1. Been a while

    It’s been a while since I wrote anything publicly but lately I’ve been kind of itchy with regards to reviving my blogging activity which brings us to this point, where I’ll try to keep up with some sort of regular schedule. I’m not making any promises though.

    Picking up things where I let them off (and I’m more ways than just this one) I’ll try to do my best to sum up what’s been happening during this past nearly year and a half. Not that it matters much but indulge me a bit and I’ll try to make it worth your time.

    7syntax and handivi

    Soon after leaving the company, which “coincided” with me going into radio silence, many people asked to publicly share what went wrong. I didn’t and I won’t. If you want good stories about all the things that can go wrong at a any startup[1] I advise you to read this collection. Story after story I kept saying: “yup, I’m guilty of that too”, go read them.

    But I’d still like to share some stuff with you, even if just the good stuff:

    1. hiring kick ass people: a friend once asked “how about the guys you have there?” to which I simply answered “Google grade people”. Everyone knows Google hires really smart people, and we were so lucky as to be able to do that as well. Hugo, Ruben and Nuno are among the brightest I’ve ever worked with and, to this day, I still wonder how on earth we managed to get them, not being able to compete on salary or perks. This alone should tell you plenty about their personality;
    2. process is everything: it’s very easy to go off course if you don’t have a process, or even a half-baked one. At one point we established a process that involved a lot of post-it notes and a white board to keep track of things in a visual manner for everyone to see, replacing what was (sort of) being done with project management software. This alone made wonders in putting stuff out the door;
    3. marketing probably isn’t what you think it is: I don’t pretend to know what marketing is, people get college degrees for it, so I assume it has to be something complex. Even so, marketing isn’t about publicity (although it involves it) nor sales nor schmoozing. If I understand it’s most basic concepts, it’s about defining who may buy your stuff (segments), talking with them to see how/if your product fixes their problems, how much they’re willing to pay and creating a compelling enough message for them to give you their money. It’s strategy, not just a bunch of tactics;
    4. listening: everyone can hear but not everyone can listen. Understand the difference and you’ll be better off from the start;
    5. it’s more than OK to accept outside work (aka consulting) in order to finance your product development, just don’t sell yourself cheap;
    6. the most important part of accepting venture investment really (and for the love of God, remember this forever) isn’t the money;
    7. there’s plenty of really good, really practical and helpful small business literature nowadays if you know where to look, so start looking!
    8. there are really good days when the sun hits you warmly in the face, you feel a slightly warm breeze, the track playing on your ipod is just perfect and you’re at peace. There are also shitty days, when the sky is pouring down, a tornado is about to hit, it’s freezing cold, you’re all wet and your ipod has no battery left but it also doesn’t matter because itunes screwed up your library and all the songs are gone. Then there are bullshit politics and bullshitters enjoying their umbrella drinks by the river and really nice people who really care enough to ask you how you’re doing and willing to actually listen. Such is life, embrace it.

    And that’s it, that’s all I have to say.

    What’s next

    For a long long time I’ve been collecting ideas, some crazy, some not so much. The time has come for me to start executing them, now armed with a little bit of hindsight, an awesome bunch of people with whom I feel I can discuss matters and who keep me in check, and a better gasp of the crucial things I need to accomplish.

    I’ll do my best at sharing the progress on those, so stay tuned.

    [1]: to establish a common lingo here, the most accurate definition of “startup” I’ve read thus far is the one by Steve Blank: a startup is an organization in search of a business model or something along those lines.