Branson says, “Do well by doing good.”

Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

The women of Water Valley, Mississippi have embraced both attitudes.

But why limit your entrepreneurial energy to just a business when you can save a town at the same time?

What does it take to change the world or at least your little corner of it?

Desire and belief.

A passionate desire to push the change and a deep belief that you can make it happen.

What isn’t required is a no-holds-barred, do-anything-to-make-it-happen desire that rejects input from others and stomps on their ideas.

Because no matter how brilliant you are; no matter how amazing your vision; no matter how deep your belief and passionate your desire…

You can’t do it alone.

SUBMIT YOUR STORY

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Share the story of your startup!
Send it along with your contact information.
I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Last fall I commented on Zynga’s foot-in-mouth incentive stock errors; now it’s Groupon’s turn to open-mouth-insert-foot and they’ve done a bang up job—and not for the first time.

Once again Groupon says it needs to revise its numbers and once again the revision is in a southerly direction (along with the stock price).

Investors, whether co-founders, friends, family, angels or VCs, let alone the public markets, do not look kindly on management that gets its numbers wrong.

They may excuse it the first time, but from then on every restatement becomes a serious blow to the management teams credibility and integrity, not to mention the overall effect on trust.

Perhaps Groupon drank its own Kool-Aid (a major no-no), since it acts as if its golden boy status excuses it from the mundane requirements, such as accurate sales reports, faced by other companies.

I understand that startups love to brag about their hyper growth and lack of bureaucracy, but when internal controls are counted as bureaucracy the company is headed for a fall.

On another note, if you are a small biz looking for a successful approach  to daily deals that has the metrics in place to really measure the value and will work with you to maximize where you already are check out this 14 year old alternative, with references up the wazoo, called Constant Contact.

Option Sanity™ structures incentive stock grants

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

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Last week I invited entrepreneurs to share the story of their startup (see below) and the first response came from “family.”

Matt Weeks is an occasional contributor here and member of my company’s board; he’s co-founder and CEO of WorkersCount, an advisor to two startups, volunteers for several other organizations in his “spare time, is an involved dad, all around family guy and makes time for friends.

Someone asks me what I do.  “I make workers count.” Here.  Have a cookie.  Smile.

WorkersCount is a direct-to-consumer mobile service that anonymously measures worker sentiment at the workplace.  Using a simple mobile “check-in” experience, workers can safely express their sentiment, discover what’s happening at their company and track other companies. They can easily see what workers in their roles or with similar backgrounds are saying and experiencing.  Using a simple set of radio buttons, workers check-in several times daily and respond to “How are you doing at work right now?” and one “Question of the day” (such as “my boss values my contributions” or “I am proud to tell friends where I work and what I do.”

WorkersCount is not a typical silicon valley start-up, and we’re fine with that.   Most start-ups fail, and that is neither good nor bad, but just a statistic and a reality of life.  Pack a lunch, bring extra water and a power bar.  Because it’s a long run in the desert.

So we began with that vision in mind—that we had to be very different to survive.  We knew that we would have to build it, launch it, develop traction and users before we would raise dollar 1.  That’s the new reality in consumer software and services.

Who cares about this?  We arrived at WorkersCount as a pivot from a much more complicated and difficult-to-scale concept.  That was an important epiphany and a valuable lesson.  Once you get your team and your concept into what we call the “information corridor” and begin the product and market validation process to find “product-market fit” you start down the path to success.

It was during these “getting-hit-over-the-head-lessons” (for Monty Python fans) that we became disabused of our preconceived notions, and landed on the real problem that needed solving.

I call this the “market invalidation process”—meaning that we needed to push ourselves to explain why our assumptions and the monetization and engagement models we had built were NOT invalid.

Most people do it backwards—they attempt to find data points that validate their preconceived notions.  As a result they often get the answer they were looking for, instead of a new and more powerful answer.  Even if it is “start over, this one won’t work.”

