Kendall's "Internet startup checklist":

1. Idea:

  1. Would YOU write a check for your idea?
  2. Don't spill your candy in the lobby.
  3. Is your idea refining or revolutionizing?

2. Funding:

  1. Are your financials realistic if nothing goes right?
  2. Could you see your investors with a 10X, 20X return in 3 years?
  3. Do you have back-up plans b,c,d before quitting your day job?
  4. Do you have a great answer for the most cynical of investors?

3. team:

  1. Can you build your idea or will it take a team of pros?
  2. Is a specific person on your team essential or can he/she be replaced?
  3. Dont give up the farm to recruit talent.
  4. Hire brave & passionate smart people.

4. Product:

  1. Does your product SOLVE a problem?
  2. Beware of feature creep! Customers & prospects add features, not developers.
  3. Stay focused on money earning features, not cool ones.

5. Marketing:

  1. Is it costly (time/resources) to get branded in your target market?
  2. Make a goal of closing a core group of customers the first year. (traction)
  3. Adjust marketing resources to get traction (don't need much).
  4. Be sure to test your "seo / ad-words / ad-sense" properly before banking on them
  5. Nothing is better than "boots on the street." Start knocking on doors.

6. Customer:

  1. How many "loss leaders" do you have?
  2. Does your idea help your customer or is it just a "nice to have"?
  3. Make each customer feel like they are the only customer you have.
  4. Can your customers be up-sold? Do they have peers they could refer?


May 7, 2009 Scripture in vain

So I went to a money management seminar at the church.  Our pastor is such a star (Allistair Begg), so I assumed his team had the  same deep breadth of scripture so I took a chance on this free Saturday event.  Basic disappointment is an understatement.  I left at break so I cant be sure it was a solid F, but obviously sad enough to make me crabby while I write this.  My hope of this post is my three readers can think a bit deeper than the Amway fluff that these “biblical” based money seminars are doing.  NOT that we use scripture to justify our trite ideas rather read scripture to use us to love the less fortunate. (is that different or am I wacked?)

Anywho…This picture is of Apostle Paul in prison (supposedly writing the letters to Corinthians etc.) painted by a true genius, Rembrandt. I believe this painting represents how someone can carefully express their talent while maintaining the reverence of scripture vs. just using 3000 year old truths to move a silly agenda of bad ideas.

paul

Rant begins….During the seminar one of the speakers said “I counsel people to do this and that.  Dont worry, you can do that..read Romans 13.” WTF???

Or even better…to take the 11th chapter of ecclesiastics with “Divide your portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth.” and spinning to an admonition of portfolio diversification like Solomon was thinking about his Charles Schwab account.   Clowns.  So then we continued to look selfishly at scripture searching for verses to justify the group to build nest eggs, plan our retirement, savings, and to keep our current economic comfort zone in the USA.

What a F’D up perspective.

Here is the correct perspective: First, name it “Managing it all in an Economic Crisis.”  Then on the day of seminar, people need to walk in that room, pray with thanksgiving and gratitude that we ate breakfast in our home that gave us the energy and physical strength to walk to our cars that took us to the building protected by young soldiers that want to just be home.  Then when all the mouths are dry from realization of their own greed and pride, we then take the second half of the seminar, to “manage” our wealth, time and talent during the economic crisis.  We group together, ask who has what (time, money, stuff) and see how we can help the less fortunate in our backyard that are really hurting from this financial crisis vs. working on how we are going to bullet proof our own pocketbooks during crisis.

I wonder if the people in Rwanda who read Ecclesiastics 11 during their crisis(es) think about moving their Fidelity 401k to more of an agressive small cap fund?

Want to comment? Comments: 2

Posted by Kendall in Greater Good

2 comments so far

  1. CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP!!

    awesome, brother. You make me proud to be related.

    May 10th, 2009

  2. Amen. I read this last month and sent it to my friends to think about.

    Mission Frontiers:Further Reflections by Greg Parsons

    “During economic “crisis,” or any crisis, believers should be the calm ones. Jesus said, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or your body, what you should wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than clothing? (Matthew 6:25, NET Bible) Simple truth. Difficult to apply. It could be more difficult to apply if someone really doesn’t have enough — such as our brothers and sisters in certain parts of the world. But many I’ve met around the world seem to have an easier time trusting God from day-to-day than those of us in the West, who have and expect so much more. http://www.missionfrontiers.org/pdf/2009/02/30%20Further%20Reflections.pdf

    May 11th, 2009

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