The Foundations Of A Startup Community

This post originally appeared as a guest post on TechCrunch.

For the past few months, my wife and I have been traveling and meeting startups around the world. We’ve met entrepreneurs in Tokyo, Thailand, India, Israel, and Istanbul. In the next week we’ll be meeting with a community leader in South Africa. It’s been fascinating.

In addition to meeting with the teams, we have been leading Q&A sessions with larger groups. The discussion always includes the group asking “how do we make our startup community as strong as Silicon Valley?”

It’s an important question, as a lot of the startups’ success in Silicon Valley can be attributed to the strong community. However, that community has been growing and maturing for over 40 years. So when people ask about how to replicate it, I try to direct the conversation back to the foundation of the community.

These are the elements I think are important to seed a startup community:

Support

There are a lot of places where starting a company isn’t seen as an exciting and inspiring pursuit. In fact, in places like Japan, we learned that becoming an entrepreneur is seen as an unwise and ill-informed decision. This kind of environment makes launching a startup, which is already an incredibly difficult task, near impossible. The founders needs to find a way to feel supported. If they don’t feel support, they won’t make it through endless 18 hour days. In places where support isn’t the norm, founders need to find ways to support each other until the rest of the community comes around.

Collaboration

One of the best things about having co-founders is it gives an entrepreneur other people to bounce ideas off of and work through problems with. But in good startup communities, this kind of collaboration isn’t limited to internal conversations. Founders of different companies should constantly get together to share their experiences and help each other. Especially in newer entrepreneurial communities, it’s incredibly important to pool knowledge, instead of everyone figuring out everything on their own. This can happen in any form, whether it’s late night hack sessions or weekly breakfasts. Figure out what works for your community and then get together and talk.

Transparency

When collaborating, transparency is a must. In many places, people are afraid to talk freely about their ideas, figuring that someone might steal what they’re working on. In more mature startup environments, we’ve learned that this shouldn’t be a concern. The risk of someone stealing your idea (which I’ve never seen happen) is almost always offset by the huge amount of value you get from sharing what you’re working on and asking for feedback. So when you get together to talk, really talk.

Embrace Failure

It’s human nature to talk about your successes and hide your failures. After all, why tell people what you’re not good at? Why admit you didn’t do something well? In startup communities, it’s one of the most valuable things you can do. Most entrepreneurs (and people in general) will tell you they’ve learned more from their failures than their successes. By keeping these failures to yourself, no one else can learn from them. In startups, people don’t see failure as a reflection of your talent, they see it as an opportunity to learn and improve. Most startups fail. So if you’re going to get into startups, embrace failure, and learn from it. Then share what you learned.

Form Startup Hubs

Getting a group of entrepreneurs talking is a great step, but finding some common places to do that makes it a lot more powerful. This be a permanent location (co-working space, incubators, technology organizations, cafes) or a scheduled event (meetups, happy hours), but it’s important to establish places where entrepreneurs can co-exist. There are probably a lot more entrepreneurs around you than you think, and getting everyone together is one way to understand the size of your community. This is one of the reasons that Startup Weekend is such a powerful organization. It brings the community together.

Invite Outsiders In

People from more established entrepreneurial cities love helping smaller communities grow. Use this to your advantage. Invite people who have been successful in established hubs to come speak at a local conference, come speak at the local hub, or just come and meet teams when they’re in town. Pay attention to people’s travel schedules (which people always post to Twitter) and if they’re in your area, invite them. Entrepreneurs love sharing knowledge with someone else, and it’s rewarding to do this with a new community. Dave McClure has formed a whole organization around this concept withGeeks On A Plane, which takes entrepreneurs to all corners of the world to teach and learn from the local startup community. Jeff Slobotski has done it for years with the enormously successful Big Omaha conference.