Great entrepreneurs don’t drink their own Kool Aid.  Even if it looks great on a pitch deck for investors.    Building a company and holding a team together through extreme weather is tough enough when everybody is being authentic and honest.  It falls apart fast if everyone is agreeing to tell the same fantasy bed-time story.

Yes, your mom will love your idea (even if she doesn’t really understand it), and your dog will love it (especially if there is a treat involved).  But real users only care about their own experience and their own problems.  Not yours.

Through this painful process we found our market—where there was huge chaos, pre-existing spend by large entities, and an already connected and established set of communities of end users.  We discovered that there was very little dependable and valid data, and even less information that end-users (of various types) could act-upon.  The perfect storm for disruptive innovation.

Now all we had to do was build an engaging and meaningful mobile consumer experience and create habitual use, shake up some of the existing assumptions and build a trusted brand.  On a shoestring budget.  Ha!    Welcome to start-up land.

Why are we doing this?  We are a values-driven band of 5 workers with decades of work experience under our belts at large enterprises and startups alike.   We have personally felt the pain of being a worker and of trying to be a great boss or supervisor.   The experience is frustrating coming from both directions.  We think we can fix some of that, and create a little bit of fun and lots of smiles along the way.

We are passionate about enabling workers to drive a better workplace.  To discover where people like them are thriving and where they are struggling.  To enable workers at all levels to validate that they are in the right job in the right role in the right company for them, now.  And where they might look (with a little help from their friends at other companies) for their “next hop” now or sometime in the next 30 to 40- months (the average duration of the “gig” in a career these days).

We are making it fun, simple and easy, and we are rapidly introducing a fun game aspect and lots of cool rewards to build traffic and encourage people to share the experience. We want them to keep coming back to see new fun facts and get deeper vision into their own company and those of their friends.  But it’s damn hard.

The pay-off is when our early beta users (please become one, by the way, at www.workerscount.com, and help us shape the features as they are brought live) say “where have you been all my work life?  This is something that I’d use all the time!” “This is something my son/daughter/spouse/best friend needs to know about!” And when, as one beta user shared

“I would just be relieved to know that I’m having a bad day or a bad week, but that I’m really much better off here at this company with it’s imperfections, than people like me appear to be at those other two other companies I’ve been watching.  Now I can relax and get on with my job knowing that, at least for now, I’m in the right place.”

For our friends not working or actively looking, not to worry. You are more than 8% of the workforce and we respect that.  We are soon to launch insights and features for you, as well as for our college and grad school friends who want to get the same insights so that they can be smarter and more informed about where to consider for their “next hop.”

What about the “next hop?”

Are careers a series of “gigs” and short stints?  We think that this may be the new reality.  So even if you stay at the same company, your world will in all likelihood change radically every 30 to 40 months anyway.  Having a handle in real time on what’s happening inside and outside of your company is a new type of power and knowledge that every worker can now have.

By the way, in case anyone is asking:  we don’t work for employers or HR departments.  This is a direct-to-consumer service, delivered on mobile, tablets and laptops.

Yes, we’re looking to scale rapidly when we exit beta, and with broad engagement we aim to change the way workers communicate with one another, with their companies (via our public indices and reports) and with friends at other companies.

WorkersCount.  Your voice counts.  Come along with us and join the community.

We will soon have cool schwag, tee shirts, hats, mugs and yummy cookies.  Naturally.  It’s a startup.

Thanks for asking what I do.  “I make workers count.”

Thanks, Matt. I encourage all of you to sign up at WorkersCount, enjoy Personal Time, the official WorkersCount blog Matt writes, like them on Facebook and follow them @workerscount.

ATTENTION FOUNDERS, FRIENDS OF FOUNDERS AND STARTUP EMPLOYEES
SUBMIT YOUR STORY

Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup (not a product pitch) along with your contact information.
I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.

