

How I Spent A Million Bucks And Ended Up With These Two Chairs. - merrick33
http://blog.mixergy.com/how-i-spent-a-million-bucks-and-ended-up-with-these-two-chairs/

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callmeed
Keep your costs down, sure ... sort of a basic lesson

Cal me crazy, but I'm really skeptical about this author in general ... why is
it so hard to find info about his previous $30MM revenue business? What
exactly did Bradford & Reed do–and how much was it acquired for? I see
mentions of greeting cards and games ... but no mentions of any actual profit
or acquisition details.

I'm starting to feel like the startup world is becoming inundated with people
who _just want to sell stuff to startup founders_ (be it books, info, their
name or whatever). Frankly, its getting old.

Yes, startup founders need solid advice and lessons from those who have done
it before. But, for God's sake, use some discretion when it comes to the
source of your advice.

~~~
menloparkbum
_the startup world is becoming inundated with people who just want to sell
stuff to startup founders_

He's part of the parallel universe in silicon valley (physically, and in
spirit) of people who hold seminars, arrange mixers, make blogs, write twitter
posts, and generally act as a big sideshow and social group for 2nd rate
startups and their entourages.

It's a surreal place filled with the same people at every event (and linked on
every blog or re-tweeted on every tweet) who seem like they must be important,
but aren't.

Sometimes worlds collide and Tim Ferris does a talk at Google (or TED - WTF?)
or Tara Hunt doles out free beer at a conference room at Yahoo!...

In my experience unless your girlfriend is working for one of their boutique
PR firms you can safely avoid everything about this world.

~~~
rjurney
I'm coming to do a geek/startup tour of silicon valley... can you recommend
any events/groups that don't suck? Because what you're describing sounds
pretty similar to the worst of our local networking groups, and I get really
irritated when I show up for one and its a bunch of guys trying to sell me
management consulting and a 'startup' speaker that made millions selling used
hardware.

~~~
menloparkbum
It's hard for me to recommend anything, because I don't feel like I've gotten
much out of the good events I've gone to. I'm not really an event guy. I'd
probably be more useful in the negative for particular cases, like "that one
sucks - definitely DON'T go to that one." Also - I haven't gone to any of
these things for almost a year.

That said, SuperHappyDevHouse is the only event that is genuinely hacker
oriented. Some of the particular tech specific meetups I've been to have had
good presentations.

If you really want to network it's probably best to figure out where your
favorite startups go out to drink beer on Fridays. If you're looking for
hackerish, generally interesting things to do, events like Maker Faire are
pretty good.

~~~
rjurney
So you wouldn't recommend the entrepreneur educational events Stanford
organizes? The tech stuff we have here, somewhat, although I'll be there for
the Hadoop Summit. Was hoping to get a glimpse into people making all these
connections that the valley is supposed to offer a startup.

Gonna catch an open coffee, but still looking for things to do relating to
startup/biz side of things. I'm not looking to network for anything in
particular so much as get a good sense of the environment.

~~~
menloparkbum
Oh, actually that kind of thing sounds cool. I just haven't been. Stanford is
great and is worth going to an event there if you're in the area.

~~~
rjurney
But you're saying that cocktail hour by Blanko.com would not be a great
networking event as it would be characterized by wanton douschebaggery? I'm
trying to catch some of those too, just to experience them.

Sorry to pick your brain, but I'm 'exploring' valley/provincial market
differences for fun.

Which groups suck? :)

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zandorg
Jerry Yang slept under his desk, Amazon had door desks.

I tried to emulate Yang by renting an office - I wanted to sleep nights in it.
But I chickened out and continued to work from my bedroom (a UK equivalent of
a USA garage).

~~~
zaidf
I never understood how someone ACTUALLY sleeps "under" a desk:p My desks have
too many power cords to make any kinda sleep possible.

I went with this: <http://zaid.posterous.com/me-office-and-bed>

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stuff4ben
A great lesson we should all learn from. His mistake was in thinking that
money could buy him prestige, power, and respect. It hardly ever works.

~~~
noodle
i would agree with this statement if it said "money alone".

money's a tool, and if you put it in the hands of someone who deserves
prestige/power/respect, someone wise/thoughtful/intelligent, it could
potentially speed along that process faster than it would happen without it
(if used wisely).

/$0.02

~~~
numbchuckskills
I would disagree. I would suggest that this dude is a tool, and that money is
just fine.

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omarchowdhury
He doesn't even say what business this was for. And don't tell me it was for
Bradford & Reed... why would they need to impress clients - why are clients
even going to a Manhattan corporate office to buy greeting cards?

~~~
AndrewWarner
Good question. Wish I asked that at the time.

My clients were the sponsors who bought my ads.

Like you said, they hardly ever came to NYC to meet. Pretty much all my
business was done by phone or I flew to a clients' office.

But when I had a dinky office in Queens, one of my clients came to see me. And
I was embarrassed when he saw my office.

And instead of being smart and dismissing it, I magnified the incident in my
head.

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antidaily
If he sold the rest of the furniture he bought with the million, then
presumably he has/had that money too.

~~~
Retric
It was an ambiguous statement; the implication was the loss of value for that
venture was a million, with the only benefit being 2 chairs. I don't think a
floor in Manhattan + retail cost of furniture + a decorator is going to be
cheap even if you sublet the space and sell the furniture. (Then again
subletting might have been a net gain.)

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prewett
There's an observation in value investing that if a company buys a gorgeous
new headquarters the stock is going to do poorly, presumably for similar
reasons as this guy. I think it was Peter Lynch who commented on this.

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vang3lis
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