Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”. This is my favourite quote by Winston Churchill. As an entrepreneur you should expect to fail repeatedly. And especially with technical innovation you have to fail, to perfect your product or service.
The last thing you need, then, while surrounding yourself with the inevitable problems you will encounter while attempting something new and different, is for a known issue to be the one that becomes a major problem in your business.

Notwithstanding the fact that by far the biggest risk when starting a new company are that either the idea sucks or your execution of it sucks (with the result that nobody wants what you create), this to-the-point article by multiple-time entrepreneur Andrew Scott provides a great guide to the nitty-gritty due process that should be followed to ensure you’ve covered the legals and give yourself the best possible framework under which to build your new startup.

http://www.kernelmag.com/features/building-a-company/1455/get-off-the-ground-in-forty-easy-steps/

Source: kernelmag.com

I've written for The Kernel on why we should teach all our kids to code

The Kernel has just published a column piece by yours truly taking a look at the state of computer science education in the UK and making a case that we should be teaching all our kids to code. This is an issue I’m very passionate about, please do check it out and share your thoughts.

This deception happens nearly every day and is especially rampant in Silicon Valley where new business models are created and standard metrics aren’t always available. It also reflects the optimistic nature of the Valley. We want to see exponential growth. We see hockey sticks everywhere. Even worse, these statistics get thrown around in the echo chamber and presented as fact. And as they get reblogged and retweeted, they lose the disclaimers that made them technically true in the first place.

Every time I see a statistic, I try to figure out how much it was tortured. I want to know what it really means as opposed to what the person who is telling me the stat wants me to think it means.

Rocky Agrwal has a great post on VentureBeat calling out Larry Page’s sloppy use of statistics this week while commenting on the growth and engagement of Google+ users. A whole bunch of overzealous bloggers and news sources fell into the trap, misinterpreted his comments and reported Google+ to have grown much faster than in reality, drawing flawed comparisons with Facebook’s daily engagement (credit to Jeff Bercovici at Forbes for calling out the rest of the media with the correct interpretation).

This misuse of statistics and accompanying obsession with vanity metrics is a pet hate of mine. Rocky calls it “intellectual fraud” - but as an entrepreneur you’re fooling yourself just as much. When you start to thrive off other people’s celebration of your vanity metrics you begin to live and breathe your own spin. Just as with announcing your plans in advance, celebrating success based on vanity metrics is likely to give you a premature sense of achievement or completeness, reducing your drive to succeed where it really matters. Worse, you’re likely to be driven to maximise the vanity metrics - actually deviating from your core path.

Just as with all our projects and ventures, ultimately whether Google+ succeeds or fails won’t be down to the press reaction or people’s perception of how big it is. PR is not a sustainable marketing strategy, and the perception of popularity does not make users more likely to enjoy and gain value from your product. On the flip-side, setting overly generous expectations only sets you up for a fall when investors or stakeholders discover the hard truths.

Focus on what matters, and be proud of that.

Source: venturebeat.com

If you are really interested in the challenge of making a big, inefficient market more efficient or if you have spent time digging in and identified a multi-billion dollar market where capturing some small percentage of the consumers leads to a big opportunity, keep your day job. If you believe that starting a company is the shortest path to making a lot of money or if you feel good about the business because natural acquirers in the industry limit the downside, keep punching the clock.

…

If you are overwhelmed by a medical grade compulsion to solve a problem or build a product, and it is easier to start up than to overcome the compulsion, start up. If the idea keeps you from going to bed, wakes you up in the middle of the night and gets you up in the morning and starting up is the only way to cure the insomnia, start up. If all your friends are sick of hearing about how you are going to change the world by starting up and you keep preaching into the doubt, start up.

If you think you want to start up, please don’t - Sneakerhead VC 

He’s right. Startups are hard. If you take the plunge, you better know it’s the deep end - and you can’t see the pool edge.

If there’s doubt, there’s no doubt. But if you decide you’re sufficiently insane, welcome to the club!

Source: sneakerheadvc.com

I’ll be contributing to The Kernel

I’ll be contributing monthly posts to newly launched online magazine The Kernel, generally with a tech slant, providing insights, opinion and reporting from a technical entrepreneur’s perspective.

My first post was published during the pre-launch beta last month - Nailing That Elusive Technical Co-founder. Feedback and suggestions welcome..

The Kernel welcomes its latest columnists

The Kernel’s managing editor introduces our second wave of columnists: correspondents from America, Spain, France and eastern Europe, a developer specialist and writers on social media and science.

Source: kernelmag.com