Naiveté is an asset

Towards the end of last week I visited one of my clients, Voxeo, to discuss a new project I'm working on. While on the trip I had the opportunity to meet with Dave Hoff, one of the co-founders of imified which was recently acquired by Voxeo. For a little background, imified makes it easy for developers to "IM enable" their applications. Essentially, it allows users to communicate with web applications by using chat clients such as AOL Instant Messenger, gtalk, and other common chat protocols.

I love talking to entrepreneurs about how their businesses got started and the challenges they encountered; I get a ton of inspiration by talking to them. While I was chatting with Dave about how imified got started, he said that had they known how difficult integrating with all the different public chat protocols was, they probably would never have gotten off the ground.

When he said this I recalled a special I watched about the Chudnovsky brothers and their work with the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. They had to merge the data from numerous high resolution digital photographs of the tapestries for a project with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These brothers are two brilliant mathematicians and when talking about the project they basically said that there was no way they would have taken it on had they known how difficult it was going to be. Once they got started of course, they had to finish.

Naiveté, it turns out, is an asset.

Have you ever had an idea and shared it with someone who knows a lot in that particular field? Likely they dismisses it, stating how difficult or complex it would be. They'll give you a host of reasons as to why the consumer won't buy it, or why it can't be built, or if it can be built and the consumer would buy it, why marketing it would be so hard that no one would find out about it anyway.

The problem is, they're burdened with the knowledge of all the difficulties that inevitably lie ahead. In their minds, the challenges dwarf any possible benefit. They don't understand the dream because they're too hung up on the effort that would be involved.

Their knowledge is a liability.

This isn't to say that expertise is bad. Becoming an expert, and working with experts, is probably an inevitability of any successful person or business. My point however, is that before you do anything, you have to get started. Anything that helps you get started is an asset.

Just imagine, how many people would have children if it weren't for a little naiveté? Who would put in thousands of hours of school and internships working to become an MD? Who would be a teacher?

If you have the opportunity to start something, don't let the fact that you don't know everything prevent you from trying. Very likely, the reason you're even willing to make the attempt is because you're "naive" enough to try. This instantly gives you a leg up on your competition.

Sometimes knowing too much can be a liability, embrace your naiveté.

Investing in yourself

After having recently hired an employee, built GoFind!, and now having started Duarlander, a few people have asked me exactly why I'm spending the money to do all this - especially given the state of the economy. I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to share a little about my perspective on a few things as it relates to investing, risk, and the overall economy.

First, the money I'm spending on these initiatives are investments in either Ideal Project Group or Duarlander. It's not like I'm spending money taking friends out to dinner or blowing it on liquor.

Second, while it's certainly not cheap to do these things, relative to the potential reward the risk is pretty small. I've said numerous times, if building GoFind! helps Ideal Project Group get into managing software projects for hand-held devices, it's paid for itself even if I don't sell a single download.

Third and probably most importantly, the stock market is now nothing more than a national casino. It is no longer a place to invest, it's a place to gamble. Some people are good at gambling; I however, am not. And just like a casino, the house always wins and they don't really care what happens to you. Giving your money to a 401(k) manager is no different than funding a poker player and sending them to Vegas. In fact, there's probably some poker players that your money would be safer with.

Fourth, a lot of companies lie about their earnings and their assets. Citibank can say they're profitable because they're now allowed to lie about how much their assets are worth. Hey, guess what, you know all those phones I had to buy for Duarlander? I've decided they're each worth $100,000. Duarlander is a $700,000 company and it hasn't even been around a month, isn't that awesome! Give me a break.

What this all means is that the money I might have otherwise used to invest in public companies (by way of a 401(k), Roth IRA, or other investment vehicle) for retirement, my children's education or general savings is now being invested in businesses that I own and control instead of companies that I own a tiny fraction of and have no control over.

The amount of money I'm investing hasn't changed. Where I'm investing it has.

We've all been sold the story that the safe and conservative thing to do with our money is to give it to someone else and let them decide what to do with it. That the risky thing to do is invest in yourself and start your own business. I believe this is complete nonsense. The safe and conservative thing to do with your money is to keep it in your possession, invest in companies that you own, and keep these companies under your control.

