Marco Gallotta
One major difference I’ve noticed between the Silicon Valley and Cape Town startup mentality is that here the techies are learning how to do business, whereas in Cape Town the business folk think they know about tech. In some cases they do, but it’s rare. The result is startups here often have two technical co-founders, whereas in Cape Town there’s almost always a business co-founder (sometimes both are!). People I speak to here often ask what these business co-founders do. I’m hard-pressed to come up with a good answer.

I felt that he had an interesting perspective and one that warranted a discussion from the perspective a business co-founder, me.

Here’s my response

I am one of these “business folk” who “think they know about tech” and that actually is a great summary. Although I am fairly technical in my knowledge (I built my first website when I was 12). But your observation of business people is not entirely complete.

I do agree that in Cape Town (SA as a whole) there is a lack of drive from techies to become more business orientated and push their products from merely a cool side thing in to a fully fledged business. In some cases, even in the valley, technically gifted individuals lack the business acumen to make their product, app, idea, technology or innovation a profitable success.

Bare in mind that a technology business isn’t just about the technology. Even tech businesses involve generating revenue, managing staff, managing sales people, managing call-center people, support staff, brokering deals, negotiating contracts and much more stuff that isn’t technology orientated.

Often once the technology is built in its first iteration the next step is business, sales and marketing. Techies know they’re good at tech but also need to recognise what they are not good at and find a partner to balance out their shortcomings.

If the technology evangelist in the business is stuck doing the “business” stuff then the product can suffer. This is where a business co-founder comes in to play and is extremely valuable. Often my job entails making sure that the technical team is happy and comfortable enough and have what they need in order to build the absolute best product they can.

In the end though I think that co-founder relationships need to be analysed on their merits and in context. There is no sweeping rule to abide by, there is no one shoe fits all solution.

Cape Town needs to find its groove, we need to emerge out of a lot of teething pains and get a sense of what works for us in our context.

This year I have but one goal which will play out in my personal and business life: do not over complicate anything.

I’m going to try and make simple and quick decisions and break everything down to its bare bones. Simplicity.

Here’s the first simple things for 2012, a simple and beautiful view.

Speaking to people in the last few weeks I noticed that many of my thoughts begin with, “And another thing I learned this year is…”. So here is a list of 20 things that I learned in 2011 as a startup founder and now the CEO of Motribe.

1. Hire slowly, fire quickly.
2. Trust your gut about: People, deals, businesses and contracts.
3. One deal can break your company.
4. One deal can make your company.
5. Don’t scale your staff with one big client. They will leave you (staff and client), eventually.
6. Cashflow, cashflow, cashflow. Startups worry about revenues, entrepreneurs know the value of cashflow.
7. Be transparent with your team, they know when something is going on.
8. If you have to, work on a public holiday, your biggest deals could happen after hours. Great business minds don’t keep office hours.
9. Don’t listen to people who like to talk, listen to people who like to listen and have achieved.
10. You know best more often than not. Trust your instincts.
11. Avoid people-politics and games where possible.
12. Be honest, open and transparent. If you aren’t happy, tell someone.
13. Fire bad clients.
14. Be picky about who you work with.
15. Don’t do business just for the money.
16. Do whatever it takes.
17. No one knows your business like you do, fight for it.
18. Make the best decision you can at the time with the facts at your disposal.
19. Say “Fuck it”, and take the risks necessary for great success.
20. Have a co-founder or business partner who you can rely on. When shit gets heavy you need someone to back you up.

It’s hard to pick the most important lessons from the list above but for me I think that number 6, 16 and 20 are right up there.

What lessons did you learn about your business in 2011?

Don’t talk shit about not having hope for our country. A nation is made up of more than just the people who “lead” it… If you’re ready to complain then stand the fuck up for what you believe in. Don’t run away. Seriously now. The people who make up this nation have overcome so much and we can do it again. Don’t be spineless and wash your hands of it. Don’t whisper your pessimism, make a difference with your optimism…

The above was written by my cousin. She’s 20 and this is clearly a passionate topic for her.

I have not received adequate or acceptable service or treatment by an accounting firm ever (I do have a great personal accountant who manages my personal tax issues).

I have had to deal with too many insanely priced lawyers and law firms far too often.

What pisses me off immensely is that many of the legacy professions that are held in high esteem are full of lies, obstructions and smoke and mirrors.

