Sunday, May 31, 2009

Big Companies or Small

Great things about Start-ups
  • Flexible schedule: You can work all night as well as all day
  • Nobody telling you what to do: unless you get funding, or your collaborators are in today
  • You're responsible for your own success: Yes, it's all your fault
  • Realize your vision: Hope you don't mind re-runs in your dreams every night.

Great things about Big Companies
  • There's always someone there to help: yes, they're right behind you. Is that a knife?
  • Move at lightening speed: That's Stuart Lightening, 350lb, 85yr old racing champion of 1943
  • When you talk, people listen: And you do talk, for hours. Then they talk. Once more around...
  • Deep Pockets: There are big budgets to do stuff, and you use them up to do the littlest things.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Finding The Right Battlefield

Had a call this morning with an agency that is government related and purports to provide funding to start-up ventures. I'm always sketical of such organizations, as one's I've seen in the past mostly employ deadwood from big corporations, and seem to quickly form a clique with other cronies. What criteria they use for funding things is a mystery, and they are rarely accountable for their failures.

Whereas VC's will list start-up logos like trophies (until they go south) the gov't orgs seem to avoid acknowledging their record.

Well the call went positive, but I'm not naive enough to expect anything to come of it. I'll get an enthusiastic intoduction to yet another group of deadwood-agency and they'll queue me up with a bunch of other chumps to sing and dance while they make big sweeping statements about how the world works.

In the past I've seen broad comments to rooms full of entrepreneurs telling them that there are "no good managers around," or that "nobody understands the market", and "when I was in business..." I'm always tempted to ask, "yeah, but what have you done lately."

Oh well, I'm jaded but still enthusiastic. I think success involves skirting around the parade of losers and finding someone who actually has an ability to do things, not just talk about them. So I enjoyed pitching my concept this morning, and I'm happy to get in front of whomever I can find, but I won't fight any battles that don't have an upside for us - no point wasting the energy.

Researchinator is keeping the powder dry.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Getting Things Done?

Yesterday, as I was about to pick up on the coding work I had been doing the previous day, I thought about my rule of thumb regarding milestones. The rule is that to do something well it should be considered early and often. So if you have a deadline on Friday, and are sure you can get it done in a few hours on Thursday - you shouldn't count on that. Instead, it often helps to take a tiny chunk of time - say even 5 minutes - to review the work earlier. Ideally, you look at the stuff and move it ahead a bit every day leading up to the slot where you'll do the work.

So if the project is writing a document, you can create the empty document and give it a name, on Monday. Tuesday you might write a rough bullet point outline for 5min. Wednesday, fill in the introduction that sets the stage for the rest of the doc, and on Thursday do the big job of writing it.

What that does for you is two things:

a) it gets your brain working in the background on the task. Scoping it out, even if a bit means your brain will already have some structure thought out when you launch into it later
b) Often your attempt at spending 5min on Monday will turn into doing a bit more. What the heck, I'll do the outline too. Pretty soon you have a rough draft, and you polish it a bit on Wednesday. The result is your Thursday has less pressure, and you end up with a better document as you've had a chance to both write and refine the draft before finalizing.

So yesterday I was going to take a five minute review through my biz plan and pitch slides in preparation for a conversation on Friday, and ended up spending most of the day repositioning some stuff in the business plan. My thinking had evolved since the last review, and I really wanted to capture the adjusted course, so I jumped in.

I have a 5 point portfolio of product opportunities, and the intent was to focus on the first two elements. Now, however, I see that the first two are demonstrators for achieving the third, so I've repositioned that stuff, and it reads more interestingly like focus on number 3, with 1 and 2 being addressed on the way there. Much happier with that.

Nothing focusses strategy like the lens of time.

Researchinator basks in the warmth of the adjusted focus...

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Morning Tea Two-Step

Each day colder than the previous it seems. I think the weather is moving the wrong way. Sitting down to get the day started, but a first order of biz is to plan for a charity event tomorrow evening. I'm bringing my protegé from the volunteering org along for a fancy dinner. Should be interesting.

But today I'm hoping to build on the small bit of progress I was making yesterday at wrap-up time, and not get too distracted by industry watch stuff.

