Instigator Blog

LinkedIn is a business networking tool that works well for a couple of things. For starters, it’s good for staying in touch with people. You keep track of who you know and what they’re up to. Secondly, it works well for recruiting.

Some time ago, LinkedIn released LinkedIn Answers, which allows you to pose questions to people within your network or a greater audience. At first I didn’t pay any attention to the functionality, but I started receiving questions from people.

• What is the best RSS reader for a Blackberry?
• How would you implement a staff-wide networking program?
• What would you like to be able to see and do on a local community website?
• Jobster.com: Has anyone used this site and if so, what do you think of it?

You’re not obligated to answer, but if you have an answer, it takes all of 2 minutes to reply. I believe all the answers are made public, and a discussion can ensue.

I’ve asked 2 questions recently, and in both cases I received very quick and good responses.

It amazes me how quickly people respond. I’m certain had I emailed all of the contacts and asked the same questions, the response would have been slower. Why? Because people tend to ignore mass emails, or feel overwhelmed by email to start (which I completely understand!) And although your LinkedIn questions will get sent to people via email (they receive a notification), somehow it feels different, it doesn’t feel like a mass email (or email at all), and so people respond.

LinkedIn Answers works great for referrals.

For general purpose questions, most people will search Google. But when you need a reference or referral you want to go to people you trust; i.e. your LinkedIn network. I recently asked via LinkedIn, “Do you know any videographers in San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, Boston or Toronto?”

The response was immediate, from people I trust. I now have a bunch of videographers to contact. (Incidentally, I’m still looking for more if you know anyone!)

It took approximately 2 minutes to submit the question, and I received 15+ responses in less than an hour.

LinkedIn scored big-time with this feature. It’s useful and sticky. Plus, it’s fun.

Starting a company is tough. Expect plenty of mistakes, and lots of lessons learned. You’ll have moments of sheer panic and other moments of absolute euphoria. It’s a roller coaster ride.

But don’t take things too seriously. Some things are more important than work. It might not feel that way from time to time, and in some instances work will be the one and only priority, but the minute you take things too seriously you’re digging yourself a hole.

Standout Jobs is a crazy startup. Tons of moving pieces, crazy deadlines, high expectations and plenty of stress. But I try to avoid getting overwhelmed…my older son Sam, helps.

I brought him to the office recently (forgot his daycare was closed and couldn’t miss an important meeting) and we had some fun. I introduced him to the team, played some golf and ran around the huge, empty space. We’re squatting at the moment in a 6,600 square foot downtown office, taking up one tiny corner. Lots of room for Sam (and me!) to have some fun.

But everything isn’t fun and games! We’re still looking for great Ruby on Rails developers, so I thought it was time to get Sam on the computer. He’s a fast typist, just not terribly accurate:

Whether your startup succeeds or fails you’re bound to learn a ton. If you don’t learn a ton, you did something wrong (unless you sold the company for millions and millions, and then who am I to argue with that, right?)

The guys at Xobni, a San Francisco-based startup, published some great lessons learned from their startup experience. More than lessons learned, they list some of their original assumptions and the actual reality of what took place.

Startup Assumptions Are Way Off

Each of the items they list under “what we thought” is an absolute gem. Thank goodness people are blogging more and more about this stuff, because lots of first-time entrepreneurs are bound to make the same mistakes. Experience teaches us so much. In fact, people with past failures have a higher chance of succeeding versus first timers.

I wanted to highlight three of their points:

1. “We’d launch our first product in two months.” After 13 months, Xobni’s only in private alpha. As Matt Brezina (author of the blog post, co-Founder of Xobni) points out, the idea behind Xobni has grown immensely.

   This point resonates strongly with me, because the Standout Jobs team wants to launch in the Fall. If I’m not mistaken, we have 81 days to launch. Two or three months is not a long time to launch anything, and it leaves very little room for error. We’ll iterate quickly, review quickly and do as much as we can in parallel. But if you spend even 1 week heading in the wrong direction, it’s hard to get back on track.

2. “The hardest solutions create the most value.” Matt writes, “Graduate school teaches you to find complex solutions to challenging problems. Users teach you otherwise.”

