Great progress using Lending Match feature of Lending Club, but one bug

Just under a week ago I made my first attempt to use the Lending Match feature of Lending Club to invest in a whole batch of P2P investment loans all at once. It has worked out well, with just two related glitches. Out of nine loans, eight have already been "Issued", and only one failed to reach 100% funding in the two-week funding period. Not bad at all. I was actually worried that two or three of the loans might not get funded. So, that was the first, almost-expected "glitch". I classify it as a glitch because I have to now manually intervene to "set things right." Now, I need to select another loan to substitute for that rejection. Oops... here is the second glitch. Even though that rejected loan has already dropped off the Funding/Issued list, my funding amount has not yet been credited back to my account, so I can't reinvest it yet. To me, that is more of an outright bug rather than a simple "glitch." But, I am confident that either later today or tomorrow morning the money will be credited and I can select a replacement loan for investment.

My current Net Annualized Return is displayed as 13.44%, before the new loan batch. That puts me up at the 78% percentile. The new batch of loans may push me up to 82% or so. I think I want to be at around the 85% to 90% range, rather aggressive, but not way out there with the whacky 10% fringe nuts.

Based on my quick success, I am already looking at some other "extra" cash that is earning 0.00000001% interest in my Fidelity account and trying to decide whether to "save" it with SmartyPig.com and get 2.01% APY or "invest" it with Lending Club and get maybe 17%. Maybe I'll split it in half and do both.

Further down my list of things to do is to check out the FOLIOfn Note Trading Platform. I want to see which notes might be selling at a premium and maybe sell a few to lock in some bigger gains.

-- Jack Krupansky

Trying out the Lending Match feature of Lending Club

My Lending Club investment loan account has been on auto-pilot for some time now. All has been well since I last blogged about it in early August. All of the loan payments have been on time. In fact, enough interest and principle repayment has come in that I now have enough from those two sources alone to make a new loan. I also finally have some new work income coming in again, so I am also adding new funding for another batch of loans, the same amount as my original funding. The difference is that this time I will try out the Lending Match feature which automatically selects and recommends a batch of loans given an investment amount and a target interest rate.

The feature gives you a slider bar which displays the interest rate. As you slide between lower and higher interest rates it also displays a pie chart with the percentage breakdown of each credit risk class. I was tempted to go for 18% or even 20%, but the resulting risk profile seemed too "risky" for me. I pulled back and finally settled on 15% as an optimal risk profile for me. My current annualized return is about 13.5% and loan rates have risen by 0.5% since I made my investment loans back in June, so 15% is only a modest increment above my current risk.

Lending Match selected my nine investment loans. I wasn't comfortable with two of the recommendations, so I deselected them, and Lending Match recommended replacements that I was comfortable with. I did this on Thursday. So far, two of the nine have reached full funding and are awaiting final review by Lending Club. A third is very close to full funding. Most of the rest are progressing with funding fine, with only two or three that may be questionable as to whether they will reach full funding before their two week funding period expires.

So far, I am extremely happy with the results I have gotten with Lending Club.

I will do a few more experiments in the next couple of months, and then consider a more serious investment as long as my work income holds up and I start accumulating a little cash to invest.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my Kiva micro-loan for the month of October

I made a new micro-loan through Kiva for the month of October. My intention is to make a new micro-loan every month, if possible, from repayments for past micro-loans. Repayments in August and September were more than enough to fund this latest micro-loan (and for a few more months as well.) All of these micro-loans are for micro-entrepreneurs in business in developing countries.

This one was for a group of 17 (mostly women) in Ayacucho, Peru for their individual business needs, especially retail. It is an 8-month micro-loan for a total of $3,025, of which I lent $25. The micro-loan was already disbursed to the micro-entrepreneur on August 26, 2009 by the local partner. Kiva is raising funds to essentially buy that loan from the local partner.

This was a group loan, meaning that although the individual members of the group take their money and go their own ways, the entire group is responsible for the total group payment each month, even if some members are unable to pay and the others make up for the shortfall..

I was going to make a loan to a micro-entrepreneur in the Phillipines, but Kiva has a new policy that permits their foreign partners to decide not to cover foreign exchange losses (e.g., if the U.S. dollar declines relative to the local currency.) I have no idea how big a deal this might be, so I restricted myself to only selecting loans that are not tagged with this risk.

I now have only one micro-loan that is delinquent. It is actually just due to the field partner experiencing difficulty with transferring the money back to Kiva due to some new local government requirement.

I have made a total of 22 micro-loans to date, since December 2008.

Here is my Kiva public lender page: http://www.kiva.org/lender/JackKrupansky

Note: This is all real and good, but these micro-loans do not net any interest to us micro-lenders. Kiva's fine print:

Lending to the working poor through Kiva involves risk of principal loss.
Kiva does not guarantee repayment nor do we offer a financial return on your loan.

Still, at least we know our money is really helping somebody better their lives in a visible way rather than put the money in a bank account or money market fund where who knows what it helps to pay for or what good it does and for only a few pennies of profit in our pockets.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my Kiva micro-loan for the month of September

I made a new micro-loan through Kiva for the month of September. My intention is to make a new micro-loan every month, if possible, from repayments for past micro-loans. Repayments in August were more than enough to fund this latest micro-loan (and one for October, November, and December as well.) All of these micro-loans are for micro-entrepreneurs in business in developing countries.

This one was for a group of five (one man, four women) in Kabul, Afghanistan for their individual business needs, including: purchasing beading materials, fruit cart business, general store, bakery business, and selling of books, pens, and other things. It is an 11-month micro-loan for a total of $1,075, of which I lent $25. The micro-loan was already disbursed to the micro-entrepreneur on July 27, 2009 by the local partner. Kiva is raising funds to essentially buy that loan from the local partner.

I now have only one micro-loan that is delinquent. It is actually just due to the field partner experiencing difficulty with transferring the money back to Kiva due to some new local government requirement. The other loan which was tagged as being delinquent has now been fully repaid.

I have made a total of 21 micro-loans to date, since December 2009.

Here is my Kiva public lender page: http://www.kiva.org/lender/JackKrupansky

Note: This is all real and good, but these micro-loans do not net any interest to us micro-lenders. Kiva's fine print:

Lending to the working poor through Kiva involves risk of principal loss.
Kiva does not guarantee repayment nor do we offer a financial return on your loan.

