
Early Startup Time Wasters - icey
http://talkfast.org/2012/05/05/early-startup-time-wasters
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localhost3000
I've had the opposite experience with working at home vs working in a shared
space. I was much, much more productive working at home (having a 'home
office', aka a room with a desk and no tv was key) but I am far happier
working out of a shared space where I have other humans to bond with (and whom
I have become close friends with). On balance, moving into a shared space has
been a great decision but I do sometimes miss the ruthless productivity that
came from having absolutely zero distractions.

~~~
sukuriant
I came on here to say basically this. Some days, especially when I've had too
much of the same atmosphere, I find that going home and working from there via
remote desktop can increase my productivity, if it's maintained for a day or
two. Then, when I return to my normal office, I'm similarly productive -- and
both of these are more productive than the day before that I didn't work from
home.

The "work from home" is definitely a "your mileage may vary"

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vbtemp
Above all else, a commute to the office will suck all the creative juices
straight from your cranium. Spending 30+ minutes schlepping through traffic
each way makes the whole day a waste.

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mattmanser
Don't drive yourself then? You chose where you live, if daily commute factored
so low, well, that was your choice. I walk or get the bus depending on
mood/weather. Great way to start the day.

~~~
karamazov
This comment is smug rather than constructive or helpful. It might be useful
the next time the poster decides to move, but it's certainly not useful right
now.

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rohansingh
I think that in a way, your comment actually proves the parent's point. As you
said, "the next time the poster decides to move".

The operative part there is that it is the poster's decision. I think most of
us who have the resources to begin a startup or afford renting a coworking
space also have the ability to be somewhat mobile within our local geographic
area. Americans in particular are known for moving quite often.

To conclude, I think that considering a walkable or bikeable commute or the
availability of public transit is great advice for anyone who is planning on
moving within the next five years — which is nearly 75% of the US population.

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Udo
Of course, everyone's mileage varies. There are many items on that list that
should be universal, though:

Invite-only access (pisses me off as an interested user all the time), go-
nowhere "partnership" promises from other companies (I too wasted _a lot_ of
time on these dubious proposals during my startup time) and, the closely
related point: "quick" meetings with people who do nothing but serve their own
[and often times underwhelming] agenda.

Working from home on the other hand is probably a personal thing - some people
think it's great, for others it doesn't seem to work out at all. Personally, I
prefer a mixture. At home I _do_ get a lot of things done that require
concentration.

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ezl
This.

Startups are an acute instance of "too much to do, too little time". Good task
prioritization might be the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT skill that a startup founder
needs to develop.

Not all failures are time wasters though -- some of the items in that list
seem reasonable enough (techcrunch amazon affiliate links).

DHH said something like "If you're not working on your single best idea,
you're doing it wrong". He was talking about startups, but I think that could
be applied to your to do list as well.

~~~
jen_h
TechCrunch is a really neat cap-feather, but it mostly just pulls in a lot of
non-real-user inbound interest in my experience (VCs, potential partners) -
and if you're not close to ready or even interested in funding/partnerships,
all that inbound interest wastes a lot of time, too - so you might as well get
closer to a point where you're ready and willing to handle the inbound queries
(i.e., capture your users, make them happy first), and then get the coverage.

~~~
rhizome
"Lookie-loos," "window shoppers," etc.

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nikkisnow
I have to agree with the first point of the article regarding 'Invite Only' -
this has been one of the biggest headaches in all of the projects I've been
involved in. It seems there is little to gain in preventing people to sign up
with your app. It doesn't seem to increase interest for users and, in all
reality, denying access when the visitor is ready to sign up is just not
smart. Numbers count; 10,000 potential users doesn't seem to be as strong a
number as 1,000 actual users.

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rhizome
It started with the original GMail invites and became somewhat of a mythical
buzz-producing technique that really only worked for a limited number of
sites. Turntable.fm is the last one that I remember learning about in a way
that seemed to generate more interest.

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jvoorhis
I tend to be much more productive on days when I work from home, but after a
1.5 year stretch with an out of state company I found it harder to stay
focused at home.

