The fundamental misunderstanding of business by startup CEOs

I just read an entertaining but entirely worrying article from the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup; The Confessions of an Arrogant Startup CEO. Give the article a read and form your own opinion about it. I read it and it shocked me.There is something fundamental in there that I believe is at the heart of a self-destructing startup culture in Silicon Valley.The gist of the article is as follows: Francis Pedraza is trying to raise more funding (they already have $1.5m) for his startup, Everest. He sent an email to Mark Cuban that started as follows: Subject: Peter Thiel invested so you’re lucky I’m emailing you.Mark didn't respond well and told Pedranza that he wasn't interested.That's all well and good and sometimes founders push too hard as Pedranza admits.The thing that absolutely blows me away is this sentence from Pedranza about the desperate situation he's in with regards to his staff: "If I don’t raise money, they don’t get paid." I thought that for a business to be sustainable, grow and employ the best that it needed to generate enough revenue to pay staff and continue to be profitable? No?This is how dire the situation has become in the Valley that revenue and profitability aren't the main focus but raising funding to pay salaries is?If I were Cuban I wouldn't have invested in Everest either but for an entirely different reason.If the CEO of a startup isn't focused sufficiently on revenue and ultimately profitability then it's all over before it's begun.Silicon Valley needs to stop looking at fund raising as success and start focusing on profitability.

Tech is good, customer service is better

I am baffled by bad service when I come into contact with it. I've dealt with good customers, bad customers, great businesses, horrible service, amazing products and almost everything inbetween and one thing remains consistent; if you provide great customer service the customer will most often leave happy.Good service is something so simple that everyone can provide for free to make their customers feel important. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos famously said, "We're a service company that just happens to sell shoes." This is a simple statement that can apply to absolutely every business, just replace "shoes" with whatever you do. "We're a service company that just happens to sell pancakes", "We're a service company that just happens to sell hot air balloons," you get the point.

The problem with technology

Customer service is something that I think I managed to mishandle at my previous company, Motribe. We often felt that our technology was so good that the problems being reported by paying customers was never ours. If the client or user didn't use the platform the way we intended or if they had some feedback or a complaint that it was their fault and not ours.Our technology was untouchable. In fact, many entrepreneurs believe that they are so smart, their tech is so good and their product is so game-changing that the problem is never theirs. If we all just shut our pie holes and listen to the customer we'd receive amazing insight into the user experience and be able to make the product better.In technology startups it's difficult to separate the tech from the product, the creator from the product and the user experience of the product. Ultimately the tech is the product and that's something quite personal which leads to a lot of difficult conversations about the tech, the product and the customer.With NicSocks I simply sell socks so it's easier for me to hear feedback like: The stitching inside the sock hurts my feet. Because it probably does hurt that guys foot. I learned to disassociate myself from the product and the problem being reported.When you sell socks the product is the sock, the website (tech) is merely the medium used to sell the socks. If the website (tech) is broken then it's preventing people from buying more socks so it needs to be rectified immediately.

Toxic attitudes

I would often descend into a rage behind closed doors about a difficult client or account manager from a customer at Motribe. This left customers more frustrated than me because that can always sense your frustration. It also meant that customers began to loath the technology we were peddling and look for more problems and take pleasure in reporting those problems.This attitude quickly trickled down into my team who began to dislike these clients too. That's tantamount to saying that didn't like money because if you dislike the client you dislike their business and their money. The scariest thing was that there was no real reason to dislike them. We just had to listen more.

Customer service is so simple

I don't believe in the old saying that the customer is always right. People can suck and be blatantly wrong and there will come a time in every business where you'll need to be harsh with a client or fire a customer. But that is a desperate and last measure. Most of the time simply being nice to the person and extremely attentive will solve the problem at hand.NicSocks is a very lean startup started on a shoestring budget with the kind assistance of some of the best web designers in the business using Wordpress. This small budget meant that technical issues were bound to pop up and we've had our fair share already. Wordpress also comes loaded with it's fair share of issues.I've had payment systems not work, registration break, I've had users email me about usernames being incorrect and emails not being received and I've had a lot of customer feedback in the 3 months I've been selling socks. However one thing remains consistent, I haven't lost a customer to bad or broken technology.I have fought for every customer and salvaged every single complaint and turned them into a sale. How? I do whatever it takes.At one point I sent one pair of socks up to a customer using express delivery couriers and made an R80 loss on that pair of socks. But, I now have a dedicated customer who will (and has) returned to buy more socks.