Still, at least we know our money is really helping somebody better their lives in a visible way rather than put the money in a bank account or money market fund where who knows what it helps to pay for or what good it does and for only a few pennies of profit in our pockets.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my Kiva micro-loan for the month of August

I made a new micro-loan through Kiva for the month of August. My intention is to make a new micro-loan every month, if possible, from repayments for past micro-loans. Repayments in July were more than enough to fund this latest micro-loan (and one for September as well.)

This one was for a young married man, with children, in Palestine who cleans carpets. It is a 20-month micro-loan for a total of $1,500, of which I lent $25. The money is to be used to buy cleaning supplies.  The micro-loan was already disbursed to the micro-entrepreneur on July 16, 2009 by the local partner. Kiva is raising funds to essentially buy that loan from the local partner.

Two of my micro-loans are delinquent. One is actually just due to the field partner experiencing difficulty with transferring the money back to Kiva due to some new local government requirement. I suspect that the other is also experiencing some local problem and is already 75% repaid. Both are in central Africa.

Here is my Kiva public lender page: http://www.kiva.org/lender/JackKrupansky

Note: This is all real and good, but these micro-loans do not net any interest to us micro-lenders. Kiva's fine print:

Lending to the working poor through Kiva involves risk of principal loss.
Kiva does not guarantee repayment nor do we offer a financial return on your loan.

Still, at least we know our money is really helping somebody better their lives in a visible way rather than put the money in a bank account or money market fund where who knows what it helps to pay for or what good it does and for only a few pennies of profit in our pockets.

-- Jack Krupansky

First Lending Club payment fully posted to my account

Since I posted yesterday about the first payment on my first Lending Club investment loan which was due five days ago, the updating process has completed and the first payment has been fully credited to my account. Done! Technically, I probably should say that it took four business days for the payment to post after the payment due date since the payment was due on Sunday.

The payment amount for my $25 share of a $7,700 motorcycle loan was $0.83, consisting of $0.26 accrued interest and $0.57 principal repayment. Lending club charges a 1% service fee, which was $0.0083 or rounded up to $0.01, so my net payment was $0.82, which was simply added to the cash sitting in my Lending Club account (which earns no interest unless I reinvest it.)

My rough calculation suggests that the 1% service fee reduced my nominal 12.53% interest rate by about 0.48% to roughly 12.05%. Still very decent. Over the term of the loan that discount to my rate will rise since although the monthly payment stays the same and the service charge is based on the total payment, the interest portion of the payment trends down to zero.

The Account Activity screen is now updated and shows both the loan payment and the Lender Service Fee.

The first payment for my second investment loan is due today. Just as wth the first loan, I see that the accrued interest is reset to $0.00. I do also see a line on the Loan Performance screen for the loan that shows the payment status as Scheduled, but I see that line for all of my loans. Based on my experience with the first loan payment, I believe that I will see this payment fully posted next Thursday morning.

I just noticed that the Loan Performance screen has a Credit Score Change field that alerts you if the borrowers credit score has changed. For one of my loans I see that their score is Up. Neat feature.

All in all, everything is proceeding smoothly.

Move over Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Chase... us Lending Club investors are out to eat your lunch! Really.

-- Jack Krupansky

Waiting for initial payments on my Lending Club P2P loan investments

I have successfully completed my initial batch of person-to-person (P2P) loans ("notes") through Lending Club. I have invested 20% of the modest amount ($1,000) than I have earmarked for experimenting with this new investment vehicle. I have $25 investments in eight (8) different consumer loans, with a range of risk profiles. All loans are for a 3-year term.

I actually put in a total of 15 orders, but seven of them either did not get to 100% funding by the end of the 14-day funding period or failed to get verification of employment or income. These "failures" might seem alarming, but they really just show how picky and conservative Lending Club really is.

Unfortunately, the other 80% of my money is sitting at Lending Club idle and does not earn any interest. I could withdraw the money, but I intend to invest it by the end of the summer and it would not earn very much in a money market account anyway.

What's next?

The next step is to wait for the initial monthly payments to come in and see how that process works in practice, as opposed to theory.

My first monthly payment is for $0.83 on July 12, 2009, just 5 days from now. That 83 cents is my share of a $7,700 motorcycle loan that is rated C1 (somewhat risky) and has a rate of 12.53%. Lending Club takes about 0.7% of that, which should net me 11.83%. So far, Lending Club says I have 22 cents of accrued interest (updates every day). The 83 cents includes both accrued interest and repayment of principle. So, of that initial 83 cents, about 25 cents will be accrued interest and 58 cents repiad principle. As each month goes by I will get the same total payment (although it may vary by a penny due to fractional cents), but less interest and more repayment of principle. I am not positive that the 83 cents is actually my net or the gross before Lending Club takes their 0.7%. That is one of the details I will need to verify when the first payment comes in.

Payments are deducted automatically from the borrowers bank account via ACH debit. My share of the payment will accumulate in my Lending Club account, but will not accumulate interest. Lending Club has a reinvestment feature, but that requires that at least $25 be available in the account. I do have my remaining 80% of my initial capital, but I intend to wait until the end of the summer before deciding whether and how to invest deeper into Lending Club. The reinvestment feature searches for loans that meet parameters that you set and sends you an email alert.

My second note will make its first payment 5 days later, on July 17, 2009. The third is a day later, on July 18, 2009. I have two payments due on July 22, 2009, another due on July 23, 2009, another due on July 28, 2009, and the last due on August 9, 2009.

So, for now, all I have planned for the next two months is to sit, wait, and watch. And to blog about my experiences.

Oh, and I still need to research various questions, such as how the interest income gets reported for taxes.

I also want to spend some time sifting their a Google search of "Lending Club" and "sucks" to see if there are any legitimate gripes about Lending Club before I get in too deep.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my Kiva micro-loan for the month of July

I made a new micro-loan through Kiva for the month of July. My intention is to make a new micro-loan every month, in large part from repayments for past micro-loans.

This one was for a married woman, with married children, in Managua, Nicaragua who farms. It is a 14-month micro-loan for a total of $625, of which I lent $25. The money is to be used to buy fertilizer and supplies. I did not realize at the time I made the loan, but replayment is at the end of the term (14 months, August 2010) rather than monthly. I'm not sure I want to put much money into this form of loan, although this one time is fine. Need to read all the details more closely next time.  The micro-loan was already disbursed to the micro-entrepreneur on June 18, 2009 by the local partner. Kiva is raising funds to essentially buy that loan from the local partner.

