Last week one of our competitors began the process of shutting it’s doors: StartupLinkup. On the top of their home page you can now read the following:

StartupLinkup.com is winding down. It was a nice experiment, but I realize it’s not the best model for connecting startup founders.
I strongly recommend that you use StartupSQUARE. Tristan, Manuel, and Marcel are the great guys there, and will make sure you get the right connections. All the best, Adrian.

Opportunities Everywhere

Adrian is a great developer. I saw when the first seeds were planted in his head months ago based on the Google Doc spreadsheet for co-founders and I predicted that some speedy coder would have something up in a couple weeks. Yep…that was Adrian. So why would he abandon his idea?

Partly because he’s a great developer. He can build a website in a week or two. He doesn’t lack for new ideas or the skills to implement them and that’s a distinct advantage in this ecosystem. With opportunities everywhere, there’s no need to doggedly chase down one path if it’s not the right one for you. In this case, Adrian recognized the same customer problem we did and also recognized that his solution wasn’t quite working. Why keep pursuing it?

Instead of fighting it out for each customer, he turned to his competitors (startupSQUARE, techcofounder.com, kofounder.com, fairsoftware.net, etc.) and announced that he would redirect traffic to whichever one of us had a good solution that would actually solve the problem. (Fortunately, that turned out to be us thanks to some really great endorsements from our users!)

His rationale was pretty straightforward. A successful solution that helps entrepreneurs find co-founders helps Silicon Valley, it helps the economy, and ultimately Adrian benefits as a member of that ecosystem.

Adrian thought in terms of long term benefits for the group instead of the short term benefits for himself.

(note: Adrian’s next project sounds pretty cool. I’m interested to see how it develops.)

That brings me to my next point: we all know each other. There are quite a few companies looking to provide opportunities for co-founders, advisers, and investors to find one another. We talk on the phone, we share information. Why? Wouldn’t it make more sense to horde data? Isn’t business like a poker game? The guy with the most information wins, right?

The pervading philosophy here is that cooperation builds businesses and competition chokes markets. Instead of having ten companies compete for the same slice of the pie, they’re more inclined to sit down together and figure out how to bake a bigger pie.

Chess vs. Poker

If you want to win in Silicon Valley, you have to play chess more than poker. For those that don’t play chess or poker, here’s the difference: Poker is a game of incomplete information. You don’t know what cards the other person has.

The only way to give yourself an advantage at poker (beyond being able to calculate simple probabilities) is to read the other person’s mind. Of course there’s a science to that and some people are great at picking up subtle micro-expressions and body language. However, that skill doesn’t help you in chess.

Chess is a game of complete information. Of course, you still don’t know what the other person is thinking, but all the pieces are out in the open and obvious. If you lose, it’s not because the other person pulled a fast one and somehow hid a piece, it’s because they had a better strategy and tactics. In Silicon Valley, information is a commodity.

Information is a commodity?

Yes. Well…no…information still valuable and in some cases rare, but data is a certainly a commodity and information is on it’s way.

You can have all the facts and figures in the world and without the ability to parse that data into useful information, it’s useless and worthless. Minor case in point, if need you need to know how to create an arrow using CSS instead of a graphic, just search the web. (I liked this post when I needed to know.) There are ten thousand blogs giving away more than just data. They are giving away information under the rightful assumption that their ability to generate that information (a “how to” guide) is more valuable than the raw data (meaningless lists of css syntax).

In this case, Jon Rohan is trying to increase his reputation as someone who can turn data into information by making it freely available to everyone. The only thing that now differentiates a front end developer on this particular task is their ability to successfully execute a Google search. However, Jon’s skill and willingness to share it set him apart.

Companies behave in this fashion as well, not only open sourcing their prized code, but they generate open APIs by the thousands which allow hundreds of thousands of developers to use their abilities to turn data into information and generate value. Companies like Facebook of course keep some data to themselves, but their APIs essentially commoditize vast swathes of data and enable any company out there to become a partner of Facebook simply by writing a couple lines of code.

In this system of complete information, developers in Silicon Valley wind up cooperating more than competing in order to differentiate themselves on the basis of abilities rather than information or data.

Chess rather than poker.

