Startup to Massive Companies

I ran across this interesting blog post by Reid Hoffman, (Linkedin co-founder) that talks about how to take your startup big.

http://greylockvc.com/2011/03/22/ten-entrepreneurship-rules-for-building-massive-companies/

Keeping a startup as startup for more than five years can be a drag. In worst case scenario, your competitors will catch up and grow beyond you. Or someone with deeper pockets might under cut you. Hence, taking it to the next level, and making it big is the key. So plan ahead and plan well.

The Art of Managing

As an technology entrepreneur, you will need to manage a lot of things. This will include, not only the technology (programming and software development), but also administration, management of team, Human resource, sales and even writing business plans/marketing plans and what not. Yes, not only this but a lot more.

This will not be easy and who said entrepreneurship is easy. It will test your endurance and will push you to your physical limits. But in the end, you are responsible for everything.

So here is my guide of what one needs to do to manage his/her time while launching their enterprise.

• Short Meetings
• Schedule project meeting with staff. It should not last more than 10 minutes and at max 20 minutes. Discuss what needs to be done. Make quick minutes. Schedule and set deadline to the team. Use a collaborative project management tool and assign them to the team. 
• Keep these meetings short and regular. Even meeting daily will be great.

• Use Technology
• Information Technology is not there to build solutions for your clients, it is there as the best tool for you to make yourself and team more productive. Use technology to the maximum. Here are a few recommendations
• Redmine for Collaborative Project Management
• Google Apps:  for email, document sharing and intranet based services
• GoogleTalk Chat: Collaborate more online. You can ask a lot of questions through google chat than in person. Do it regularly and Google will even keep track of your chat in your email account.
• Wordpress: For a quick way to make and manage your company website. And do not forget to use its plug-ins. You will be surprised by the power it offers.
• GNUCash: For maintaining your financial accounting. Its a great alternative to paid accounting packages.

• Hiring
• Do not hire too many folks. Hire only the essential. That will keep your enterprise cash flow positive. And if someone is badly needed, see if you can do with a part time individual rather than a full time resource.

• Seek a Mentor
• As an entrepreneur, you WILL make mistakes. No doubt about it. So get yourself a senior and experienced person to assist you. Ask him a lot of questions and take his advice. I am sure you will grow much faster than without him/her.

• Office Space
• Scott McNealy (former Sun Microsystems CEO) once commented after the 1990s bubble burst that they acquired too much retail office space in too short a time. It's always good to show off a big office and a big team. But can you really afford them? So start off by sharing office space. Find other small enterprises and see if they can give you office space. Do not spend your precious little money on renting/leasing/buying big offices in anticipation of new hirees.

• Work Hard/Play Hard
• You will be expected to work 70 hours a week or more. You will also be expected to lead by example. You will be needing to be there for everything. But dont take work to your head. Go and have some fun as well. Take up some physical activity. Like hiking, playing cricket, racquet ball/squash, jogging. Anything. It is the secret for a healthy lifestyle. Without it, you will inevitably run into many health problems as you advance in life. So avoid the obvious health hazards and do the right thing. Get yourself in physical health.

So if you can do the above, you have a better chance to succeed.

How vital is work experience?

So the burning question for many wanna be entrepreneurs is always:

How vital is work experience before starting my own enterprise?

We let the experts answer this one. And there were many but really good responses listed on this Career Advice forum run by Personforce.

So check out the cool responses and maybe ask one or two of your own questions to the experts.

Explain Business – Entrepreneurship Focused Forum

Now here is a neat little forum for the budding entrepreneurs. It is run and managed by Stanford Alum entrepreneurs and offers advice on “starting a business or running a small business” especially in these trying times.

Even though the forum is less than a month old, already lots of folks have asked some interesting questions. And they have been duly answered by experts. Questions like,

• One man ad agency - how much should I charge?
• Do I need to incorporate if I am launching an iPhone App?

The forum is unlike the usual forums. All the questions follow a flat hierarchy and are characterized by tags rather than topics. The most recent questions automatically pop to the top thus making it easier for users to read/answer them. You can also instantly vote for any question that you like. And of course, you can even subscribe to get an alert if someone answers your pertinent question.

I enjoy this format much better over the typical boring mundane forums where everything is overly structured and answers are many levels deep. We love this forum so much that we have added a link to Explain Business on our blog. Yes, our readers can now ask questions directly on that forum and get an instant response back. So start asking your questions on Explain Business and let Stanford alum answer them for you.