Here is my Kiva public lender page: http://www.kiva.org/lender/JackKrupansky

Note: This is all real and good, but these micro-loans do not net any interest to us micro-lenders. Kiva's fine print:

Lending to the working poor through Kiva involves risk of principal loss.
Kiva does not guarantee repayment nor do we offer a financial return on your loan.

Still, at least we know our money is really helping somebody better their lives in a visible way rather than put the money in a bank account or money market fund where who knows what it helps to pay for or what good it does and for only a few pennies of profit in our pockets.

-- Jack Krupansky

Withdrew 60% of my Kiva funding

I went ahead and withdrew 60% of my Kiva micro-lending funding (back to my PayPal account). I intend to keep the remaining 40% in Kiva and reinvest in new Kiva loans as repayments come in.

I have been quite happy with Kiva, other than the one limitation that there is no interest paid on my investments. If they paid even a modest level of interest, say 1-2%, I would happily invest A LOT MORE in Kiva. A 2% return would cover most defaults and make Kiva investment money self-sustaining.

I may move the money over to Lending Club, or I may park it over at SmartyPig.com where it can earn 3.05% APY.

-- Jack Krupansky

Progress with Lending Club P2P loan investments

I got off to a great start with my initial peer-to-peer (P2P) loans ("notes") through Lending Club, but then things bogged down. Now I am starting to catch up again.

I started by making five small $25 investments in five different notes. I was done, for now. Or so I thought. But only two of the notes were eventually issued. For various reasons, the other three fell through. Two days after I made the investments those three were showing as 100% funded, but still "In Review." At first I thought that simply meant that Lending Club review staff was behind and would eventually catch up. Not quite.

The review process is really two steps. First, the credit bureau is consulted and credit history and credit score and all of that credit history stuff is evaluated. That is actually an automated process. Then the loan is made available for us investors. We get to see a combination of that auomated credit information as well as unverified employment and income information. Why unverified? Well, simply because it takes time and separate manual processes that can only be automated in some cases. The loan description actually does indicate whether the employment and income information has been verified (with an asterisk if it has been verified) and Credit Status Review does say "Under Review" if the displayed information is still unverified. The status will change to "Approved" once Lending Club has completed the employment and income verification. Lending Club is up-front and transparent with all of this, but you (I) need to understand the jargon and I had failed to do so initially. Now I know.

At least now I can understand why so many mortgage originators were so willing to issue "no doc" mortgages back before the financial crisis -- it is a real pain to verify income and employment.

Lending Club says that they are in talks with a number of payroll service providers so that they will gradually be able to automatically verify employment and income for an increasing portion of loans.

Why not wait until Credit Status Review says "Approved" before selecting a loan for investment? Simple: Because a lot of the "best" loans will already have gotten to 100% funded by that time and no longer be available for you to make an investment. There is no risk selecting an "Under Review" note, it is simply the inconvenience that your investment will be returned within a few days and the money is tied up during that review period.

So, I went ahead and selected another four loans (total of ten). My goal is still to get five or six loan investments.

So far, another loan has been issued (four so far), two more are "In Review" (fully funded), and three are "In Funding."

It is difficult to say how many of those five "open" investments will finally be "issued." I did not intend to do five more, but it's okay if all five get issued. Maybe only one or two will ultimately get issued and that would be ideal for me. Or, maybe they all fall through and then I will have to go back and search for new loans to invest in.

But the bottom line is that I am starting to get into the swing of the whole process.

I actually got to meet the executives of Lending Club last week. I'll post about that separately.

-- Jack Krupansky

Invested in my fifth Lending Club P2P loan

I made my 5th investment in a peer-to-peer (P2P) loan ("note") through Lending Club, $25 in a note for $11,000 for someone to buy a wooden sailboat, at an interest rate of 14.74% for a term of 3 years. The loan grade is D3, which is higher risk due to the borrower's credit score being in the 660-678 range.

Read about my fourth investment loan.

-- Jack Krupansky

My first Lending Club peer-to-peer loan investment is now fully funded

The first Lending Club peer-to-peer (P2P) loan ("note") that I invested in yesterday is now fully funded, closed, and "issued." It was only 60% funded when I invested yesterday, but things move fast on Lending Club. This loan ("note") is for $10,000 intended for credit card refinancing. It is a low-risk loan (grade A5) with an interest rate of 9.63%. The first payment (interest only) is due on July 17, 2009.

I am still considering investing in another one or two loans in the very near future to round out my initial portfolio.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my fourth Lending Club peer-to-peer loan investment

I just made my fourth investment in a peer-to-peer loan ("note") through Lending Club. This note was for someone to remodel their kitchen and bathroom. The loan is for $5,000. My investment is for $25 of that note. The interest rate is 9.32%. The term of the note is 3 years. The loan grade is A4, which is low risk. The borrower's credit score is in the 714-749 range. The note is still "In funding", with 13 days left in its funding period, so it is possible that it does not get fully funded and I get my investment back, but it is already 43% funded in just one day.

I may do another one or two investments in the very near future, but my initial four investments cover a wide range, from two low risk notes, to one moderate risk and one higher risk note, with a variety of purposes, including educational expenses, a motorcycle, home improvement, and debt consolidation.

That's enough for one day!

Read about my third investment loan.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my third Lending Club peer-to-peer loan investment

I made my third investment in a peer-to-peer loan ("note") through Lending Club. This note was for a student for educational expenses. The loan is for $4,000. My investment is for $25 of that note. The interest rate is 15.37%. The term of the note is 3 years. The loan grade is D5, which is a lot riskier. The borrower's credit score is in the 660-678 range.

For my next loan... Maybe I'll fund some home improvement.

Read about my second investment loan.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my second Lending Club peer-to-peer loan investment

I went ahead and made my second investment in a peer-to-peer loan ("note") through Lending Club. This note was for someone here in New York buying a motorcycle. The loan is for $7,700. My investment is for #25 of that note. The interest rate is 12.53%. The term of the note is 3 years. The loan grade is C1, which is a bit riskier. The borrower's credit score is in the 679-713 range.

For my next loan... Maybe I'll fund some home improvement.

