Adii Pienaar

A couple of weeks ago I joined AngelList hoping to get into the angel investment scene and diversify my own business interests (as well as meeting new people and having stimulating / challenging business conversations about their work). I've had a couple of introductions to startups which I thought had some traction, but to date I've resisted pulling the trigger on any of the deals, as I've decided to err on the cautious side.

Bubble or no bubble, I'm not convinced of either of those ends on the spectrum. This article published by the Economist last week introduces a new "bubble theory", one which resonates more with my own thoughts than the alarmist articles that have been published recently.

Here are my concerns:

1. Funding supply is exceeding the demand, which is driving higher valuations. Angel investment has indeed become sexy and - dare I say it - moved into the mainstream. Heck, I'm quite connected and I read a lot, but it's only in the last couple of months that I've taken notice of angel investments to the extend that I'm intrigued enough to get involved. More angels obviously means that valuations are being driven up and I'm not sure that all of these valuations could ever be sustainable.

2. Valuation techniques / models are shocking. Talking about valuations, I recently quizzed a startup founder on how they decided the valuation of their business (for the purpose of raising some funding). He said: "We want to raise $200k and for that we're willing to part with 10% equity. So this values our company at $2m". A little crude IMO (especially since this was prior to $1 of revenue)... I'm no investment expert, but I did my fair share of business valuation models during my Honours Degree and this kind of valuation is risky at best.

3. The Exit Culture. At this kind of pre-revenue valuation, how can I ever earn a proper ROI on my angel investment? I need to hope that the company is valued at a higher level in a subsequent funding round or I need to hope that they get acquired somewhere in the future, in which case I'll probably be rich. Alternatively I need to hope that revenues eventually justify that valuation, which is a gamble at best since your guess is as good as mine when - and if - that will happen (as there's no supporting evidence pre-revenue).

4. Closed Focus. It just seems that so many startups are targeting the same kind of tech-savvy demographic, which suggests that we'll eventually reach a saturation point in the appetite of this demographic to try something new (which in actual fact is only a slightly different spin on something else they've been using until now). This approach is very gimmicky and I highly doubt that we'll continue to see $1m-in-sales, overnight iOS app successes as much as we've seen them until now.

None of these concerns, invalidates either angel investment or the tech / startup community at the moment, but they most definitely make me think twice about make any investment at present. I know that there are a lot of angel investors - especially those that have access to the best deals in the Valley - that will make an absolute killing for pulling the trigger now, but that is most definitely easier, when you can make 10-odd sizeable investments & in the process you're hedging your own risk (based on the assumption that you're actually making good investments).

Unfortunately I'm not in that position to take a 10-deal kinda risk on our personal finances at present and I thus need need to be much more selective about the investments that I do make.

The WordPress ecosystem is rife with copycats and we're severely lacking a couple of unique ideas. Due to the popularity of WordPress and the obvious success that designers / developers and businesses have experienced in recent years, many more are flocking to the platform to make a quick buck. Which would've been absolutely fantastic for all those involved, except that these newcomers are not bringing much newness to the table.

In every industry where businesses have experienced significant success, you'll find a lot of "late-adopters" trying to get in on the gold rush. I believe that WordPress is still in its infancy as a ecosystem and as a result I think its a very viable decision for a newcomer to try enter the industry.

The supposed gold rush is most definitely not over and whilst the established players will continue to reap the rewards of being first movers, there is still space for newcomers to make a name for themselves. Yes, it is becoming harder and harder for a newcomer to gain traction when starting out, but it is most definitely still possible.

My problem is that none of these newcomers are bringing any new ideas to the table; instead they have preferred a strategy of emulating the success of the bigger players in the industry. At WooThemes we've often been amused at the varying attempts of newcomers to copy our brand / model / product strategy and yet we're still to be knocked of our perch. I don't say that in an arrogant way, but there's no way that Theme Company A can be as good a WooThemes as WooThemes itself will be. Uniqueness would've however served them much, much better.