Flickr image credit: WorkersCount

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Pivots are the name of the game, but why would someone go from founding a commodities company in Dubai (that died when the economy crashed) to creating an e-commerce site offering merchandise from socially conscious startups supporting a wide variety of causes?

“What I was doing before was incredibly unfulfilling.”

So says Brent Freeman , founder of Roozt.

Unfulfilling.

It’s a more common sentiment than you might think.

Even when the exit is lucrative it may not be satisfying.

As someone once said to me, “My startup job made me rich, but it didn’t make me happy.”

Perhaps that’s why so many alumni from places like Microsoft and Google become socially responsible angels.

How fulfilling is your startup?

Option Sanity™  is fulfilling.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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I ended Tuesday’s post about micro cultures by saying, “That’s why cultural fit or, at the very least, cultural synergy, is the most important trait to look for when hiring at every level.”

The result was several phone calls and a few emails asking for specifics. I’ve offered specifics multiple times over the years, so just click the links for the answers.

• How to check cultural fit; and
• how to avoid bad hires and wrong hires.

But when all is said and done, the hardest part of good hiring is walking away from candidates with the right skills and the wrong attitude.

SUBMIT YOUR STORY

Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup in 300 words or less.
Send it in an email along with your contact information.
I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific Time.

Flickr image credit: Ashish

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Part of the allure of starting a company is the idea of being your own boss and creating the kind of place in which you always wanted to work.

That’s what drives Tony Hsieh and thousands of others.

The problem is that in order to accomplish that goal you will have to go far beyond your comfort zone; much further, in fact, than you would working for someone else.

I just started working with “Tomas,” a new founder, and during our first conversation he described himself as an introvert who preferred not to respond to questions or comment until he had time to process the conversation/information.

OK, it’s frustrating and makes conversations very one-way, but I bided my time to see what the impact would be.

It didn’t take long to find out.

First, I sent an introduction to “Bill” who was willing to share expertise that Tomas badly needed; Bill responded immediately, asking when Tomas was available, but Tomas didn’t write back.

The next day Bill went ahead and called, although he hadn’t heard back. His feedback to me was that it was a non-conversation and he thought he might even have offended Tomas in some way.

None of this made sense to me. I had spoken to Tomas the evening of the day he got Bill’s response and he said he would respond to is as soon as our call ended.

We talked again yesterday. When I asked why he hadn’t sent the email when he said he would he said that he hadn’t had time to “craft the email.”

There was more and after hearing him out I told him the problem (as I saw it) was that along with being an introvert he is a perfectionist and doesn’t want to make a move until he is sure he is right. He also prefers to proceed linearly.

Tomas’ response? He said I knew him well.

I told Tomas that as an entrepreneur he will have to get out of his comfort zone.

He will not always have the luxury of a day or more to process conversations or craft perfect emails.

He needs to practice thinking and responding on the fly—especially on the small stuff.

I said that he will make mistakes and that’s OK; they can be corrected.

Tomas’ vision is brilliant; it solves a problem faced by millions and holds the promise of making their lives better.

I will do everything I can to help Tomas succeed, but only he can choose to leave his comfort zone.

Image credit: JJ Chandler.com

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Analysis by VC Anthony Tjan, founder of Cue Ball, found that 25% of both entrepreneurs and corporate business builders consider themselves lucky.

That’s a big percentage for something considered random, dubious or non-existent, depending on whom you ask.

Further research found “a combination of what we call a lucky attitude and a lucky network” as opposed to random luck.

What happens next? Does that attitude continue as success mounts?

But the biggest risk for top leaders is being complacent and overconfident — which amounts to being disconnected from the reality, attitude, and relationships that can sustain and take excellence to a new place.