Sending your money into the electronic casino where computers change the value of a company by 30% in minutes is what's risky.

Invest in yourself.

Get Unconfused

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is being willing to make a decision while you're confused about something. Or worse, not even realizing that a decision has to be made because you were content with not understanding a situation. It happens in the world of project management all the time, especially with new project managers. The best advice I can give people about this is to be comfortable with what you don't know, and have enough confidence in yourself to dig for answers.

Unfortunately, many people are unwilling to do this because they fear it will make them look stupid, or afraid it will agitate people on their team. The thing to keep in mind is that for every person you may be agitating, there's probably three or four more that are thirsting for the clarity that your questions will provide. As for looking stupid, it's just simply not true.

Think of it like this; the President of the United States can't be an economist, a general, a spy, a small business owner, and a doctor. However, it's perfectly reasonable that we expect the President to make informed decisions based on a series of discussions and questions with these people who are experts in their respective areas.

The key is to understand the difference between getting the proper perspective on a situation so the right decisions can be made, and getting too deep into the details of someone's work. It's true that it can be a fine line sometimes, but generally speaking after a couple questions it'll become clear as to whether you need to back off or continue asking more questions.

A software developer probably isn't going to want to sit down and explain every detail of their work to you. However, it's fine for you to ask why one requirement is being completed before something else that you know is more important, and that another team is waiting on. Maybe there's a technical reason, and if there is, the developer should be more than happy to explain it to you. If you get an answer that doesn't make sense based on your understanding of the situation, don't just walk away confused. Get clarification.

You may end up with new information that changes your perspective of the situation, which you can then share with others and in effect become an advocate for the developer. Or, you may realize that the developer misunderstood their priorities. Either way, your project will be better off because you were willing to ask questions.

This, by the way, isn't something that applies only to project managers or business. There's a whole world of people that thrive on you not understanding something. (Think banks, credit cards, politicians, lawyers, car dealers, and realtors) And, they count on you not being confident enough in yourself to probe them with questions to get the clarity you need to make the right decision. The best example of this is to go into a car dealership, talk to them about leasing a car, and start asking them all sorts of questions about the money factor. It'll totally freak them out and I promise you, they will have no idea how to answer your questions without getting "the finance guy."

The Birth of a New Company

One of the things I love about running my own business (and life really) is that in two or three months, you can find yourself doing something you never would have expected.

This happened to me once again recently, and I'm announcing today a new company I've started named Duarlander. I had no idea two months ago that I would be doing this, but here I am, starting my second company. So, how did this happen?

Readers of this blog know that Ideal Project Group just recently launched our first internal product called GoFind!, which is a mobile application for the Android Operating System. While we were working on the project, we noticed there were some minor differences in the way the application would work on the G1 vs. the myTouch - both phones that run Android. There were a couple minor bugs that needed to be fixed, but that only appeared on the myTouch. In most cases the bugs were very minor, but when present caused the application at times to not even open.

I thought to myself, how am I going to know if this application works on all these other devices that are coming out? Then I thought, everyone that's developing applications for Android is probably going to have this question. That's when I decided to start Duarlander.

Duarlander is an application testing business where we'll test Android applications for developers on every device. We have purchased every Android phone that's been released in the US, and we'll continue to do so as more devices become available. I hope that at some point we'll also buy devices that have been released in other countries, but for now we're starting with just the US market. You can learn more about Duarlander by checking out the website.

I don't know of course what's going to happen in the long run. Is it possible Android 2.0 is going to solve all these issues? It's possible, but I suspect as handset manufacturers continue to customize the User Experience, differences in the way some apps work on various phones will continue to persist. Either way, I feel this business has very real potential and I wanted to give it a go.

I'm also trying something somewhat unconventional with the launch of the business. I honestly have no idea what we should be charging for the service, so I'm not going to pretend I know. We're going to offer our services for free for a little while, and in exchange we're asking the Android community to answer two simple questions:

1) How much should we charge?
2) How much would you be willing to donate today?

