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Happy Holidays!!!

From the team at SDYE.. Happy Holidays! See you in the new year!!

Marissa Mayer’s Simple Advice On Who To Hire: Smart People Who Get Things Done

Hi Group,
After last nights meeting, one thing really stuck out, aside from the funding everyone is always looking for, it was obvious the next and most cruticial element to get your ventures to the next level is the right people to help you along. That being said, check out this article I found on Techcrunch this morning written by Michael Arrington but focused on Marissa Mayer's hiring process.
You can view the original post here

Marissa Mayer’s Simple Advice On Who To Hire: Smart People Who Get Things Done 9 Comments
by Michael Arrington on December 10, 2008

Google’s Marissa Mayer said a lot of interesting things on stage today on stage at the Le Web Conference in Paris. We covered the Chrome and Search Wiki news.

But the most important thing she said, in my opinion, was also the simplest. An attendee asked Marissa how she went about building her team over the last decade.

Her answer: “I like to hire people who have two traits. They’re smart, and they get things done.”

She also talked about the joy of working with a team where every member was passionate about the project. But the key message resonated. Smart people who aren’t closers tend to flail. Small startups get rid of these people fast because they stand out. But sometimes they can find a place to hide in larger organizations where they fester like a cancer. If a company the size of Google can avoid hiring them in the first place, it’s a serious competitive advantage.

From my own experience, team members that you can rely on to just take on work and complete tasks are rare, but worth spending the time to find. It’s not always clear from interviews or reference checks that they have these traits. But you know within a month of hiring them. That’s why most of the people we hire we try out for a month before either side commits. And we also end up hiring a good percentage of our interns on a permanent basis, too. After spending a summer with them, you know what they’re made of.

Does Your Product or Service Stick Out in a Crowd?

In our efforts to define the value of our web based service to our customers, Matt and I have learned a great deal about the concept of the "Competitive Adavantage".
Seasoned experts will tell you (or at least us) that a true company is built on an unfair or competitive advantage and that success is largely based on how strong or defensible the said advantage is.
Here is how I see it, and I am in no way an expert, infact I still have a lot to learn, so take this all with a grain of salt.
A competitive advantage can come in a variety of forms:
- Go to market strategy (Apple, Hulu, Rent.com)
which can include but may not be limited to partnerships, relationships, exclusive deals.
- Defensible technologies or methods (Microsoft, Oracle, Guinness Beer)
which can include but may not be limited to patents, licenses, methods, ect..
- A unique and clear understanding of your serviceable market and how they use your product or service (Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin)

If you have not defined your competitive advantage yet, fear not, as all is not lost.
I have learned that listening to your customers is more important than trying to build something defensible, after all, if you build something your customers will not use because you focused your efforts protecting it instead of using it, you most certainly will be the only person protecting it and using it when the smoke clears. A perfect example was/is all the digital music copy protection issues over the last 5 years.
Some of our greatest ideas for Asirent came directly from our customers. They know what they need and they know what they want. Do not assume anything, ask a lot of questions, build solid relationships and grow your advantage from there.

How to Bootstrap Your Way Past Recession by Noobpreneur on December 5, 2008

This post comes via SDYE member Caleb Granger!
Thanks Caleb for bringing the post to our attention to share with our other members.

How to Bootstrap Your Way Past Recession

It’s time for entrepreneurs to do what they are supposedly good at - bootstrapping.

I don’t know how about you, but I view business owners can only call themselves entrepreneurs if, and only if, their main focus in business is cost-cutting - one major element of bootstrapping.

The successful entrepreneurs I know are guarding their money like a maximum-security prison guarding prisoners - Money coming in is encouraged, and money coming out is inspected many times with security measures.

Those entrepreneurs are bootstrappers - In my opinion, only a few entrepreneurs start their career in the business world NOT as bootstrappers.

Bootsrapping tips

I learn from my fellow entrepreneurs on how to bootstrap your way to thrive in today’s recession - From what I learn, there are several similarities in bootstrapping methods among them; To name a few:

* They purchase everything on business credit cards - this way, they reap point rewards that can be redeemed with various rewards, such as traveling the world - this is effective as long as they pay their bills on due date to avoid late fees or other fees incurred.
* They do balance transfer - they ‘reshuffle’ their business credit cards, and transfer the balance - or aggregate some, to the most attractive credit card issuers offers possible.
* They always think, “Substitute, substitute, substitute” - i.e. if printing their own business card is cheaper, they’ll do it for sure.
* Their motto, “Save the money, save the world” - free advertisements, free classifieds, consignment, dropshipping, viral marketing, etc. are their keywords.
* They choose NOT to hire employees, if they feel hiring ones will not add to their business’ revenue significantly.

