Don't waste my time

I would like to help people, but I am tire of having my time wasted ... read this entire post before you send me a message or don't send me a message ... just don't waste my time.

Even when you have even only an extremely modest amount of money to invest (e.g. a million or so that you could afford to lose), you get really used to hearing from people thinking that they could make better use of your money than you can ... very few, if any, can ... in addition to the investments that I scrutinize routinely and follow closely as an owner, I have a list of over 300 developmental projects that I'm working on ... I take my responsibility to build wealth and serve as a steward of resources extremely seriously; I spend at least 80 hours a week doing this ... I'm not stupid, I'm not uneducated, I wasn't born yesterday, I'm not poorly informed, there a good chance that I worked harder on this today than you did. There's a big world of investments and you probably have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER of how tough it is for your idea to make it into my top 1000 list.

I guess you could say that this posting is intended to be a polite rebuke of people who think this ... it includes churches, charitable organizations and other projects ... as you read it, you might think that it's not all that polite ... well, all I can say is that this posting is my most toned-down version ... if you find this is offensive, you really don't want to know what I really think of parasites who want to waste my time.

Here's how I look at it ... for the last five years, there have been entrepreneurs on Kiva.org that have inspired me to invest $25. I don't think that any one of those little projects is disruptive, but I think the example has potential. Some people think in terms of explosive huge investments ... the next Microsoft, the next Cisco, the next Google ... I think in terms of lots of small explosion, chugging away. A disruptive engine is a matter of several thousand tiny revolutions. Just recently, I've started funding projects on Kickstarter.org -- the vast majority of the Kickstarter project do not inspire me, but a few do and when you invest with others a few hundred dollars goes a really long way.

Eventually, I will try to start a competitor that imitates what Paul Graham is doing at yCombinator, but I'm keeping my powder dry for now for personal reasons -- basically I can't stomach being involved with slimeballs. I don't care for VCs, angel investors with unrealistic expectations and I get really depressed when I see stupid, entitled wet-behind-the-ears pukes who imagine that they are going to disrupt the world and create the next FaceBook (i.e. I'm ecstatically happy for Mr. Zuckerberg lottery winning and thrilled that he will spend his money trying to make education better and change the world ... but I'm not the least bit impressed by the Facebook phenomenon)

So if you think you have a great idea, go to a place like Kickstarter and register your project and start trying to inspire other people ... AFTER your big idea gets a degree of traction and support, send me a link to your project and I'll look at it, but don't waste a lot of time waiting for me ... especially if you don't have your shit together, if you aren't ready to use my money wisely ... I'd prefer to buy you a cup of tea [because it's cheaper], but I'll even splurge and buy someone a cup of coffee relatively easily (I buy discontinued Folger's crystals in bulk from liquidators; a cup of coffee costs me about four cents a cup)... but $100 is a lot of money to me -- it's four Kiva loans ... if you want to inspire me, your idea has to be a lot bigger than the Fixer's Collective idea of collaborative mending and artistic upcycling ... if you can't inspire others first and build something that absolutely just blows them away so that $500 is a huge amount of money, don't waste my time.

The goal of the Sustain Fund Venture Relationship Management (VRM) platform

As we are developing our Venture Relationship Management (VRM) platform, the most important thing is important to keep in mind what the goal is ... the goal is minimize the wasted time, pointless frustration, unnecessary cost of a ill-conceived venture; the goal is not to eliminate failure -- the goal is to eliminate failure due to obvious, foreseeable pitfalls, traps, and tricky situations. The VRM platform is about developing a relationship management tool that helps the entrepreneur by bringing collaborative experience [of potential customers, investors, partners] to bear during the venture startup period AND allows potential customers, investors, partners to focus their efforts where it matters. On all sides, the matter of "qualification" and "authentication" matters enormously ... investors concern for privacy is justifiable -- even though they are willing to take risks and help people, they do not want to be "spammed" with requests from entrepreneurs who haven't done their homework or have silly, ridiculous business ideas ... entrepreneurs concern for secrecy is justifiable -- they do not want to "tip their hand" strategically or disclose their "secret sauce" of their technology.

The VRM must first of all be about authentication ... probably this is about some form of gated, gradual, step-wise accumulation of trust.

The VRM must be about moving projects forward according to a semi-predictable workflow where everyone involved understands what is expected of them at the next step AND what they should expect from others at the next step.

