Do More Faster India. Brad Feld
the idea is a red flag, particularly in the absence of tangible progress. Sure, with this attitude I miss out on investing in some truly great ideas, but that’s okay with me: I don’t invest in ideas. Neither does Warren Buffett. I’ll lose less money than those who do. I can largely control my downside by investing in good people who, even if they fail this go-round, will learn from mistakes and have other fundable ideas (ideas I’ll likely have access to as an early supporter). I do not have this advantage when investing in ideas.
One popular startup dictum worth remembering is “One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion.” Put in another light: There is no market for ideas. Think about it for a second: Have you tried selling an idea lately? Where would you go to sell it? Who would buy it? When there is no market, it is usually a very sure sign that there is no value.1
Almost anyone can (and has!) come up with a great idea, but only a skilled entrepreneur can execute it. Skilled in this case doesn’t mean experienced; it means flexible and action-oriented, someone who recognizes that mistakes can often be corrected, but time lost postponing a decision is lost forever. Ideas, however necessary, are not sufficient. They are just an entry ticket to play the game.
Don’t shelter and protect your startup concept like it’s a nest egg. If it’s truly your only viable idea, you won’t have the creativity to adapt when needed (and it will be needed often) in negotiating or responding to competitors and customers. In this case, it’s better to call it quits before you start.
Focus on where most people balk and delay: exposing it to the real world. If you’re cut out for the ride, this is also where all the rewards and excitement live, right alongside the 800-pound gorillas and cliffside paths. That’s the fun of it.
David didn’t beat Goliath with a whiteboard. Go get amongst it, and like the best boxers, prepare to think on your feet, bob and weave, and quickly adapt.
I had a friend who read this chapter and said, “I vehemently disagree that ideas are worthless. Everything that’s ever been created in the world started as an idea—Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Robert Naismith’s invention of basketball. I don’t think those are worthless ideas.” Yes, that’s true. But there’s no market for ideas, there’s no website, nor any company in the world, where you can share an idea and get paid for it. An idea needs a person behind it, and some action, to become valuable. Without those, an idea is, well, just an idea.
What about all those “great” ideas we fund at Techstars? Well, about half of the companies who go through Techstars tell us that they have a “substantially or completely different” idea and product that they’re building after the three-month program ends, compared to when they first walked in our doors. When the founders of DigitalOcean applied to Techstars, they had an idea around helping developers navigate complex infrastructure. We loved the founders but hated the idea. They were already contemplating changing their idea when they arrived in Boulder in the summer of 2012 but were nervous about what our reaction would be. They quickly heard that we believed in them, but not their idea, and aggressively changed course. Alex White, the CEO of Next Big Sound, talks more about this in the chapter “Fail Fast.” The willingness to change your idea based on data is the sign of a strong entrepreneur, not a weak one.2
Notes
1 1Yes, there are a few exceptions, like licensing IP, but IP is “property,” as distinct from an unprotectable thought.
2 2Text boxes throughout Do More Faster provide additional commentary by David and Brad.
Chapter 4 Start with Your Passion
Kevin Mann
Kevin was the founder and CTO of Graphic.ly, a social digital distribution platform for comic book publishers and fans. Graphic.ly raised $1.2 million from DFJ Mercury, Starz Media, Chris Sacca, and others after completing Techstars in 2009. Kevin also recruited Micah Baldwin, a Techstars mentor, to join Graphic.ly as CEO in the fall of 2009.
I am a huge comic book fan and I started my company because of my own frustration and disappointment.
A few years ago, I read about the release of a new “Dead@17” story and I was excited to find that for once my local comics bookstore actually had it. I bought the first three issues and loved them. I couldn’t wait to pick up the fourth and final one.
On the day of the release of that fourth issue, I ran to the comics bookstore. I looked at the new release shelf only to find that it wasn’t there. I asked the store owner about it. I was told that because of budget cuts he had to stop buying a bunch of titles, and this was one of them. However, he said his sister store in Newcastle had it.
Newcastle was a 100-mile round trip and at the time I didn’t drive, so I knew the journey was going to suck. I headed off to the train station and I took my iPod along to make the journey bearable. A couple of hours later I arrived at the Newcastle comic store only to discover that the fourth issue of Dead@17 was sold out there!
On the train on the way home, my frustration and anger boiled over. I kept thinking that there had to be a better way of buying comics. And then it dawned on me. That morning I had purchased a movie from iTunes, which I was watching right there on the train. Why shouldn’t buying comics be just as easy? Why did I have to travel more than 100 miles and waste the better part of a day, all for nothing?
I realized that I had two options. I could quit buying comics or I could quit my job and build the iTunes of comics.
That’s how Graphic.ly started, and my enthusiasm for comics has now transferred to a business I love being a part of. Every single day I am excited to go to work. I get to create and innovate in a sector I love. Ultimately, I’ll solve a problem that was ruining something very special to me.
If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, it won’t mean enough to you to succeed. Startup founders choose an insanely difficult path, so passion is a prerequisite.
Many entrepreneurs start a company to “scratch their own itch.” Kevin is a great example of one such entrepreneur, as you just read in the story of how he came up with the idea for Graphic.ly. Kevin and his business partner, Than, got right down to building a demo during the Techstars program. They quickly produced a beautiful piece of software for rendering comic books on the Web and on an iPhone. One of their mentors, Micah Baldwin, fell in love with the idea, and Kevin recruited Micah to join the team as CEO at the end of the summer. Micah, Kevin, and Than quickly raised a seed round of investment from venture capitalists and angels and began building out the team and the product.
One of Graphic.ly’s goals was to produce comics with amazing graphic clarity regardless of the platform the comic book was rendered on. They also wanted to innovate in the user interface to add a social component to the comic book, allowing fans to interact with the comics in a deep and engaged way. At the same time, they started building out a library of comics with several of the larger comic book publishers. While there was always a chance that existing e-book vendors would start focusing on comic books, Graphic.ly believed that their single-minded focus on comics gave them a big advantage over other companies.
Kevin also shares the honor of being one of the Techstars Boulder 2009 founders who inspired Brad to cofound the Startup Visa initiative. The goal of the Startup Visa initiative was to make it easy for non–U.S. entrepreneurs to get a visa to start a company in the United States. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to do this, as Kevin (a U.K. citizen) and Than (a French citizen) discovered. After six years of very little headway with the federal government on immigration issues, Brad stopped pursuing the Startup Visa initiative. Nonetheless, Kevin and Than inspired Brad and others to work on the immigration issue, and Brad now works with the Global Entrepreneur in Residence program to support international entrepreneurs.
Chapter 5 Look for the Pain