Thank you!

So I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to Adrian Fritsch again for his kind words and his contribution to our site. He realized what we should all realize, that contributing to the eco-system in the spirit of cooperation leads to greater long term benefits for everyone.

I hope that startupSQUARE can play it’s part in this, by taking those values to the broader entrepreneur community via our site and help every system build as vibrant a co-founder eco-system as Silicon Valley.

Related posts

• The Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Pivot (3)
• Someone Please Write a Blog Post about Minimum Viable Strategy (3)
• Photographic Proof that I am not a Ninja (2)

It’s been a few weeks since the Lean Deck Clinic and Gregarious & I are starting to plan the next ones. But first, we wanted to publish some of the lessons learned from the clinic.

These are notes from the participants themselves of advice given by a variety of different clinicians (see here for the list). So the bullets may at times contradict one another or other advice you may have read or received. I’ve edited some for legibility.

Special thanks to John Maloney from NetworkGrader.com who took some very good notes and sent them in.

• You need to hook an investor in 30 second on a human level by finding a shared experience/pain point.
• Start your pitch with stories and craft a compelling narrative.
• Describe the offering first and why it is important and an opportunity.

note: Feedback on what to start a pitch with often varies tremendously. Often people advise starting with the problem statement.

• Avoid ‘TMI’ – Too Much Information.

note: This was mentioned more than once. It is the “Lean Deck” Clinic.

• Add screen shots, mock-ups and demonstrations when available.
• Be carefully using industry investment quotes because companies often invest for reason other than they say.
• Some VCs want to see domain expertise in the team.
• The team is important, but startups are a lonely business since Individual founder(s) do virtually all the work.
• If you can present without a powerpoint, it’s fantastic, but it’s very very hard.
• A good presentation with a small audience (a table of 5) is very different than a good presentation in front of a large audience (a room of >50).

note: Knowing your audience is always key and you should ideally change your presentation to fit your audience. So a larger audience will clearly change your pitch. You may also be targeting a small portion of the audience (investors) at a conference rather than the general audience. So things can get very complicated.

• Avoid launching if you’re fundraising.

note: In followup discussions this was very contentious advice since it potentially reduces the amount of learning you can do. However, there is a big difference between a public launch and ongoing customer development.

• Clearly elaborate how you will get traction.

note: a.k.a Customer Acquisition. This is the most often overlooked slide or part of a business plan.

Cheers,
Tristan

Related posts

• Startup Weekend Lesson Learned #1 – The Pitch (1)

The bloated thing is my foot.

After my anti-ninja rant last week, it was perhaps inevitable that the universe would see fit to prove that I am not a ninja by any stretch of the imagination. Behold my foot. (see pic) It’s not supposed to look like that.

Let the laughter and taunting begin!

The End of My Parkour Lesson

As I vaulted gracefully over the first 4′ block and approached the more imposing 6′ padded barrier at a full run, I had nothing to fear. I had cleared it a half dozen times already and as I’m 6’4″ myself, I reckoned that if I collided with it my 190 lbs would more than likely flatten it and the diminutive gym teacher holding it in place.

One foot goes halfway up the wall while your hands slap the top of the barrier, providing a pivot point to convert your forward momentum into upwards velocity as you vault over and land gracefully on the comfortable looking floor pad on the other side. At least so goes the theory.

Reality looked reasonably similar except for the graceful landing part, which was replaced by a pop, a surprised expression, and the subsequent agony of my right ankle twisted at an implausible angle to the left of where it should be. Fortunately, I retained enough of my wits to cry feebly for help.

My ankle was dislocated and (as I’d later learn) fractured.

Laugh It Off

Failing sucks. But it happens. A lot.

It’s been a long time since I injured myself badly, but I was fortunate in that I could see the humor of the situation almost instantaneously. As I lay on the ground hoping that my ankle would suddenly pop back into place, I had to start laughing. It was presumptuous of me to start vaulting 6′ barriers after my second class and it was perhaps inevitable that I’d hurt something. So I laughed long and hard.

(Important note: If this happens to you, call for help first, then laugh. If you laugh first, people tend to ignore your “no really, I broke my ankle” claims.)

