A cure for the Summertime Blues?

I think all entrepreneurs work pretty hard, also at times normal people might be on vacation (i.e. pretty much right now in Norway). Sometimes it can feel like being the last kid in the classroom, solving math problems while hearing the sounds of playing outside. In fact, I don't think I was ever that kid (I counted on the last minute stress to get me results), but I think I can claim to be the metaphorical one at times, working long nights and cutting a few days of holiday trying to build a product and a company.

When the results of the extra efforts are not evident and short term in nature, it is easy to get a bit of a Summertime Blues feeling. But then, even if things take longer than you hope, I still believe in one of my favorite sayings - often attributed to Bloomberg: The harder you work, the luckier you get. And this Saturday our TapBookAuthor.com company was featured, through an interview with me, in Finansavisen - one of our two major business newspapers in Norway. Below you can find a snap of the article.

So even if customers coming shuffling in (we got at least two new paying customers this summer!) is a stronger cure for the summertime blues, a bit of publicity does not hurt either. So Eddie Cochran was not right, there IS a cure for the summertime blues (playing the song also helps, in fact!).

And to prove I can be, or try to be at least, the cool kid not being stuck in the classroom; in a week I will go to Bali surfing. Almost offline.

Running like a gazelle

I am proud that my company qualified for the so called gazelle list of Norway's main business newspaper, DN, based on 2013 numbers. Today I got the physical proof in house:

Out to buy a frame! :) And then on to make our product company behind TapBookAuthor.com a gazelle in 2017!

Five Fine Years

Today it is five years since I quit my job to run my own company as a full time gig. It is quite different from doing some product development things on the side with the employer's blessing or in addition to studying as I did back in the days... You can't be half pregnant and it is hard to be a part-time entrepreneur as well.

Even if things may not have "taken off" by some measures (and some of the first products truly never got out of the phase with a few pilot customers), I am extremely proud of what we have been able to do with TapBookAuthor.com with no external funding since 2011. All the major publishers in Norway are customers and we also have customers in exotic, and less exotic such as San Francisco and London, places all over the world.

Today I met with an author that was so inspired by our tool that she was shivering from the opportunities it opened (we are working on our business model and technology to help indie and stand-alone publisher-authors, and are running a beta program to learn more). Such experiences makes it easy to find motivation for an extra long night of working (I've had my share of such late working nights, or to paraphrase Joey from good-ol' Friends: Actually, I've had a lot of people's share!).

If you read this and are considering to do the same and start your own company, should you do it? I will not claim it is easy and I am still not quite used to the insecurity of not knowing the economical situation just a few months into the future. That being said, I can honestly say I have never regretted jumping. So I would say jump, get the experience and find out for real if it is your thing. And unlike being pregnant, there is even a way back if it should not work out for you. Good luck!

Nir the Truth

Following Facebook’s announced acquisition of WhatsApp a week ago tomorrow, many interesting discussions about valuation have popped up (my stand on this is that the defensive argument makes a lot of sense and that improving ads on Facebook is probably the primary monetization strategy, but enough on that).  Yesterday I saw a blog post from Nir Eyal, one of the guest lecturers in our TINC program, that explains what I discussed with a fellow entrepreneur the other day: While it is super cool with such an event, there is a sting of jealousy to be felt quite clearly for most of us. “I could have written the prototype for this in a weekend and done many things better”[1].

It does not feel fair. What Nir basically points out, is that you will be happy with your car (or salary) until you learn the neighbor’s is better, or if you are a monkey in an experiment a piece of cucumber is a nice treat until your mate gets something nicer, like a grape. Then no way you are going to keep working for just a cucumber slice!

I have a personal experience to share, that is somewhat related to these types of feelings as well. I experienced my first “liquidity event” quite early, about 23 years old and still in university I got about 1% of a company as compensation for going the extra mile and working several nights to land a fixed price project, even delivering some interesting features like social scoring of the stock forum that was part of the service.

This company was sold (at 1/10 of the estimated price when discussions begun, one dotcom-crash in between…). Looking back, it feels somewhat like pocket money[2] - but at the time it was both significant in economic terms for me as a student, but not least it gave me a taste of what might even be an important reason for me being an entrepreneur today.

But my point is this: I remember how happy I was about the reward at the time. That is, until I learned that someone else in my university had earned more by just selling a domain (they had it by chance, same abbreviation as a bigger brand). On all my available scales, at the time at least, my effort was bigger, so it did just not feel fair! Like Nir points out, such feelings might have helped during earlier phases of evolution, but it does not help us being sympathetic (or happy!) right now.

Anyway, my personal cure to this is to always ask myself the question “if there is never an exit, will it still have been worthwhile?”. As long as work is fun[3] and meaningful from day-to-day and the economics work out somehow, I can easily live with not being acquired for heaps of money - even as we try to become “venture worthy” I will not let go of this. Then it is also easier to honestly admire other people’s success and just hope that some day a smaller scale version awaits you, knowing you are still good even if that is not the case.

[1] - Most people realize there are subtle details in focusing on such a narrow area, not least to viral growth and adoption, but there is of course some truth to it. You need luck and timing, in addition to gut feeling, dedication and hard work. Having worked a lot with scaling web apps, I think the engineering effort to scale to this level with such a limited team size sounds impressive - even if also this aspect in theory sounds like “easy” to scale since traffic (minus large group broadcasts) is very easy to partition.

[2] - Inflation adjusted, we are talking about maybe two months of my current salary. Now this may also show that we have decent salaries in Norway (but high taxes), but try measuring it in beers out on town. My best estimate for that is that it would have covered maybe 900 pints of beer in a bar. :-) If it had happened the months before at 10X the price, I could at least have been pretty beer-soaked in the rest of my student days...

[3] - A slightly tongue-in-cheek test that is in fact useful in practice for evaluating many options such as projects, features and partners is: It is either "no" or "hell yeah".

Make the desire to win bigger than the fear of losing

I was recently made aware of some research about penalties in football (soccer, for any US readers). How can this be relevant in project management? Maybe it is a stretch, but I think it can learn us a thing about motivation. Let's see.

I cannot find the original Norwegian source now, but the basic content was this: When the last penalty is taken in a football penalty shootout, the likelihood of scoring is almost twice[1] if your team will win if you score than if your team will lose if you miss[2].

Even though generalizations from non-related fields is risky and I am a fan of brutal honesty[3], I will take my chance on this one: This can learn us to make the desire to win bigger than the fear of losing. If your project team feels scoring that goal (be it completing their component, polishing that presentation, or something else) will win the game, it is better than if they fear their mistake will drag the entire project to a failure.

So making each team member feel that their contribution is essential, but creating an environment where everyone is sure someone else will pick up the ball (!) if he fails his current task, sounds like the winning formula. Maybe not rocket science (it is football science, after all!), but a good reminder?

Now go on and win your game.

[1] - Again I didn't manage to find the original numbers, but they were something like 40 % and 70 % likelihood of scoring. Will update this blogpost if someone pings me with a link to data or original article. The source is as credible as it gets in Norwegian mass media, at least (A-magasinet from Aftenposten) - and it seemed to reference valid research.

[2] - I.e. the statistics were for the tenth penalty, and equal score before the penalty will give the first situation and the team not having the shooter being one goal up would be the second.

[3] - For the record I am also a fan of a lot of praise. But being direct about the negative also gives credibility to the praise. Maybe a separate blog post on this later!