Anyone can do it

In today's disconnected and removed world of emails and text messages, spam and reminders it's easy to forget that a simple phone call or one nice email response in a timely fashion can win an irritated customer over. Remember that next time you're about to explode - One nice email.Great technology and world changing innovations can only be built by a select few but amazing companies with great customer service can be built by anyone.

My first Men's Health column

I started my professional career as a journalist. It's something that I wanted to do from when I was a little kid. Back then I wanted to be a war correspondent but those dreams disappeared somewhere along the way.I've worked for some of the top media companies and brands in the country including 702 talk radio, Financial Mail and Mail&Guardian but unfortunately my passion for writing as a career left me early on.My father will be happy to know that his money wasn't all wasted and I'm finally doing something constructive with my journalism degree. A few months back I met Jason Brown, the editor of Men's Health magazine. Jason is doing a cracking job at MH and realised that his readers were looking for local business content.That's where I come in.Hopefully this column will be the first of many, but even if it isn't, it's good to have been published.

Sell, sell, sell and other startup stumbling blocks

I was fortunate to be invited to mentor a group of startups at the 88mph work space. I sat with each startup for 20 minutes (timed) and asked them about their businesses, the problems they were encountering and the help they thought I could provide.Here are some of the main issues that came up.

Sell

Almost every startup I spoke to out of the nine were battling with one common issue - sales. It seems as though we're hellbent on building tech and improving it forever without focusing on either the business model or the selling of the business model. I was no different in many of my first startups but eventually you realise that your product is good enough to sell (not perfect) and that you need to go out and do this.Selling is scary for a few reasons:

1. What if I fail and no one wants what I'm selling?
2. What if I succeed and actually have to start building a business?
3. The embarrassment of the hard sell - this is an South African issue, we're too polite to tell people how amazing we are.
4. No understanding of sales tactics and/or sales cycles.

Once you understand the issues they are easy to overcome because they are simply not issues. If you don't know how to sell, learn. How do you learn? By selling. If you are fearful of failure you get over it by trying and failing or succeeding and vice versa for success. You wont be afraid of success once you are succeeding.Being afraid to hard sell your product means one of two things: You don't know how to do it or you don't think your product is good enough to sell. The best founders sell their products in their sleep, they just don't know it's called sales. If you love your product, if it's solving a problem and if it actually works, it's an easy sell for anyone.

Launch

The myth of the MVP is one that I am seeing pop up all over the place. Many entrepreneurs believe that an MVP is the worst possible acceptable version of your final product. This is sort of true but ultimately incorrect in my view. An MVP is the minimum viable product that you can put into a specific (and forgiving) market like early adopters that will allow you to gather valuable data and insight into the next iteration of your product.In short an MVP needs to help you deploy, learn, analyse and iterate. It's not a shittier version of your final product. It's a learning tool helping you move towards your final product.So what you need to do is plan and launch.

Growth

There is a buzz-phrase floating about the infamous tech blogs abroad and that buzz-phrase is "growth hacking". This is a painful phrase for me to hear. This phrase and concept is misleading and over simplistic leading founders and entrepreneurs to believe that growing a customer base is simply a matter of hacking, spending, developing and repeating.This might be true when you've got 10 developers, R1m to spend on marketing and A/B testing set up already but getting those things going takes time and effort (let alone money).Growth can occur in many ways with many different affects on your business.

• Rushing growth can destroy your service and flood it with spam, errors and server issues.
• Growing too slowly can tarnish the reputation of your community and stagnate growth further.
• Faking growth by buying users on advertising networks can provide the short-term illusion of growth but long term closure for your business.
• Growth without a plan, scaling in place and a revenue model will upset you, your investors, your customers and leave them searching for an alternative service.

I am a firm believer in organic growth especially if you are looking for those users to pay you for a service. It's tough to advertise blindly and expect a customer to pay you for something they've only seen through marketing. Organic word of mouth and peer-endorsement is often the best way to create viral growth. Although this type of growth requires a fantastic product and time to evolve. I met with nine startups who all believed they were fundamentally different to one another when in truth their problems were almost all the same. Business is business and problems persist no matter what business you're in. Learn to share your weaknesses and strengths and learn from the businesses around you. The best way to learn is to observe those around you.