In the same way, coming back to the US to start a company after five years abroad with little sense of the local market is potentially stupid and some flailing about was overwhelmingly possible. However, the possibility for injuring either my body or my ego is not an acceptable excuse. The real failure would be not to try at all. Stumbling on the way, that’s just part of the fun.

So it’s healthy to laugh about it. Laughing does great things to you when you’re injured. It jacks up all your endorphins (mmm…sweet sweet endorphins) and it also gives you a sense of perspective. Even in pain, I just learned something and will know better next time.

(In this case, avoid hitting the top of the mat straight because by the time it compresses you’ll be at an angle.)

If All Else Fails…

However, sometimes you can’t get up.

Certainly in this case, I couldn’t even considering getting to my feet until my ankle was back in place. That’s when other people come in handy. Other people can do all sorts of useful stuff like help you up, get a pack of ice, and drive you to the hospital. They can also take blurry pictures of you to commemorate the occasions. (Thanks Tota!)

Hurt but happy.

Teammates, co-founders, and advisors play the same role in your startup. I can’t imagine what I’d do without co-founders to talk me down when I’m wrong, back me up when I’m right, and flat out get things done. The fellow entrepreneurs I’ve come to rely on for advice serve the same functions. And in addition to giving great business advice, they’ll also swing by the drug store and pick up ice packs for my ankle.

Other people are great. If you don’t think so, consider a career where you don’t have to talk to anyone. Perhaps a monk.

Lessons Learned

• The universe has a wicked sense of humor.
• You’re going to fall down at some point.
• Pick yourself back up.
• If you can’t pick yourself back up, make sure you’ve got a good team to help you.

Cheers,
Tristan

Related posts

• What makes Silicon Valley special? – Information is a Commodity (0)
• Stop Calling Yourself a Rockstar and a Ninja (37)
• Parkour for Startups: Conserve Momentum (1)
• Hackers and Ninjas Wanted (0)

I understand that you kickass at Guitar Hero and you play a ninja in World of Warcraft, but seriously… can you stop calling yourself a rockstar and a ninja in real life? These hacker terms for “awesome coder” have gotten way out of control.

[UPDATE: Thanks to everyone for pointing out that WoW has no ninja class. Sorry...I'm a Starcraft guy.   ]

Rockstars suck!

A rockstar is an heroin addicted egotistical maniac who rakes up enormous hotel bills by throwing TVs out the window and has clauses in their employment contract like “my poodle requires a foot massage by a 6’2″ Russian model.” You want to know why your favorite band broke up? ’cause one of the band members suddenly noticed “I’m a rockstar” and they didn’t need anyone else. Why would you want to hire one in your company let alone choose one as a co-founder?

Know who I want in my company? Tony Levin. That guy doesn’t play one more note than necessary and he ROCKS. He’s what I’d call a lean bass player of the highest caliber. Check out his discography if you don’t believe me or just take Peter Gabriel’s word for it. Listen to the bass line on Sledgehammer. Is he a rockstar? You probably wouldn’t recognise him walking down the street. Do you want him in your garage band? You can’t afford him.

Shinobi

Let’s see, why wouldn’t I want to hire a ninja?

The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, and assassination.

Wow…that sounds awesome! Let’s hire a backstabbing assassin for our company! Wait…is he assassinating us or infiltrating us?

The ninja, using covert methods of waging war, were contrasted with the samurai, who had strict rules about honor and combat

Even better! I can start a company with someone who has no sense of honor! That should be great when it comes to protecting our intellectual property!

[UPDATE: John Metta has the best picture showing how overused the word ninja is here. Also embedded on the right.]

Seriously guys…I’m sure we can think of some ego flattering terms for a good programmer that don’t immediately imply that hiring them would be an act of blatant stupidity. I’m open to suggestions.

[UPDATE: As many have correctly pointed out, I had to hurriedly strip out these terms from our own site! Yes, this was a tongue in cheek late night post, but that is how ubiquitous these terms are. I actually annoyed myself while trying to write a web site copy without using them. It will take dedication to kill off these evil evil memes.]