I will also consider a somewhat higher-risk note in the 13% interest range.

Read about my first investment loan.

-- Jack Krupansky

Just made my first Lending Club peer-to-peer loan investment

I just now made my first investment in a peer-to-peer loan ("note") through Lending Club.  I opened a Lending Club account as an investor (lender) last Wednesday. The initial funding transfer from my bank account (actually my Fidelity brokerage account) completed yesterday.

I am starting with a modest $1,000 initial funding and intend to invest $25 in each peer-to-peer loan (called a note.) That will eventually spread my risk over 40 loans (notes.) After I get at least six months to a year of experience (and depending on my own financial condition) I will consider how much more to invest.

A typical Lending Club loan (note) would be in the $5,000 to $25,000 range, so my little $25 is only a small amount of the risk of default for a given loan (note.)

The standard Lending Club note is for a 3-year term.

I am still a little concerned about the dicey state of the economy and the risk that even people with good jobs today might lose them and default on their debts, so I am currently thinking of investing only a small portion of my funding up front, then a little more over the summer, then some more in the early fall, and maybe the rest as we start to see some economic strengthening and reversal of job losses later in the fall and into early next year. At least that is my initial "plan."

I'll probably invest about $100 to $150 upfront just to get some experience with the whole process. That would be small pieces of four to six loans (notes.)

I'll probably spread my investments over a range of credit risks, just to see how different risk levels perform and to average up to a higher return.

My first investment was for $25 of a $10,000 note intended for credit card refinancing. The loan grade is A5, indicating low-risk. The interest rate will be 9.63%. The borrower works for Best Buy. Their credit score is in the 714-749 range. There are a lot of other credit-related details that Lending Club provides. The note is still "In Funding", indicating that it has another 8 days left in its 14-day funding period. If investors do not buy up the entire note by the end of that period that note will not "close" and our investments will be returned.

For my next loan... I guess I'll get it over with and loan somebody money to buy a motorcycle!

-- Jack Krupansky

Opened a Lending Club account to be a peer-to-peer lender

I just finished opening a Lending Club account as an investor (lender.) This online Web site supports what is called peer-to-peer lending. It lets people like me who have extra money to lend to... other people like me who need money. As the web site says:

Lending Club is a social lending network that brings together investors and creditworthy borrowers to offer value beyond traditional banks.

Borrowers with good credit can get personal loans from $1,000 to $25,000 at interest rates that are often significantly better than rates from conventional sources.

For lenders, money invested goes immediately to Lending Club's approved borrower members. Most lender members spread their investment across tens or hundreds of qualified borrowers. Notes (that correspond to specific borrower loans) are offered only by means of a prospectus.

The next step is to complete the initial funding of my account so that I can start matking loans. I initiated the transfer of funds this morning, but it may not complete until next Tuesday.

My expectation is that I will be able to make some initial loans in a week.

I am starting out with $1,000. I still need to do some more reading and strategizing, but I expect that I will spread my risk by only contributing $25 to each loan. That would give me 40 loans initially. Also, I may only commit half or even a third of my money at the beginning and wait a few months to see how things play out.

A typical loan might be in the $5,000 to $15,000 range with an interest rate in the 9% to 13% range, based on the grade of the loan.

A lot of credit background information is available for each "note" (loan), including income and credit score range and loan "grade", so a decision can be made based on verified facts and risk.

Unlike Kiva which is great as a non-profit charity for helping the working poor around the world, Lending Club actually permits me to make a decent profit from my lending.

I do have a fair amount of concern about lending in the current economic climate. Even if somebody has a great job today, they might lose it by the end of the day. I might in fact decide to defer most of my lending until later in the summer just to minimize the chance of lending too much to tomorrow's unemployed.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my Kiva micro-loan for the month of June

I made a new micro-loan through Kiva for the month of June. My intention is to make a new micro-loan every month, in large part from repayments for past micro-loans.

This one was for a group of 18 micro-entrepreneurs in Tanzania who are making furniture. It is a 6-month micro-loan for a total of $4,550, of which I lent $25. The money is to be used to buy leather, cloth for sofas, and varnish for wood. Its first repayment is scheduled for August 2009. The micro-loan was already disbursed to the micro-entrepreneur group on May 27, 2009 by the local partner. Kiva is raising funds to essentially buy that loan from the local partner.

Here is my Kiva public lender page: http://www.kiva.org/lender/JackKrupansky

Note: This is all real and good, but these micro-loans do not net any interest to us micro-lenders. Kiva's fine print:

Lending to the working poor through Kiva involves risk of principal loss.
Kiva does not guarantee repayment nor do we offer a financial return on your loan.

Still, at least we know our money is really helping somebody better their lives in a visible way rather than put the money in a bank account or money market fund where who knows what it helps to pay for or what good it does and for only a few pennies of profit in our pockets.

-- Jack Krupansky

Is there a dog on the end of your leash?

Uber VC Brad Feld had a Twitter tweet containing the following great characterization of a dysfunctional organization:

each person on the team had a leash in their hand but didn't know if there was a dog at the other end

So, do you know what's at the end of your leash?

Or maybe you just are not sure which end of the leash you are on?!

-- Jack Krupansky

Patrick Dixon on building a better business

Somehow I managed to pick up Patrick Dixon as a follower on Twitter. I checked him out in the Wikipedia and found that he has a book entitled Building a Better Business that is a guide to management, marketing and motivation, covering issues ranging from team leadership and change management to corporate governance, branding, and marketing.

Key points:

• People will only follow you if they see you're ahead, are convinced you know the route, trust you, and want to get there too.
• Life's too short to sell things you don't believe in.
• The future of marketing belongs to honest information, accurate data and clear claims based on truth.
• Every product and service is sold on the promise of a better future. The purpose of business is to deliver on the promise, and profit is the reward for doing so.
• Business strategy is the battleplan for a better future.
• You can have the greatest strategy in the world, but what is the point if no one cares?
• Connect with all the passions people have—for themselves, their families, their communities and wider world—and they will follow you to the ends of the earth, buy your products and services with pride, and may even be willing to work for you for next to nothing.
• When you have been close to death it makes you think about life.
• Give people a convincing reason and they will lay down their very lives.
• All the most powerful speeches ever made point to a better future.
• You cannot have strong leadership without passion.
• Mission is at the heart of what you do as a team. Goals are merely steps to its achievement.

