Here are my slides from my talk - Lessons Learnt from WooThemes - at NetProphet yesterday. If you’re not intrigued enough to view the slides yet, have a look at these compliments that I got via Twitter yesterday…

Wow @Adii makes awesome slides. If his slides are this good, you should be buying his themes. ~ @saulkza

Seriously ass-kickin’ slide deck by @adii at #NetProphet, be sure to check it out when it’s posted. ~ @PresoRockGods

Nothing like a bit of ego-stroking, ey? :)

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.

When you’re within an ambitious startup, you want to tackle so many different things at the same time, but due to the size of your team it is simply not possible. This leaves you with two choices: 1) invest further and increase the size of your team; or 2) be content to prioritize everything you tackle.

The first option is generally too risky for me and the second is largely frustrating i.e. I’m between a rock & a hard place.