Adii Pienaar

Read this article by the 37Signals folks and whilst I agree with them 99% of the time, I’m just not feeling very agreeable today…

See, I can agree that an obsession over a product name isn’t worthwhile as that time could be better spent doing stuff (i.e. developing your web app) that will create a bigger return on your investment / effort.

But the thing is, those product names become your brands too, which means you do need to put some initial thought into how you want to brand, market & position those products. If you go with a shitty name from the start (because you’re taking the approach of not obsessing), then it’s definitely gonna limit the space you have in which to tweak & market in future.

In the end, it comes down to finding a balance in terms of the things you spend your time on. So do spend time on deciding your product / brand names, but don’t be overly anal either as that is just valuable time being lost…

So as I’ve mentioned before, I’m really keen to do some angel / seed investing (via iincubate, which will also fall under the radiiate umbrella) in the future and as a result I’ve been following quite a few influential peeps in that space as a way to build up my own knowledgebase.

Up until now, I have zero experience with angel / seed investments and the bit of theory that I do know, I picked up during my graduate studies in Business Management. That being said, I don’t think that angel investing is overly hard to grasp, as it is not much different to any other form of investing (imho as a newbie).

I’d think that it would be possible to make a solid investment decision based on the following two factors:

• Does the idea make sense? Irrespective of how speculative the idea is, if it makes sense and it’s possible to turn it into a sustainable & potentially profitable idea, then your investment should be fine.
• Does the business / revenue model make sense? How dependent are those on external factors & assumptions? What percentage uptake / number of customers do you need to cover overheads?

As far as I understand (and this is my mentality with regards to angel investments), the idea is to take a small percentage of a startup at a conservative price level (so you need to get in early). Based on that, it is thus possible to limit one’s risk exposure with great potential in terms of earning a proper ROI if the idea & business model does gather traction.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, as these are just the thoughts that I have been playing with in my head… I still have a lot to learn obviously and most things I’ll only end up learning with future experiences. In the meantime though, my plan is (as it has always been) to simply wing it and learn on the job…

When I flew out to the UK on Friday I made the decision that I was gonna give Gowalla a full go whilst over here, as it had more spots & users compared to the relatively slow uptake in Cape Town. But to be honest, I just can’t get into it…

For one, it’s quite a mission to check in at every place; not in terms of the process, but more in remembering to do so. And secondly, I don’t see the value thereof for either myself or my followers.

Gowalla has an amazing interface and I can’t (and won’t) knock them in any way, but the service just doesn’t seem to be able to entrench it into my natural ways (as to some extent Twitter has done).

Anyone else feel this way?

First off: I’m a massive believer in growing one’s own ideas and it would thus be a very hard decision for me to ever even consider selling one of my companies. We had concrete interest in WooThemes in the past for example, but to this day we have decided that we’d rather continue to grow our own baby, instead of selling.

This article on TechCrunch goes on to explain why FourSquare should not be selling out to Yahoo. I however have an unique take on this…

1. At a valuation of $80m+, I sell my startup today; especially one that is reliant on technology. Whilst you are relevant & trendy today, this may not be the case tomorrow; so I’d rather sell for a ridiculous amount of money now and start up something new.
2. A valuation of $80m+ is ridiculous to say the least. FourSquare isn’t even making any money; so wonder what that valuation is based on? Potential? Forecasts? Pfff…
3. The author has gotten his point of having an entrepreneurial spirit spot on by saying “But there’s a reason why you became an entrepreneur and didn’t just stay a mid level developer grunt at a variety of large organizations. You have the fire to change the world. So go do it.”. Fact of the matter is, that approach is always a risky one and sometimes you need to take some money off the table and out of the equation (i.e. looking after one’s longer term needs).
4. Personally I’d rather sell completely than have to take VC funding and answer to a bunch of suits. But that’s probably just me.

I will always be an entrepreneur at hard and even at silly valuations, I will be reluctant to sell any business I’m currently involved with or may be involved with going forward. Reality however is that even entrepreneurs need to be realistic at times; so selling your startup should always be an option.

Having that as an option, doesn’t mean you are selling out, but it does mean you are considering every possibility and every opportunity. In my mind, that is more entrepreneurial than just ignoring a possible sale because you are afraid of selling out.

One thing that I’ve learned over and over again of late is that there is absolutely no space for compromise & complacency when dealing with customers. These are the people that makes your business a success and they ensure that you are able to pay the bills; so never - ever - stop short of pulling out all the stops to please your customers!