All really good points to keep in mind at all times.

Here's his book on Amazon:

Note: I do get a tiny commission from Amazon if you buy a book after clicking on the cover images or link above that redirect to Amazon. Thanks!

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my Kiva micro-loan for the month of May

I made a new micro-loan through Kiva for the month of May. My intention is to make a new micro-loan every month, in large part from repayments for past micro-loans.

This one was for a weaver in Guatemala who makes women's clothes. It is a 14-month micro-loan for a total of $300, of which I lent $25. Its first repayment is scheduled for July 2009. The micro-loan was already disbursed to the micro-entrepreneur on April 24, 2009 by the local partner. Kiva is raising funds to essentially buy that loan from the local partner.

Here is my Kiva public lender page: http://www.kiva.org/lender/JackKrupansky

Note: This is all real and good, but these micro-loans do not net any interest to us micro-lenders. Kiva's fine print:

Lending to the working poor through Kiva involves risk of principal loss.
Kiva does not guarantee repayment nor do we offer a financial return on your loan.

Still, at least we know our money is really helping somebody better their lives in a visible way rather than put the money in a bank account or money market fund where who knows what it helps to pay for or what good it does and for only a few pennies of profit in our pockets.

-- Jack Krupansky

Must be able to prioritize multiple tasks and manage time efficiently

A description for a "Lean Champion" position appeared in my email inbox this morning and one requirement stood out:

Must be able to prioritize multiple tasks and manage time efficiently.

Nothing new or unusual about that, and that seems to be the requirement for almost all jobs, and I am quite used to that, but I suddenly realized that it does not sit right with me. I have spent decades doing that, but is it really the best way to go, at least for some of us?

Rarely do I have only one task in front of me, but the truth is that it usually makes much more sense to tackle tasks in an opportunistic manner to optimize over the long run and do each piece of work when you feel most effective at tackling that piece rather than focus or obsess on which task is top "priority" at the moment. Sure, sometimes there are tasks that need to get done in the very near term, but the goal should be to avoid being in such a position where short-term "firefighting" is the norm.

Do I manage time efficiently? Usually not in any strict sense. I am much more focused on effectiveness than raw efficiency. Maybe efficiency is appealing since you can measure it more easily, but that does not mean that the organization is getting any greater value than if effectiveness was the goal.

Another way I read "Must be able to prioritize multiple tasks and manage time efficiently" is as "Must be willing to be micromanaged and work in a chaotic environment where priorities change on a daily basis." That, of course, really sucks, but is oh so typical. The boss (or even CEO) cannot get his priorities (or goals or values) straight, so he dumps everything on the underlings.

Another common interpretation for "manage time efficiently" is that the worker does not complain and always does as they are told.

Finally, although being "agile" is a good thing, treating people as if ADD was a job requirement is not such a good thing.

-- Jack Krupansky

Experimental wiki for the EntConnect entrepreneurs conference

We are experimenting with using wiki technology for the EntConnect entrepreneurs conference.

The EntConnect wiki "home" page is here.

The schedule for EntConnect 2009 is here, for posterity.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my Kiva micro-loan for the month of April

I made a new micro-loan through Kiva for the month of April. My intention is to make a new micro-loan every month, in large part from repayments for past micro-loans.

This one was for a man and his wife who has been selling toys and children's clothes in Mongolia for eight years now, to expand their business. It is a 26-month micro-loan for a total of $1,150, of which I lent $25. Its first repayment is scheduled for June 2009. The micro-loan was already disbursed to them on March 30, 2009 by the local partner. Kiva is raising funds to essentially buy that loan from the local partner.

Here is my Kiva public lender page: http://www.kiva.org/lender/JackKrupansky

Note: This is all real and good, but these micro-loans do not net any interest to us micro-lenders. Kiva's fine print:

Lending to the working poor through Kiva involves risk of principal loss.
Kiva does not guarantee repayment nor do we offer a financial return on your loan.

Still, at least we know our money is really helping somebody better their lives in a visible way rather than put the money in a bank account or money market fund where who knows what it helps to pay for or what good it does and for only a few pennies of profit in our pockets.

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect entrepreneurs conference underway

The EntConnect 2009 entrepreneurs conference is now underway. The keynote presentation this morning is by social media guru Bill French of MyST Technology, focused primarily on Twitter.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well. The conference runs from Thursday, March 26, 2009 through Sunday, March 29, 2009.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org. It now has some agenda and schedule information, including skiing on Thursday and fun activities on Friday. I will be around both evenings, but traveling during the day on Thursday and up in Boulder on Friday.

I have been attending the conference since it first started in 1992 as ME SKI '92 and then evolved into ENTCON and then Entrepreneurial Connections or EntConnect.

For a little nostalgia, check out the original ME SKI '92 conference announcement.

-- Jack Krupansky

Bill French will be talking at the EntConnect entrepreneurs conference

I almost forgot to mention that social media guru Bill French of MyST Technology will be attending and speaking at the EntConnect 2009 entrepreneurs conference. The conference starts on Thursday, which is tomorrow. I am not sure when Bill's presentation is scheduled on the weekend, but he is actually giving two presentations, one on Twitter vs. Facebook and the other on web site security.

The biggest uncertainty, for me, right now, is whether a spring snow storm might mess up travel in the Denver area, especially the airport when I am flying in tomorrow afternoon. Or, flights back east may be delayed due to rain. It will be a little... "adventure."

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well. The conference runs from Thursday, March 26, 2009 through Sunday, March 29, 2009.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org. It now has some agenda and schedule information, including skiing on Thursday and fun activities on Friday. I will be around both evenings, but traveling during the day on Thursday and up in Boulder on Friday.

I have been attending the conference since it first started in 1992 as ME SKI '92 and then evolved into ENTCON and then Entrepreneurial Connections or EntConnect.

For a little nostalgia, check out the original ME SKI '92 conference announcement.

-- Jack Krupansky

Getting ready to get ready to head out to the EntConnect entrepreneurs conference on Thursday

Yikes!!! The EntConnect 2009 entrepreneurs conference almost here. It starts on Thursday, less than two days from now.

