Adii Pienaar

So I've been trying to get back into blogging properly (once again), because firstly I really enjoy it and secondly I actually believe that there is a tangible benefit to having a well-read & -trafficked blog (even if only to stroke my ego).

The age-old problem however remains: doesn't matter how much I try get to a point where I'm blogging daily (my current aim - or "dream" - is to blog 5 times a week, Monday through Friday), most of my days just don't allow for that. See, either I get stuck doing actual work (since blogging can't be regarded as actual work) or I'm doing a lot of writing over at WooThemes or I'm just not in the mood / inspired to publish something here.

Blah, blah, blah... Same old excuses... And I'm not intending this to be one of those posts where I set myself lofty blogging goals, promise you that things will be different this time and that I'll actually be publishing some value stuff here regularly. That'd be bullshit.

So to counter some of those issues I sometimes face to blog daily (lack of time or lack of inspiration), I decided that I would be doing two things:

1. I'd make a concerted effort to at least write down any ideas for blog posts as I have them, which means that on those days when inspiration deserts me, I'll have something to write about; and
2. When I have some free time on my hands (normally when I want a break from work i.e. when I procrastinate), I should draft a couple of posts that I could publish on days when I don't have much free time.

I now have a "problem" of a different kind: whilst I have quite a list of ideas that'll probably make for some nice blog posts, I'm not as passionate about writing these as to when I initially had the idea. I write my best stuff when I actually sit down to write a post immediately after I had the idea. I enjoy writing more when it's impulsive and it doesn't feel like a chore when I get the opportunity to do that.

For that very reason it took my more than a year to finish Rockstar Business; it was relatively easy pumping out the first couple of random chapters, but when it came down to formalizing everything into a semi-coherent book (with an apparent structure), it became so much harder.

Daily blogging fails my impulses on that very level.

And somehow I don't think I'm alone in this boat. So many of us that have committed to blogging more (and written those quintessential "I've failed, but I'm doing this better this time around" posts), yet that aim could possibly be inherently flawed for most of us.

It's hard writing something of value every day and if you consider that there are only a handful of bloggers that manage to do this properly over a long stretch of time (Fred Wilson, Jason Cohen & Mark Suster are some of my favourites that manage this), you've got to ask yourself why that is. My opinion is that everyone is not a natural writer / blogger and to most of us, daily writing / blogging requires a skill and commitment that will challenge the mere mortals among us.

So I reckon it's okay to have lofty goals, more okay to screw up and writing the failure post should be something anyone should be ashamed of. I think the value is that we should continue trying and working hard (if a well-read blog is something you aspire to have), since you're probably adding value even if you only publish 5 posts in one week once every 3 / 6 / 12 months.

That being said, those failure posts are kinda lame. :)

A couple of weeks ago I was wondering out loud whether I might just be a one-hit wonder. The fact that I did not share at that time, was that I had already made the decision to close down Radiiate (my 2nd business after WooThemes), after it didn't grow / evolve in the direction I had hoped.

In this post I'd like to share my experiences in trying to start up another business, especially given the context that I had done it before (and am still doing it) with WooThemes.

1. (Most) Serial entrepreneurs do it sequentially

This was probably the biggest take-away after the whole experience (well said in this comment): it is just not that easy to commit completely do doing a new startup while I was still committing close to 100% of my time to another business. I just did not have the time or mental energy to power through the initial startup phase and I ended up making it really hard on myself in the way I was constantly pulling myself in two different directions.

My problem was compounded by the fact that I was doing this solo (i.e. without cofounders), which meant that I was exclusively responsible for the strategic direction & decisions. Things might've been different if I had cofounders that could've at least shared this responsibility with me.

2. Too many shitty ideas

When I cofounded WooThemes, it was my best idea at the time. I can remember either Jason Fried or DHH mentioning in an interview that if they ever sold 37Signals, they would be selling their best idea and that in turn would mean their subsequent startup would be their second best idea. So with WooThemes, this was easy: we had the idea, believed that we could execute it and worked hard at doing just that.

