Visualtis is now becoming an established local IT consultancy; we still pursue new ventures (taking more fun than ever) but for the most, gone are the days of the early-stage startup-wannabe. Our first years are full of valuable experiences, as Jim Hirshfield says at The Grateful Life: be a student of entrepreneurship at an existing venture. After my experience at Visualtis I endorse that advise.
These are some of the things I learned in the first years:
- Give testing priority.It’s hard, and it takes resources but if you don’t commit to proper testing from the beginning, you never will. The later on you make your commitment the harder it becomes, until it is one of your eternal TODO items.
- Care for your internal communication. Provide spaces and tools for conversation, both real and electronic. People should feel comfortable and the information must be readily accessible and search enabled.
- If you can’t trust your employees, distrust them (deeply).
- Marketing and sales are a priority, you are supposed to run a business for money. The perspective of a sales person helps when searching new venues and income sources.
Last: try hard to make fun. I’m sure our last project benefits from the experience gathered; but the energy people are putting into it and the fun we are getting is something we needed in our past venues. I feel that makes a lot of difference, we really like our Porra!
Some one else sharing experiences at a startup-wannabe?
Playing with a new (to me) perspective on business.
Last week I heard via twitter of an Old-World SalesMan and his seminars and dvds on the fine art of money making.
Watch! he is out for your money
The guy is Dan Kennedy; “pyramidal scheme” comes to my mind looking to his offerings. And yet, I’m not myself a experienced salesmen or money-maker, I can learn something.
A big obstacle to absorb Kennedy’s teachings is his philosophy towards business, money, life, and responsability. Money is paramount and getting it the entrepreneur’s only responsability, everything else is optional or an obstacle. I know: old-fashioned, simple, and doomed to failure in the long run; but maybe it works. I’m calling it marauder ethos and will try to embrace as much of it as possible without losing my own perspective. Couldn’t embrace a corporate or liberal ethos, Marauder Ethos sounds fancier.
I want to build my business around local, sustainable communities, with responsability towards such communities. And here’s the point, there is more money outside of those communities-to-be; money ready for the taken in Kennedy’s terms.
So I will apply that all-for-the-money marauder to the outsiders and use money, experience, and energy to foster the grow of sustainable communities and natural enterprises.
*Update* Trying Kennedy’s teachings with some affiliate promos.
Via twine (i guess) found a small essay on the concepts of flow and living a meaningfull live.
Full of things both small and obvious that are easy to forget. I was reading small snippets. I read little snippets while puppet compiles. Truly inspiring.
I found it in a moment of recovery, after a week down and worried; thinking, mostly, of the coming job cut. Time to grow and adapt.
In the past I used ‘:’ as separator for complex labels on my gmail account (v.g. fuco:faw). Now, Apple’s Mail.app likes ‘/’ as separator; if my label is fuco/faw Mail.app shows a folder ‘fuco’ with a children ‘faw’
Screenshot of sample folders using both separators