I personally won't be participating in the skiing portion of the pre-conference activities on Thursday, but I will be flying out from New York City on Thursday afternoon, arriving at the conference hotel roughly in time for drinks and dinner. My flight from Newark arrives at 4:18 p.m. If I catch the 4:43 p.m. RTD skyRide AF bus to the Cold Spring Park-n-Ride, which is a block from the conference hotel, arriving about 6:12 p.m. But if I miss that bus due to hassles at the terminal, I'll catch the 5:45 p.m. bus that arrives at Cold Spring at 7:17 p.m. With the latter I could miss any informal dinner gathering, but I'll catch up with the gang after dinner in the hotel lounge.

I'll also be skipping any Friday daytime activities to head up to Boulder for the day. I will be back to the hotel in time for drinks and the traditional Friday evening conference "feast." In the morning I'll catch the RTD GS bus at 8:05 a.m. (or 9:04 a.m.) to arrive in Boulder at 9:01 a.m. (or 10:00 a.m.). In the afternoon I'll catch the GS bus at 3:36 p.m. (or 4:36 p.m.) to arrive back at Cold Spring at 4:39 p.m. (or 5:39 p.m.).

I'll also be spending Sunday evening up in Boulder (and maybe eating dinner at Laudisio!) before heading to my Flight back to the New York area on Monday afternoon.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org.

I have been attending the conference since it first started in 1992 as ME SKI '92 and then evolved into ENTCON and then Entrepreneurial Connections or EntConnect.

For a little nostalgia, check out the original ME SKI '92 conference announcement.

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect entrepreneurs conference now listed as a LinkedIn event

A Google search alert for "EntConnect" just informed me that the EntConnect 2009 entrepreneurs conference is now listed as a LinkedIn event. The LinkedIn event description says:

EntConnect is unique -- NOT a giant, formal, white-washed conference with two dozen talking heads. Building upon a rich history honed since 1992, it's a unique "unconference" experience -- you help set the agenda. An amazing opportunity to meet current and future entrepreneurs.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org.

I have been attending the conference since it first started in 1992 as ME SKI '92 and then evolved into ENTCON and then Entrepreneurial Connections or EntConnect.

For a little nostalgia, check out the original ME SKI '92 conference announcement.

-- Jack Krupansky

Have a great idea and looking for seed funding? Check out TechStars

There are many ways to fund a new technology startup, but one particularly intriguing approach is TechStars, which is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment fund located in Boulder, Colorado. They fund up to about 20 technology startups each summer. For each startup, up to three founders get $6,000 each for the summer to crank out a substantial prototype to get their idea off the ground so they can get to the next level. The deal includes server hosting, work space if needed, legal services, and more. Most importantly, each team gets access to the 50 entrepreneurial mentors who are part of TechStars as well as the opportunity at the end of the summer to pitch at an investor event with upwards of 150 angel investors and venture capital investors in attendance.

That may not sound like a lot of money (or time), but the networking and focus on rapid success are worth much, much more. Remember: quality, not quantity.

TechStars is active in both Boulder and the Boston area.

The principals of TechStars are David G. Cohen (Executive Director), Brad Feld, Jared Polis, and David Brown.

They recently held their spring kickoff meetings in Boulder and Boston (invitational, limited seating, one-day mini-camps called "TechStars For A Day" (TS4AD) for TechStars applicants), but are still accepting applications until the March 21, 2009 deadline. My apologies for not posting about this earlier.

Feedback from Benjamin Brinckerhoff, founder of Devver, class of Summer 2008:

I prefer writing code to business plans, but I found the business advice from our mentors to be incredible: it was concrete, immediately applicable, and always focused on building something real for our users.

Check out the TechStars web site for more details.

-- Jack Krupansky

Remember ME SKI '92?

Were you one of those fortunate souls who attended the historic ME SKI '92 entrepreneurial engineers conference back in April of 1992? If so, EntConnect is the conference for you.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org. Hotel rooms at the Sheraton Denver West in Lakewood, CO are available at the conference rate of $79.

-- Jack Krupansky

Brad Feld on failure

Successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist Brad Feld has some interesting thoughts on failure in his blog post entitled "Have You Ever Failed?". He offers some personal experiences and concludes by telling us that:

In my world view, the best leaders understand that failure is an integral part of things.  The cliche "fail fast" is one of my favorites.  When things aren't working, deal with it.  Another is the famous line from Atlas Shrugged "Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever."  Denying that failure is part of our existence is akin to faking reality.

While I accept "the experience of failure" feels "negative / crappy / depressing / hard / sucky", I don't believe that "failure is bad."  Deal with it, learn from it, pick yourself up, and try again.

"Learn from it." If only it was as easy as it sounds. Too often, we do learn from failure, but we somehow end up focusing on the "wrong" lessons and somehow miss the "right" lessons.

"Fail fast" is a really, really good idea, but only to the extent that you have "Learn fast" down cold.

-- Jack Krupansky

Last day for early-bird registration for the EntConnect 2009 entrepreneurs conference

Believe it or not, the deadline for early-bird registration for the EntConnect 2009 entrepreneurs conference has been extended to today, Friday, March 6, 2009. The conference will be underway only three weeks from today.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org. Hotel rooms at the Sheraton Denver West in Lakewood, CO are available at the conference rate of $79.

I have been attending the conference since it first started in 1992 as ME SKI '92 and then evolved into ENTCON and then Entrepreneurial Connections or EntConnect.

For a little nostalgia, check out the original ME SKI '92 conference announcement.

-- Jack Krupansky

My Gary, Indiana solution

Back in January of 2000 when I still had a small mountain of financial assets, I actually considered whether I should go to cash and permanently retire. One option, the one I chose, unfortunately, was that "I only need one more year of decent stock market returns (15-20%) and then I will be set for life", but we know how that movie ended. That was all I needed, one more year, and then I could live "forever" on income from Treasuries. In fact, three-quarters of my net worth was in Treasuries at that point anyway due to my call option strategy that was working so well in the bull market. But, that is water over the dam now. The other option that I briefly considered, but rejected as unattractive, was what I called "my Gary, Indiana solution". Briefly, although I did not have enough money to retire in New York City, I could have retired forever if I could have stomached relocating to some godforsaken place that was really, really cheap, such as I imagined Gary, Indiana to be.