Summary of Lessons Learned

• A company is a team.
• Teams are built from strong individuals
• “Strong individual” is not a synonym for “raging egomaniac”
• When looking for a co-founder look for a partner, not a rockstar

Cheers,
Tristan

Related posts

• No Titles Please – We’re a Startup (0)
• First Dates and One Night Stands for Co-Founders (12)
• Why Get Married on the First Date?…Co-Founder Dating (0)
• When Should You Find a Co-founder? Before your idea is even half-baked. (0)
• Photographic Proof that I am not a Ninja (2)

Ok…this is less of a lessons learned and more of an outright challenge.

At the last Startup Weekend (#swmobile) the team I joined was called KissMobs. As far as I’m aware, we are the only Startup Weekend team ever to finish the weekend cash flow positive. It could be there are others, I don’t have the stats and I’ll let Franck correct me on this one. We also didn’t pay ourselves any salaries and my dividend totaled enough for a cup of coffee. A bad cup of coffee.

Still, I think every team coming out of Startup Weekend should have this as a goal: A SALE

No Whining Allowed

My challenge relates to some of the snide anonymous comments I saw going across Floughter (I’ll explain later). There were a couple of people griping that the technical demos weren’t cool enough and it ‘looked more like a business plan presentation than a Startup Weekend.’

I half-heartedly agree and you can read some of the ways I flailed on the technical side at our own presentation in my last post. However, I’m am just as unimpressed by a great demo without customer development as I am at a business presentation with no demo. A product with no customers is not a product and it’s not a Minimum Viable Product either (sorry Eric). Regardless of how impressive your 54 hours of hacking were, you have failed.

Get Out of the Building

Steve Blank‘s commandment of “Get Out of Building” is exactly what Katherine Webster from our team did. We had an application designed to promote bars by creating a spontaneous flash mob singles scene. We didn’t have a working product, barely had a landing page with a survey, and no marketing effort. So how could we get a customer? She went over to a local bar and talked them into giving us $50 bucks to promote a Startup Weekend after party on Sunday.

She gave them enough of a pitch that they paid us $20 upfront. After we bought a domain name to put up our basic landing page, we were still up ~$10.

Floughter Wins by a Landslide

I am not saying we should have won the event. We shouldn’t have, we weren’t the best company by far. The company that won the weekend was clearly Floughter. Floughter is basically  Twitter but completely anonymous, 70 characters, and local to within 70 meters. (Actually the geo-location didn’t work, but nice fake for the demo anyway.)

While they didn’t get an advertiser to pay for some tweets in their stream, they did rake up about 1500 tweets in the 45 minutes after their presentation. I would argue that those users paid for Floughter with their time, even if they didn’t pay cash. I think 100 of those tweets were Tony, Nick, and myself, but regardless it was very impressive user adoption for 45 minutes of uptime. They weren’t cash flow positive, but they won by demonstrating traction.

It was all the more impressive since the team didn’t have a single engineer among them. They outsourced the entire development to oDesk.

Summary of Lessons Learned

• Revenue is Good
• Whining is lame
• Get out and sell something

Cheers,
Tristan

Related posts

• Startup Weekend Lesson Learned #1 – The Pitch (1)
• Someone Please Write a Blog Post about Minimum Viable Strategy (3)
• Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain (0)
• Clever Hans and Photoshop Iteration (1)
• Why I’m Not Raising Money (Yet) (8)

Cheers,
Tristan

Related posts

• Startup Weekend Lesson Learned #2 – Customer Development (0)
• Lean Deck Clinic Lessons Learned (0)
• Why I’m Not Raising Money (Yet) (8)
• Update: How to Make Your Investor Pitch Lean (0)
• Top Takeaway – Startup Lessons Learned (3)

Getting lean is becoming essential to all aspects of running a business and pitching is no exception. Here’s a quick update on our original post to the Lean Deck Clinic on Monday August the 2nd. The event is sold out for participants, but you might be able to score a ticket to the final round of presentations if you’re fast. (There were three left as of this post.)

Special last minute addition is the big grandaddy prize of a whopping 15 hours (~$5,000) of in legal work courtesy of Antone Johnson at Bottom Line Law Group who is himself a lean startup and focuses on providing “lean startup lawyers for emerging growth companies”. That’s enough legal work to get incorporated, deal with patents, trademarks, privacy policies and more. There may even be some more special treats coming for the other participants.