To explain this in a non-WordPress context, I love the strategy that the so-hot-right-now flight search engine, Hipmunk, have taken since launch. When they launched, there were many similar services out there, yet they pulled the proverbial rabbit from a hat in tackling a known problem in a very unique way. They Hipmunk'd a whole industry as a result.

I think the whole WordPress community can do with more Hipmunking and less copying.

At WooThemes we've certainly tried to be first movers in a few spaces. Two of these that stand out (to me) are our contribution to the WordPress core with Menu's and all the work we've done to create Tumblr-like functionality in WordPress (which has been a bit of a passion project for me personally).

Another WordPress business that I think has achieved a similar level of first-moving uniqueness is Gravity Forms, which has truly revolutionized any kind of form in WordPress and become a must-have plugin for 99% of new WordPress installations. In a similar way, the "plugin + hosted service" model implemented by VaultPress or ScribeSEO is to be lauded for doing things differently (and being great at what they do of course).

These are the kinda ideas that I believe will add value to the ecosystem and continue to be a driver of innovation in the community. Copycats on the other hand simply dilute the offerings available, which in turn just makes the initial (purchasing) decision that much harder for inexperienced users.

For every e-mail that gets sent, there's an inbox that probably can't handle yet another mail.

Cue the hipster trying to explain this "phenomenon": "I just get so much mail; I really can't answer all of them.", "So sorry if I missed your mail, but I get hundreds each day and yours probably fell through the cracks." or "E-mail overload is a real problem."

Duh.

See, I get it: we're all struggling to answer all of our e-mails since every Tom, Dick & Harry started sending an e-mail about everything a couple of years back. And now most Tom's, Dick's and Harry's have smartphones too (just so they look cool, not because they necessarily fully grasp the device), so they're sending you mail while on the pooper. I get it.

I also know that answering e-mail - especially lengthy one's - isn't the most pleasurable experience, nor do you feel like you've accomplished anything after you're done. I also absolutely hate waking up to an inbox with 30 unread mails, which means I've developed a bad habit of answering a couple of them on my iPhone, in the bed before I doze off to sleep. Bad habit. Yuck. But we do what we have to do.

The best part is that the more e-mails you manage to respond to, the more you are likely to receive back. Exponentially. Talk about a catch-22.

Here's the MASSIVE BUT though: None of these makes it okay for us to start ignore e-mails.

If I sent you an e-mail, I most probably did so because I would really appreciate a response (of any kind). Or maybe I really look up to you, admire your work and wanted to connect about something that might just be important to me. I also sent you the mail knowing that you are busy (just as I am), that it might take a couple of days for you to respond (which I'm okay about) and I tried to keep the e-mail as short as possible in respecting your time. If you don't respond, I don't know whether you got my mail, whether it perhaps went to spam or whether you didn't regard me important enough to warrant a response.

I'm nowhere near perfect when it comes to answering my own mail, but I try really, really hard to answer every single e-mail that pops up in my inbox. I'm slightly obsessive compulsive when it comes to keeping my inbox clean, I don't use any computer process that will "prioritize" my mail for me (just another lame excuse not to answer e-mails from senders outside of my network) and I realize that this isn't the most productive decision I've ever mind. But common courtesy is still a value that I regard highly.

So to everyone moaning about not having enough time, you can join the rest of us in that boat. We can also seriously stop playing the "my inbox is bigger than yours"-game, since that doesn't get the e-mail answered either. We all agree that the massive amounts of e-mail that gets sent is a real problem, but we're not solving it by selectively ignoring some of those e-mails.

You're not doing anything wrong when you're not answering the mail you receive. Compare it having your own home; if there's a knock at the door, it's your choice to open it or pretend like you're not there.

I for one - and I'm sure I'm not alone - have much more respect for those people that takes the 2 minutes to reply to my mail.

I'm the "business" guy / co-founder over at WooThemes. Our business has 3 co-founders and over the years all 3 of us have evolved our roles to focus on the specific parts of the business of which we're most passionate about.