Send Insiders Out

You community can’t expect everyone to come to you or to figure it all out on its own. It’s important to see how people are doing it elsewhere, and there’s no better way to do that than to get knee deep in it. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken with an entrepreneur who took a trip to the bay area who left without learning something new or meeting at least one valuable connection. So use whatever connections you have and visit places with mature communities like San Francisco, New York, etc. If you can’t make it, send ambassadors for you to go learn and then come share back with the community.

Be Patient

A lot of people worry that since top tier investors aren’t interested in their community right away, their efforts aren’t paying off. But they need to be patient. Building a startup community takes a long time.Brad Feld of the Foundry Group spoke about this at last year’s Tahoe Tech Talk, saying it’s taken 15 years to build the community in Boulder, Colorado, even though many people think it’s happened just over the past few years.

Overall, just understand that the most amazing thing about Silicon Valley isn’t the huge amount of venture capital, or number potential acquirers. It’s not all the incubators or co-working spaces. Instead, it’s the collaborative, helpful, and inspiring community that’s developed around it all. It’s the 10 other entrepreneurs sitting next to you at the coffee shop willing to help you through a problem or make an introduction to someone who might be helpful. It’s the support that the entire community consistently gives each other.

A strong community won’t appear overnight, but if you start with the right foundation, the rest will come in time.

Please add anything I missed in the comments.

[Update: A video of Brad’s talk]

Source: TechCrunch

Reduce Friction, Increase Happiness

This post originally appeared on TechCrunch.

There has been a reoccurring theme on my mind recently as I’ve advised startups on areas of focus. It revolves around the goal of reducing friction.

Reduced friction in a product leads to less user frustration, high conversion, and overall user happiness. I’d like to use a few examples to illustrate what I mean.

Taxis / Uber

Let’s start with Uber, the startup that lets you order a black car from your mobile phone in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Chicago, and a growing list of cities. Because I know the team, I’ve been following this startup since they launched. I actually took an Uber car to celebrate selling my first startup during one of their first weeks in beta.

When I first heard about the service, I focused on the luxury aspect of traveling in a black town car with a private driver. Who wouldn’t? It’s in their tagline (“Everyone’s Private Driver”) and it sounds awesome. But after my first Uber experience, I found out that while nice, the luxury component is strangely unimportant compared to their much bigger function of reducing the friction of getting a ride somewhere.

Let me elaborate. Friction points are italicized.

Here is generally what you need to do to get a cab:

  • Find a Car: Stand on the street waving at taxis as they drive by, hoping one stops (this can take a long time in SF), or call for one, which usually takes 15-30 minutes to arrive.
  • Set Destination: Tell the driver where you are going.
  • Ride: Many taxis aren’t the most peaceful drivers.
  • Pay: Take out your wallet and pay with cash (or credit card if they accept it – many don’t).
  • Tip: Calculate a tip to add to the fare.

Here is the Uber experience:

  • Find a Car: Open app and hit Pick Me Up. The car usually arrives within 10 minutes, sometimes within 5.
  • Set Destination: Tell the driver where you are going (although you can set this ahead of time)
  • Ride: Almost always a quiet, peaceful experience.
  • Pay: Your credit card is charged automatically.
  • Tip: Tip is calculated for you and included in fare.

Uber has reduced all the friction. What was a tedious process before is a seamless, pleasurable interaction. The most important thing Uber provides its users is that frictionless experience. The fact that it’s a black car means it’s generally an aesthetically nicer experience (and with SF Taxis, that can make a big difference), but that’s a small detail compared to the other benefits of using the service.

Zipcar / GetAround

A lot of people are familiar with Zipcar. It’s pretty simple. There are a bunch of Zipcar-owned cars around the city that members can rent on an hourly basis. All reservations are done through their website.

GetAround is a new startup taking on Zipcar by altering the model. Instead of GetAround purchasing a lot of inventory (cars), they built a marketplace for car-owners to list their own vehicles for other people to rent. I love the idea, and so do thousands of car owners looking to make money from their unused cars. The company won best startup at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC and since thenhas been well funded. I have used the service frequently. I love what they’re doing and think they’re going to build a great company.