And don’t forget to check out the NYC Lean Coffee if you’re in New York!

Good luck to all participants!
Tristan

Related posts

• How to Practice Shutting Up (Customer Development Practice) (0)
• Why I’m Not Raising Money (Yet) (8)
• Top Takeaway – Startup Lessons Learned (3)
• The Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Pivot (3)
• Startup Weekend Lesson Learned #2 – Customer Development (0)

I recently sat down with Chris Redlitz from Transmedia Capital to talk about his new startup incubator KickLabs and founding teams from his perspective as an entrepreneur (AdAuction, Get Relevant, Aptimus, and On Village), executive (Skyrider, Feedster, Reebok), and now venture capitalist. We discussed what makes a founding team work, potential conflicts of interest between investors and entrepreneurs, and what KickLabs looks for in a company. Chris is also going to be a judge at the Lean Deck Clinic on August 2nd.

T: In your experience, is there a distinct advantage to having a founding team as opposed to being a sole entrepreneur?

C: Yeah, I think so. Especially in technology it’s good to have breadth so to speak. You can obviously take an idea and have it outsourced but from a development point of view, it’s good to be able to collaborate. Collaboration is really the most important thing when you’re doing something. I have an idea but I need to actually have some sort of way to vet that idea as it morphs along the way. Having someone that has a little bit more of a technology capability with someone that is more of a business or marketing person… it’s kind of the ideal situation if you can make that work.

T: So what do you think doesn’t make that work?

C: I don’t think it’s a showstopper if you don’t because there are resources to develop. I think it’s more just, the ability to vet, collaborate, you know, brainstorm. It’s tough to do by yourself. In the short time we’ve been doing this [KickLabs] and looking at companies over the last six months, we’re not seeing too many single people come in. Or if we do, they definitely had the desire to find a team to round out what they’re doing. It’s rare to find somebody that’s doing it by themselves.

T: What are, generally, the types of things they’re looking for?

C: It depends on what their core competency is. So it’s to be able to sort of leverage what they’re doing with a very complimentary core competency.

T: When you say “core competency”, are you talking primarily in terms of skills or roles or do you find that they’re very much the same thing in this context?

C: Yeah, as a founder, it’s less about title or role. It’s more about what my skills are to bring that idea to more of a real tangible product. If someone is a little more business-oriented and methodical about their approach and someone is a little more of an idea person that’s probably a good match, right? If you get too many people that are idea people, nothing ever gets done. So I think you really need to have that sort of very complimentary skill set.

T: So would you say that the primary qualities you look for in terms of finding people both for KickLabs and teams to invest in is complimentary skill sets or are there other qualities such personality types or shared vision that you think are also critical?

C: If you’re looking to accept a company [into KickLabs] or do an investment, what are we looking for? Is that your question, yes?

T: Yes.

C: Ok. It’s a little bit different here, because we’ve got an open environment. As opposed to looking at strictly a company to invest in from a business model point of view and an entrepreneur and stopping there, we have to take that a step further. Because now we want a personality that would fit in, not to sound trite, but people either they want to work in an open collaborative environment or they don’t, and they either add value or they don’t. It’s kind of binary in that sense.

It goes beyond the normal evaluation of doing investment because you have to “live” with the people, You made the chicken reference: [note: Chris and I discussed his interest in chicken farming before I turned on the recorder] every time you enter a new hen into the coop or to the flock, they have to all get along, and they go through this pecking order process until they figure out.

T: Who’s the alpha hen?

C: Who’s the alpha hen. It may not always be the same one as you enter new ones into the flock. So that’s kind of the same thing here. When I look at a company here, I look at the business opportunity, but it’s almost as important to look at the people or person. I’m very much into investing in the founders or founder primarily.

T: Do you think that’s more important than the idea?