With Radiiate things were much different though... The day I decided to reboot Radiiate, I did so because I wanted to be involved in a startup and I wanted to stimulate & challenge myself with a few side projects. So I didn't do it because I actually had a "best idea", heck I didn't even have a good idea (debatable). What I did have was a couple of experimental ideas that I was hoping to trial. Ultimately none of these panned out as hoped and after various pivots, I decided to throw in the towel.

I know for a fact that if I had the idea before the business, things would've been very different. Having loads of experimental (and shitty) ideas definitely didn't help in this regard and in fact, it was far removed in principles of MVP, lean startups & bootstrapping.

3. Money is the root of all evil

I cofounded WooThemes while I was still employed full-time and we started the company in the classic bootstrapping + DIY fashion that is so popular. We grew the business organically from there, kept expenditure down as long as possible and even resisted office space for the first 6-odd months (preferring to work from home). This was as close to being the perfect startup model as you'd get (which resonates with the success we've had almost 4 years down the line).

Radiiate though was far removed from that model, because this time around I had accumulated enough capital, the (WooThemes) office was settled (so Radiiate could just work from there) and instead of being DIY, I had hired a team (read: expenditure). The lack of bootstrapping, DIY and my strategic involvement, meant that trying to grow organically was near impossible and the money made it easier to not face the reality (of changing things around or stopping alltogether).

4. Team composition & experience is always integral

I say this with absolutely no disrespect to Cobus & Marie (the Radiiate team), as they did an incredible job throughout and I believe they're going on the bigger, better things now.

If I had to do this all over again, I would've definitely hired more experience to be more of a guide to Cobus & Marie. I had originally hoped that I could be that guide, but ever since I became the "business guy at WooThemes", I had lost my technical knack and thus couldn't be much of a guide / help with those things.

I also regret not hiring a hardcore developer to compliment the extreme design & front-end talent that we had in the team. Various projects fell of the wayside, because we didn't have a developer in-house (multiple colabs didn't pan out) and by the time I decided to try hire someone, the expense thereof was just to significant to warrant another "pivot" (which would've delayed the decision to shut Radiiate down).

5. I don't want to be a solo founder

There must be a reason that Y Combinator prefers multiple founder teams... Duh... :)

I truly doubt that I will ever again attempt to put something together on my own; just having someone with the same, vested interest in the success of the startup means more than most can imagine. Having a cofounder to discuss problems with and having them help out with the load (especially in terms of the strategic & leadership stuff) is invaluable.

Starting up again, means doing it all over again

Ultimately I think I defied my own recipe when I started Radiiate. There was nothing wrong with the idea - in principle at least - or the passion behind the whole thing, but I guess my previous success made me arrogant / ignorant to a certain extent.

I lost quite a chunk of money trying to start this up and that is a punch that I've had to take on the chin. Whilst I doubt that I'll be doing a fully fledged startup in the short term (at least to the point where I'm not involved daily / operationally with WooThemes anywhere), if I had to do so, I would focus my attention on doing it properly and truly starting up again.

This means no luxuries in terms of cash or not having to be DIY; it would be back to square one and into the trenches. There really is no shortcuts to starting up a new business. I tried to take a few and got burned subsequently.

If you haven't heard of or are using Instapaper yet, then you're missing out. Massively.

I was admittedly a late adopter of Instapaper and whilst I've had an account (and used it on & off) for almost 2 years now, it is only in the last 6 months that it has really become an integral part of my daily routine.

The basic idea behind Instapaper is that most of us don't have time to interrupt what we're doing to read an article online - especially if they're a tad on the long side - and the service thus allows you to save those articles for reading them later (either via your web browser or via native iPhone / iPad apps). Since my days are normally unplanned and I'm constantly being pulled in multiple directions, Instapaper works really well for me and I spend most of my time using it before going to sleep at night, when consuming content via the iPad app (Instapaper being one of the main reasons that I love my iPad).

My current content consumption flow would be to find an interesting link via my Twitter stream and saving it for reading later on Instapaper. I also use Reeder (desktop, iPhone & iPad) to follow a bunch of cool blogs' RSS feeds and whilst the app is absolutely beautiful (in terms of reading & sharing from there), I still prefer to save articles I want to read to Instapaper instead.