Kettle is boiling in my small global HQ office, and I need a cup of tea to deal with the remnants of those colds. I guess I'm still fighting off the straggler viruses on my way to recovery. I feel pretty fine, but there's a persistent cough hanging out and a bit of sinus action. One never really appreciates good health until it's under threat. One also forgets about things like that that you can't control, when doing a start-up. To think that a cold may be factor that makes you miss your opportunity to succeed. Stranger things have happened in the challenging world of bringing a product to market.

So tea and typing.

Researchinator types with two hands, and two hands for tea, it's tea for you and tea for me...

Monday, May 25, 2009

Picking up the Techy Side Again...

Another week gets off to a start, following a rather productive, sunny weekend. Worked on chores around the yard, and repairs to various doors it seems. Those went okay, and yet a big pile of other chores remain. Those things you do over and over, and wonder why you put yourself in that situation. Hedge trimming, weeding, garden plantings ugh.

Crap, I just realized I left the seedlings out in the sun without watering them this morning. Hopefully they'll be okay until lunch time, when I can get back and give them some attention.

Meanwhile, in my global HQ office, a downstairs tenant, running a Jamaican restaurant, but strangely forgetting how to use his alarm system. Not sure how you use an alarm everyday for years, then forget how to do so.

So while sirens wail from below, I'm trying to get on with my - ah, it stopped (again) - day.

I hope I can make some headway with my work this morning. I have been doing development stuff again. It's a trade-off between biz stuff and tech-dev stuff. I know I need to spend lots of time on the latter, later this weekend, but for now I'd love to get to some conclusion with the former.

So it's back into the Python world today. Let's see where it gets me.

Researchinator is getting all technical on your ass...

Friday, May 22, 2009

Regular is Unusual

A regular morning! How quaint and unfamiliar. Walking in this morning felt very poetic. There were literally flower petals falling on me and I walked through the scent of lilac. Very mid-springy around here.

Getting into the venture again now is crucial, as i've lost a bunch of time. The path forward is clear, the tools to do what I need to are at hand, and I'm ready to go. So up pops Eclipse and I'm slinging python and django around like the best of them. Well, probably not the best.

I also have a bunch of biz side things to do, but those can wait till next week. I have a conversation that I suspect is a funding agencies grudging check-off item to dismiss me, but I mean to have them painted into a you-gotta-fund-them corner by the time the conversation finishes. I mean they provided cash to my huge, global 'oceanography' company when I was there, you'd think they could do something for a venture that will actually create jobs and usable science.

Oh, on a side note - Twitter! Yes, I'm connected there on this project. Hello any followers, welcome to the (mostly) daily trickle of progress that is my start-up life.

Researchinator's tendrils spread oh so weakly out into the world...

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Horse Says Who the Hell Are You

Trying to get back on the horse after so long off. I have been sporadically contributary, but not much. This second of the two back-to-back colds is almost gone now. Whereas the other one lasted most of 2weeks, this one was more intense for 3 days and is now fading.

I had a hint that it might be there on Sunday evening, May 17. Then at almost precisely 9:30 on May 18 - bam, I knew I had it, and was I pissed. I just had a cold, dammit. I can't have another.

But of course I knew that sitting next to me, my SO had just returned from Europe on the 14th, and a cold had manifested in her that day, no doubt caught and incubating during her trip. So I realized, she having been away longer than the rhinovirus incubation period, her cold must be a European variety... or at least a different one that the 2-week-nasty from which I had just extricated myself.

What does that mean? It meant I had no antibodies to that new virus, and there I was, 3-4 days after her return, with first symptoms. Classic incubation period, new virus guaranteed.

If there was any silver lining, it was that she had remained reasonably functional through the virus, so it didn't seem a virulent a bug. Plus by day 3 she came out for dinner with a group of us and wasn't too bad. Okay, I thought - this might not be another two week special.

So here we are on my day three, and sure enough, it's subsiding drastically. The headache phase kicked in pretty good by last night, and I pummeled it with Tylenol 3's through the night to get my first sleep in 3 days. The headache nips at me now and again through the day today, but I'm largely feeling better. Yesterday was rampant fever day.

