In a recent blog post , Steve Blank, author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany” talked about reversible versus irreversible decisions:
The heuristic I gave my friend was to think of decisions of having two states: those that are reversible and those that are irreversible. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc. If the decision was a bad call you can unwind it in a reasonable period of time. An irreversible decision is firing an employee, launching your product, a five-year lease for an expensive new building, etc. These are usually difficult or impossible to reverse.
My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left his office or before a meeting ended. In a startup it doesn’t matter if you’re 100% right 100% of the time. What matters is having forward momentum and a tight fact-based feedback loop (i.e. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. That’s why startups are agile. By the time a big company gets the committee to organize the subcommittee to pick a meeting date, your startup could have made 20 decisions, reversed five of them and implemented the fifteen that worked.
That’s good advice. You never have complete information for decision making in a startup, and it’s probably more important to make the best decision you can with the information you have, and move ahead. There’s definitely a danger in spending so much time gathering more information that you lose the agility advantage a startup needs to have over more established companies. But you do need to be quick to correct it if the decision ends up being not so great.
An acquisition or an initial public offering (IPO) are the two most common exit strategy options for investors in startups. Of course, the problem right now is that IPOs are virtually non-existent and acquisition activity is low. A company named SecondMarket is trying to create a third option, as described this week in a New York Times article written by Claire Miller. SecondMarket has experience in other illiquid asset markets (such as shares of companies awarded to creditors as a result of bankruptcy proceedings). But with such weak IPO and acquisition activity, you have to wonder whether there’s enough demand for a 3rd option. Check out the full article for more info.
From Calagator.org, here are upcoming events for tech entrepreneurs:
Key Events
Apr 29 – Big Idea Bash 2
May 01 – BarCampPortland III (day 1)
May 07 – Energy Entrepreneurship and Innovation
May 07 – Oregon Tech Awards
May 14 – Willamette Angel Conference
May 19 – Gorge Angel Conference 2009
May 20 – Webvisions 2009
Jun 17 – Open Source Bridge
Jul 25 – AeA Party in the Pinot
All Events
Monday, Apr 27, 2009
1:00 pm, Ongoing Counseling Sessions
6:30 pm, Digital Photo MOB Workshop
7:00 pm, PDXCritique
Tuesday, Apr 28, 2009
7:30 am, Portland Business Alliance presents Business Leads Exchange
8:00 am, Agile Testing Series
8:30 am, Elisabeth Hendrickson’s Agile Testing Series workshop: April 28 – 30
6:00 pm, Portland Data Plumbing User Group (pdpug)
6:00 pm, Networking Extravaganza
7:00 pm, pdx.st — Portland Smalltalk Users Group
7:00 pm, OMSI Science Pub
Wednesday, Apr 29, 2009
9:00 am, Portland Cisco ASA Training: Two-Day Hands-On Seminar
10:00 am, iPhone Developer Quick Start
4:00 pm, Open Counselling Sessions
5:00 pm, Big Idea Bash 2
6:00 pm, Agile Learning Games Play Party!
6:00 pm, IDSA’s 3BY10 Design Speaking and Networking Series
7:00 pm, CocoaHeads: Cocoa Programmers’ Group
Thursday, Apr 30, 2009
9:00 am, ICFP PC Functional Programming Workshop
5:00 pm, Shizzow Developers Meetup
5:00 pm, OEN SwapMeet
Friday, May 01, 2009
8:30 am, SAOpdx: Managing Agile Teams
9:00 am, Creating Agile Learning Games for Coaches & Consultants
11:30 am, NW Solar & Clean Tech Expo
4:00 pm, Slate Technologies Grand Opening
6:00 pm, BarCampPortland III (day 1)
Saturday, May 02, 2009
9:00 am, BarCampPortland III (day 2)
What tech-entrepreneur programs and events for the Portland area would you like to see? Let OTBC know by completing a short survey. From the OTBC blog:
We get input at our lunches, and through our Meetup.com ratings, but we’d like to round that out with input from a larger sample of the Portland area tech entrepreneur community. So please take three minutes to let us know what you think.