There's one reason for this: Instapaper allows me to curate my own reading list.

I've never been a fan of bookmarking services (I could never fit del.icio.us into my workflow for example), even though the benefits of these are pretty obvious. Instapaper however makes it easy & obvious to curate a list of everything I've read and it's especially the list of articles that I loved which I really like. This fits into my content consumption flow, because I'm already using Instapaper as my reader, so being able to archive / like / curate my reads in a couple of seconds makes it easy to use (instead of having to use another service).

Having all of the content I've consumed in one place makes it easy to find articles that I want to reference for my own blogging or to use as an input in setting up new campaigns / implementing new business strategies. Having that available without having to do something much more than initially reading it, is even better. :)

Try Instapaper!

In my inbox this morning was the latest newsletter from Hiten Shah, which is part of a series of newsletters (if it can be called that) in which Hiten is sharing his experiences as an entrepreneur. This morning's topic was how brands need a greater purpose to really be successful and as his thoughts got stuck in my head, I've been trying to figure out what I'd say WooThemes' greater purpose is.

When we started WooThemes, we were designers / developers and totally inexperienced in all of the other things that come along once you create a new business (admin, marketing, branding etc.). Suffice to say, something like a "greater purpose" is not something that ever came up in our discussions and we were more than happy to simply tackle the challenges that we could actually see ahead of us in growing the company as organically & quickly as possible.

So when I now try - in hindsight - to attach a greater purpose to our business, I can see it taking on a variety of shapes & directions, which has changed over time and also differs if I compare my personal aims versus the company's aims in terms of the purpose.

In the beginning, I think our purpose was quite simple: personally, we wanted to create a company that could be an extension of our web development skills and at the same time would result in a passive income. From a business perspective, I guess our purpose was to innovate and create beautiful WordPress themes, unlike those that were available at the time. And I think that this purpose has probably stuck ever since, even though our marketplace today is filled with many more competitors (compared to 3.5 years ago when we started out) and innovation itself has become a lot more complicated in general.

This does however leave me questioning the validity of this purpose given the maturity and size of our business at present. Should we not be aiming a little higher? We could possibly make it our purpose to "beautify the web" or "democratize great design", but whilst those definitely resonates with our core values & passions, they almost seem fluffy and a bit like a "double rainbow". I don't know.

I'm sure that Woo has a greater purpose at the core, but I'm just not sure that we've ever verbalized that in its entirety. We obviously have something incredible at the core which is driving our company forward at full steam, but pinpointing those exact details is a tad harder.

Does your company have a greater purpose? What are your thoughts on having a greater purpose?

I was reading Fred Wilson's post on 50/50 Cofounders just now and caught myself feeling justified in the way that we structured our partnership at WooThemes 3.5 years ago (something which I blogged about here too).

So over at WooThemes, we cofounded a company and decided that the three of us would have equal equity share in the company. We made this decision based on the mantra of "equal share, equal contribution", which at the time probably made more sense compared to today (but only because at that time we were very much DIY and all of us were designing / developing in measurable terms). But to this day, we've managed to apply that mantra in some way and on top of that, we've never had to force a 2 vs 1 decision.

In my time as an entrepreneur, I probably rate this as one of the finest decisions I was ever part of and if I had to go back, I'd want to do the same thing. This decision has allowed us to build a trusting & loyal relationship, which has only really featured a couple of minor niggles in 3.5 years, which is something I think we can be incredibly proud of.

Yes, it has been frustrating at times where opinions have differed and sometimes it does seem that it would've been so much simpler if I could simply make the decision I want to make in my own way. But having to convince my cofounders of the merits thereof, has almost always resulted in a slightly tweaked and better decision.

Most people believe a "partnership to be a sinking ship" and in many cases I'd probably agree. Heck, if I had to do a new startup today, I wouldn't necessarily go for an equal partnership just because it worked before (I believe in using the horses-for-courses mentality). I do however have a massive predisposition to equal partnerships and I truly believe that if you have the right business partners, the pro's far outweigh any possible con's.