I am here to tell you an undeniable fact. You will not get rich from your first startup. Let the responses now come.

Yes. there are exceptions, but in the grand scheme of things, these people are rare. Do not count on being one of the wealthy (or 0.0001%) from your endeavor.

A Different Look at Financing

In order to have a successful company, you need to have cash. This money is multi-purpose, but is initially used for salary for your first few hires and maybe some marketing.

Businesses cannot run without money, plain and simple. Obtaining the money to run your startup can come from many different places.

• Venture Capital (Arguably the most common)
• Loans
• Credit Cards

Keep these other options in mind. There are always other ways to fund your idea than raising venture capital.

Don't Concern Yourself with Valuation

I know this will not be a popular thought.

Understanding that business require money to operate is the key concept to understand, before understanding why I am telling you not to focus on valuation. If you feel yourself arguing with me on this point, make sure you fundamentally understand that businesses require money.

If running a successful startup is your main concern (If it isn't, what is?) then you understand you need money to operate.

Obtaining capital from Venture is not a conversation, it is a monologue. If the valuation of your company is too high, a VC is not going to talk you down from the price. They will just say No and walk away.

The VC has all day to hear and determine deals. If you valuation is too high, he will wait for the next person, that pitches him the same idea have a lower valuation, and that is who he will invest in. Venture capitalists want deals.

The mentality of setting a high valuation is human nature. As humans we want to keep what is ours at all costs. We think our stuff is worth much more than what it actually is. Think about the last garage sale you went to. You want $10 for this lamp? How about a $1?

Getting Rich or Having a Certain Percentage

I recently tweeted a link to an excellent article on calculating the equity you should give people joining your company. It is written by Jason Cohen (@asmartbear)

I received this response

This began a dialogue between Michael, Jason, and Myself. I explained to Michael how dilution doesn't need to be taken into account. If your percentage of ownership is being diluted, meaning more shares are being issued, from additional financing then your share price is going up. Jason threw the nail in the coffin with:

I think the goal is to get rich, not to own a certain %. If you dilute, it's because the pie is even bigger. Jason Cohen

Sometimes the things we care about (In this case, total ownership of the company at the end) doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

So you have a jekyll blog on github and have the issue of wanting "good" realted_posts, not just the most recent. You read the documentation and find out you need to get LSI up and running. Awesome.

You use brew install gsl and then attempt to install the gem gem install gsl...

matrix_complex.c:1525: error: conflicting types for 'gsl_matrix_complex_equal'
/usr/local/Cellar/gsl/1.15/include/gsl/gsl_matrix_complex_double.h:227: error: previous declaration of
'gsl_matrix_complex_equal' was here
make: *** [matrix_complex.o] Error 1

BORKED!!!

What gives? Well, clearly the gem isn't compatible with latest version of GSL, 1.15), duh!

But, how do I install and old version of GSL?

Welcome to Hacking Brew

Brew is just a github repository. So, what you want to do, is checkout a branch that contains the version you want to install. In our case, we want to install gsl 1.14. First, you need to identify where brew is installed. Mine is installed in /usr/local. A simple way to find out is to locate a brew formula. locate gsl.rb.

$ locate gsl.rb
/usr/local/Library/Formula/gsl.rb

Now, we need to identify the checkin that changed the version of GSL.

git log -S '1.14' -- Library/Formula/gsl.rb

This command looks for commits where the string 1.14 was either added or removed in the file Library/Formula/gsl.rb. Two receive two commits.

commit 02910443658a267b71d980372bbbb832c7401cd0
Author: Mary <mary@Marys-MacBook-Pro.local>
Date:   Sat Aug 13 00:02:02 2011 -0400

    gsl 1.15

    Signed-off-by: Adam Vandenberg <flangy@gmail.com>

commit c06fcf417448f6291d54b4600e4acc7af434a84f
Author: David Höppner <0xffea@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Mar 20 11:33:34 2010 +0100

    gsl: version update to 1.14

Awesome. We need to checkout and old commit in order to install 1.14. The c06fcf417448f6291d54b4600e4acc7af434a84f is the commit we want. So we simply run:

git checkout -b gsl-1.14 c06fcf417448f6291d54b4600e4acc7af434a84f

Now we are inside of a branch called gsl-1.14. Simply run:

brew install gsl

Cleanup time: Checking out master and deleting the branch we created.

git checkout master
git branch -d postgresql-8.4.4

Installing the GSL gem

Word. We now have gsl-1.14 installed. But will the gem install correctly? Only one way to find out.

gem install gsl
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed gsl-1.14.7
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for gsl-1.14.7...
Installing RDoc documentation for gsl-1.14.7...

