This past week was my first as a full time entrepreneur. It was amazing and I haven’t had as much fun in a long time.
For the majority of my previous career I was based in the Silicon Valley. It was always a mixed blessing because it required regular travel to corp headquarters and introduced a certain amount of friction in getting things done - especially when partnering with unknown teams located in another geography. On the upside, my teams were often able to get very different stimuli (nothing like a cal train ride filled with folks from yahoo, intuit, and other neat places) and ignore randomization to focus on getting things done. So while I figured out ways to make it work it is impossible for me to deny that it didn’t take more effort.
However being in the Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur is truly amazing. This place really is “headquarters” for folks trying to start new [software] ventures. In a single day with 2 gallons of gas (4 if you don’t have a Prius) you can connect with VCs, see great demos from folks across the world, network with a seemingly unlimited number of other entrepreneurs, and brainstorm with great folks from industry / academia.
A particularly fun illustration of all of the above coming together this week: My friend Ravi pulled me and ceo of new startup into a meeting with 7 students from Stanford whom he was helping brainstorm for a class project. Even wilder was that 4 of the students were actually visiting for 6 months from Singapore as part of an entrepreneurial focused exchange program. Needless to say, it was so freaking cool to hear about how they used the web / software today and about their experiences in the facebook app development class!
Of course with an unlimited set of opportunities to learn, brainstorm, and meet with others elevates the importance of time management and efficient work flow. Thus, I am really missing one of the things I took for granted for a long time - nearly universal free / busy calendar data. At MSFT it was easy to just enter someone’s name into a meeting request, explain why the meeting was needed and find a viable time slot for it in a more or less 2 minute atomic action. The recipient could easily accept or propose another time in another more or less atomic action. Without universal free / busy data it usually takes 5-7 emails back and forth (often over a few days) to do the same thing with a lot of flipping back and forth between my calendar & sent items folder to make sure a time slot hasn’t been booked or I’m not waiting to hear back about the another meeting for that time slot in question. It’s kind of crazy this problem hasn’t been solved better…especially given the number of companies working on calendaring.
My learning / advice - pick up the phone and just hammer out the meeting logistics in real time whenever possible.
Another observation about making the leap into entrepreneurism is that you have to be comfortable putting in a whole bunch of structure for yourself. While this is related to time management it isn’t the same. I think the best way to explain it is by re-purposing a definition about my old role (it’ll be a few more weeks before I stop cross correlating things to my old world…deal with it):
”..[entrepreneurs] not only ‘pick up and run with the ball, they go find the ball’. That really defines the difference between ‘knowing what to do and doing it’, and ‘not knowing what to do, but using your own wits to decide what to do, then doing it’.”
For me this has meant figuring out the balance of diving into an idea vs. investigating meta trends, meeting with people vs. researching online / prototyping, asking others for guidance vs. charting my own path, and the wicked kicker of them all - being too structured / focused vs. recognizing opportunities / taking risks. There isn’t a right answer for any of this and ultimately the only measure of “correctness” is what and where you end up when all is said and done. And that, my friends, is the fun of this whole adventure!