Let me start with accountants. In no world do I believe that paying R19 000 for a single meeting (that wasn’t even 1 hour long) is acceptable. R3900 as an hourly rate is absolutely ludicrous if you are not solving every problem I’ve asked you to. Also – sitting in a meeting DOES NOT qualify you as having done anything substantial. Furthermore, having 3 people in a meeting that are superfluous to the meeting DOES NOT constitute work on their behalf either. Racking up hours is thievery when not conducted effectively.

Lawyers – see above.

Then let me move on to Doctors. I have had a fair amount of illness in my time. I’ve broken bones, cracked clavicles, twisted ankles, passed kidney stones and worse. Most of the time I suffer through the pain because the doctor actually has no idea what the fuck is wrong with me. So they send me to get blood tests, x-rays, medication and all sorts of other treatments, that I pay for in the hope that something they do or say actually works. Then when it doesn’t I get left holding the bill and the pain/problem that was there to start with. Also – I want to know if my doctor was the guy who scraped through his degree with 55% or if he finished with a 98% average, ’cause if he finished with 45% unlearned, what I have probably falls in to that 45%.

Lets look at me and what would happen to me if I charged a client R3900 per hour, or R15 000 for my skills (if doctor read: treatments, tests, x-rays, etc etc) and then at the end of the project, hour, whatever I told them: Oh sorry, I don’t know what happened but I don’t have the product that you paid me for. Please can you pay the outstanding amount in 30 days or I’ll blacklist you.

ARE YOU SERIOUS? If I did that I would be named, shamed and booted out of my industry. In many of the lagacy professions out there it’s common practice to bill hours to a client to simply reach a target for the month. In my industry it’s cash on delivery. In many old professions if you have DR. MD. CA. or some other stupid two letter title you are respected. Not by me. If you diagnose me correctly consecutively then you’ve earned my respect. If you diagnose me correctly once, I count it as dumb luck.

I think that doctors should be held to the same standard as I am. If you don’t fix me, fuck your payment. If you fix me, I’ll pay you. Doctors should pay for scans, treatments and blood tests upfront, if they figure out what is wrong with me, then i’ll gladly pay them.

Today I went to a doctor who used a 5 year old machine to scan my kidney. He charged me R800 to scan my kidney, on an old machine, hooked up to a laptop. He’s probably paid off all of that equipment hundreds of times over. Unacceptable.

I’ve had it with the way people pretend to do things. I want results. I demand results because people demand them of me and I deliver. Jokers.

An interesting trend is rising and it’s one that confuses me as much in my involvement as that of others.

iPhone vs Android debates are fucking massive. Forget hunger, religion, politics, economics or anything else that might matter to most. iPhone or Android, where do you stand and how far will you go to defend your fanboy-ism?

Let me state outright that I have never used an iPhone for an extended period of time but I do own an iPod touch (my second one) and have for years.

I am not an iPhone hater. I think I am a fanboy hater. I am a hater of blind and ignorant obsession displayed by iPhone users. Kind of like Manchester United supporters actually.

Anyways, I digress.

Increasingly I am hearing the debate around how pretty the iPhone and how shitty Android is. That’s a bit of a misnomer. If you are going to tell me that the iPhone itself, the hardware, the actual phone is pretty then you have to further state what phone, precisely, you are comparing it to. Chances are you don’t know what Android device you are looking at. You aren’t educated in all things Android (nor am I).

The point I’m making is this: I use a Samsung Nexus S running Android. If iPhone users are going to compare my phone to theirs in an aesthetic sense then they should be comparing their iPhone to my Samsung Nexus S. Not to “Android”.

Comparing your phone to my operating system is like comparing iOS (the iPhone’s operating system) to Samsung, Motorola or SonyEricsson. Wrong. Yes there are versions of Android running on each and each can be customised but let’s just be clear about what we’re talking about.

Furthermore, I think that I need to get off this fucken high-horse. I baited this morning with a tweet about some new iPhone features but the truth is I like the iPhone 4S. I think the updates are great and I think that the game is on.

I don’t think there are clear battle lines drawn from the consumer perspective. If you want an iPhone, get one. If you like Android get that too. If you hate what you’ve got then you should switch. There are no allegiances here, it’s technology and it should enhance and simplify your experience of certain things. If the device isn’t up to your standard then toss it.

Last note. How hot is the new Motorola RAZR?

TWiST (This Week in Startups) is a live internet show that allows startups from around the world to pitch to Jason Calacanis. If you don’t know who Jason is (@jason) then you can check out his wikipedia page. In short, he’s an investor, blogger and entrepreneur in the US.