* They outsource - avoiding the headache and costs of having their own employees, they outsource and sub-contract non-critical business operations to a third party.
* They use the recession as their marketing tool. i.e. one of my colleagues use emotional or paranoia marketing to get customers in without costing a lot to attract them - one pitch example: “Don’t invest in today’s lackluster stock market that has bankrupted investors - invest in gold with us”

Focus on balance transfer

With today’s eminent threat on everything that incurs interest - credit cards, mortgages, business loans, etc. - doing a balance transfer for your business credit cards is, in my opinion, a must do.

I encourage you to consult your financial advisors or your trusted credit card issues about the possibility to do balance transfer.

Better yet, there are many websites on the Net offering advices and recommendations on balance transfer and which credit card issuers offer the best financing solutions.

One, single, best tip of all

Related to those I outlined above, I have one, single, best tip of all tips :)

Keep small, dream big

Keeping your business team smallish has its own perks: More responsive to changes, cost effective in running your business, and minimal bad-corporate-culture-thing.

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know and befriend with run a 2 or 3-person company that rakes in six figures in US dollars, annually.

One last tip - never run your business on your own, if you are really serious about getting your business going through the recession - you need every help available.

Ivan Widjaya
Bootstrapping
The orignal post can be seen at www.noobpreneur.com

Bill Attinger - C-Level Startup and Turnaround Specialist AT SDYE's DECEMBER MEETUP

You are not going to want to miss this one!
With Mobile blowing up and opening a whole new marketing and technology channel for most ventures, it may somehow tie back to your strategy!
Come meet Bill Attinger at the Dec.9th SDYE meetup up in La Jolla!



Bill has been a leader and innovator in growing, financing and grooming young companies for almost twenty years. His specialty is helping young companies install a sound strategy critical and the necessary corporate governance, processes and culture on which to grow and succeed. Bill prefers to do this as a full time member of a company's management team, but also considers opportunities to help a company as a Director or on an Advisory Board member.

While most of Bill's experience is in bringing new technologies and young companies to market, he is becoming increasingly involved in helping stalled or struggling companies turn their operations back around.

During his career, Bill has founded three companies, advised many more, grown venture-funded companies from conceptual to operational within nine months, secured investment capital from multiple investor sources and structured more than $1 billion of publicly-offered securities as an investment banker for Morgan Stanley.

Bill's industry and domain expertise is focused on wireless services and technology companies, with an emphasis on “SaaS” (Software as a Service) business models. His breadth of experience, however, includes other industries, including retail and manufacturing.
Specialties

Executive level experience in all facets of establishing an new operation or turning around a struggling operation, including strategy, organizing legal and operational infrastructure, recruiting, developing marcom materials, building financial forecasting models, recruiting, defining pricing structures and partnership/channel models, writing business plans, and devising scalable sales and pricing models. Subject matter expert on mobile marketing & wireless, SaaS models and startup businesses.

10 REASONS WHY I LIKE STARTUPS

1) The People - A real entrepreneur has a story, an ora and a passion(s)! She is an interesting person by her very nature. Entrepreneurs are unique in that they are limited only by determination and imagination not money or environment.

2) The Process - Building teams with vision and drive has got to be one of the most rewarding experiences. Leveraging knowledge from a group breeds a larger vision and more market opportunities.

3) The Fix - In startups, you can recognize a problem today and have it fixed by tomorrow, try doing that at Microsoft.

4) The Network - Entrepreneurs hire entrepreneurs, they are resourceful, crafty and creative, throw them all in one room long enough and they WILL find a way to make it work.

5) The Ambition - skills can be taught but ambition is contagious. Doing your best 150% of the time is par for the course at a great startup.

6) The MacGyver in Everyone - While most companies are full of Captain Mo, yours is full of MacGyvers (Minus the mullets). Give your team a locked safe, a toothpick and a shoe string and watch them go!

7) The Money - There usually isn't any, so it's obvious everyone is there because they want to be and not because they have to be. This brings out the best in your team.

8) The Learning - Startups are a crash course in business. College is great but this is the real deal.

9) The Camaraderie - You find out who you can really count on when your back is against the wall.

10) The FUN! - Startups are an emotional rollercoaster but are serious fun. I have experienced more personal growth in 2 months in a startup than in 4 years of college.