Focus and explore

I haven't had formal employment for about 4 months now and I've learned some interesting things. The main thing that I've discovered about myself is that I actually hate being distracted and love to work with extreme focus for short bursts.Someone recently told me that the best thing to happen to my career is not having a job. I wholeheartedly agree but with one major caveat; Focus is absolutely imperative when you have a lot of options.I have been approached to start companies, join companies, speak here and there, and consult to many brands, businesses and agencies. The most difficult part is to successfully explore the various opportunities in front of me without offending or leading anyone on and then focusing in on the most interesting, fun and fruitful of those.I've had to say no to some incredibly gifted people whom I respect and I've taken on some things that in hindsight I wish I hadn't. I've also had to make some very tough decisions and statements for partners and clients about various products they are pitching and proposing to me.Then there's NicSocks, my own little ecommerce startup. This is probably the most difficult thing to put on the back burner or shove aside. But I'm trying hard to stay focused on specific goals that have been set with regard to my side projects: When they become profitable enough to hire people, I will. Until then, it's all me.Here are some tips to help with focus when you're consulting and working on multiple projects:

1. Manage your time effectively with the tools available - I use Fantastical for iPhone and Desktop with Google Calendar and reminders.
2. Manage expectations - Don't lead people on. Be blunt, investigate and commit (or move one).
3. Be VERY picky. Don't say yes to everything.
4. Book time in your meeting schedule for exercise. Actually book a meeting with yourself for that run you've been meaning to go on.
5. Don't look for things to do, look for things to say no to and actually say "no".
6. If you're working on one project, set time and only work on that project.
7. DO NOT MULTITASK. EVER.

On the whole I am absolutely loving the nature of consulting and working with many smart people on a few brilliant projects. You should try it.

The ego on an Instagram user

A quick rant about apocalyptic users moaning about the new terms and conditions that Instagram (a 100% free service) is imposing.When there is a single case of a photograph owned by a user being used by Instagram without anyone's permission I'll give a shit about these new terms.Until then, get over your ego. No one wants your photographs of a cappuccino, sock, self or sunset in an advert (or anywhere else for that matter).The people who should be concerned are the famous folk among us. Imagine Gaga or Biebers faces appearing in a Facebook advert without their permission.But really - Instagram using your photographs is quite close to winning the lottery, just bad.

What the front page of Hacker News does to traffic

Yesterday, quite incredibly and without my knowledge for most of it, this blog hit the front page of Hacker News. The blog post, Don't Read TechCrunch, eventually made it to the top spot on the website and received over 90 comments.I wasn't sure what that meant but figured it out pretty quickly. I've been reading the site for a while and following their twitter account too but really had no concept of the reach. Until yesterday.I haven't seen this much traffic in a day in almost 4 years and that wasn't even on this blog.At the peak of the traffic there were 600 concurrent users on the site and specifically on that single blog post according to Google Analytics RealTime.Below is the state of affairs as at 11:18PM.26 000 unique visitors to the blog. That's probably more than I'll do for the entire year in 2013.I am definitely not writing this blog to hit the front pages of these sites but it is quite a good feeling when it does happen. I'm writing this blog as an outlet for my experiences and opinions as a entrepreneur at the tip of Africa.This is what a comparative chart of December 2nd and 3rd looks like:Not only was there a marked increase in unique users and page impressions but surprisingly there were even 22 comments on the blog post here as well as the over 90 on Hacker News itself.In truth I doubt that many, if any, of the new readers will return but it's always good to get a little spike in traffic.At the time of writing this article, my blog post has slipped to 17 on the front page but the day was a good one. I have to thank @n1c for posting the article to the site.

Don't read TechCrunch

I don't read TechCrunch (TC).I used to read TC when I believed that raising funding was an important milestone for success. Having raised money and spent it I've learned that glorifying money raising is a massive mistake and TC is the biggest culprit.It's a much more complicated and in depth process in Africa and South Africa to raise funding. It's not a simple one anywhere else, don't get me wrong, it's just that in such a young and risk averse tech space like Cape Town there are even more difficulties and complications on top of the regular effort a founder goes through to raise funding.In truth I needed to use all of my emotional intelligence (EI) just to run my own business and focus on my own issues and stability; worrying about what other companies were raising, selling, achieving, failing and succeeding was killing my capacity to focus. I started to become overly interested in how others operated and other benchmarks and achievements.What I should always have been concerned with was my own context and what my company needed. It's good to have context but becoming obsessed and consumed with what TC and other startup blogs and websites report on is problematic.The truth behind 99% of the startup exits, buyouts, shutdowns and successes is often not what you read, remember that and forget to read TC.