C: No, not necessarily, but we’ve seen this over and over and over. Twitter is a great example, Evan Williams had a great success with Blogger right? Odeo was going nowhere and Twitter was a new idea that the same investors ponied up again for because they believed in him [Evan] and his team. Because frankly, Twitter, if I looked at it in a vacuum, it probably wouldn’t have made a lot of sense. But it came from those guys who had success and they believed in him so they invested in him and the rest is history

T: I’m curious as to why you differentiated.  You said in a team that you’re looking solely to invest in you look more at the business case and less at the personality…

C: Uh, no, no, no. I look at the personality as how they would potentially fit into an environment, so I want to qualify that. If we look at just an investment, we’re certainly looking at the people and…

T: People within their own environment as opposed to…

C: Within their own environment, yeah. I don’t have to worry about them getting along with someone next to them and that whole sort of ecosystem. We’re building an ecosystem here at Kicklabs that, just as a standalone investment, we wouldn’t really consider.

T: But you still have to worry about the co-founders getting along with each other?

C: Yes and that doesn’t always work. I’ve been in a few that haven’t worked for me.

T: What are some of the warning signs of that?

C: Sometimes there aren’t any. I don’t want to get too personal, but I’ve been in situations where I never saw it coming and all of a sudden… 180º on how this person acted. Never saw it coming, and I think part of it is that as things change, whether it’s stress, success, failure… in this particular case, there was a tremendous amount of success early on and this person wasn’t able to handle it. It’s almost like you shouldn’t read your own press clippings, and if you do, then it creates issues.

So I don’t think you’d ever see it coming. It is a marriage and you kind of have to treat it like that. I mean, I actually lived with this person for a while. When you start a company, it is truly living with someone, spending more time with that person than you would with your family and no matter how well you know that person, when they say a lot of times “don’t take money and do business with your friends” there’s a lot of truth to that too, so.

T: So, speaking of marriages, one of the things I’ve talked about with a lot of people is “how you date your co-founders?” So, what would be your ideal first date when vetting somebody to join a company? How would you sort of determine if they have the right qualities, the right skill to fit in with what you were doing?

C: I was going to say go play golf with them, but that’s not necessarily the right answer.

T: It might be.

C: I like to get out of a business environment, understand that person more. So, I was half joking about the golf. I do a lot of networking on the bike… I just did a bike ride with a bunch of guys that are in and around social media on Friday. We went up in the mountains of Mt. Tam. So I think it really is like dating. I think that you have to know someone beyond business because you spend so much time with them.

I think it’s really important to understand peoples’ expectations because you’ve got to stay really aligned and you may not always agree with how the business is going or you may have to… the favorite term today is pivoting, changing business models or “morphing things”.

You have to be aligned in sort of macro vision of what you want to do, but also when you take money the founders have to stay aligned. It’s really important because if not, that can really fracture a business really quickly.

To be continued next week where we discuss how VC and entrepreneur aims can diverge…

Related posts

• Why I’m Not Raising Money (Yet) (8)
• Team/Market Fit is more important than Product/Market Fit (0)
• Merry Xmas!…now shut up and start coding. (2)
• Clever Hans and Photoshop Iteration (1)
• Why Get Married on the First Date?…Co-Founder Dating (0)

Have you ever needed feedback on your investor pitch? Are you in the San Francisco Bay Area?

Agenda

• 6:00pm Welcome
• 6:15pm Deck Clinic
• 7:00pm Welcome All / Food / Break
• 7:30pm Key Performance Metrics Panel
• 8:15pm Deck Presentations

Key Performance Metrics Panel

Lean Startups are deeply focused on measuring progress as part of the learning process. In a vacuum, metrics can get in the way of seeing the bigger picture. Our panel of clinicians will speak on the various KPIs they look for when evaluating a business and give some background on why these data points have historically proven valuable / predictive.

Deck Clinic

The Deck Clinic will present 18 startups with the opportunity to present their deck and receive immediate feedback. Startups will be grouped into sets of 3 and paired with a clinician (an angel, vc, or seasoned entrepreneur who can provide measured feedback). Each presentation will last for 15 minutes:

• 10 minutes to present your deck
• 5 minutes for feedback

Deck Presentations

Following the private presentations, the winning decks from each group will have the opportunity to present to the whole group for additional feedback. Each winner must make adjustments to their deck based on the feedback they received during the clinic.