Boom!

Related Posts time

$ jekyll --lsi
/Users/bhardin/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p0/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:55:in `require': iconv will be deprecated in the future, use String#encode instead.
Configuration from /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog/_config.yml
Auto-regenerating enabled: /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog -> /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog/_site
[2012-03-24 08:51:35] regeneration: 59 files changed
Running the classifier... this could take a while.
.............................

Wow! That was fast. Maybe 10x faster?!?

But then... Errors!!! maruku what the hell is your problem?

 ___________________________________________________________________________
| Maruku tells you:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| String finished while reading (break on []) already read: "require': iconv will be deprecated in the future, use String#encode instead.\nConfiguration from /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog/_config.yml\nAuto-regenerating enabled: /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog -> /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog/_site\n[2012-03-24 08:51:35] regeneration: 59 files changed\nRunning the classifier... this could take a while.\n............................."
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| ng the classifier... this could take a while.N.............................EOF
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                                                            +--- Byte 528

Huh... Screw maruku... rdiscount, Surly you won't complain. Whats up?

$ gem install rdiscount
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed rdiscount-1.6.8
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for rdiscount-1.6.8...
Installing RDoc documentation for rdiscount-1.6.8...

Try again.

$ jekyll --lsi --rdiscount
/Users/bhardin/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p0/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:55:in `require': iconv will be deprecated in the future, use String#encode instead.
Configuration from /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog/_config.yml
Auto-regenerating enabled: /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog -> /Users/bhardin/Documents/projects/blog/_site
[2012-03-24 09:04:01] regeneration: 59 files changed
Running the classifier... this could take a while.
.............................

Bam! Edit my _config.yml and all is good.

markdown: rdiscount
lsi: true

Building a startup is exciting. Every day you are working to create something that will shake up an industry, perhaps even change the world.

When building on your product, there are distractions. Drink Ups, Networking Events, hack-a-thons, developing, conferences, speaking engagements, recruiting, payroll, taxes, fundraising, customer development, investor updates, reading hackernews, and writing blog posts.

Each of them, at different points in time, seem fundamental to the success of your startup.

There are so many things occupying your time it can be challenging to prioritize and remain focused on what can benefit your startup the most. Everyday it seems there is another fire or priority that becomes the number one task.

But what should a startup be focused on? Is the focus for every startup different? Does the focus change over the life of the startup?

Stay Focused On Delivering Value

As a startup the most fundamental thing is delivering value. As an employee or founder of a startup this should be your single point of focus. Every thing that you do should easily map to delivering value. Nothing else should take priority over that single goal.

Working out doesn't matter. Dating doesn't matter. Eating nice meals doesn't matter. Sleeping doesn't matter. Being "seen" doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is delivering value.

But, what value should you deliver? This is determined by your customer.

Initial Value And Pivot

When you begin working on your startup, even before building product, you assume what your customers will care about. Once you begin gathering customers and engaging with them you will change your value add.

What value you deliver can take multiple forms. But remember your customers will define it, not you.

Always Be Measuring and Incrementing

A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing.
- Blake

To be a successful startup you need to have your metric. This is the hockey stick that everyone talks about. The item the metric is measuring should tie directly to how successful you will be.

The right metric to measure yourself should be tied to the value you are providing. I have seen many startups use the wrong metric to measure their success. Don't be one of these startups.

What single metric demonstrates how you provide value to your customers?

Facebook's metric is how many daily users they have. Facebook is a social network. In order to provide value to their users, they need to interact or be social with the site on a daily basis.

At SourceNinja our metric is how many packages are under management. The more packages we manage the more value our customers get from using our product.

Don't Burn Out

It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
- Neil Young

Although it is fundamentally important to your startup that you remain focused on providing value and not being distracted, there is one exception. Don't burn out.

You need to find some time, ever day, to do something that reminds you why you are working on the startup in the first place. This time should be limited and focused. It should also be as far removed from what you work on as possible and hopefully avoid technology.

For instance, if your burn out avoider is playing basketball. Limit playing to 3 games a week. If it is working out, limit it to 5 (1 hour) sessions a week. Please note: playing video games should not be an outlet. Get away from technology, you are working with it everyday.

TLDR

• Remain focused on what value you deliver
• Don't do things that aren't easily mapped to your value add.
• Only Exception: Don't Burn Out