Tell us what you’d like to see!
These are mostly ratings of 1-to-5 to show interest level in a topic. Lots of ideas are listed, but it goes fast. Really! Three minutes. (OK, four minutes at the outside.)
The survey is at this link.
And at the end of the survey, you can see what others have said up to now.
From Calagator.org, you can view a concise list of upcoming tech/entrepreneur events in the Portland area at:
http://www.oregonstartups.com/events.php
OTBC coach Mark Paul has 3 presentations coming up that are all targeted to helping business owners. We suggest you check these out!
April 21: How to Attract More Customers … in good times and bad. Lake Oswego Chamber. More info.
April 29: Best Practices for High-Performance Businesses, WSU Small Business Development Center, More info
June 4: How to Validate your Market, OEN, More info.
Elia Freedman, CEO of Infinitysoftworks (an OTBC member company), published a blog post this past week with a huge amount of insightful information on his experiences so far after launching an application in the iTunes AppStore. If you’re thinking of launching an iPhone app, this is a must read, with thoughts on everything from AppStore pricing to search terms.
VC Brad Feld gave this advice for entrepreneurs in a recent post:
As I was reflecting on the day, I realize that one of the key pieces of advice that I regularly give entrepreneurs is to “join a formal group of your peers that meets regularly and spend deep time with them.” I don’t mean “industry associations” or “random networking clubs” – I mean things like EO, Vistage, or YPO. When I was a first time entrepreneur, I often thought “I don’t have time for this.” Bull*** – I didn’t have time not to do it. And that continues today even after having been involved in hundreds of companies. Entrepreneurial communities aren’t merely geographic or industry focused – peer groups that build deep, intimate, and long term relationships between the members play a key part in the process of entrepreneurship.
Wise words indeed!
From recent VentureBeat post, Caine Moss, a partner with Wilson Sonsisni Godorich & Rosati described trends in VC deals these days. Not surprisingly, they involve longer due diligence cycles, lower pre-money valuations, stronger liquidation preferences, and the appearance of redemption clauses (redemptions require that the company pay back the investment after a certain number of years if there hasn’t been an exit event). Moss suggests that entrepreneurs pay special attention to management carve-outs (in cases where liquidation preferences are likely to leave nothing for management) and option pool increases (in cases where there is a dilutive financing). For more info, see the full post.
Here’s what’s coming up this week, from Calagator.org:
Tuesday, Apr 14, 2009
7:30 am, SAOpdx: Winning Game Plans: Serena, AboutUs, Pop Art, and Jive!
7:30 am, Portland Business Alliance presents Business Leads Exchange
5:30 pm, inFARMation (and Beer!)
6:00 pm, How to Use a Blog to Promote your business
6:30 pm, PDXPHP Meeting: PHP Develoment Methods
Wednesday, Apr 15, 2009
4:00 pm, OEN Workshop – Selling Stock in Your Company
6:30 pm, DevGroup NW: The Future of Interactivity
6:30 pm, XPDX April: Bugs Do Not Exist
7:00 pm, Beyond Heaving Bosoms
8:00 pm, SAOpdx: Software Day at the Capitol
Thursday, Apr 16, 2009
8:00 am, The Business of Renewable Energy
9:00 am, WATIR training by Bret Pettichord
12:00 pm, SAOpdx: Keeping Happy Customers Across the Global Quilt
5:00 pm, Shizzow Developers Meetup
6:00 pm, Compostmodern PDX
7:00 pm, PDXPUG – MySQL war stories: Tales from the Crater
7:00 pm, SECP’s April Event Multiple Income Stream Development
7:00 pm, UX Book Club
Friday, Apr 17, 2009
12:45 pm, OEN – Off the Record with a CEO – April
5:00 pm, Slate Technologies Grand Opening
Saturday, Apr 18, 2009
9:00 am, Corvallis Artisans Market Opening Day
Sunday, Apr 19, 2009
6:00 pm, Showing of “Everything’s Cool” and review of Climate Action Plan