When / Where

August 2-3 (TBD)
6:00pm – 9:30pm

KickLabs
250 Brannan Street, SF, CA

Here are the key dates to keep in mind for the Deck Clinic:

• 07/25 – Submissions Deadline
• 07/30 – Selections Announced
• 08/02 – Deck Clinic

Related posts

• Why I’m Not Raising Money (Yet) (8)
• Someone Please Write a Blog Post about Minimum Viable Strategy (3)
• Impending Doom and Early Releases (0)
• I Need Bigger Ears (Customer Development Mistakes) (7)
• How to Practice Shutting Up (Customer Development Practice) (0)

Admittedly, I look like a giraffe. (A handsome giraffe damnit!) So it was inevitable that the universe would take advantage of my gangliness by conspiring to put me into a Parkour class. (Hint: I got a Groupon.)

For those not familiar with it, Parkour is “extreme urban running” as imagined by a crazy Frenchman named David Belle. It’s that thing they do at the beginning of Casino Royale and in those old Nike comercials. Here’s a video if you still don’t know:

Needless to say, I’m feeling tender today. Whole new parts of my body are sore in ways I did not know were possible. And yes…it was damn fun.

Momentum

As I spent the next 24 hours massaging tiger balm into my aching calves, I thought about the class and how much it resembles what we’re trying to do with startupSQUARE.com: Conserve momentum.

Here’s how a typical Parkour vault works. You run as fast as you can towards an object in your way, leap towards it headfirst, then right when you’re about to crash into it, you drop your arms down and push yourself ever so slightly over it. This presents two distinct problems for the novice.

1. Hurling yourself headfirst towards an object seems inherently unwise.
2. Using your arms to brake your fall seems inherently smart.

Unfortunately, neither of those insights will get you over the obstacle.

Commitment

Hurling yourself headfirst without thinking things through is a typically entrepreneurial trait. It’ll work. Might be risky, but just do it. I think most entrepreneurs have this part down so I won’t go too much into it. Suffice to say, it is an act of crazy faith, backed up only by a vague understanding of the laws of physics and the belief that the second part of the equation will work. That is…the pivot.

Minor Adjustments

The second part is where you touch your arms down ever so slightly. The trick here is that you’re going to put your arms down after you’re over the object. So you’re actually not pushing down off the object, but more away and behind you. You’re just adding a little extra boost to which pivots you from a painful headfirst collision to a badass monkey style dismount.

If you put your arms down too soon, you’re actually trying to stop your fall with your arms, which is not going to happen. If you don’t believe me, imagine catching a 185 lbs torpedo (my weight) with just your arms. Yeah…doesn’t sound pretty.

This is a typical situation in a startup. You’ve invested a tremendous amount of time trying to build up momentum, calling all friends to try your product, handing out flyers, coding coding coding, and pimping yourself to every VC with a checkbook….then all of a sudden…an obstacle in front of you. What’s to be done?

Sanity

The sane thing would be to stop and go around it. Or pick a different direction.

But we’re entrepreneurs, so let’s get past the sane stuff. We want to conserve momentum. We keep going forward, hurl ourselves violently at the impending doom of a metal barrier, and then make a slight midair pivot and keep going.

This series of minor pivots allows us to keep going and avoid the stop start of a big company. That’s the type of start and stop where projects get cancelled, execs get fired, budgets get swallowed by financial crises,etc. We know that if the company grinds to a halt, it will be incredibly difficult if not impossible to get going again. Our finances will run out, morale will deteriorate, and our financial backers will be unlikely to invest another round in a “new direction”.

What we really need is not to stop. Any obstacle can be overcome and it doesn’t mean the vision is wrong. We need to be lean and nimble, pivoting as we maintain momentum. We need to be graceful. In the spirit of l’art du déplacement We need to…and this is the only time you’ll hear me say this…be a little bit more French.

See you at Parkour class,
Tristan

P.S.: If you’re in San Francisco and would like to go to a class, let me know. I need someone more gangly than me at the class for encouragement.

Related posts

• The Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Pivot (3)
• Customer Development with Network Effects (1)
• Why I’m Not Raising Money (Yet) (8)
• Update: How to Make Your Investor Pitch Lean (0)
• Top Takeaway – Startup Lessons Learned (3)