So long...and hello again

It's with a heavy heart and a deep breath that I rejoin my blog after more than 18 months.  As you may have guessed, things got a bit crazy when L. (and all of my possessions) moved to San Francisco. We were forced to shut Loosecubes down in November after building an amazing team and wonderful community. I've learned quite a bit over the last while to share with you.  It's been almost 2 months, a hurricane, a wedding, and a restorative trip to Africa since the shut down.  I'm finally ready to be back.

So many people made this journey possible and I’d like to say thanks to a few. I wouldn’t be worth a dime without Anna Thomas’ relentless positive energy, magical foresight, and organizational skills.  To Pete, Yanda, Sep, Luke, James, and Lisa, thank you for encouraging me and for teaching me the ins and outs of this crazy industry. To Brian, Theresia and all of our wonderful angels who took a chance on me in the beginning when very few people even knew what coworking was – thank you. It’s been an exciting, exhausting, hilarious, wild ride. 

Most of all, thank you to Team Loosecubes who worked day in and day out to bring our community a product they could be proud of and a service they could rely on.  You made me laugh every day – from nerf gun target practice, to fireside chats at SXSW, lunches at Foragers and pop up Loosecubes around the city, talking to TV crews (or programming for them), maintaining a positive attitude and bringing your all every day to work.  You guys are the real deal and I’ve never before worked with such a talented yet humble group of people.  I will be forever indebted to you for all that you have taught me.  

And last but not least, to L., my partner behind the scenes, my advisor, my confidante, and the love of my life.  Thank you for keeping me sane and for always reminding me to stay close to my center.  Here’s to the next chapter.  Tomorrow is a new day – let’s make it count.

You're sales

I want to reframe my post You’re product and community. 

Product and community are the two most important parts of my business (other than technology, which I can’t actively work on). 

If the most important part of your business is selling your product or services directly to customers, don’t outsource sales.   It’s fine to outsource everything else.  If the difference between success and failure is your ability to close sales with ad agencies, spend 80% of your time understanding your customer, engaging them, and closing the deal.  Spend 20% sleeping.  Have other people do the rest (website, marketing materials, taking out the trash). 

Don’t hire a sales guy so you can make sure the trash gets taken out.  You are the best (and only) person to tell the story.  Tell it.

You're product and community

When I was first starting work on Loosecubes, one of my friends and trusted advisors said to me, “You’re going to need to be the product manager and the community manager for now. You can’t delegate these early on.” 

I had no idea what a product manager was and had some idea about what the community manager might be.  I’d run a nonprofit after all. 

For those of you who don’t know what a product manager is, check a great post by Colin Nederkoorn (Product Manager for Challenge Post and generally awesome person): http://bit.ly/b0nwfO 

If you’re starting a company on your own, start thinking about how you balance manager time (community) with maker time (product).  These are two very different ways of thinking.  I found doing product (wireframes, user flows, reviewing comps) at night and on the weekend and doing community during the day (emails, marketing materials, meeting with people, talking to users) the best way to balance both.

This is why it’s hard to find time to exercise when you’re starting a company.  Hang on, it does get better (I hope). 

Why don't we get drunk and screw

Names matter.  Especially in a world of SEO and links, trademark costs and web domain brokers.  Yikes, you better pick right.

People need to remember the name of your company.  How many awesome new products do you hear about that you can’t google for the life of you?  I want to share - or god forbid - buy your product and I can’t get the name right!  You’re dead in the water.

Functional names work in industries where figurative names dominate (like songs). Why don’t we get drunk and screw is so obvious it’s shocking. and memorable. no subtlety there. Jimmy Buffet was freaking brilliant.

On the other hand, figurative names work well in industries where functional names are the norm.  Amazon, for example, is way better than www.storethatsellseverything.com and zappos works much better than www.shoestore.com, or was it www.shoesstore.com?  double consonants are a killer. We had that with www.smythhotel.com.  I always want to leave out one “h.”

How does your company's name make your customers feel? How many times do you have to remind people what your company is called?  Try before you buy.  Test a name for a week and see what people say.  And please don't pay $10,000 for a domain name that you haven't tested.  Don't wimp out.  Get this one right.

You have no choice

I’ve talked to a lot of people about their business ideas.  “What do you think?” they ask.

These are tough conversations.  Chances are you know way more than I do about your market and what strategy you are going to use to attack it.  I can’t tell you to move forward or not.

What I can tell you is some advice a good friend gave me: 

You know when you’ve hit on the right idea because you’ll have no choice but to pursue it.

 If you have to ask, chances are it’s not the right idea.