Don't be ashamed of a sustainable business

This is the third article in the series I'm writing about the things I learned building a mobile startup in Africa. The first article was titled: Investment is scarce. The second article was titled: Raising funding can distract you.In the era of tech startups raising a billion dollars and being bought for triple that after a few months, it is increasingly becoming uncool to build an organically grown and profitable business.The irony of this is that profitable, sustainable and proven business models tend to raise more money more often.For some strange reason the cool factor of raising money has overtaken the cool factor of profit. This is a strange place to be, the world seems to be on it's head with this logic. The other odd thing that comes with the glory of raising funding is the perception that businesses become successful overnight. Unfortunately companies like Instagram perpetuate this bullshit myth. It takes years and years to create either a massively viral and fast-growing platform or a profitable, scalable and sustainable business.The thing that most people forget is that it's easy to build a business firstly with someone else's money and secondly with a small team. Scaling growth and maintaining profitability are entirely different things.Let me put it like this: When you are paying the salary of 2 people, profit depends entirely on overcoming those two salaries. When you are paying the salaries of a team of 300 you need to overcome those salaries before you can even begin to consider the other expenses that come with that staff faction. A business that has organically grown to 300 people and can still maintain profitability is much more impressive to me than a business that is spending someone else's money to employ 300 people for 2 years in the hope of finding a revenue model that sticks.There are very few tech companies that are angling at long term, sustainable and scalable growth. One of those on my list of must-haves right now is Evernote. I can't live without their app. They are so embedded in long term growth that their sales cycle is two years long (you use their app and two years later you upgrade to a paying customer). They are building a 100 year old company starting today, everyday.Don't be ashamed of organic growth. Apple took 30 years to get to where they are today. Ferrari is over 80 years old. These are companies who have proved themselves, their product and their model over time. Maybe it's time we start thinking this way and begin building business for the future.

The corruption of an apathetic electorate

Recently I have been staying away from politically fuelled articles but I just can't keep my mouth shut on this one.Read this article about Jacob Zuma's new mansion and where he found the funds. Here's a snippet:

Yet as his people struggle in squalor, South African president Jacob Zuma has sparked outrage by spending £17.5 million (R248m) to upgrade his rural family home.

The fact that Jacob Zuma is our president makes me angry with the South African electorate. All those people who chose not to vote. This is what you get, you bunch of apathetic arm-chair protestors.I am not embarrassed by the country, we have a magnificent country with amazing people who do incredible things. I am saddened by the people voting for this man as our leader and I am enraged by the people who do not exercise their vote when it matters.I am outraged by Zuma's actions and if these allegations are proven to be true, the people of South Africa need to rebel against this level of blatant corruption and misuse of much needed aid and our trust. 

Raising funding can be a distraction

This is the second post in the series of things I learned building a mobile startup in Africa.There are few things that you should focus on when building a company. Things like customer growth, product development and revenue growth. Early on in the life of a business raising funding should not be one of the focal points for a founder.This might seem counter-intuitive to some but in truth, raising funding is an unwanted distraction. I'm beginning to believe that funding should be used for growth and only seldom is it worthwhile raising funding for early stage startups. Research and development is one fantastic justification for early stage startup funding. Even then, however, it's rare to find a company or people who are genuinely researching a game-changing technology that justifies millions of dollars of funding.Most businesses need a solid business model with a trajectory towards not only revenue but profit. Without this, there are very few things that can help you and more often than not money is not one of them.In the exceptionally rare cases like a Twitter or Facebook, funding can be raised off the back of the theory that when there are enough users the revenue model will emerge.In truth the only thing that searching for funding did for me was take my eye off the business ball. I neglected to pay attention to staff when they needed my input the most, I handed over key clients relationships too early or too late and went after the big raise. What I should have done was hunker down and gun for more business, more sales, more clients and work through our revenue model more efficiently.My ego also took a battering while on the funding hunt. For every potential "maybe", possible follow up email, response or kind word I received ten of the opposite. When it comes to opinions, everyone has one and most of them are uninformed but sadly if that opinion is coming from someone who you want to take money from, you have to listen. So I sat and listened.I listened to people tell my why my business was too big, too small, too far into Africa, not in Africa enough, too mobile, not mobile enough, too social, not social enough. There were no consistent responses and no constructive criticism.Ultimately the decision to halt the hunt for funding was the smartest move we made. It allowed me to settle into my role in the company, focus on nurturing the right environment for my team and clients and gain ground in the key performance indexes of the business.Let me end off this post by saying that funding is not success but more often than not the beginning of failure for many startups.

