As a startup entrepreneur you’re always on the lookout for ways of serving more customers at each chance you get, whether it’s through marketing, generating leads, sales, or just plain ol’ helping someone else out. It’s about earning more than a starving artist’s wage. But as with any business, there is the craft of your business that you love to do and then there is the business of your craft, how to make money doing what you love to do.
Having said that, there are a number of quotes that I’d like to share:
- Never hand an ill workman good tools.
- An ill labourer quarrels with his tools.
So, what do these mean? A poor technician, i.e. workman, artist, writer, etc. makes excuses for the tools they use in getting the required results. It’s the same as saying that buying a great word processor will make you a good or even great writer. Not quite.
A good word processor (the tool) makes the task of writing easier, but it does not make your writing (your skill) any better. Whether it’s a book an author is producing or a graphic by an artist, it takes work and talent, using good brushes to do oil paintings with or using a good saw to finely and precisely cut wood. If you don’t know how to use them well, i.e. your talent or skills, it won’t make the results any better.
Apple is a tool maker
Read more…
Image via CrunchBase
Any startup entrepreneur needs to make connections with others, primarily because they can’t do it all themselves, but it’s best they don’t do it all themselves.
Startup Weekend Denver occurred this past weekend at WorkBrite’s Coworking location. I’ll go into what happened and what I saw.
Purchasing a ticket to attend pays for food and drinks for the weekend. Great for those that “need to get things done” in starting up a business.
Friday Night’s agenda:
- Network – meet and greet with 52 Denver and the surrounding area attendees from all backgrounds and skill sets. One was even on his vacation and from out of state to join in the fun since there is not a SW in his area. Maybe he’s looking to start one? You just never know.
- Icebreaker – get your body moving and interactive with others in a Rock, Paper, Scissors game to win $50.
- Pitch – you have 60 seconds to explain your idea with 30 seconds of Q&A.
- Vote – everyone gives their vote to the project that they would like and narrow down the field to 4-8 teams around an idea. You choose which one you want to provide assistance to. Some required coding help, others did not, but most did.
Saturday’s Agenda:
- Breakfast, lunch, and dinner – continental breakfast, lunch and dinner and drinks to keep you “fueled up.” Coffee and soda drinks included where and anything caffeinated was the drink of choice.
- Build out your business – work toward the Sunday’s goal of presenting your efforts to the judges.
Sunday’s Agenda:
- Continue to build out the business.
- At 4 Pm a final push and at 5 PM the last pitch and selection of the finalists.
Overall Friday night is the most hectic as you’re determining the idea to follow and how you can contribute to it. On Saturday it came down to doing the work so it was gelling time, finding out where you fit into the team that you have selected to help out and then getting productive.
Clothes of choice were varied. Short, especially cargo shorts and flipflops were abundant, though, so you’d say it was Saturday casual wear, a notch below casual Friday. Coders usually had laptops and earbuds or headsets to keep focused on their tasks. Of course, laptops where all around.
As a Mac entrepreneur the one thing that I did see was about a 2 to 1 use of Macs over PCs for those attending. Startups know the right hardware/software combinations. So if you want to start a business, Macs are the computer of choice. Smart people use them.
Overall if you have any reason to start a business and have a weekend to learn, Startup Weekend is the place to be to get your feet wet learning about startups. Nothing like getting a baptism of fire for the newbies.
Image via CrunchBase
Hey potential Startups and Entrepreneurs, step right up and buy tickets to the 2011 Denver Startup Weekend on June 3-5th at WorkBrite, 4120 Brighton Blvd, A-40, Denver, Co 80216. Get your tickets now.
StartupWeekend Denver is a community building startup event. Participants get together with local developers, marketers, designers, enthusiasts and start companies in just 54 hours.
Denver Startup Weekend is part of a larger movement of others cities that are doing the same thing. Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups. You can learn more about it here.
As an entrepreneur and startup business I’m always thinking about how Macs are used in these environments. When you look at Apple’s demo of iWork on the iPad it makes you speculate as to what Apple has up it’s sleeve. If the iPad is showing a version of iWork on a slimmed down hardware of a laptop in an iPad, it makes you wonder about the version of iWork for regular Macs. So here are my thoughts.
- More than likely an iPad and MacBook Pro will have the same file format for both so that files created on either platform can be shared seamlessly.
- Will the new version of iWork have an export function that will allow authors to publish their books in the epub file format?
- Will Apple’s revenue on book sales at the iBook store be more than the typical publisher’s take? Apple’s only costs will probably be only storage and bandwidth of an author’s ebook. No physical inventory or shipping required.
- What is the market share of the ebook market versus the real book market share?
- As an author, does the pricing structure allow me to sell a physical book through one channel and give away through the iBook store an ebook? My friend Ted said he buys physical books and then scans them into his Mac to do a search and find when he is looking for the facts from the book. This is much quicker to look up a “remembered” fact when time is short than finding the book and looking for the reference. I like his approach, hence this question.
- Can I charge different prices for a physical book versus an ebook in the iBook store?
- Can the iPad version of iWork allow for manipulating graphs and charts in the book? Imagine allowing to change the data on a book’s chart or table real time, that would be cool. An truly interactive and educational book.
Personally these are some unanswered questions, and more to follow, that need to be answered before I’m ready to jump to the iBook store. Early adopters will have no problem getting an iPad and seeing the benefits, but having just come from a book sellers trade show I did not see one Kindle or other ebook reader in the bunch.
The iPad will sell and will be a success, it’s just going to take a while to get it out to the average public as it’s “too expensive” for every day book readers to buy for everyday reading. Now education and all of the books that have to be carried, that’s another story. Sound like a niche product.
Your thoughts?
Update 03/31/2010:
Ars Technica has an article titled “How Self-Published authors getting in iBookstore via Smashwords” telling how independent publishers (formerly self published) authors will be able to get into the iBook store.
Hi all,
I’m not going to post today but I thought I’d give you a chance to tell your story about using a Mac in your startup. Tell the truth and keep it clean, ’cause we all want to hear how you’re doing.
Kevin
….and this is a chance for you to discuss your business and using a Mac to start up your business. Your business story covers what you are thinking about using the Mac and can answer such questions as:
- short description of your company
- how and when did you first starting to use your Mac in your startup
- the good and the bad, strengths and weaknesses about using the Mac
- what lessons you have learned about startups
- what advice you’d give to people considering starting up a business
- anything else you can think of
The length of the story needs to be around 450 500-700 words or less (or more if you want me to edit it down some) and may contain one graphic/photo. Use iWork Pages so that I can insert it into my upcoming 6×9 sized book.
I’m looking for a mixture of businesses and even out of the ordinary businesses, for example animal husbandry, that tells how a Mac can be used in that business or industry. This is an idea I had and putting it out to see what Mac users want to talk about using the Mac and see what you all have to say about this idea.
Let me know what you think and what issues you see. I’m winging this as I go, so be prepared for changes, but I’m looking for suggestions as well.
P.S. Also think of this as a short introduction to who you are and I’ll figure a way of pointing your information to your company’s web site or blog so you’ll have more information to discuss your company with future customers.
Update #1: Think in terms of telling your story to others, tell it compelling enough so that people are entertained and enlightened at the same time. Also, enjoy writing it, have some fun.