Straight from the This Week In website:

ThisWeekIn, Inc. is a web television network covering a wide variety of topics from tech to entertainment. Produced out of our Santa Monica studio, our web shows feature guest experts, founders, movie stars, comedians, technologists and CEO’s — all keeping you up to speed on what’s happening this week with a fast and funny style. Informative and entertaining, ThisWeekIn is the place for whatever your interests may be.

So basically the evening started with 10 startups who pitched to a crowd in attendance at the Bandwidth Barn. Each startup spoke for 3 minutes. This was my first point of pain. I spoke for three minutes, exactly, to the second yet some of the others were allowed to speak for way more. The environment of the event is a competition and in competitive arenas the rules need to be adhered to.

(Side note: I think this is some what of a larger issue in the local tech industry right now, things are all jovial, fun and not all that serious. People expect not to be taken to task for fucking up, startups expect to succeed ’cause they are branding themselves as startups. That’s not the way it works. This is a fundamental problem in my eyes. Startups are serious business for those involved, it’s my livelyhood and you’re messing with if you mess around. The TWiST event is a competition with a declared winner, stick to the rules.)

The selected startups, in order, were:
Mobiflock
Motribe
Waytag
Snapbill
lessfuss
Cognician

To Jason’s credit he pushed to get through all 6 of us and normally the show only has 3 startups.

At this point I should also commend Tyrone who organised the event. However, he mentions in his introduction with Jason that South Africa is “behind” and we’re trying hard to make it work. I was a bit offended by that statement and think that there are a million ways to represent us as a country, that wasn’t one of them.

To cut a long story short: each startup pitches to Jason and Tyler for 60 seconds (Again not very hard and fast) and then Jason and Tyler give each startup a score out of ten for Business and Presentation. I was given a relatively hard time about my presentation and Jason had some good comments. I was told to be more personal, include a personal anecdote or story of some kind to engage with the audience. That’s a really good point and one I will be including in my future presentations. A piece of personal advice to startup founders – if you are pitching your company over and over again, try to mix it up, keep it fresh and have 3 or 4 different presentations that you use otherwise you become bored with the content no matter how excited you are about your company.

In spite of my presentation not going as well as I had wanted, Jason and Tyler immediately understood what we do here at Motribe and the value of our services. My presentation was given a solid 7 from Jason and Tyler and the business we have built a good 8 out of 10 (Calacanis rates Facebook and Apple at a 10 out of 10).

All in all I was happy with the outcome and performance of Motribe.

I do need to make mention of the star of the show: Mobiflock. Vanessa did a brilliant job of pitching her amazing company and went on to win the event. Congrats!

The video of the entire show is below. If you’re looking to skip ahead to the Motribe pitch go to minute 24.

(If you can’t view the above, here’s the link – http://youtu.be/5tr5ptnUoDE)

Can you just imagine 150 years from now when someone, some thing, some alien discovers the above video and then discovers pictures taken on a polaroid camera from the 60s and 70s. They will think that we have lost our minds.

In actual fact, I kind of think we’ve lost our minds a bit too. Many of us (myself included) are using new technological advancements to do old things. Instagram photos are made to look older. Why are we not trying to push the envelope a bit and use Instagram to, I don’t know, do something new with photographs?

Just a thought, technology should push us forward and we should learn in an iterative fashion from the past, hold on to what is good and create.

I love Instagram photographs and PicPlz (the Android version) but get this embarrassing thought in my head when I picture future generations discovering some our era’s “advancements”.

Everybody is looking at high-end, high-margin and relatively low volume.

Groupon itself is avoiding the emerging market mobile play because the don’t have a clue about the mobile web, feature phones or emerging markets and how they use smartphones (if they do at all).

Apparently Groupon just released an Android App in Germany. Why would they not be pushing Android apps in to the emerging markets too? Android is selling like hotcakes in Africa and the rest of the developing world.

If I were sitting in India and I ran Snapdeals.com I would create a mobile web version, then a java version, then an Android version of the Snapdeal experience.

The other major thing that needs to change (that no one is doing) is catering for the mass-market with mid-level deals instead of Spa treatments and the likes. What about deals from places like Shoprite, Walmart, Massmart companies, Pick ‘n Pay and those companies?

Maybe there is a problem with the margins, volumes and numbers on smaller and cheaper deals but for my money, if you make that work, you’re golden.

I have, had, a fear of the oceans that’s been with me for 25 years. This weekend that fear was conquered.

Here are some photos:

With out a doubt the weekend that just passed was the best weekend of activity I’ve had in Cape Town. The weather played nice, the ocean played nice, the surf teacher taught us how to surf and look good (ish) while doing it and I had good mates to rip me off and cheer when I feel. What could be better?