However, they face a serious challenge. Zipcar owns its inventory, so they have more control of the friction in the experience:

  • Search: Search Zipcar.com
  • Reserve: Click on an available car and it’s instantly reserved.
  • Get Keys: Unlock with your Zipcar Card
  • Find Car: Go to the dedicated Zipcar parking spot
  • Drive
  • Add Gas: If less than 1/4 tank is left, use provided gas card to fill up tank. Otherwise, just return the car.
  • Return Car: Park car in reserved parking space
  • Lock and Return Key: Lock with card and walk away

There isn’t really a lot of friction there. Now let’s look at that experience with GetAround:

  • Search: Search GetAround.com
  • Reserve: Since the cars are personal property, car availability isn’t guaranteed, so this turns to two steps.
  • Request several potential rentals.
  • Wait to hear from an owner.
  • If an owner replies, your booking is reserved. If not, repeat search.
  • Get Keys: You can unlock some cars with the mobile app. Most, however, you need to set up a time to exchange the key in person with the owner.
  • Find Car: Since GetAround owners don’t necessarily have dedicated parking spots, the car’s location varies, so you need to ask the owner where it is. Sometimes the answer resembles “On 27th between Guerrero and Dolores”.
  • Drive
  • Add Gas: Before returning every rental, the gas needs to be filled up to where it was at the beginning of the rental, which you pay for. So you need to remember the initial level and try to add just enough gas to return it to that level.
  • Return Car: If there’s not a reserved spot, you need to find a place to park it. If this takes longer than expected, you might be late returning it.
  • Lock and Return Key: Coordinate with the owner how to return the key and tell them where their car is parked.

Wow. That’s a lot more friction.

Again, I love GetAround, and their team is more aware of these issues than anyone. I’m 100% confident that as they go, they’ll iron this stuff out, just as Zipcar ironed out all the challenges they faced at the beginning. The friction issues GetAround faces are a result of the fact that Zipcar bought cars, while GetAround buys bandwidth. This initial disadvantage will make the company much more nimble and scalable long term.

I think the key to reducing friction quickly is to incentivizing the car owners to reduce the friction points. Give owners the option to guarantee their schedule, so cars can be booked immediately. Push them to install the CarKit, (the device that lets the renter locate and unlock the car from their smartphone). Then, when owners do these things, GetAround should give them a bigger percentage of the rental fee or prioritize those cars in search results. These owner will get more rentals and make more money. Over time, as users choose these cars, other owners will need to add these options to compete in the marketplace, and friction starts to disappear.

Airbnb / Kayak

Even successful startups still work every day on reducing friction. Let’s quickly compare Kayak andAirbnb.

Kayak:

  • Search: Search Kayak.com and only available hotels appear.
  • Confirmation: You can make a reservation instantly on the hotel website
  • Arrival: You go to the front desk, get your key, and go to your room.
  • Checkout: You leave your room.

Airbnb:

  • Search: Search Airbnb.com and get a list of properties, some available, some booked (since the owners don’t keep their schedules up to date).
  • Confirmation: Many times, owner writes back saying the calendar wasn’t updated and you need to search again.
  • Arrival: You need to arrange a time to meet to get the key, sign a small contract, etc.
  • Checkout: Most of my experiences, you can just leave the key and go.

A lot of times, finding an Airbnb accommodation is a bigger hassle than a booking hotel. But they’ve managed to build a $1 billion company, and continually works to make the process seamless and frictionless. And it’s getting better and better.

So what does all this mean?

Friction is important to consider when creating a product. If your users feel friction using or signing up for your service, you have a problem. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but you should do everything in your power to remove as much friction as possible. And you should pay attention to this constantly as your product and service grow.

