Startup Tips Day 5: James Thomas from WackyLabs

Day #5 in the CenterNetworks Startup Tips Month comes from James Thomas of WackyLabs. James is also a contributor on CenterNetworks.

James' Tips

Tip #1 - Define your goal

How can you achieve success without a clearly defined end result in mind? Simply put, you cannot. Start with a clear, concise, and measurable goal. If your goal is monetary, split it into something more easily measured. e.g., If you're expecting $75,000 a year from 2000 subscribed users, then make your goal 2000 subscribed users. If you measure it financially you'll be looking for ways to earn money. If you define the way in which you intend to make money, then your time will be spent looking to fill that goal, and financially your intended results will be met.

Tip #2 - Choose your business partners wisely

This sounds like a given, but excitement can rush you into choosing a business partner too quickly. If your partner is not reliable in terms of delivering work, then they're just dead weight. If their name is on the legally binding documents next to yours, often times when you call it off, you'll have to give up a significant portion of the company or walk away completely from the idea. If your idea is your baby, you can't afford to let that happen, so choose wisely. I personally will take drive over talent any day of the week.

Tip #3 - Launch early, update often

Often times, I've seen startups never get off the ground because they never launched their product. It sounds stupid, I know, but these are brilliant people who focused so much on a full feature set that the whole thing caught fire before they got it out of the oven. Getting your product launched is just the beginning. Content updates, monetization, and advertising are the driving point of your business, most likely. With no product, how will you ever make money? To sum it up, concentrate on your most valuable features with the highest return, launch your product, and make frequent updates. (For more information on this topic, see the Rapid Release Model methodology.)

Tip #4 - Play hardball

You're in the game to win, so play like it. Bust your butt to get your work done, even if it means skipping out on the finer things in life for a while. The world is full of dreamers and thinkers, but the doers are the ones who succeed. Even if you have to force yourself to work, do it.

I've met countless software and web developers with big dreams. When I ask these people what steps they've taken to achieve their goals and dreams, often times I hear a sob story, or a "someone elses fault" story. That proverbial "some day" is today. If you don't have the motivation to move on an idea now, then you probably never will and this lifestyle may not be for you.

Tip #5 - Are you passionate?

I phrased this one as a question particularly because it's not something you control. Are you passionate about the things you're building? If not, you may want to build something else. If you're not obsessed with the things you build for a reason other than money, then your best work will not come out.

Some of my idols in the tech industry include Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Both are tremendously successful, and both have crazy work habits. They do it because they love what they do, not because they expected to become as financially successful as they are.

Tip #6 - Don't let success spoil you

"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." - Bill Gates.

To elaborate on Bill Gates' famous quote, success fertilizes egos. What's the difference between someone who has had success and someone who has had failures? If you had success without failure, chances are you don't know what the secret ingredient was that made you succeed. Failures teach experience, and success is never permanent.

I heard a quote once (yes, I love quotes) that made it clear to me. "Those who succeed tend to party, those who fail tend to ponder." Don't party too much.

Tip #7 - Say No

Everyone is a designer. Everyone has an opinion. When you show a product, you're going to hear those opinions. Don't be afraid to say no. If you have a clear vision of your product, and according to tip #1, you should, then don't steer to far from that vision. If someone offers you a groundbreaking, revolutionary feature idea, then consider it. If someone doesn't like the way you handle something, hear them out, but you don't have to implement their idea. You can't please everyone, but you have a startup because you want to please yourself.

Tip #8 - Learn from others' experience

I will never smoke, and I will never drink. I sound like a party pooper, I'm sure. Growing up, I used to hear my parents coughing up a lung in their bedroom at night while I was watching TV. Nearly everybody in my family is an alcoholic. This has taught me that it's OK to learn from someone else's experience. Why relearn what's already been taught to someone else?

Inspiration to Go

Here are a few quotes I deem relevant. Hopefully, you can draw some inspiration from these.

• "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." - Steve Jobs
• "It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much." - Steve Jobs
• "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Cosby
• "What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do." - Bob Dylan
• "Eighty percent of success is showing up." - Woody Allen
• "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

James Thomas is kind of a big deal. He is very important. He has many leather-bound books and his apartment smells of rich mahogany. During the week, he develops websites for Disney Internet Group. During the wee hours of the morning, he develops WackyLabs' array of websites, including skinnyr, JamJunky and listobo.