I've found lately that occasionally varying my work location – maybe 3 days in
the office, 2 at home or at a quiet cafe – is refreshing and helps me avoid
the slump.

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javajosh
I enjoyed this post quite a lot. I'd like to see a companion post on
specifically engineering time-wasters - e.g. did you find that evaluating new
technologies to solve problems to be an unnecessary risk, or a pleasant
surprise that ended up saving time and effort in the long run? What about the
tension between "one size fits all" tools and tools that are so specialized
that you need a tool to select the right tool?

~~~
erichocean
Developing general solutions to specific problems is an engineering
timewaster, in my experience.

Using complicated tools and tooling where simpler tooling would cover your
actual needs with less effort.

Developing a solution that attempts to meet all needs with a lot of effort,
instead of developing a product that meets the needs that can be effectively
addressed.

I'm guilty of the last one, so what I do is develop two solutions:

1\. a solution that actually "solves" the problem with engineering (the
"right" way to do it), and

2\. a second approach that is an order of magnitude (sometimes a few orders)
easier to implement that _partially_ solves the problem, but requires a bit of
management to stay "solved" over time.

Engineers seem to prefer engineering solutions (go figure), but especially in
business, a combination of engineering and management is usually the most
cost-effective approach.

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lrobb
There's 2 big ones:

1\. Writing code. 2\. Not committing.

You should never write a single line of code until you have a customer lined
up. Not in theory, in reality. Not a friend that says it's a great idea, and
they'd use your software. A list of verifiable people that you don't know that
want to pay you money. Someone that can write a check at BigCo. Someone that
is beta testing your product live.

On commitment, cue the joke about pig & chicken opening a ham & eggs
restaurant: The pig says no thanks, he'd be committed, the chicken would
merely be involved. This kind of ties in with #1... If you don't have an
actual paying customer lined up, it's really easy to get involved in "side"
activities... I'll just bust out this contract real quick... Sounds like a
cool company, I'll go interview (especially bad when it involves samples).

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kkowalczyk
That sounds good on paper but in reality writing code for new product is based
on faith. You don't know what will work and figuring that is both the most
risky part of writing software as well as most lucrative (when solved).

And the only way to find out if something will sell is to build and try to
sell. The method you advocate (get sales before you have a product) just
doesn't work.

"A list of verifiable people that you don't know that want to pay you money"

How do you propose to "verify", or even find, people that you don't know?

"Someone that can write a check at BigCo."

Would _you_ write a check for something that doesn't yet exist? How do you
know, from just a description of the product, whether it's going to be moral
equivalent of Vista (a massive flop by Windows standards) or 7 (a massive
success)?

You don't, which is why no one pays for ideas or description of future
products.

"Someone that is beta testing your product live."

That does require that code has already been written, doesn't it?

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lrobb
You don't have to actually have a product before you sell it, or build
something to see if it will sell... It's called vaporware : a computer-related
product that has been widely advertised but has not and may never become
available

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lrobb
Don't hate peeps.

It's called "Minimum Viable Product" now, but 15 years ago we called it
vaporware.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product>

 _The canonical MVP strategy for a web application is to create a mock website
for the product and purchase online advertising to direct traffic to the site.
The mock website may consist of a marketing landing page with a link for more
information or purchase. The link is not connected to a purchasing system,
instead clicks are recorded and measure customer interest._

That is how you get sales before you have a product... Or at least know that
you'll get sales.

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knes
It maybe worked for him but I found it hard that it can be applied to every
startups

1\. Invite-Only Access. Depending the service your startup offer ( Storage &
bandwidth heavy ), you will have to offer to do invite only because you can't
just spend all the money you don't have on this. Invites will allow you to
control the cost of it all.

2\. & 3\. Real-time traffic measurement & User admin dashboard Those are the
only one I agree :)

4\. Experimenting with ads too early. Using ads early can be a really asset.
For example, It can allow you to A/B test some new messages or value
proposition. It can also help you see if you product can appeal to a certain
niche by hyper targeting your ads ( Does 20-25 old people living in New jersey
and who likes Soccer and BBQ will be interested in my product? )

5\. Amazon Affiliate links I think its great he took the time to try it out.
The goal is not to make loads of $$ with "a few thousands uniques/day" It's to
see the conversion rate. It didn't work out in his case so that "business
model idea" he can write off of his list.

6\. Techcrunch TC offer you so much more than traffic & SEO. It will be let
the world you exist to important people ( angels, VC, etc )

7\. One-off partnership projects. His experience isn't a good one. Probably
didn't negotiate hard enough with his partner. BizDev / Partnership can bring
tremendous traction to your startup if done right. Just don't get screwed up
by the other guy and don't waste time "building a prototype" for him without a
signed contract.

8\. coffee Meetings Sure the productivity can take a hit if you do it "too
much". But think about the social aspect of it. Wether it with coworker or
external people to network. it will help build a strong relationship.

9.Excessive side projects As a manager you have the duty to keep everyone
happy and productive. The coders will always have side project. Better to have
them work on a side project for your company and under your supervision than
to pissed them off and make them work on the side project during the Weekend.

10\. Working from home Working in an open space can be a pain in the ass for
some people. Because people will interrupt them all the time because of a bugs
/ ideas / whatever. If they are to introvert to say no, their productivity
will go down the drain. So better for them to work some times from home to be
truly focus on their work.

Cheers,

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silverbax88
I do have to say that he's talking about learning the ropes of your business,
not 'time-wasters'.

An example for me would be that we have one area of business where we organize
events. In order to attract attendees, we tried Google Ads, Facebook ads,
email blasts, flyers in popular locations/stores, newsletter ads. None of it
worked, or it barely worked. By year two we figured out that for our market,
postal mailers worked like crazy. Sending a letter to the prospects home gave
us super ROI.

Do I wish I'd known that at the beginning? Yes. But it took going through all
of those other methods to hit on the one that worked, which gave our company
domain knowledge.

This is really just a version of the business axiom 'Fail faster.'

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jen_h
Great advice. I know better now, but I often wonder how much time we would
have saved our first few years if I auto-deleted anything that included the
text "jump on a call."

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vbtemp
This is really interesting. I'm planning my own limited invite-only beta
rollout. However, this isn't the first time I heard it's a time-waster.

Does anyone else have opinions on this?

