Book Report: Do More Faster

I finally got to catch up on some reading recently and got through ‘Do More Faster’ by Brad Feld and David Cohen.  The best way I could describe the book is: a collection of blog posts (with commentary) by people from across the spectrum within the startup ecosystem.  Contributors include founders, VC’s, lawyers, engineers, and more. 

I definitely recommend the book.  It’s a quick read, offers a lot of unique perspectives, and contains a bunch of useful advice for both new and experienced entrepreneurs.

The book is divided into seven themes, with a collection of short posts under each theme. Below are some of my favorite blurbs from each theme.  Enjoy.

Theme 1 - Idea and Vision

“… if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long.” 

“Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there.”

“By shipping early and often you have a unique competitive advantage of getting useful feedback on your product.”

Theme 2 - People

“… the biggest hiring mistake entrepreneurs can make — hiring those less capable than themselves.”

Hire Slowly, Fire Quickly - “hiring a new person, especially an early one, is like doing an organ transplant.  Even if you think there’s a good match, you need to see if the body accepts or rejects the transplant, and you find out pretty quickly.”

Theme 3 - Execution

“… gather as much data as possible and measure every aspect of your business.  If you don’t instill this discipline at the beginning, you’ll never catch up, and you’ll never have the right information to make the right decisions.”

“Don’t suck at email”

“We use dozens of open source applications (free!) to run our business.  Our philosophy is to outsource everything that we’re not great at to someone who is a proven and scalable leader, preferably without paying them.”

Theme 4 - Product

“Always trim away what you don’t need to be doing and ask yourself, ‘What is the thing that matters most to making progress right now?’ Focus on these and let the other bright ideas sit on the sidelines…”

“Make sure you stay focused and listen to what people need and help them get it. Then do that again, and again, and again.”

Theme 5 - Fundraising

“Don’t forget about bootstrapping”

“Beware of angel investors who aren’t. They’ll put you through endless diligence, play bait-and-switch with your financing, and generally waste your time.”

“Seed investors care about three things… People, Products, and Markets.”

Theme 6 - Legal and Structure

“Like a prom date arranged by your parents, the default entity for your business is probably not the one that you want to dance with, let alone get married to.”

“Vesting is good for you.”

“Your Brother-in-Law is probably not the right corporate lawyer.”

Theme 7 - Work-Life Balance

“… magical things can happen when you can invest where your passion lies.”

“The clarity and perspective that a little time outside the office can provide is priceless.”

Startup Tips and Tools

I Learned Some Important Startup Lessons Playing the Guitar

As a guitarist, I’ve played in various bands and groups over the last 8 years and in the process, learned a lot about doing a startup.  Below are some thoughts about team-building and learning:

Ideally…

When starting a band, regardless of music style, a person generally looks for people that can play specific instruments to fill out the group.  Let’s take a four-piece rock band for instance – a front-man/rhythm guitarist, lead guitarist, bassist, and a drummer.  There’s usually no need for a harp player when trying to play standard rock music, though that could be really cool.

Starting a company should follow very much the same mentality.  Working on a consumer web app, an optimal team of three might include a back-end engineer, front-end dev/designer, and a biz guy.  If mobile is where it’s at, a mobile engineer should be in the founding mix.

A lot of people stress finding ‘complements’ when building a team but I’d say that filling roles is a better way to frame the process.  Being lean and iterating quickly is very much a function of having the right people specializing on the necessary parts that move the company forward.

What usually happens…

I know it’s easy to talk about building the perfect team.  The truth: it’s very hard to do – especially in NYC. There’s a ton of great talent, but there’s an even bigger demand for that talent.  You’ll often see business guys camping out and looking for programmers at hackathons and other meetups around the city.  There are a lot of awesome (and shitty) ideas – and entrepreneurs are having a hard time filling the roles to help bring them to life.

This is where adaptability comes in.  When we were starting bands in high school, nobody could ever find a bass player.  It’s such a necessary part of every band. There were too many guitarists and a number of awesome drummers, but maybe one or two bass players in the whole school who were already in bands.  What did we do in these situations? Someone picked up the bass.

If you look at the NY startup scene, you’ll come across stories like those of Vinicius Vacanti of Yipit and Nate Westheimer with Ohours.  Vin wasn’t able to fill the role of technical co-founder for his startup.  Nate was tired of being a ‘non-coding product executive’, having his ideas sit on his ‘mental shelf, or tiring the ears of friends and loved ones’.  When it came down to it, both of these guys put their heads down, focused, and learned to code in order to put out a minimum viable product.  Today, Yipit has raised a $6 million dollar round, and Nate’s Ohours has been already been acquired by Hirelite in order to help foster face-to-face relationships.

The fact that both Vin and Nate were adaptable and open to learning new things directly led to their respective successes.   Entrepreneurs always have to be ready to learn new things and fill gaps quickly.  If you can’t find a bass player, learn to play it yourself.

Building the right team is crucial to a company’s success.  Ideally, you’ll be able to form the perfect team.  If not, do what you can, and learn what you can’t.

Thanks to Mattan Griffel, Demetri Karagas, Steven Gutentag, Lexi Lewtan, Eugene Song, Murat A. and Natan Edelsburg for reading drafts of this post.