Yearly Archives: 2013

Not Crushing It

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Great post by Elizabeth Yin:

I’ll be one of the first entrepreneurs to admit we’re not crushing it.  Building a business is hard.  Crushing it would mean that you are always on the up and up.  Crushing it would mean that you are always hitting all your goals.  But you know what, that never happens — whether it’s in business or in life.  I am never crushing it. We are never crushing it.

Oh, man, can I relate. January started my 16th year running Infinity Softworks. Year after year I hear about the hot new company. A few years go by and that company is gone. I don’t wish the end for these companies and believe at some point we will be a hot company again, but meanwhile it is one foot in front of the other.

How do I do it, you ask? Easy. I believe in what I’m trying to accomplish and don’t believe it will happen over night.

(By the way, what a stupid phrase, “crushing it.” It’s like we are all pro ball players hitting home runs or surf boarders or pop drinkers or something. This is business, not entertainment.)

Adventures In App Marketing

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My friend Patrick Thompson pulled off a great presentation last month at Mobile Portland. Patrick’s built an excellent indie company, accomplishing the goals he set out to accomplish, doing it his way. In this presentation he walks through how he built his company from scratch, describing in detail the things he learned along the way, including mistakes he made. He shared tons of data! Enjoy!

The Little Things

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I got my first job when I was 14. My job was to wash out golf carts a few days a week at the local college-sponsored course. In exchange, I received free green fees and a locker to store my clubs. I didn’t get paid in cash for that job — I was actually too young for that by state law, I believe — but to a 14 year old who probably would have spent most of the money playing golf anyway, it was a heck of a deal.

At the end of the summer my mom and stepdad moved us to Florida and the next summer I came back to Ohio to stay with my dad. That summer my dad talked to a friend of his who painted houses and got me on his crew. I worked hard that summer. It was grueling, physical labor with very long hours. I’m sure my dad got me the job partly to show me what life would be like if I didn’t go to college.

But that wasn’t the only thing I learned. I also learned a little about working with people, in particular managing them. My boss, a friend to this day, worked us from early until late every day but at the end of every day, he never failed to say thank you as we each left for home and dinner. It wasn’t a complex gesture, just a simple one, but it always made me feel wanted and respected.

I try to do the same thing to this day.

Springsteen and an Atlanta Shave

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Joe Posnanski is one of the great sports writers of this generation. His post, from December 31 though, has nothing to do with sports. It starts with a hair cut, an odd thought for a man like Posnanski who possesses very little hair. It weaves into a story about searching for an American Doll in a mall in Atlanta, getting a great shave, and a Bruce Springsteen concert in Oakland, California, from a few weeks before.

But in the end, though, this article has nothing to do with American Dolls, Springsteen, haircuts or shaves. It’s about a lesson he wants to teach his daughters. As Posnanski said, it’s about never mailing it in, “that life is about delivering your best effort, giving the best you have, all the time, even when you’re tired, even when you’re discouraged, even when you are alone, even when other people will not see it or acknowledge it or even accept it.”

It’s a fabulous article from a fabulous writer. I highly recommend reading the entire post.

Good Luck, Michael Dell

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If you are unaware, Dell, Inc. went private with a $24.4 billion buyout funded by Silver Lake Partners, Michael Dell, Microsoft, and some banks. The question Om Malik asked yesterday about Michael Dell is an interesting question. In short, why? Why is Michael Dell putting his reputation and personal fortune on the line to save the company that bears his name? Om’s answer is simple, and one any of us running a company we founded will understand:

Every so often people say that its not personal, its business. Nonsense! It is always personal and it will always be personal. If you spend your lifetime nurturing and growing a startup, it is nothing but personal. Outsiders will never understand — for a founder, failure, defeat and ignominy are always personal, just as success and fame. For founders, our identities are intertwined with the companies.

I can relate. By no means do I keep Infinity Softworks going for irrational reasons but here I am, 16 years later, running a business that doesn’t pay for itself. I’ve spent plenty of time asking myself why I keep going. I could have walked away at any point having felt good about what we attempted, even if we didn’t accomplish our goal of changing math education. We’ve distributed 20 million software calculators, helping students and professionals all over the world. I’ve kept a business running for a decade and a half. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

For me, I keep going because I still have hope to accomplish what I set out to do. We’ve been using the same tools to work with numbers since the 1970s but we now carry always connected computers around in our pockets. In 40 years the tech has changed; the products we use haven’t. I have one more shot, I believe, to re-invent the way we work with numbers and I’m going to take it.

Obviously Dell Inc. is a different deal. Here’s a company, and Dell a man, who accomplished his goals. But those goals morph as maybe they did for Michael Dell. His name is literally on the line. Here’s hoping, from all of us running the companies we started, that Dell makes it happen.