Defrag your Hard Drive

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Play the video (Hawaii Road Runner customers only)

When was the last time you defragged your hard drive? If your computer is more than a year or so old, chances are your files are heavily fragmented all over the drive, which typically results in poor performance.

The defragmentation process reviews your hard drive and determines if it needs to be reorganized (defragged). There is a simple utility called “Disk Defragmenter” in your accessories, system tools folder (Windows only) that you should run about 1x per year that will keep your hard drive well organized and giving you the best possible performance.

It’s easy to do and pretty safe, though this might be a good time to make sure you’ve got a good backup.

Quick thought on Executive Summaries

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Many Exec Summs I read are either too long or too wordy. Here’s some bullets/thoughts to keep in mind when writing yours:

  • Its purpose is to give the investor enough to see if they are interested.
  • It’s not to give in-depth info, that’s what the pitch/slides/businessPlan is for.
  • In many ways, you want to give enough to get them interested, enough for them to say “hey, lets look more into this”.
  • Investors are pretty smart and they can go through something really quickly and know whether they are interested or not.
  • The ES’ purpose is to state the plan in a quick and easy-to-digest way so they don’t have to think or move around it to get what they need to know.
  • LESS is ALWAYS better. Why? Because it forces you to only keep what’s absolutely necessary, allowing the reader/investor to cut through the fat and get to the meat in the quickest way.

How much of your own money have you invested?

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I remember one presentation made by a CEO who had claimed to take several companies public beforehand, yet here he was pitching to raise a relatively small amount of money that someone with his alleged previous success would have easily been able to self-fund. When the investors asked him why he didn’t just fund his own venture, his answer was, “My wife won’t let me”. I’m sure he was telling the truth (my wife won’t let me invest in all the deals I want to either), but he definitely lost a lot of points with some of the investors in the audience.

This simple question (How much of your own money have you put in the venture) is an obvious one that you should be prepared to answer. In addition to looking for the direct answer, investors are also trying to subliminally find out:

How successful have you been on your previous ventures?
If you have presented a history of previous successes, you must have money in the bank, right? If you don’t have money in the bank, then you either didn’t make as much money as your success claimed, or you spent it all on something else.

How confident are you in your current venture?
An obvious point, but extremely important nonetheless. If you’re raising $X and asking investors to pony up their money, surely you have already stepped up to the plate. If you don’t have money in the bank, did you mortgage the house to raise capital? Hock the car?

If you haven’t invested any of your own money, don’t skirt the question and exceed expectations by proactively addressing the subliminal questions. Some investors will disqualify you right away regardless, but if you have an honest and compelling story that answers both the direct and subliminal questions, you may be able to come out of it alive.

I’m not the only one that thinks Google is for search only

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A while back I wrote that Google is trying to do too much and hardly succeeding at anything other than search.

Its nice to see someone else agreeing with me. Read Don Dodge’s “Google a one trick pony?”

Listen to a live pitch to real VCs

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Here’s a cool post “Gnomedex 6: Should TagJag be funded ?” from Jeff Clavier that talks about how Chris Pirillo had the creative idea to do a live pitch to VCs about his company TagJag. I suggest you read it as the basic advice is excellent, pointing out many mistakes that entrepreneurs make. Also, listen to the mp3 file of the presentation.

Management Wisdom: Firing People

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I’ve had to fire quite a few people over my past n companies. Some firings went really well. Others were a complete disaster, especially when I had to fire those that were consumed by the Dark Side. Wish I had read “When Firing Someone, Focus On Those Who Remain” back then. And if you’re planning on starting/running/building a company, I suggest you read these links too.

Still watching broadcast TV?

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Scanning through this TechCrunch post Whither Television Programming? drove me to jot some quick thoughts on the future of TV:

I rarely, if ever, sit through an entire broadcast TV program. I do, however, watch about 2 hours of recorded TV a day and probably another 1/2 hr of Internet-downloaded videos.

I can easily see a day when you will simply subscribe to your favorite video entertaiment via vodcasting (video clips delivered to your computer via podcasting technology) and never go near your cable TV again.

In fact, many will argue that day has arrived already, with the ever-growing lists of vodcasts one can subscribe too. Maybe so, but those are still in the amateur category. I want to subscribe to my favorite news program and watch it on my laptop/pc/media center.

I think the big question/challenge for the traditional media is how to not lose ad revenue. How do you stop people from FFing through the ads?

Easy, but hard: Make the ads relevant to the viewer. Develop a 1-1 with me and what I’m looking for. Do that, and I’ll probably hit rewind and play the ad a few times.

Do you really need a superstar executive team for your startup?

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A startup needs a small, lean team where every person can perform some key aspect of product development. This lets you get to market cheap and fast. What you don’t need in the startup stages is a superstar CxO team (CEO, COO, CFO, CxO).

Why? Several reasons:

  1. High level executives are used to directing, overseeing, and building teams of people around them. They don’t usually do the actual work. I once hired a “Marketing VP” in one of my small companies, assuming she would do it all and save me money, but I quickly found out that she herself couldn’t really do the work and was used to having the “Agency” get the job done. I got far less than what I needed but it cost me way more.
  2. CxOs don’t *really* want to do a startup, blood-sweat-tears-wise. They want to leverage their contacts and experience and direct *everyone else* to get the work done. This is a very needed skill, later on in the game, but not at the very beginning.
  3. CxOs want (and perhaps deserve) to get paid a lot, but your company might be too small or to nascent to take advantage of what they can really do. It’s like using a steam shovel to dig a small hole. Sure, you can do it, but you could have also dug that same hole with a hand-held shovel that’s sitting in your garage.
  4. True CxOs consider themselves mercenaries, and if the tide turns the wrong way, very little holds them back from jumping ship. I remember talking to a potential strategic buyer one day who was super proud of this awesome Fortune 1000 CEO he had hired, only to see the shiny new executive leave the company holding the bag less than a year later.

    5. If it’s your startup, remember, it’s really up to you and your small band of brothers to get the job done in the early stages. Get your product up and running with some customers and ideally some revenue. Then get a *list* of potential CxO candidates who are interested so that when you start building up relationships with your investors, you’ll still be lean and mean, yet have a pool of talent you can pull from when you need to.

    Thanks to Ed Sim’s “Top-heavy teams” which motivated me to write mine.

Success checklist for software startups

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Kleiner Perkins has a condensed list that describes what the ultimate software startup needs. I suggest you ask someone other than yourself (or anyone else in your company) measure your product against this list and rate how well you do against each point:

  • Instant Value to customers – solve a problem or create value with the first use
  • Viral adoption – Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
  • Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
  • Simple, intuitive user experience – no training required.
  • Personalized user experience – customizable
  • Easy configuration based on application or usage templates
  • Context aware – adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.

Hat tip:

Don Dodge

Paul Kedrosky