When you examine your product, where are the friction points? Are you letting users sign up with Twitter/Facebook, or do they need to register separately? Are you opening popups to get their attention instead of letting them continue on the site? Are you requiring information you don’t need?

Reduce friction, increase happiness.

Source: TechCrunch

Why artists should use Instagram

This post originally appeared on the Midem Blog.

Snoop Dogg, Justin Bieber and more use the rapidly growing photo app/social network: Onesheet’s Mulligan explains why you should too

Instagram is a photo sharing social network that has experienced explosive growth over the past year. Only available on iPhone, it allows users to take a photo, do some light image editing (cropping, framing, rotating, and applying filters), and post it for their friends to see. They can also post the photo to Twitter, Facebook, and a growing number of supported sites. Over 10 million people use Instagram. And the service is only a year old.

Hundreds of millions of people look at the photos when they’re posted to the different social networks. And musicians are starting to take notice. Justin Bieber is using it (check out his photos here). Snoop Dogg is using it (check out his photos here). And a lot of other musicians are jumping on board.

So why is this important for musicians to know about? First, a word about social networking in general. Engaging in social networks isn’t always easy. Some musicians don’t like the idea of having to post all their thoughts and activity to Twitter, and others don’t like the responsibility of keeping content fresh and up to date on their Facebook page.

For some people, social networking isn’t natural and takes away from the focus on their music. My advice has always been if you can’t make social networking feel natural, then don’t do it. Your fans will know when it’s not genuine or it’s forced, so find another solution. Maybe that’s solution is hiring someone to manage your social network presences (and being clear it’s not you managing it, but a representative).

Other times, that solution is finding a tool that does feel natural and then share content from that tool through social networking channels. YouTube and Soundcloud are great examples of more natural tools. Musicians can record a new part of a song and post it to Soundcloud, or shoot a quick video of them on the road and post it to their YouTube channel.

For a lot of musicians, this is part of the creative process of writing and performing music. Clicking “Share to Twitter/Facebook” isn’t a lot of extra work, and it enables them to take advantage of the additional promotional channels without having to manage those channels.

So, back to Instagram. Most musicians carry a camera with them on tour or in the studio. Many also carry a smart phone, many of them iPhones. To take advantage of this additional promotion channel, musicians just need to download the free Instagram app, take a photos and every so often post one or two to Instagram. When they post, click share to Twitter/Facebook and before long, they’ll see a following starting to develop on Instagram. It should feel very natural, and will be a visually creative way to engage with fans through another creative outlet.

Many social networks come and go. Instagram seems like it’s going to be around for a bit, and I’d encourage bands to take notice and give it a try. It’s fun and engaging, and I suspect that you’ll find yourself posting to it more than you think.

Source: blog.midem.com

Our visit to Open Network Lab in Tokyo

This post originally appeared on Techcrunch.

Before coming to Japan, we asked everyone we knew for advice on how to connect with the startup community in Tokyo. Every recommendation pointed at the exact same place: Open Network Lab.

Open Network Lab (“Onlab”) is a Japanese startup incubator in the same vein as Y Combinator or TechStars. The incubator provides startups with mentorship, office space, and a small amount of cash in exchange for a piece of equity. This model is popular in the United States, and leading Japanese internet company Digital Garage(investors in Twitter, Path, and more) wanted to try it in Japan. Onlab is currently in its second year of operation has incubated three batches of startups. Even though it’s a young program, they are already making an noticeable impact on the Japanese startup community.

We spent our first hour talking with Hironori (Hiro) Maeda, the guy in charge of overseeing the incubator’s operations. Hiro grew up in Japan and attended an international school before going on to study computer science at Bucknell University. After college, he launched a startup of his own, and several years later was asked to return to Japan to help build and run Onlab as a way to move the Japanese entrepreneurial community forward.