Tjan recommends seven MAP functions to avoid the disconnect:

• humility, the lack of which leads to arrogance;
• intellectual curiosity, the lack of which also leads to arrogance;
• optimism, looking first for the positive attracts great people, while the opposite repels them;
• vulnerability, the best preventative for arrogance;
• authenticity, which is lost when shrouded in spin; worse, believing the spin leads to arrogance;
• generosity, no matter your success, share your knowledge sans the ‘what’s in it for me’ attitude; and
• openness, willingness to a listen to new ideas from 360 degrees of non-traditional sources.

Read the article (it’s short) and then share your thoughts on luck below.

Option Sanity keeps you lucky.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  So easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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History is interesting, the more ancient the better, but ‘ancient’ means different things by context.

Ancient Internet history dates more to the 1990s and one interesting historical nugget is that the general attitude that everything on the Internet should be free was nonexistent.

Enter Angie’s List, which has always been a subscription service.

Because this was 1995, nobody was yet shouting from the rooftops that information wanted to be free. “Some of the choices we made early on were dictated by the world we lived in,” Ms. Hicks said. “People paid for content.”

Angie’s List went public in November, 2011 at $13, jumped 25% and trades close to that number today.

Angie’s List has over a million subscribers and around three quarters of them renewed in 2011, up from 62 percent in 2008.

The business is built entirely around user-generated content, but differs in a very significant way from other rating sites, think Yelp.

Angie’s List allows no anonymous reviews and the staff goes to great lengths to keep the content authentic.

If you are developing an Internet company counting on advertising revenue is the norm, but the idea of targeted ads is facing a major backlash. The only way to target is to track.

73% say they would…

NOT BE OKAY with a search engine keeping track of your searches and using that information to personalize your future search results because you feel it is an invasion of privacy

The subscription model is making a comeback and it is one you should consider—assuming you are offering something of real value.

Image credit: Angie’s List

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Are you curious? Are you creative? Do you jerryrig (innovate) solutions to your own problems? Are you into contests?

If your head’s been going up and down, or even if it hasn’t, do I have a deal for you.

Not me, actually, but dozens of companies in a multitude of fields are looking for you.

They are looking for you and others like you to solve their problems, but they aren’t looking for experts.

According to Karim Lakhani, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, “The further the problem from the solver’s expertise, the more likely they are to solve it.”

30% of the unsolved problems of science-driven companies posted on InnoCentive were solved by its non-expert network.

InnoCentive posts both the problem and the reward for solving it.

Interested in health?

“Another model combines smaller prizes for promising ideas with big prizes for success.  The Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, for example, gives out $100,000 grants for interesting but unusual ideas for solving health problems the foundation sets out: like finding cellphone-based ways to increase vaccination rates, or creating the next generation of sanitation technologies. Entrants need only submit a two-page write-up of an idea. The money finances research, and if a project succeeds, it can win a prize of up to $1 million. Since 2008, the foundation has awarded prizes to 602 researchers in 44 countries.”

You just need to describe your idea—having the skills to make it happen has nothing to do with conceptualizing it.

So click here and start putting your creativity to work now!

Flickr image credit: cambodia4kidsorg

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Over the past few days we’ve been discussing the importance of disconnecting, the destructive force of 24/7 work and what drives people to do it.

People who found companies do so because they have a vision; they recognize a need as well as a way to fill it.

The real work comes between recognition and fulfillment—sharing and evangelizing the vision, building a framework within which the vision can become reality and then sharing the reality with the world at large.

The middle step, the framework, is what differentiates short-term success from long-term.

The middle step requires a cultural vision that also needs to be shared and evangelized.

There is much truth in the analogy that startups are like children and, like parents, founders need to decide ahead of time the value system they want their child to absorb.

“People feel this constant need to be connected. There’s no priority structure. Everything is urgent. Everything is red flagged.” Nancy Rothbard, a Wharton management professor

As founder you have a far-reaching choice to make; far-reaching because it will affect your company for years to come and determine if your child is

1. respectful and values the people in and around it; or
2. a spoiled brat that sees the world only in terms of mememememememe.

Option Sanity™ is values-based.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process; so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

Your comments-priceless

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