~~~
mattmanser
Do you really think you're going to be overwhelmed with sign ups?

Simple beta: Add 'we're in beta' to your sign up page.

Done.

Invite-only: don't link the signup page to the rest of the site. Add it to the
ignore in robots.

Done.

Anyone who finds it, well they just wanted it enough. Too many sign ups? Take
the page away. Get rid of the template page, whatever. It takes about 10 secs
to kill a page in most languages without a redeploy.

Writing lots of extra code?

Sucker.

Don't over-engineer.

~~~
vbtemp
The only thing is that this is not a free service, so I want just a couple
users to flesh things out and get some new opinions, before releasing
something that flops and gets a bad rap.

~~~
ismarc
Make a signup page to be part of the beta, include the disclaimer that it's
free during the beta but once the service is publicly available it will be
charged for and the fees are waived during the beta in exchange for bug
reports, possible issues/downtime, etc. Then, whenever someone signs up, just
automatically send them an invite. You don't limit the people who want to use
it in the beta and can provide valuable feedback and you set expectations
appropriately for leaving free status and to the state of the application. And
if you think that you may get a bad rap for being in "beta" and it not being
as good as Google's beta, just call it "alpha" instead.

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kpennell
Great list. I really like that idea of shot selection. 1000 options of what
you can do...which one will yield the best results? What a tough question.

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par
Love this post, I definitely focus on TC too much. Love seeing how to maximize
press outlets.

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methoddk
6\. TechCrunch

Yes.

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sohels
Thats a great list to avoid... but why not partnerships? Specially when
working on a B2B platform, I believe its important to build relationships from
the get go.