We're going to take these two pieces of information and determine our pricing structure in about a month - unless it becomes clear sooner than that. In the meantime, if you're a developer shoot us an email to get your app tested on all the devices that have been released so far. I'll keep posting updates about the business on this blog, and hopefully we'll have exciting news to share in the coming weeks.

Lessons from a birthday party

Two weeks ago, I threw a surprise party for my wife's 35th birthday. The sole purpose was of course to have a good time and celebrate my wife Maile. In the process of planning the party though, I learned (or in some cases re-learned) some pretty valuable lessons about running a small business. Most of these lessons seem simple and obvious, but they're worth recognizing and calling out none the less.

Initially, I was going to have the party at one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants. The food is good, it has a great atmosphere, and I thought it would be nice to give the business to a restaurant in our community. After all, restaurants are feeling the impact of this recession as much as anybody. After a lot of back and forth and numerous phone calls, I still had the party in our neighborhood - but it was at a different place than I had originally wanted.

So.....what happened? It wasn't one thing, but was instead a series of events. First, there was an issue with how much space I needed and the owner was concerned about having to turn away too many people. Once we worked that out, then there were concerns over whether we could really have an open bar. Once we came to an agreement on that, then there were problems over how much food would be available and what kind of food would be included. At one point I even asked, "well, can I just make a reservation for 30 people and pay for everything on a normal tab?" The answer: "No, because you guys might end up staying all night and my tables wouldn't turn over."

Over the course of our conversations the price changed three times, the "open bar" became pre-purchasing a certain number of drinks, and reserving our space became having the space unless there was a chance someone else wanted it in which case we might have to split our party up. Then a contract came over, via fax because the owner didn't have an e-mail address, outlining a different agreement than what we had discussed.

All I wanted to do was throw a nice little party for my wife, and all of a sudden it felt like I was planning a full blown wedding reception. It was getting ridiculous.

The final straw was when the owner said: "You know, we're going to have 30 people eat at our restaurant whether you have your party here or not." With that single statement he told me that he didn't care one bit about getting my business or me as a customer.

Contrast this with ElCid, a great little Mexican restaurant in Logan Square where I ultimately ended up having the party. I called them up and told them how many people I was having. They had a room upstairs available that we could use and there was $100 deposit. They told me how much the open bar would be per person, or if I wanted I could just pay as we went like a normal tab. He e-mailed me a menu that I selected a bunch of appetizers from to get started and then allowed people to order whatever meal they wanted once they arrived.

Everything was easy.

When I saw how simple it was to work with ElCid, the decision was made. I'm a firm believer that the way someone works with you before an engagement begins is how they'll work with you throughout an entire project. The experience with the other restaurant left me wondering how much, or what kind, of a headache I was going to have to deal with the night of my wife's birthday.

There are a host of lessons coming out of this experience that I want to remind myself of and apply to how I run my own business:

Lesson #1: If you can't, or don't want, to do something - just say so. If the first place had just said "hey, we'd love to help but we don't do parties" everything would have been fine. I'd still be a happy customer. Instead, they irritated me to the point where I don't want to give them any of my business.

Lesson #2: People like it when you trust them. No one at ElCid even asked me for a credit card until the end of the party - it was quite refreshing to have that level of trust given to me. Everything has gotten to the point where we're always trying to protect ourselves from any possible loss, that we're very likely alienating people that might otherwise do business with us because we act like they can't be trusted.

Lesson #3: The easier you are to work with, the more people will enjoy working with you. If you make people use a fax machine, you aren't easy to work with. Period.

Lesson #4: If you put something in writing - it better match exactly what you said verbally. If you send over something in writing that doesn't match exactly what you said - you either look like an idiot or a liar.

Lesson #5: Know your business. The fact that the first place struggled mightily with the open bar, when every other restaurant I ever talk to knows how much they would charge, tells me that they don't have a good grasp on basic financial components of their business.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, most of these are obvious, but it's easy to forget these lessons when entering into discussions with a potential client. I'm going to try and make sure I keep these at the front of my mind next time I'm discussing an opportunity with someone.