I actually had no idea what Gary, Indiana was really like, but being part of the so-called "Rust Belt", I imagined that everything was much cheaper there. I could easily and quickly get to Chicago, Illinois if I ever had a desperate urge to be somewhere other than "nowhere" and fly from Chicago to "anywhere." Meanwhile, I would not have to burn through piles of cash for living expenses, or so I imagined. In truth, even if Gary was only moderately cheaper I actually would have been able to life, even if not thrive, on Treasury income.

The big obstacle to implementing "my Gary, Indiana solution" was simply the fact that for me personally it had the feeling that I would be imprisoned or at least exiled away from anything that might interest me. Joliet would not have sounded much worse to me. The Internet and Web were still relatively primitive even in 2000 compared to all the online social networking we have today. Maybe with Web 2.0 I could have envisioned living in a bubble, like living on the moon or Mars.

Alas, today I do not even have the financial resources for that "ambitious" Gary, Indiana "solution" that I had back in 2000. I would need to have some kind of job, but I might be able to pull it off with a more menial type of job, if something were in fact available.

In any case, my immediate goal here is simply to record for my own reference and for posterity this idea that I had back in 2000. Whether I can reuse it in some way remains to be seen.

When thinking anew about the concept, two immediate questions come to mind. First, where in the U.S. can you live very, very cheaply? Second, and which of those places have significant acceptable and palatable employment opportunities. The goal here is not to find a place to spend the rest of my life, but finding an "economic refuge" until technology employment opportunities once again become plentiful.

-- Jack Krupansky

Contemplation of life off the grid

Although I personally have no desire to "drop off the gird", the current economic crisis implicitly raises it as a very real possibility. Obtaining satisfying and well-paying work (or even entrepreneurial opportunities) is no longer anything even remotely resembling a "slam dunk." Maybe life off the grid would not be such an unconscionable alternative.

But what would it mean to live off the grid, as a general proposition? Somehow, the primary constraint would be to dramatically limit expenses:

1. Rent. Maybe free lodging. Or camping.
2. Meals. Consider growing some own food.
3. Health care. Only real option is that you need to be in great health.
4. Entertainment. Need to entertain yourself. Use the library, including free Internet access. Free cultural events.
5. Socializing. No longer quite so easy to socialize with those on the grid. Network with others off the grid.
6. Keeping up. Including current events, work opportunities, and training opportunities. Once again, the library may be a best solution.

Thoreau tried to live off the grid, for awhile, but he had some land, a cabin, and a life he could go back to.

At this stage I am certainly not seriously contemplating going "off grid", but if May rolls around and I have no serious employment opportunities (contracting, full-time, part-time, or whatever), suddenly going at least partially off-grid will become a possibility to consider. I will still have significant cash (and stock??) resources at the end of May (when my current apartment lease is up), so I actually will not be "forced" to go completely off the grid, but maybe a partial off-grid lifestyle might be a possibility.

Some kind of semi-nomadic lifestyle may in fact be more appropriate for me.

Or, finding some locale where I can live really, really, really cheaply until the economy stabilizes at least a little.

In any case, I have my living expenses for the next three months covered and can "merrily" sit back and watch the economic storms swirl around me, as if I had not a care in the world. Or something like that.

-- Jack Krupansky

Calling all entrepreneurs, there are only three more weeks until EntConnect 2009

Wow, there are only three more weeks until EntConnect 2009!

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org. Hotel rooms at the Sheraton Denver West in Lakewood, CO are available at the conference rate of $79.

I have been attending the conference since it first started in 1992 as ME SKI '92 and then evolved into ENTCON and then Entrepreneurial Connections or EntConnect.

For a little nostalgia, check out the original ME SKI '92 conference announcement.

-- Jack Krupansky

Brad Feld on investment vs. speculation

One of my pet peeves is when people refer to all manner of stock and commodity trading and speculation as "investment" when it is no such thing, so I really appreciated venture capitalist Brad Feld's blog post entitled "Investment vs. Speculation." I mostly agree with him and absolutely agree the we need more attention to investment and less attention on speculation.

My main departure from Brad is that I see investment as not only long-term, but open-ended, whereas speculation can be multi-year but has a target event which will end or "exit" the speculation. Granted, no investment is necessarily "forever and ever", but would normally end only when the "investment thesis" changes or our investment goals change. But with speculation, we may have a price or P/E target in mind upfront that predetermines the decision to end or "exit" the speculation.

In short, in speculation we focus intently on the end or "exit" event, while in true investment we focus on building enterprise value over time, either to achieve dividends on an ongoing basis or to increase market value over time, but with no date or price for "exit" in mind.

In the case of venture capital investment, it is not typically open-ended and usually has a fairly clear end goal or "exit" in mind, such as an IPO or sale of the investment to another business, coupled with a distribution of stock and cash to the investors.

Venture capitalists, as the general partners of venture capital limited partnerships, have a fiduciary duty to satisfy the goals of delivering an "exit" so that the limited partners can cash out both their original investment and profit within some fairly well-defined range of years, typically 5-7 years. Granted, that timeframe is well beyond the tolerance or patience of most stock and commodity speculators, but "real" investors might use that as a minimum rather than a maximum timeframe.

Nonetheless, a venture capital investment is clearly relatively long term compared to speculative activity that we see with stocks and commodities.

Another thing about venture capital investments is that they are inherently "speculative" in nature in the sense of having a high degree of risk that the principle invested in an individual company could be completely lost. Most stock investors would never consider investing in a company that is rated in advance as being at such as high risk of a major decline or even "going to zero." I would still consider venture capital as an investment since there is a fairly high tolerance to short-term adverse events of the sort that would cause a garden-variety stock or commodity speculator to immediately hit a "stop loss" and dump their "investment." Unlike stock and commodity speculators, venture investors typically have a role on the board of directors or some other advisory role such that they can help out to significantly mitigate adverse events. The "package" of high potential return and significant technical and managerial expertise of the venture capital general partners give venture capital an acceptable level of risk for the limited partners and result in it being more of an investment than a speculation.

On the other hand, venture investors do have one quality advantage over stock investors: they have very low tolerance for allowing a company to stagnate for long periods of time and are super-motivated to aggressively push company management to "maximize shareholder value."

All of that said, I am glad to hear that someone else is beating the "investment vs. speculation" drum.

-- Jack Krupansky

Should Twitter have an app store (ala Apple)?

The fact that Apple seems to be doing quite well with its App Store makes me wonder whether, say, Twitter could also do well with a comparable store for add-ons for use with Twitter.

