Andy Sack’s top 10 lessons learned

Winston Churchill famously said that “success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” As entrepreneurs, we know that failures of all sizes will be part of our future (and have already been part of our past and present). And misery loves company so it was not surprising to see a packed room for Andy Sack’s session “Lessons Learned” at yesterday’s Entrepreneur University organized by the Northwest Entrepreneur Network at the Bellevue Hyatt.

While there were plenty of other highlights from the day (Jenn Clark from Team Obama and BaconSalt co-founder Dave Lefkow as keynoters, for example), Sack’s 10 Lessons Learned was the most blogable. So here you go …

10. 5 years to create anything of value: While the overnight success stories get all the headlines and buzz, it generally takes a long time to build a company that has any value.

9. Focus on the first market longer than you think: Sack offered several real-world examples of startups trying to sell his Founder’s Co-op investors on new market opportunities. Every time his response is to continue to focus on the existing market until you truly dominate it.

8. Beware of shiny objects distraction: Most entrepreneurs know all about this. It’s a running joke at Serra Media, in a good way. We have exposed our tendency to get distracted by new opportunities and now openly mock one another to get ourselves back on track.

7. Avoid the rush to nowhere: Markets don’t change as fast as hype suggests they do. Don’t get yourself in a rush to where “everyone” says the market is going because, all too often, it will be a rush to nowhere.

6. Competition doesn’t kill companies: Early stage companies get killed by internal conflict, not external competition.

5. The customer has the answer: Sack suggested Outcome-Driven Innovation as an interesting and potentially important method to do product development.

4. Two numbers to focus on: Customer acquisition cost and Lifetime Value (LTV) of each customer. If you’re not tracking them, start.

3. GFA: Be, or get, aggressive. Amid a stream of (well-placed) F-bombs, Sack delivered some really sage advice. Thinking you’re aggressive and actually being agressive are two very different things. Plow through, be frugal and don’t wait for someone else to make it happen.

2. KISS: Yes, Keep It Simple Stupid. See No. 7, 8, 9 as for reference.

1. Time and money don’t matter (as much as you think): Factors like time and capital really aren’t as constricting as you think. For support, Andy showed a video from Tina Seelig at Stanford that I’ve blogged about before. I’m a big fan of her concept of not framing problems too tightly. It really is the best lesson an entrepreneur can learn.

Journalists finding success as entrepreneurs

Do some industries produce better entrepreneurs than others? In technology, software engineers who create interesting tools and services to solve problems and the business people who know all about pricing models, gross profit margins and scaling an operation have a leg up on the competition.

But what about journalists?

This week I have the honor of moderating a panel discussion at the Online News Association conference titled “From Journalist to Entrepreneur.” We are fortunate to have one of the most famous journalist-turned-entrepreneurs on the panel in Om Malik, who founded the GigaOm Networks (and is one of the few successful journalist-turned-entrepreneurs who continues practicing journalism). He’s not alone, of course. There are many other success stories with regard to journalists becoming entrepreneurs and launching their own companies, from famous tech luminaries like Nick Denton (Gawker), John Batelle (Federated Media) and Ben Huh (I Can Has Cheezburger?), to up-and-comers and under-the-radar figures like Lisa Williams (Placeblogger), Scott Karp (Publish2), Matt Coen (Second Street Media) and Julia Scott (Bargainbabe).

One of the questions I will ask the panelists is whether journalists have any advantages in becoming entrepreneurs. I know the prevailing wisdom is “No!” given the history of insulation from the business side of the house. (How do you launch your own company when you don’t know anything about the company you work for?) Most journalists lag behind in technical skills, too (although that is beginning to change).

Here are some qualities that might help journalists become entrepreneurs:

• Great at research: There is a ton of new stuff to learn when starting a new company, from legal to accounting to HR. A good reporter will save time finding the best information, which often entails meeting with (”interviewing”) other entrepreneurs.
• Good at networking: Great reporters are good at developing sources who will give them story tips. This is the same skill required in networking with other entrepreneurs and potential business partners.
• Can work cheap: Bootstrapping a company is a lot like journalism since it often means working for peanuts to pursue your calling.

There are thousands of people who have left journalism for some other industry, and many have started their own companies. The obvious option is to start a media company like Scott Lewis (Voice of San Diego), Joel Kramer (MinnPost) or Susan Mernit (Oakland Local). But as more journalists spread their wings and take on more roles in technology and business, the number of journalists-turned-entrepreneurs will continue to grow.

- Mark Briggs

Are entrepreneurs better with age?

Yes, according to research recently released that surveyed 549 entrepreneurs in high growth industries. In a guest post on Techcrunch, Vivek Wadhwa spells it out:

I’ve got a message for all the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who think a CEO is over the hill after age 40. Old guys rule. And they are far more likely to be the founder of a successful technology company than most of you understand. … We also learned that these founders are likely to be married and have two or more kids.