But developing that community has its cultural challenges. “Launching a startup, where there is a lot of uncertainty and unsuitability, does not fit a culture where harmony and stability are strongly emphasized,” Hiro told us. “However, a lot of younger Japanese are realizing that the nation itself is at uncertainty. The employment rate of college graduates have reached the lowest point in the past decade and the Japanese earthquake has made the people in entire nation uncertain about their future. The uncertainty and the increasing interest of the success that Silicon Valley is experiencing has made more younger Japanese take bigger risks.”

This has led to a ton of interest in Onlab from both entrepreneurs and the general public. This interest doesn’t come without its hurdles, however. Even though the community is willing to take risks, Hiro says it’s just not quite ready to be as transparent as entrepreneurs in other parts of the world.

“Entrepreneurs in Japan haven’t realized the benefits of transparency and sharing information. People are afraid of sharing ideas and experiences — thinking that it is their only competitive advantage”, he said.

In more mature startup communities like Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs share their war stories on a regular basis. And they don’t hide their failures, but instead embrace them and try to help others avoid it. Hiro knows this, and is fostering the same type of communication with his startups: “We encourage failed entrepreneurs to move on to their next idea and hope that they will see their failure as an experience they can take advantage of for their next venture.”

Hiro also requires his startups to get together at least once a week to discuss ideas that have worked, tasks that they found challenging, and points in they’re development where they’re getting stuck. Although it doesn’t necessarily come naturally, it’s working. Hiro says these sessions are getting better and better and the entrepreneurs are seeing the value in openness and transparency.

And Japan is taking notice.

When we were there, national network Tokyo TV was spending the day filming the lab and talking to the startups. When they found out some people from Silicon Valley were visiting too, they asked us to sit down for an interview. Most of the questions were around whether or not Japan had the ability to compete with Silicon Valley and whether Onlab could work. Overall, my responses were that it was already working. People are learning about this community all over the world and Onlab has started to put the Japanese entrepreneurial community on the map.

We also spent a few hours talking to and mentoring the startups (listed below). Overall, the companies were on par with the types of startups you see in the Bay Area’s incubators. There was an impressive focus on design and user experience and most had well-fleshed out business models and quality prototypes. As a taste of what Onlab has been producing, here is a quick look at a few of the incubator’s current startups:

Giftee
Giftee has built a platform that allows people to send each other gift certificates for physical goods. They’re responding to the gifting trend, and already have deals in place with some major brands in Japan, including Muji.

FindJPN
FindJPN is the AirBnB for Japanese experiences. They focus on providing a marketplace for some of the best excisions, experiences, and events that tourists to Japan can easily purchase via their website.

ABCLoop
ABCLoop is building a language learning community that enables people help each other learn a foreign language in very short, direct interactions. The site gathers the lessons in Loops, which are conversations around a particular topic.

Pirka
Pirka has built a mobile app that inspires people to help pick up litter around them, by giving users a social network to post photos of what they’ve picked up. They’ve already recorded over 20,000 pieces of trash picked up in 20 countries.

Dressful
Dressful is building a social shopping network for working woman, where they are recommended new items by Dressful according to their taste profile and also by their friends through a mobile app.

Mieple
Mieple is building a new way to meet people through your social connections. Think about it as LinkedIn Introductions for the entire web.

Our advice: Pay attention to what Onlab is doing and expect to see it develop and inspire a new generation of Japanese entrepreneurs.

Source: TechCrunch

Celebrate The Small Victories

This post originally appeared on the 500 Startups Blog.

Startups aren’t easy. They are a never-ending series of extreme ups and downs.

Your product launches! No one uses it. You get unexpected press and the user base spikes! The servers go down and all those users are pissed. You get funded by top-tier investors! A major tech blog claims a competitor will make your startup irrelevant. You strike an amazing partnership with the biggest company in the industry! The partner re-prioritizes and cancels the deal. Your company goes viral and the mainstream starts using it! Another company sues you for some stupid reason. You spin the lawsuit to generate international press! The legal fees bleed your company dry. Google wants to acquire you for tons of money! Then they acquire that competitor the tech blogs said would make you irrelevant. Oh, and the dog pissed all over your bed. And it smells.

