

What I wish I knew before starting a business - d2viant
http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/08/19/8-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-starting-a-business/

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jdrich
There are corollaries to a bunch of these items:

1\. You will need to be more agile than you could ever imagine. It's amazing
how much dexterity and foresight is needed to manage things when they're
moving at such glacial pace, but timing is critical. An hour could mean the
difference between eating next month or closing up shop.

2\. Some items will succeed quickly, but only temporarily. You need to burn
the kindling, but you also need some good wood. This is especially critical
when you're in a service-based company. Your first few clients might bring you
a lot of bacon, but the clients you build relationships buy you a pig farm.

3\. You can't do it alone. Whether it's financial, technical, social, or moral
support, you're going to need it eventually.

Overall, I think this list petered out a bit in the end, and some of the
points missed the mark. Overall, I think that running a business is a lot like
fishing, playing a game of poker, and riding a bicycle at the same time. You
need patience, attentiveness, social and observational skills, and endurance.

And a very understanding wife.

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delano
It got a bit sexist there in the end.

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jdrich
Apologies!

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maukdaddy
5\. Your bad employees rarely quit

If you've ever worked for, or with, the government this is readily apparent.

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redstripe
This is true of any large organization. No government bashing required.

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ataggart
A large organization populated by bad employees will go out of business. Only
the government and its appendages have the luxury of avoid that fate.

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ora600
You will not believe how many bad employees a large organization can carry and
still grow and prosper.

I mean, ever talked to an AT&T call center? Do you see them going out of
business any time soon?

There was this guy I worked with on a previous job. He was simply unqualified
to do his job, and displayed no interest in becoming more qualified. He did
the bare minimum to survive, and very often others had to do his work for him
so they can make progress in their own job. For various reasons his managers
preferred to keep him even though he knew of his low performance. He was there
for 3 years when I left. The organization is in no danger of dying, even
though around 30% of the employees were of similar quality.

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ataggart
When I think of firms not dependent upon nor beneficiaries of government
largesse, market manipulation, and anti-competitive barrier raising, AT&T
isn't what comes to mind.

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ora600
Sigh.

HP? IBM? Oracle? Verizon?

Although "market manipulation" is broad enough to include any large company at
all. Same with "anti-competitive barrier rising".

So, we can say that past a certain size companies become evil bastards and
have many bad employees and they survive quite well.

They are still not government though, and consumers could choose to stop using
their products and they could go out of business. Except they don't.

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ataggart
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Let me try again:

When I think of firms not dependent upon nor beneficiaries of the government's
largesse, the government's market manipulation, and government's anti-
competitive barrier raising, AT&T isn't what comes to mind.

And of course the firm's resistance to market forces is not binary, but rather
proportional to how close the firm is to the government corpus. Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac more so than AT&T more so than Apple.

~~~
ora600
So I was hoping you will accept one of my other examples of companies with
large numbers of bad employees that show no intention of going out of business
any time soon.

The cellphone market is highly regulated, but the large computer and software
manufactures don't seem to depend on government manipulations.

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asterix
Nice point about bad employees will be the most loyal :-) I had not quite
thought of it that way.

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frossie
Me, I'd worry about the person whose most loyal employees were bad. It would
mean they don't provide the kind of workplace where good employees stick
around. The number one reason people leave jobs: they don't like their boss.

There are a lot of technically brilliant people who aren't looking to move for
a 10% pay rise (unless they are grossly underpaid - sheesh, don't underpay
your people). Great people will stay for a good boss (see above), a happy
environment, a degree of creative freedom, opportunity to work independently,
the chance to extend their skills, etc etc.

It's true that bad employees generally don't quit, though.

[Edit: Don't believe me? Ask Pixar what their staff turnover rate is. Is Pixar
full of bad employees? Methinks not.]

~~~
count
I'm not sure the intent was commutative (if a then b, but not if b then a)?

Your bad employees will be loyal.

That doesn't mean your loyal employees will be bad.

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redstripe
A good corollary to #4 is that good bosses/managers are also very hard to
find. That includes most of the people who will be reading that blog full of
self pity about the bad luck they have finding good employees.

Why is it that these management blogs always pander to the readers without
ever suggesting that the problem may be you - the manager/boss.

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atldev
Don't know if I agree with #2. There are plenty of overnight success stories
that are 10 years in the making (Zappos comes to mind). And plenty of startups
had to muscle through tough times without seeing "quick success" (Pandora).
Countless others.

If things things that succeed tend to do so quickly, why is the idea of a
pivot so important?

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dctoedt
Perhaps pivoting is important to turn away from something that isn't
succeeding, towards something else that might.

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atldev
The larger a company is, the easier it is for bad employees to hideout in the
org. The path of least resistance for the average manager is to just let it
slide.

It is also my experience that letting poor performers slide has a big impact
on your top performers. Top performers want to be part of a winning team, and
letting slackers ride sends a terrible message.

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kenjackson
There's actually some research, which I couldn't find that points out just the
opposite. The best performers often like being the best performers, and
actually take a slight pay hit for being considered the best.

But there's probably also a difference between working with someone who does
no work, takes 3 hour lunches, and never gets anything done on time. Versus
the person who works hard, but just takes 20% longer than you to get stuff
done. The former really bug people, but the latter tends to just make you look
good, while still helping the company.

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akkartik
_"If you want to build a business predicated largely on finding, getting and
keeping quality employees to succeed, you should understand that premise will
be your greatest risk. Finding a market and profitably selling to it (usually
the greatest risks) will take a back seat. Better yet, pursue a business that
needs some reasonable percentage of employees to be really good."_

I'm having trouble parsing that. What option is the last sentence better than?

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sheena
He's saying it's better than the first option: pursuing a business that
requires a very high percentage of quality employees in order to have any
chance of succeeding.

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shadowsun7
I'm interested in item 2 (things that succeed do so quickly). Is this true?

Edit: (I should note that I'm more interested in this observation as applied
to people than I am applied to products, though. Are great salespersons great
on the first day, or is it possible that some people just need time to get
used to the environment?)

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sosuke
I'd love to see some data on this as well, are there no instances of slow and
steady winning the race in the startup world?

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papa
The unlucky point is so true. All kinds of crazy costs and snafus will sneak
up and knock you off your feet. Taking care to plan ahead always helps, but
having that new server go dead or finding some unexpected legal fees or
finding an unanticipated tax bill in the mail can really knock you off your
game for a few days.

Just be sure to keep some emergency cash reserves on hand if you can afford to
do so. It can save your sanity and your company (I've had 2 instances where
the cash reserves have saved my company's behind: (1) was for a costly rescue
from DriveSavers and (2) was for some hefty but worthwhile legal fees from an
unexpected legal dispute.

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smiler
I'm a solid worker - just spent the weekend in the Bay Area for the first time
ever and on the Saturday I worked for 16 hours instead of seeing anything.
Anyone want to hire a solid worker for some freelance? :)

~~~
dusing
What do you do? Dusing at row27.com

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smiler
.NET mostly - just looked at your site so I doubt that lines up but you have
nice looking work :)

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lowglow
I believe the author is confused about what a "sunk cost" means.