The Art of Bootstrapping (From G.K.'s "How To Change The World" Blog"

Too much money is worse than too little for most organizations—not that I wouldn’t like to run a Super Bowl commercial someday. Until that day comes, the key to success for most organizations is bootstrapping. The term bootstrapping comes from the German legend of Baron von Munchhausen pulling himself out of the sea by pulling on his own bootstraps. That’s essentially what you’ll have to do, too.



1. Focus on cash flow, not profitability. The theory is that profits are the key to survival. If you could pay the bills with theories, this would be fine. The reality is that you pay bills with cash, so focus on cash flow. If you know you are going to bootstrap, you should start a business with a small upfront capital requirement, short sales cycles, short receivables terms, long payables terms, and recurring revenue. It means passing up the big sale that takes twelve months to close, deliver, and collect. Cash is not only king, it’s queen and prince too for a bootstrapper.

2. Forecast from the bottom up. Most entrepreneurs do a top-down forecast: There are 150 million cars in America. It sure seems reasonable that we can get a mere 1 percent of car owners to install our satellite radio systems. That’s 1.5 million systems in the first year. The bottom-up forecast goes like this: We can open up ten installation facilities in the first year. On an average day, each can install ten systems. So our first year sales will be 10 facilities x 10 systems x 240 days = 24,000 satellite radio systems. That’s a long way from the conservative 1.5 million systems in the top-down approach. Guess which number is more likely to happen.

3. Ship, then test. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. When your product or service is good enough, get it out, because cash flows when you start shipping. Besides, unwanted features, not perfection, come with more time. By shipping, youll also learn what your customers truly want you to fix. It’s definitely a trade-off your reputation versus cash flow so you can’t ship pure crap. But you can’t wait for perfection either. (Nota bene: life-science companies should ignore this recommendation.)

4. Forget the proven team. Proven teams are overrated—especially when most people define proven teams as people who worked for a billion-dollar company for the past ten years. These folks are accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and it’s not the bootstrapping lifestyle. Hire young, cheap, and hungry people—people with fast chips, but not necessarily a fully functional instruction set. Once you achieve significant cash flow, you can hire adult supervision. Until then, hire what you can afford and make them into great employees.

5. Start as a service business. Let’s say that you ultimately want to be a software company: People download your software or you send them CDs, and they pay you. That’s a nice, clean business with a proven business model. However, until you finish the software, you could provide consulting and services based on your work-in-progress software. This has two advantages: immediate revenue and true customer testing of your software. Once the software is field tested and battle hardened, flip the switch and become a product company.

6. Focus on function, not form. Mea culpa: I love good form. MacBooks, Audis, Graf skates, and Breitling watches. But bootstrappers focus on function, not form, when they are buying things. The function is computing, getting from point A to point B, skating, and knowing the time of day. These functions do not require the more expensive form. All the chair has to do is hold your butt. It doesn’t have to look as though it belongs in the Museum of Modern Art. Design great stuff, but buy cheap stuff.

7. Pick a few battles. Bootstrappers pick their battles. They don’t fight on all fronts because they cannot aff ord to. If you are starting a new church, do you really need a $100,000 multimedia audiovisual system? Or just a great message from the pulpit? If youre creating a content Web site based on the advertising model, do you have to write your own customer ad-serving software? I don’t think so.

8. Understaff. Many entrepreneurs staff up for what could happen, best case, even though they say they are being conservative. “Our conservative (albeit top-down) forecast for first-year satellite radio sales is 1.5 million units.We’d better create a 24/7 customer support center to handle this.” Guess what? You sell 15,000, but you do have 200 people hired, trained, and sitting in a 50,000-square-foot telemarketing center. Bootstrappers understaff knowing that all hell might break loose. But this would be, as we say in Silicon Valley, a high quality problem.

9. Go direct. The optimal number of mouths (or hands) between a bootstrapper and her customer is zero. Sure, stores provide great customer reach, and wholesalers provide distribution. But God invented e-commerce so that you could sell direct and reap greater margins. And God was doubly smart because She knew that by going direct, you’d also learn more about your customer’s needs. Stores and wholesalers fill demand, they don’t create it. If you create enough demand, you can always get other organizations to fill it later. If you don’t create demand, all the distribution in the world will get you nothing.

10. Position against the leader. Suppose that you don’t have the money to explain your story starting from scratch. Then don’t try. Instead, position against the leader. Toyota introduced the Lexus lines of cars by positioning them as being as good as a Mercedes but half the price. Toyota didn’t have to explain what as good as a Mercedes meant. How much do you think that saved it? “Poor man’s Bose noise-canceling headphones” would work, too.

Original Link Here