You get the point.

Although this scenario is extreme, it’s not that exaggerated. It’s different for every company but inevitably, you will go through some of the most intense joys and disappointments. It happens to everyone, even seasoned entrepreneurs. It’s part of the process and why living this life is so exciting (and why having a supportive team/family is so important.)

Unfortunately, the gaps between the cycles might (and usually do) contain more downs that ups. And often the downs are more extreme than the ups. So overall, especially at the beginning, the good times don’t come as often as the challenging ones. It’s rough, but there is one thing I learned to do to make this whole process easier (and more fun): celebrate the little victories.

Now, I’m not encouraging entrepreneurs to get ahead of themselves, but I want to remind everyone that creating a business from an idea and having people express any interest in what you’re doing is an insanely huge accomplishment. Be proud of it. Be excited when things go well.

Some ideas of little victories to celebrate:

  • First employee hire
  • First time you see or hear about someone who you didn’t talk to directly about your product, using it
  • When the first major company emails you about partnering
  • Someone expresses interests to acquire you
  • You get an email from a customer whose life is better because of what you created

Remember, these are little victories, so the celebrations should be as well. Don’t overdo it. The point is to do something just a little out of the ordinary and special. Take your team to go see a movie some afternoon when you’d normally be working. Or go eat taco’s together away from your desks. Buy a new (reasonably priced) TV for the office. Bring in donuts one morning. Take everyone to go kart racing. Go to the supermarket and get them to make a $10 “congratulations” cake and bring it to the office. Hell, go buy a piñata and give your team a bat. Again, it’s just a small, fun activity to reward yourself and your team for doing something great.

As important as it is to celebrate with your team is, it’s equally important to share these little victories with your spouse. Most likely, whoever you share your life with hears you bitch more than they hear you celebrate. So make sure to share the good news with them too. Take them on a date. And again, make sure you’re reinforcing how rewarding your career is. When you share good news, it makes it a lot easier for them to support you through the not-so-good news.

With my first startup, I would make sure to tell my wife every exciting thing that happened. For example, the first time we got an email showing serious acquisition interest, my wife and I went out to dinner to celebrate. Although we knew the deal probably wouldn’t happen (it didn’t), it was a huge accomplishment just to have someone express interest. That was worth raising a glass to.

Celebrating these victories is healthy, and will make it easier to make it through the times when things seen dismal (incidentally, it’s not nearly as dismal as you think). Everyone celebrates the big victories (the product launches, the funding, the user and revenue milestones, the exits). But make sure to take the time to celebrate the little ones too.

Source: blog.500startups.com

Musicians: Focus your efforts and get greater results

This post originally appeared on the Midem Blog.

I just returned from a great week in France, where Sonicbids hosted the Music & Brands part of MIDEM. During the week I was asked to lead some artist mentoring and expert sessions for MidemNet, which I was happy to do. Basically, I spoke with artists or entrepreneurs during 15 minute conversations or roundtables. In most of these sessions, I found myself continuing to give the same advice, and it all centres around focus.

In the entrepreneurial world, we talk about focus a lot. The general advice to a startup is to focus a single core problem/solution and really nail that one before building a big set of features. Since most startups have extremely limited resources (little money, small team), this is important, because trying to build a ton of features right away most likely reduces the quality of the whole set. I even talked about this in a previous post for this blog.

So that’s the advice I always give to entrepreneurs, but it applies very closely to artists as well. Whether an artist is trying to find a manager, get on the radio, book more gigs, or even build a presence different country, the ability to focus will make an enormous difference.