The VRM must be about communication ... all that the VRM's programatic venture workflow really does is delivers a "processsing job" to the computational power of an entrepreneur, an investor, a partner or a potential customer. Each workflow could vary, but a typical startup sequence may be something like this:

1. entrepreneur formulates specific request for resources to build a SET of different prototypes ... ideally set of different prototypes constitutes a designed experiment with choices of different factors chosen to maximize the potential for comparisons in design choices and to learn as much as possible a la Set-Based Concurrent Engineering [SBCE];
2. active investor/manager considers proposal and decides with entrepreneur whether to / how to involve partner/supplier;
3. entrepreneur, investor, partner/supplier agree on how resources will be procured and paid for -- who gets how much equity for supplying what;
4. entrepreneur builds SBCE set of alpha prototypes using resources;
5. entrepreneur and investor involve a set of potential customers in alpha prototype;
6. customers evaluate alpha, possibly passing it back-and-forth to the entrepreneur for fine-tuning and furnishes responses;
7. entrepreneur, investor and possibly partner evaluate results of customer trial and decide whether to go back to step 1 (rethink entire strategy, build another another set of prototypes) to move forward to step 8 or to scrap venture.
8. entrepreneur, investor and possibly partner evaluate results of customer trial and choose optimal configuration of factors for production-intent level of prototype ... again this involves procurement of resources, exchanges of equity for who funds the resources ...
9. entrepreneur builds production intent prototype
10. likely customers evaluate beta-level production intent prototype.
11. entrepreneur, investor and possibly partner evaluate results of customer trial and decide whether to go back to move forward to step 12 OR to "go back to the drawing board" all the way back to step 1 (rethink entire strategy, build another another set of prototypes) to recalibrate by going back to step 7 and re-examine flaws in production-level execution or to scrap venture.
12. entrepreneur, investor and possibly partner evaluate results of beta trial and devise strategy for optimal (i.e. in light of current data from beta trial) strategy for production launch and marketing ... again this involves procurement of resources, exchanges of equity for who funds the resources ...
13. entrepreneur builds production intent product for sale to customers
14. launch
15. refinement (SCRUM style) ... the first or second refinement usually involves an "unknown unknown" due to a set of interactions that are not realized until the product receives broader exposure ... at that point, a new or unforeseen opportunity presents itself
16. launch
17. refinement (SCRUM style) ... at some point it is necessary to take care of the unnecessary but "nice to have" refinements that were known about before, but "put in the parking lot"
18. launch
19. refinement (SCRUM style) ... at some point, it will be necessary to refactor and simplify or maybe to adjust the supply chain to bring in a better supplier ... three especially intense iterations are usually necessary to wring the bulk of the larger opportunities for improvement from a new launch ... three iterations is a good thing to aim for in terms of stability (i.e. transition / exit point) ... this does not mean that opportunities do not remain; it also does not mean that you launched too "dirty" ... three means that you got the launch about right
20. Transition -- exit of launch team to people who are better managers, better able to position the asset with others to perhaps to extend scale or scope of technology OR to allow for superior brand management and more intensive cost reduction

The bottom line with this 20 step sequence is that visualizing the process illustrates how much communciation matters ... we believe that a VRM tools could help because that there are so many many opportunities for including qualified participants, for improving communication ... it should be possible to do this better than with an ad hoc collection of CRM tools, contact managers, Excel spreadsheets and Project GANTT charts.

Venture foundation workflow

Sustain Fund's primary project currently involves building a workflow tool (i.e. cross-platform mobile+web app with data hosted in the cloud) for managing the workflow of hundreds of Sustain Fund's own projects as well as helping others to manage their projects' workflows. We would be happy to use someone else's tool if we could find something that works ... basically we are looking for something that would replace our current approach (i.e. customized CRM tool for relationship/campaign mgmt + MSExcel + MSProject).

The reason we are doing this is that it is fundamental to what we do -- Sustain Fund targeted at sustaining projects that might be incubating in the brain of an experienced engineer with a desire to make a difference ... our model is the intensely-practical Kickstart.org approach to developing genuinely needed technology that can lay a foundation for a range of diverse affiliated products and provide a fertile environment for seeds of entrepreneurial growth that enable people to develop the skills and aptitudes necessary to develop their own better solutions. You could say that Sustain Fund aims to be a soil building agent for entrepreneurs who will farm the fields of opportunity.

Laying the foundation for a working project is about the workflow that involves taking your idea from concept to project [with an alpha-level demo/test] to venture [with a beta-level products/services to share] to an money-making enterprise with a tested service or product, a happy and growing base of customers and quite possibly employees and investors.

Of course, our reason for posting this entry is expose our ignorance ... we are looking for a lot better ideas, a lot better workflow ... mostly, that means that are very interested in what you see as shortcomings of or problems with this workflow. It also our way of displaying our competitive nature -- our way of calling out people who think that they are smarter than us ... if so, how? If you are scared of helping us, are you really all that smart? What are you worried about?