What I learned building a mobile startup in Africa

I have learned a lot in the past two years. Many of the lessons haven't really even sunk in yet but I thought that I should start off by writing a list of things I'd learned while building my mobile company in South Africa. This list turned into quite a long post so I have decided to try and write a series of blog posts on the topic.The first one will be titled: Investment is scarce. You can read it below.Here's the list of topics that I'd like to cover in my upcoming articles:

• Raising money can distract you
• Don't be ashamed of "sustainable" business
• Reading Techcrunch will fuck with your mind
• The West is coming, but they don't understand... yet.
• The people who will fix Africa's problems are Africans
• Identify your customer & listen to them
• Erik Reiss had a point - ship your product
• If no one uses your product and you never earn money out of it can you really call it a product?
• Founders need to sell, whoever the fuck you are, sell.

I felt quite nervous publishing this post. It means I have to stick to writing these articles. But nevertheless it must happen. So here goes. 

Investment is scarce

I am not sure when it happened but for some fucked up reason getting investment is seen as some kind of success or final point in startup culture. For a short time that's what I pegged as some twisted kind of success; financing. But the truth is something closer to financing equalling debt.When Motribe began to really gain ground and we had solid user, client and revenue growth it looked like we needed funding. In hindsight the truth is that we needed to hunker down and continue to grow our revenue but having read so much and listened to so many people about funding being success, we decided to head overseas and get the lay of the funding land. We stopped in at New York, London and Austin while we also spoke with VCs in Silicon Valley, Germany and South Africa.One of the interesting things I learned is that it's not hard to find rich people. It's also not hard not meet venture capitalists or network your way to high-wealth individuals willing to throw their money away. It is extremely difficult to find the right people or investors and the right kind of money. There is such a thing as the right kind of money.What is hard is finding investors in South Africa who are able to invest more than a few million rand. The ceiling appears to be R5m for young businesses. South African VC is still young and therefore fairly risk averse. That means it's not really venture capital and more like private equity. Venture capital abroad is also a tough nut to crack open because there are tricks and traps all over the show. Some wanted me to move our headquarters abroad, others wanted a lead investor on the ground in SA to start the round off. Some wanted to see more growth, some wanted to see more revenue. To some we were too young, to others too old. Some wanted us to ask for more money and some less. Walking the streets of New York from investor to investor was incredibly tough.I thought that I was doing the right thing and I'm sure that if closed a big round of funding while over there everyone would have agreed with me. But in truth I should have been on the ground over there doing deals, selling the product we had and hustling to make more money, not raise more money.The long and short of it is simple: Raising money is easier if you have a profitable business, so work yourself stupid to get to that point.

Perspective

There are many clichés that exist to express the problem with being too close to something. Perspective is a difficult thing to find and many of the greats either towered over this problem or fell to its trickery.Seeing the wood from the trees is one of my favourites. Here's how I saw the woods and the trees in Bellagio:[gallery link="file"]Having recently sold Motribe left me feeling very close to the local technology industry. I've been preaching about mobile for nearly four years in the South African space and I've been promoting my baby (Motribe) for 2 years solid. So when I no longer had to go to work every day I felt a bit lost.I was fortunate to be invited to attend a conference in Bellagio, Italy in October. The conference is held at the Rockefeller foundation in the Rockefeller Villa and hosted by the Knight Foundation. I didn't know much about the Knight foundation before I went to the conference so I made a point of doing some research. Here's the short version to catch you up:

Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged.

