MIT Course on Failure

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Brent

I just heard about a cool course at MIT – The Fine Art of Failure by Diane Garnick.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the course in MIT’s OpenCourseWare, but I did find a description for it here:

The goal of this course is to develop the skills necessary to identify, analyze and optimize the learning experience from failures. … students will discover how to recognize early warning signs for failure. Signals will vary both in terms of intensity and lifespan, enabling students to explore the possibility of either modifying a plan or moving forward and subsequently gaining the best possible experience and insight from the failure at hand. … Learning Objectives:

  • Identify potential and actual failures in their early stages
  • Use shared experiences to analyze potential paths to mitigate emotional and financial losses
  • Develop, evaluate and implement recommended options for preventing, reducing and responding to failures

Apparently Garnick will be the only person ever to study at one Top Ten MBA school (University of Chicago), while teaching at another. Too cool.

Thanks to bodyhacker for making just about the only blog post on it, including a link to this video interview with Diane Garnick.

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Incubators Sell Mentors

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Brent

Reading over a few important posts at Startup Lawyer, I came across a post on incubators with a very apt observation:

Startups don’t evaluate their participation in an accelerator by asking “Is the $20k worth the equity given up to the accelerator?” Rather, startups ask “Is the mentorship worth the equity given up to the accelerator?”

$20k is easy to come by, in Australia at least. Quality mentors, not so much.

I remember Mick Liubinskas asking me what I would pay to join an incubator like Startmate. It was his way of gauging the value it offers. At first, it sounds like an odd question. A startup usually considers the incubator to be the one paying, they’re forking out the money after-al.

But by selling 7.5% of the company for $20k, the startup may be paying through the opportunity cost. Often 7.5% of the company is worth more than $20k. Access to and ongoing involvement from experienced mentors on the other hand, makes up the difference for any undervaluation. An incubator sells access to its mentors just as much as a startup sells its equity.

I think this mutually beneficial exchange is one reason the model is so successful.

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Branching is Beautiful

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Brent

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I Finally Understand Evernote

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Brent

I’ve used Evernote for probably 2 years now. I use it primarily as a text editor for all non-code text. It’s not a great text editor, in fact, it’s the buggiest I’ve ever used, but it’s everywhere, so I always have my notes.

Then on Wednesday I got the Springwise newsletter in my inbox – awesomness-overload!

Solar-powered portable cinemas, crowdsourced feedback, LCD-ski-googles with a GPS and, and and… it was too much novelty for one sitting. Just as my brain was about to shut down, a voice lodged in the back of my mind by recurrent marketing interjected – “Remember everything. Clip it to Evernote.”

I finally understand what Evernote is for – after two years of using it.

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Crowd Funding WordPress Plugin Development

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Brent

Over on Speckyboy, Andy Killen just restarted the discussion on rewarding plugin developers. It was a worthy topic of conversation when Alex King raised it last month in his Open Source Motivations post, and it’s a worthy topic now.

Why? Well, because we haven’t solved the problems yet.

Producing a Solution

Lately, a fellow plugin developer and I have spent our nights and weekends thrashing out potential models for a solution. These generally revolve around some combination of crowd funding new development, like a kickstarter for feature requests, and using subscriptions for premium support services, based on the bbpress plugin. This would all be tied together with the Prospress marketplace plugin which I develop.

It’s a complex problem that can only be solved with an entirely new and elegant system. We haven’t conceived a suitable model yet, but once we do, we’ll be releasing whatever we come up with as a plugin on WordPress.org Extend. The more help we get, the sooner that day will come.

You Can Help

The WordPress plugin community is tremendous. I know both plugin users and developers want to see this community continue to thrive. So if you want to help solve the problem it faces, get in touch.

As a plugin user, you can give us details about how you’d like to support plugins. It would really help us settle on a model.

Plugin developers can help us understand their pain points. And if they believe in the idea like we do, help build the thing.

If you want to help, contact me.

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Dealing with Risk

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Brent

Lately I’ve been monitoring my risk aversion. I want a life that is achievable only by taking a large number of major risks, yet I have a risk averse disposition.

I uncovered today what I think is another one of the many differences between my current state of being – a wanna-be entrepreneur and my desired state of being – an entrepreneur.

Wanna-be entrepreneurs see opportunities, then risks, and decide the risks outweigh the opportunities. Entrepreneurs see opportunities, then risks, but are confident they can beat the risks.

So that is the key to overcoming my risk aversion. The question now is how to gain the confidence that I can beat the risks I see.

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