   I never attended graduate school, but I’m all-too-familiar with complex solutions and how easily and often people push them. Users do like easy-to-use systems, but very often they love features too. “Feature-rich” is still something people cling to, even in the Web 2.0 world (although less so.) Keeping things simple, avoiding feature bloat, and making sure your system is easy and fun to use is critical.

3. “We would spend a month or two raising money.” It took Xobni 5 months to raise their Series A. That doesn’t surprise me. In our case, we were very lucky to raise our money in less time than that, but we were aware that it typically takes 4-6 months.

Many Important Startup Lessons Learned

Many of the lessons learned for Xobni are absolute classics. They’ll hit startups time and time again. What struck me when reading Matt’s thoughts however, is his focus on some smaller startup issues that few people talk about with enough frequency.

For example, in lessons learned #6, Matt points out that looking for deals on small items (phones, computers, food) isn’t worth it; your time is too expensive and precious. Startup founders tend to do everything, and there’s a lot to do right at the beginning. Much of that work is “operational” in nature, or “busy work” — setup an office, get bank accounts, sign thousands upon thousands of agreements and contracts, etc. Being able to outsource that work or hire someone to help you is a huge bonus. This leads to point #7 for Matt, which espouses the value of office administrators and assistants.

Finally, the last lesson learned is perhaps the most critical:

Hiring the best is difficult. We’ll do whatever it takes to get a good employee: $1,200 last-minute flights, $3,000 referral bonuses, flowers for significant others etc. I suppose the enormity of this challenge is evident in the commissions charged by recruiters. They charge 20% of a hire’s first year’s salary as their fee. It is worth it. Your team is all you’ve got.

Well…we all know how I feel about that one, right?

Kudos to Xobni for putting it out there and helping others along the way.

Every company has competition. If you don’t think you have competition you’re wrong. It’s out there. And more is on its way.

There are pros and cons to keeping an eye on your competition, but obsessing over them is a mistake.

Still, when you’re working on a stealth startup, moving at a 100 miles a minute to get to market, and you think you’ve got a killer idea worth millions, you can’t help but feel stunned when you discover new competition.

It’s the “holy crap” reaction.

The “holy crap” reaction goes something like this:

1. Someone tells you about a new company “in your space”, or you discover them on your own.
2. You take a cursory look.
3. You’re stunned by the slickness and “Web 2.0″ style of their website.
4. You read their tagline and a bit of their messaging on the home page. It sounds a lot like what you’ve been talking about.
5. You quickly glance at their feature set or demo, but by this time you’re too panicked to really look. You see a couple keywords and feature items that look similar to what you’re planning and you scream…

Holy Crap! They’re doing exactly what we’re doing!

Often, you’ll scream this out loud to your co-founders sitting nearby, and they’ll go through the motions, and get to the same conclusion. Hopefully no one jumps out any windows, or breaks into heaving sobs.

Ultimately, every company has competition, remember?

After fully engaging in the “holy crap” reaction for a few minutes, it’s time to calm down and investigate things a bit further. Most likely, you’ll draw these conclusions:

• They’re not doing exactly what we’re doing.
• They’re not that far ahead.

In order to truly get past the “holy crap” reaction to competition you need to have an ultra-clear understanding of your company’s purpose and value proposition.

It’s not about the competition. It’s all about you. When you look at competition and panic, restore your faith through your own company’s strengths; not the competitions’ weaknesses and differences. Without a clear purpose, value proposition and plan of attack for getting things done, you’ll get so rattled by the competition that you’ll stumble and possibly fail.

Holy crap.

For all the Montrealers out there, please take note that DemoCamp Montreal 3 is next week on Tuesday, June 26th in a month’s time on Thursday, July 26th. I could have sworn it was supposed to be on June 26th, but I guess I was wrong!

There are still spaces available if you want to demo something; it’s a great opportunity to put your feet in the fire and get some response from the Montreal tech community. Don’t worry, they’re all pussycats.

Sadly, I probably won’t make it. Having two kids at home (one that will be just a month old) means I’m on “Daddy Duty” in the evenings until things settle down a bit. But Standout Jobs will be well represented with Marc-Andre Cournoyer and Fred Ngo.

It’s always worth coming out to these events, checking out what people are doing, catching up with friends, and making new contacts. So enjoy!