All of this to say, that the researcher in me thinks that someone should be classifying this rhinoviruses based on symptom patterns. Sure, it's not going to be identical in everyone, but I'm guessing that we have pretty different immune systems, and if the symptomatic order was so similar in both of us (though the severity higher in my case) I wonder if we couldn't characterize the virus based on symptoms. The previous 2week bug, I think I picked up on a trip to NY. It was a longer duration, slower changing bug.

Anyway I hope I can get back to regular research work and development on my project now. I've missed too much time this past 4 weeks. Gotta get things in gear! Let's jump back on that horse rather than admit defeat after having been thrown, twice since mid April.

Researchinator is chomping at the bit, tho' perhaps I should give that back to the horse...

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Camel's Back is Getting Sore

Sunny windy day, and horror of horrors - I've picked up another cold, back-to-back with my previous one. I'm worried now that this could be the cold that kills my business, rendering me ineffective for a while longer and as such starts the slide to failure.

Just when I really needed to press forward to recover from 2weeks of miserable illness, and I get another. This one is from Geneva, from whence my wife brought it home. I thought I might get through it, but sure enough 4 days later, whamo. Textbook incubation.

So I'll languish again for a while. Trying everything to deal with it. Which reminds me, I should take a nap, and see if I can't work through a bit of the discomfort this afternoon.

Researchinator is rapidly becoming the sickulator...

Friday, May 8, 2009

Black Hole Imminent?

Back home again - yesterday was in Montreal at a networking event. Not too bad, but organization could have been better. Met lots of people, none of whom will have any value in connecting me to funding, no doubt, but it's all good practice - cause you end up pitching your concept a dozen times or so.

The driving was fine, and the hotel okay, though again with the 4star hotel where you can't control the AC yourself. That sucks. At least the sheets fit the bed this time.

Weekend approaches, but SO is about to take off for most of the week again. Another quiet week. Ugh. I should pull a 48hour coding marathon or something. Nothing but typing, eating and feeding cats & fish. Hey - feed the fish to the cats and even that can be pushed aside.

Some inspiring thoughts resulting from all the start-up conversations. The fail quick and often approach sounds up my alley. lol Still waiting on patent close off. Doh.

Researchinator is stuck in an event horizon time freeze it seems....

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Building Relationships

Yesterday didn't see me in the corporate HQ at all. Rather a lunch, some VC chat and a bit of time in the driveway to change my winter tires into the summer/all season ones. Today a meeting with a collaborator (hope he turns into that) and then off to a lunch very shortly. Tomorrow it's off to Montreal to commune with the community and see if there are some good investor connections to foster. A cheap nearby option, I hope.

But for now it's off to lunch meeting. Gotta meet with anyone and everyone these days.

Researchinator is talking, lotsa talking...

Monday, May 4, 2009

Out of the Woods, into the Bramble

A walk-in-able morning, with sun shining, flowers in bloom and a bit of a chill in the air. The sweater came off about 3/4 of the way through, but pleasant anyway.

My brief flirtation with a young contributor to my project flamed out with employment. I expected exactly this, but for some reason the younger set these days do not find communication a strong suit. Oh well, no harm, as I could forecast the direction in the absence of words. Still he thinks he can do some evening stuff, but that's just innate guilt talking and will soon fade.

Will keep looking for additional connections.

Meanwhile, I have to figure out how to get back on track as the 2wks of illness have drained me of momentum. I really need to make things happen over the next 8 wks. The patent continues to be a dogging force, but I will have to work around that. I did get to review and comment on a draft last week but haven't heard yet the result. Most optimistic outcome is still 2wks from filing, more likely he'll drag it out for another month. Jeeze.

Researchinator needs to find the path through the bramble and bracken...

Friday, May 1, 2009

Minor Friday Progress.

Reviewed patent draft. Hope this thing doesn't take much longer. Seems to me maybe a minor change to a bit here and there, and a couple of hours on the claims drafting.

Man - I wish this part was over. It was never this painful doing patents with a big corp. Now I unfortunately have this slow process that's not going anywhere fast.

Considering Vancouver travel at the end of the month. Need to look for meetup opportunities.