My roots are heavily embedded in journalism and media and it felt good to be surrounded by fresh minds from all over the world. I met people from Bhutan, Guatemala, India, Canada, Tanzania, USA, Nepal, Zimbabwe and more and all had a unique perspective on media, journalism, technology and the integration of them all.It's very refreshing to witness a coming together of minds so far removed from one another but so interested in finding a common ground and actually then finding one.Seeing what people can accomplish with limited technology, bandwidth, funding and manpower really helped me understand the advantages that I have. Seeing all of these incredible people provided me with some much needed perspective. It was fantastic for me to be reminded that there are amazing people all over the world doing some of the most innovative things I've ever seen. It's good to remember that the cluster that you are in is not the only one you can be in, tap into or be exposed to. Sometimes you need to physically remove yourself to gain the perspective. Sometimes you need to go to Bellagio for a week.The perspective that I was able to bring to the group appeared to be a mobile-specific angle on media and journalism as well as revenue and business models. Most of the people attending were fellows (people who had received a grant or funding to innovate and push boundaries in certain spaces, industries or markets around the world - Knights fellows, Gates fellows, Ashoka fellows and more) who have all done thankless work in their communities and others all over the world.One of the strangest things that I noted from almost all of the fellows was the reluctance to generate revenue off of their ideas and products. In their space generating revenue is seen as a negative because you are taking money from the same people you try to help. I think that that often people respond and respect a service they can pay for. Also, there are revenue models outside of charging users. Most people just lack the perspective to find a sufficient model that works for everyone involved.Perspective is a fantastic thing to have.

A successful first exit - Mxit acquires Motribe

Starting a technology company was something that I did thinking that it would be anything but what it turned out to be. It has been fun, dirty, educational, tiring, invigorating, difficult, tough, stressful and life-altering. When I started Motribe I just thought it would be something fun to do instead of being employed!I was fortunate enough to have amazing support from Justin Stanford, Anton van Vlaanderen, Doug Cherry, Laurence Olivier and Erik van Vlaanderen who collective form the 4Di Capital team. 4Di provided Motribe with an initial seed investment and a follow-on investment. They showed faith in our business and in me as a leader (although I'm sure they had their doubts from time to time!) and I'm incredibly grateful to them for that. Hopefully in the future we'll work together again.Founding, building and keeping Motribe alive and kicking for the past two years has been the most rewarding experience of my career. It has also been the most difficult thing that I've ever had to do. Startups in the mobile tech space are easy to begin but extremely difficult to get right and fortunately at Motribe I think that the team managed to get it right.The proof of this pudding is in the selling.Over the past two years I have traveled to London, New York, Texas, Kenya and many other places in search of business opportunities and investment for Motribe. I was turned away many times and succeeded many times. I've taken risks that worked and many that didn't. I've trusted people who have become my closest friends and kept close people who have taught me some of the most important business lessons I'll ever learn.From securing our first client within a week of launching the platform to partnering up with Mxit to launch two incredible apps that my team came up with and executed perfectly, we did what needed to be done.In year one we took up the "Fuck Yeah!" phrase as our company motto. That perfectly sums up the first year of a startup; excited, ambitious and a fuck-yeah attitude to everything. We had tough times in that year, we hired staff, fired staff, signed new clients and lost old ones. We went from having almost no money in the bank to soaring and hiring our current team of 9 people.In year two I was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuck who at some point said: "Hustle your face off." And that's what we did in year two; hustle young man, hustle.After two very short years I am happy to announce that we have successfully sold Motribe to Mxit, Africa's largest social network. You can read the first article written about it here: Mxit buys mobile social network builder, Motribe.It's never easy parting with something that you have invested so much time, effort, blood, sweat and sleepless nights into and this is no different. Mxit is a thriving company with many people to do what needs to be done. I am a starter and an entrepreneur. That's where my heart lies and I believe that's where my passion will continue to grow. I am leaving the Motribe team to seek out new inspiration and the next big idea for the African Continent.I need to thank my team for their solid support and amazing work to get Motribe to where it is today. You are an amazing group of people who all have very bright futures. A founder is only as good as the team he can assemble. It's often said that you should hire people smarter than yourself, I think I did that extremely successfully.For now - I'm taking some time off, going snowboarding, walking my puppy and enjoying the coming Cape Town Summer.I have learned a lot over the past 2 years and in the last 6 months especially. I'll be sure to transfer my learnings into a few articles on this blog soon.

Co-founders: to business or not to business

Marco Gallotta, an extremely gifted technologist and developer posted the following statement on his Facebook page:

Marco GallottaOne 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.

One simple 2012 rule

I am not a fan of new years resolutions. I very rarely make them and when I do, very rarely stick with them and/or complete them.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.

20 Things 2011 taught me about my business

2011 has been one of the most intense, fun and challenging years of my business life. I've had my fair share of insane highs and crushing lows.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?

From the mouth of a new generation

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.

Why legacy professions piss me off

I have not been properly treated or diagnosed by a doctor in years.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.

When you talk about phones, talk about the phone

When you talk about an operating system, talk about the operating system.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?