If you’re a folk artist and want to start playing in new cities, you might think to pick the most populated cities and call the popular clubs. But what if those aren’t the types of places folk fans hang out? It would be a lot more valuable to do your research and find the cities and venues that bands like you play. Maybe a small suburb outside of San Francisco has a thriving folk scene, where the city itself doesn’t. And maybe the there’s a tiny coffee house that only fits 40 people that are crazy about folk music. You might be surprised to find out that although it doesn’t have the capacity of the 1000 person club in the big city, those 40 people are hoping to be exposed to music like yours, and probably will be more valuable fans in the long run.

The same goes with radio. Don’t just send your songs to the most listened-to radio stations. Do the research and learn who would be most interested in your music. Then reach out to them and explain that you’ve found that people who love [similar-artist], which the station plays, tend to enjoy your music. Chances are, if you sound like an artist their listeners like, they’ll give your music a shot.

Here’s the thing: music venues and radio stations are in the business to make money. Most will book/play whatever it takes to get people through the door or to turn on their station. If you can make a logical argument that your stuff will appeal to their customers, they are a million times more likely to book/play you, at least once.

We see this at Sonicbids all the time. Bands that come on and just submit to everything without understanding what the promoters are looking for rarely see success. But the bands that carefully pick the gigs that fit their genre, following, etc… see a ton of success.

So do your research and find the right targets. It’ll go a long way.

Source: blog.midem.com

Pizza And Ramen Are Hurting Your Startup

This post originally appeared on the 500 Startups Blog.

The typical stereotype of an startup environment is a bunch of kids sitting around living off of pizza and ramen noodles. It makes sense because that food is quick and cheap and entrepreneurs don’t have enough time and money.

Here’s a New Year’s resolution for you: Put down that slice of pizza. Don’t heat up that Cup O’ Noodles. Stop putting all that crap in your body. Your startup will be better for it.

Why?

The biggest reason is by only fueling your body with shit, you’re also fueling your brain with shit. If you improve your diet, you will improve you work, and in the end, your startup. You’ll sleep better, be better rested, and use your time more effectively when you’re awake.

Another big reason is that the majority of startup events you’re going to (and you should be going to a lot) also serve all that crap. Eat it then, but try not to eat it when you’re at the office working.

I know you’re probably thinking that eating healthy is too expensive, and again, startups don’t have any money. But in reality, you can easily make eating healthy affordable. Here’s one (of many) simple ways:

Go to a farmers market or local produce stand (NOT Whole Foods) and buy a bunch of rich, colorful vegetables – bell peppers, zucchini, squash, onions, carrots, baby bok choy, and whatever else you like. Get as many different colors as you can. You can probably get vegetables for 5 meals for about $10-15. Then go to a store and get 3 cans of low sodium beans (about $1 per can) and 5 boneless/skinless chicken breasts ($1-3 per breast).

Total: $18-33 for 5 meals. $4-7 per meal. Not expensive and probably about the same price as a fast food meal.

Prep is easy. Here’s the simplified directions:

  1. Steam or saute a couple handfuls of chopped vegetables with some oil until soft.
  2. Saute or grill a chicken breast with some oil, salt, and pepper.
  3. Heat the beans in a sauce pan (even better with some parsley or cilantro leaves and chopped scallions).
  4. Put it on a plate and eat it. Then get back to work.

There! You’ve just cooked an incredible healthy meal for about $5 that will keep you feeling full all day. You can make this in bulk at the beginning of the week and heat some of it up each day. To give it some varied flavor, find spices or sauces you like and add when heating. Next week, choose different veggies. Or use lean beef instead of chicken. Or a different kind of bean. Or a different marinade.

And stop drinking soda all day. Instead, drink twice as much water as you do now. The constant pee breaks will be a good chance to stretch your legs and take a break from your computer.

As a note, I love unhealthy food. It’s delicious and I’m not saying it’s evil. I’m just saying it’s not a productive addition to a 14-hour, high stress work day. I constantly try to make sure the majority of meals I’m eating don’t make me want to take a nap afterwards. Especially lunches.

