

Seed capitalism - moog
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/businessview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10834563

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skmurphy
This is a great article. Two key points for consumer oriented startups: it
always takes longer and foolproof is hard to do. Key paragraphs:

[T]wo other key characteristics of the successful entrepreneur: persistence
and perfectionism. Mr Bissonette had expected to have the new product on the
market within a year to 18 months. In the end, it took four years.

Experience had taught Mr Bissonette that “when you launch a new category, you
make one mistake and it could be your last chance.” So each new version of
AeroGrow's kitchen garden was tested to destruction with people whose fingers
were anything but green. “We kept building the best system we could, watched
how people would kill their plants, and changed it so they couldn’t kill their
plants that way any more,” says John Thompson, AeroGrow's marketing director.

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Frocer
Great article. This reminds me of the Excite team, after the 6 of them
graduated from Stanford, they decided to start a company simply because they
want to pursue entrepreneurship, without even having an idea of what they will
be doing.

I think it's important to show that entrepreneurship succeeds when you are
persistence, have a strong drive to succeed, and have the determination...
rather than how media portrait it as random luck (ex. Founder x first started
the company because he couldn't find something that does y)

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wallflower
In Triumph of the Nerds, a great feel-good movie for Internet startups, there
is a nice time capsule vignette of the founders of Excite, when the company
was just getting started.

In Bob Cringely's documentary. Joe Kraus and Graham (the other co-founder) are
interviewed while working in someone's basement. They're sitting in near
darkness, illuminated by the glow of multiple workstations. In this brief
vignette, they both exude confidence. Joe Kraus, dressed in jeans, seems to be
very entreprenurial charismatic. Graham reminds me of a young Bill Gates and
demonstrates Architext's technology on Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Later, in the documentary, several months or a year later, Bob Cringley goes
to visit the massive brand new, post-VC offices of excite.com. Graham and Joe
lead Bob on a tour - and you can see that the founders are still very much the
same people - humble but world-affecting ambitious.

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Frocer
Thanks for that. I will definitely check it out.

I read about Excite's early days in Founders at Work.