1) Sketch your idea, doodle, draw...ultimately we put things in CAD systems, but we find that it usually works best to draw an idea on a piece of paper or whiteboard...also, it is necessary to record thoughts about your idea on you mobile phone's voice recorder...let your idea sit for a few days, come back to it, sketch, doodle, draw, write some more...let your idea sit for a month or two...keep coming back to it, visualize it, speak about it, sketch it in more detail.

2) Develop 10-slide presentation for your idea; it will become the biz plan

• Define the problem -- why is this a problem; what are you trying to correct, how does it cause pain or discomfort to people, how big of a problem is it, why does it matter to people, what do people do now, what will happen if no one does anything,
• Your solution to the problem -- discuss different facets of your solution: what kind of a thing or tool is it, how does someone use it, how do they try it, how do they pay for it, what materials are necessary to make it, can you simulate it its performance, can it be automated or scaled or expanded, what is the method of implementation, what are the pre-requisites for its use what sort of training is necessary, what are its impacts on the environment and society
• Business model -- describe how you monetize this thing or earn $, why is it a fantastic value proposition for your customers [what costs do they avoid by going with your solution vs. a competing solution], what is your strategy for referrals or getting more customers, what about future renewals, how will you achieve organic growth, how will you expand the amount of business from each customer,
• Secret sauce, special magic, business legs-- what is disruptive about this, how will you maintain your competitive advantage, what are the next big things in your idea pipeline, how diversified is your idea pipeline, how do you do something better that someone else with more capital/experience is already trying to do, what keeps somebody else from adopting the key part of your idea and making their own?
• Marketing, sales, PR, social networking plan -- is this a web-centric, mobile-centric business -- if not, why not, can it be, how will you reach people without spending an enormous amount for an office, holding events or some sort of presence in their lives? How are you going to reach people face-to-face, what are you going to use for salesforce automation or a customer relationship management system, how do you reach your current base of customers, what sort of PR events or projects will you be using to build good will and publicize your company,
• Competition, industry, SWOT -- this is a detailed discussion of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats; what are the keys to success fo the business, what will you do to track these keys, what metrics will you monitor
• Team, partners, vendors -- what skills does your team have, what about your partners and suppliers, who holes are you trying to fill, how are you recruiting people, how are you expanding your network of partners
• Key milestones, funding needs, projections -- the more that you look at financial projections, the more you will realize that this is, first of all, about what can you achieve WITHOUT spending money and then how $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000, $500,000 expands the set of opportunities.
• Project status, timelines -- this is about dynamic project planning, how will success scale your project, are you ready to take advantage of opportunities.
• Call to action -- after you have demonstrated clearly, succinctly that you have done the homework and are READY to exploit this opportunity, ask people for EXACTLY what you need from them ... if you need $32,500, ask for "$32,500 for X" -- do not ask for "probably gonna need at least $30,000" -- do not tell them we "need about $35,000."

3) Implement your plan, spend as little as possible...register several good domain names associated with the idea to stake your claim on the brand, $500 spent on different domain names will get one that resonates; avoid long names, very short URLs can be used/sold for other projects.

4) Check how it's working, Use web analytics [if you're building a web-centric business] or similar tools Get feedback on your implementation from as many people as you can, especially from likely customers

5) Rebuild your plan, SCRUM style every 4 weeks ... each time revisit, revise, improve all ten points of step #2 ... reload and put the revisions in place for step #3 ... re-do step #4 but go it one better: not only check how the plan's working, also check how your good your checks/metrics are, revise your checks/metrics for next time ... repeat until it's not necessary.

Why eCombinator is important to Sustain Fund

If you look at the projects in the yCombinator portfolio, you might be tempted to conclude that the "y" in yCombinator seems to be for insanely useful, catchy ideas that could be developed for not much money and then ultimately sold to Yahoo, Google, MSN, Facebook or some other web portal.

I don't know if it's about Yahoo -- I really do not have a clue what the "y" stands for, but I could not think more highly of yCombinator and its approach to the frugal development of concepts into something that can be demo'd and tried by customers. I think that Paul Graham's yCombinator is something that approaches true genius ... an idea that is bigger in terms of economic consequence than almost every Economics Nobel prize-winning idea that I can think of ... Coase's work on transaction costs is pretty big, but a lot of the others ... well, not so much.

The most sincere form of imitation is flattery ... or maybe it's the other way around ... but the "e" in eCombinator.com is for engineering, economics, environment, electricity and entertainment ... it's basically about transdisciplinary combinating of great work in different disciplines for solving these different "hard" (i.e. physical) esomething problems.