Source: blog.500startups.com

Avoid DIY sites that do too much

This post originally appeared on the Midem Blog.

I hear artists complain a lot about needing to use too many different online services. One for email, one for websites, etc… They wish all these features could be rolled up into one dashboard, but the reality is using different services is a very good thing. In fact, artists should seek out services with focused features, because companies that focus on one core thing produce the highest level of service and quality.

A common struggle that exists for entrepreneurs in the tech world is the impact on  adding more features vs. improving current ones. Once you build an application with successful core features, there is the overwhelming feeling you need to add stuff that makes it do more – especially when competition starts adding new functionality. But the best services don’t. The best companies make their core even stronger.

So, although inconvenient, my advice to artists is to figure out what functionality they will need and work with companies who specialize in those services. It’s a natural tendency to use the service that does the most, but the companies who have the largest quantity of separate features have sacrificed quality to get there. As they spread their financial and intellectual resources across too many initiatives, no one piece of functionality gets enough attention, and soon it’s just one big dashboard of a bunch of crappy features.

Just a few examples of companies who focus:

  • CD Baby is focused on being the best independent music marketplace. Almost every rising band sends their CD to be sold on CD Baby. CD Baby charges higher fees than a lot of similar services, but they have obsessed over helping indie artists sell music for over 10 years, and they are amazing at it.
  • TuneCore has become the defacto DIY digital distribution engine for independent musicians. It’s simple to use and focused. Even though CD Baby, who wins at physical, offers their own digital distribution, all the TuneCore staff does is work on getting music into more stores in more countries. Their core product is extremely powerful. They too have tried side projects like tour widgets, but that never took off because it wasn’t the focus.
  • Bandzoogle is an awesome artist website hosting service. They focus on this feature, and they do it better than anyone else. CD Baby has a website division with HostBaby, but their real business is CD Baby. Bandzoogle’s web product is better than HostBaby’s just because it’s the full focus of that company.
  • FanBridge is focused on email for artists. You won’t find an indie artist email product anywhere else as strong as theirs, because they focus on it. Bandzoogle, who I just said is awesome at websites, also does email. My guess is that FanBridge kicks Bandzoogle’s ass with email the way Bandzoogle kicks HostBaby’s ass with websites, because FanBridge spends 24/7 thinking about email. They obsess over it.
  • MobileRoadie and MobBase obsess over building apps for bands. It’s their focus. And they rock at it. Both companies have different business models, different approaches, and different customers, but both built amazing products for these customers. iLikereleased an app builder product last year as well, and it was wasn’t nearly as impressive. The design, customization, and functionality were all pale in comparison to what MobileRoadie and Mobbase built. For those companies, it was their obsession, while for iLike, it was a side-project.
  • Bandcamp is another great example. Artists LOVE this service, but Bandcamp doesn’t do that many things. They just built a media player with download, sharing, and sales capabilities. A lot of other services offer this too, but Bandcamp has obsessed over it for several years, and their product is amazing. It’s easy to use and highly effective. Other services that offer this feature haven’t executed it nearly as well.

So artists and managers, I know it’s not as convenient as you may prefer, but you will be much better off using 5 different services specializing in 5 different things rather than trying to find one service that tries to be everything for everyone.

When a company obsesses about solving one problem, users – in this case, artists – win.

Source: blog.midem.com

How To Launch a Music Startup: Establishing Key Metrics

This post is part of the How To Launch a Music Startup series, which focuses on building a company that creates online products for musicians. It’s also being featured on the top music blog Hypebot.

Source: bmull.posterous.com

How To Launch a Music Startup: Introduction

I’ve been working on a series to help new entpreneurs interested in building products for musicians understand some of the quirks of the process. Today, it launched on Hypebot. We’re going to run it there for a bit and see how engaged readers get. An excerpt is below and the full article is over at Hypebot. Let me know your thoughts!

Source: bmull.posterous.com