This is satisfying news when you help launch your first company the same year you turn 40, are married and have two kids (that’s me!). And you fight the nagging regret that you should have become an entrepreneur earlier in life.

Timing, patience, experience and even luck play a part in the success or failure of any startup. The age of the entrepreneur, I’d like to think, does not.

- Mark Briggs

Evan Williams: Committed to the vision, not the product

I’m a big fan of Stanford’s podcast series featuring entrepreneurial thought leaders. Lately, I’ve been catching up on the old (”classic”?) installments which is interesting because – if they are 3-4 years old – you know whether the projections for the future of a certain business or market played out as the entrepreneur predicted. Since he is going to be a keynote speaker at the Online News Association conference in October (I’m moderating a session on entrepreneurial journalism), I wanted to learn a little more about Evan Williams.

I discovered Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, completely missed on his projection of where podcasting was heading in this session from May 2006. But, interestingly, he was dead on with where digital communication was heading. Check out his answer to a question about the potential of his company  at the time, Odeo:

When I think about the path we are on now, enabling communication and personal expression, I think the biggest setback could be if it’s too hard to do. Which is one of the advantages of audio is that it can be really easy to do. I think people have an insatiable and ubiquitous desire for communication and personal expression. And the more ways that you enable that, as long as it’s easy, are going to be adopted in ways that we really can’t anticipate.

As far as the trend in general, I’m pretty confident. But as I said, I’m always hallucinogenically optimistic.

Take out the audio and it sounds like he’s describing Twitter. So it’s no surprise that, when the concept appeared on the company’s radar, Williams helped the company shift focus and dive in.

The challenge for any startup is determining what constitutes a viable new direction for your company, and which is a “shiny new object” that is not worth chasing. Focus, after all, is critical to success.

It also helps, of course, to be “hallucinogenically optimistic.”

If you’re looking for a trend in hyperlocal news, keep looking

An investor once called them “the cockroaches of local media” (because they should have died and didn’t). But Mike Orren and his team at Pegasus News are probably the best example of what works and what doesn’t for a hyerplocal news startup.

In the five years since Pegasus News launched in Dallas/Fort Worth, the company has survived near-death experiences and been sold twice. As recently as May of 2009, in the middle of the recession, the site was setting records for page views and advertising revenue. So Orren knows what it takes to survive the roller-coaster ride of an independent journalism startup, making his recent blog post essential reading.

Last week saw a number of developments in the hyperlocal space. While it’s natural to try to draw a trend from deals, launches, closures and acquisitions, it doesn’t usually work. Orren wrote:

In the market space in which I presumably operate, there were great examples at both ends of the spectrum last week. My pals at Everyblock sold their company to MSNBC, and instantly, Hyperlocal is a Business Now. Seemingly moments later, the Washington Post shuttered its “hyperlocal” site for Loudon County, VA — and voila, Hyperlocal is Dead. My friend, Greg Sterling, quickly saw the fallacies flying.

Orren analyzes his own experience with Pegasus News as an example of what a typical startup is likely to go through. In the end, he boils it down to this:

• Data is as important as news.
• Individual behavioral customization is the road to winning readers and delivering effective advertisers.
• What happens in your neighborhood or to people you know is as important, if not more so, than the three-alarm fire downtown.

Those are the core concepts Orren built the business plan around in 2004. “Today, these sound laughably obvious, if not pedestrian.,” Orren observes today. While five years of experience has taught him that his instincts were mostly right, it has also taught him that execution is everything:

Anyone who’s worked on or invested in a start-up will tell you that there are two parts to the business: the concept and the execution. While both are critically important, I’ll argue that a flawed concept with great execution has a better shot than the inverse.

If you’ve read this far, then you’re obviously bitten by the hyperlocal startup bug so be sure to read the entire post.

- Mark Briggs

The importance of a community manager

Building community online is not easy. And it’s not just for social networks anymore. Companies of all sizes, shapes and colors have recognized how important digital communities can be to their business, so many (if not most) are carving out positions specifically for community management.

In a post last year, Marshall Kirkpatrick asked at ReadWriteWeb if startup companies need community managers? Viewing the issue through the lens of a startup company is even more instructive, since most are working with scarce resources, meaning the decision to hire anyone is critical. Should one of your precious hires you go to a 20-something who will spend hours of company time on Facebook and Twitter?

This summer, Serra Media hired Amy Rainey as an experiment to see whether a community manager would help our affiliate sites grow their respective audiences. She’s done a wonderful job keeping sites fresh with new content, reaching out to site editors and communicating with end users. Not surprisingly, traffic to all sites using Newsgarden and TownLuxe is up, significantly in some cases.

If you expect to foster any sort of a community on your web site – or cultivate a community on one of the existing social networks around your brand – hiring a community manager will be a smart move.

Note: We’re currently accepting applications for a fall internship as a community manager at Serra Media. (We’re also looking to fill marketing and programming positions.)

– Mark Briggs