When we started the company, we were bootstrapping and as a result all 3 of us were hands-on-deck & in DIY-mode in terms of being involved in the actual production of our products, as well all the business & admin stuff. But as we grew the team and hired designers, developers & a support team, our roles changed quite drastically.

So at the moment, my role within the company would be generally regarded as being the "business guy". Most of the writing on this topic tends to agree that a triumvirate of co-founders (a designer, a developer & someone taking care of the business-side of things) is the ideal mix of skills in an online startup. Even though neither of us are exclusively responsible for one part of the business, there are obviously things that I do more and take more responsibility for as a result.

My Responsibilities

This is generally what I spend my days doing:

• I do all of the marketing & tracking of the campaigns.
• I do most of the blogging.
• Exploring potential business development opportunities.
• Networking with whoever.
• Managing collaborations.
• I try coordinate all of our daily / weekly / monthly efforts to assure that we're hitting our strategic aims. I tend to take a step back from individual tasks / projects and take a more holistic look at the stuff we're doing.
• Interacting with the WooThemes community across all channels.

Not a bad job, right? :) Well, whilst this is 100% what I'd like to do every day, it doesn't come without its own set of challenges.

The Challenges

Nothing in life is ever perfect. Remember that! :) Heck, if anything was perfect, life would be pretty boring in that we'd have nothing we could improve on.

These are the challenges of my job as the "business guy" at the moment:

• I haven't been designing or coding for ages, so if I have an idea or the team decides to put a little campaign together, I need to wait for one of the guys on the team to handle the design / code of the project before I can continue with my tasks on that project. This inevitably means that there is gaps between the conceptualization of a project and the execution thereof, which sometimes means it is tough to keep the motivation and momentum going for that project.
• There's a seemingly obvious list of priorities: bugs, products and then everything else. So guess what falls off the radar? Everything else. Guess what a big part of my job is? Everything else... :)
• As a result of the above two points, I generally have items on my to do list that takes ages to tick off. Either they're not top-most priority or I need to wait for someone on the team to "help me out". Neither is wrong, but I don't get the satisfaction of feeling that I've accomplished certain things by ticking them off.
• I obviously understand our products and wouldn't be able to market them without that intimate knowledge. But I don't understand the complexity and detail anymore, as I'm out of the development game. I don't understand why certain bugs are harder to fix and why it seems (to me) that all we do is fix bugs or upgrade existing functionality (instead of developing new, groundbreaking products). I need to take the queue from the rest of the team on this and I think we'd all agree that where communication is involved, it's always a bit of a challenge. :)
• I spend a lot of time trying to tie up loose ends & making sure everyone is on the same page. This doesn't deliver an actual "result" in itself, but does help in getting the work done indirectly.
• Some days I spend the whole day answering e-mail, yet it doesn't feel like I've been working. Self-doubt is a massive issue.

If you've read my blog you'll know that I don't mind being personal and sharing emotions - yes, emotions - in explaining my mindset and experiences as a business owner & entrepreneur. So I don't pretend to think that these challenges are the worst in the world, but I do think they're pretty significant and most co-founders in my position should share similar experiences.

What are your experiences in this regard?

Life changes so quickly...

I can finally (publicly) share that Jeanne & I are 9 weeks pregnant and expecting our baby later this year. We've known for a couple of weeks, but waited for our first doctor's appointment before sharing the news with the world.

Heck, to say that the last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind would be a complete understatement (as I still have some professional / business news to share as well). Along with the absolute joy & excitement of finding out that we'll soon be parents, it is just so obvious during times like these that one's life can really change in the wink of an eye. I do however expect that these changes will be the most rewarding experience I've been part of during my life thus far.

I don't intend for this to become a "daddy blog" during the next couple of months, but "parent" is soon another title that I'd add to my resume. So expect the odd update on how that changes my life as a "rockstar", business owner and entrepreneur. :)