In other words, which is the cart and which is the horse (or chicken and egg if you wish), the iPhone as a "platform" or Twitter as a platform?

-- Jack Krupansky

How do you calculate a reasonable price when bidding on a contract?

Calculating a reasonable price -- profitable for you and acceptable to the client -- is a very challenging issue facing any contractor.

[Warning: the rest of this post is supposed to be a joke!]

Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence. One is from New York, another is from Tennessee and the third is from Florida. All three examine the fence.

The Florida contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. 'Well,' he says, 'I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me.'

The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, 'I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 profit for me.'

The New York contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the government official and whispers, '$2,700.'

The official, incredulous, says, 'You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?'

The New York contractor whispers back, '$1,000 for me, $1,000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.'

'Done!' replies the government official.

My apologies to contractors from Florida and Tennessee.

-- Jack Krupansky

Only three more days to get the early-bird rate for EntConnect 2009

There are less than three days left to get the $149 early-bird rate for registration for the EntConnect entrepreneurs conference. Register on of more Saturday, February 28, 2009 for $149 or the rate goes up to $299.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org. Hotel rooms at the Sheraton Denver West in Lakewood, CO are available at the conference rate of $79.

I have been attending the conference since it first started (as ME-Ski and then ENTCON) in 1992.

-- Jack Krupansky

Thomas Friedman: The government should give money to venture capital funds

I am no fan of Thomas Friedman, but I do agree with most of what he says in his latest Op-Ed in The New York Times entitled "Start Up the Risk-Takers" in which is proposes a fairly simple model for government investment to create new jobs:

Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partners -- university endowments and pension funds -- are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way. If they go bust, we all lose. If any of them turns out to be the next Microsoft or Intel, taxpayers will give you 20 percent of the investors' upside and keep 80 percent for themselves.

Sounds like a plan. But, it is not quite so simple. True, professional venture capital firms operate in a relatively narrow range of financing and stage of development. The typical paradigm for a venture capital-funded venture is "early stage", were only a relatively modest level of capital is needed (rarely more than $20 million), and where only a modest number of jobs are generated. Sure, some venture capital firms offer "later stage" funding, but that is still for the relatively early life of a new venture when growth is high but revenue and jobs are still relatively modest. The Googles and Microsofts and Intels of the world did not require large-scale capital in their venture capital stages. So-called expansion capital on a large scale typically comes not from professional capital firms, but either organically funded from revenue and profits from dramatic early success of a Google or Microsoft or Intel, or from debt offerings on Wall Street or other non-venture capital sources. That is the stage when a high volume of jobs are created.

Professional VC firms do offer growth stage funding ($10 to $50 million), but that is still only the stage where a venture might be hiring no more than a few hundred people, not the major growth stage where thousands of jobs are being created and hundreds of millions of capital investment are being made.

Sure, I agree with Friedman -- and have already myself suggested -- that the government should temporarily step in to fund professional venture capital firms that are having difficulty raising capital from their traditional sources such as large banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and large endowment funds (all of whom are themselves struggling financially), but this is money to fuel a future wave of job creation, say three to ten years from now, and won't create millions of new jobs in the next two to three years.

There are also SBIR, SBA, and other government funding programs that can be boosted directly by the government. Government guarantees for bank loans and debt offerings for young, innovative ventures could also be a big help for growing innovative companies far beyond the early stages where venture capital is most successful at boosting promising companies and weeding out the good ideas that simple do not work in the real world.

Yes, by all means the government should ramp up venture capital investment, but that will not obviate the need for stimulating and supported significant chunks of the "old economy" for many years to come.

Besides, the last thing we need is yet another new "bubble", let alone a slew of them.

We want new ventures that are robust and durable, not flash-in-the-pan, "gold rush" style "opportunities."

Energy innovation is worthy of investment, as is filling the gap for funding of venture capital firms, but let us be careful to avoid turning this into another "dot-com boom", because we all know how that movie ended.

The good news is that it might cost only $20 billion (as Friedman suggests) to give the venture capital industry the shot in the arm that it does in fact need.

Personally, I am not completely convinced that any or many of the top VC firms could actually put $1 billion to use with their current investment paradigms and I would not want to destroy the current paradigm that works so well. To be clear, over-investment does not result in comparably greater success. Maybe $250 million average (per year) for the top 20 firms and $50 million average for the rest of the top 100 firms would be more than sufficient for the level of investment that these firms could manage successfully at this point. That works out to about $9 billion a year. Okay, double it to make sure that good businesses do not have trouble getting funded. That gets us to $18 billion, close to Friedman's number. My own original number was $2 to $3 billion a month or $24 to $48 billion per year. My model was simply that in times of financial crisis, better to err way over the top. At this point, I would prefer to hear the VC sector tell us what they feel that they need. Offer them $50 billion a year and sit back and watch the spectacle of them saying "Please give us less money."

Maybe the key thing is for the government to be able to assure VC firms that there will be "government supported" funding (e.g., debt securities) available for VC-funded companies that have advanced beyond the VC-supported stages to the point where they do need tens or even hundreds of millions to expand to the degree where individual firms are creating many hundreds or thousands of jobs. This might help to encourage VC firms to fund new ventures that will eventually require large-scale capital after they advance beyond the stages where traditional VC firms add the most value.

Finally, Friedman did not even mention so-called "angel" investing, where individual investors are funding innovative new ventures at a smaller scale than normally appeals to professional venture capital firms. Give these people more generous tax incentives, matching funds, and possibly some degree of government guarantees, or maybe outright tax credits, and you could see a dramatic blooming of innovative firms.

In any case, I do have to give Friedman credit for raising awareness of this critical issue to the national level. A single small paragraph in my own blog simply wasn't good enough to even get the ball rolling:

Provide government funding to venture capital firms which are experiencing extreme difficulty raising funds from traditional sources (big banks, pension funds, and insurance companies) due to the credit crunch and skrinkage of the economy, on the order of $2 to $3 billion per month.

-- Jack Krupansky

Are you a former reader of Midnight Engineering magazine or need an excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado?

[This is a revision of a recent post, just trying to get it more accurate.]

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. Targeted primarily at engineers (hardware, software, and other) and others with a strong technical interest, it is more of a loosely-structured "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, intellectual property and legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. With plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well), the conference is a great opportunity to "learn and share" and otherwise have an "out of box" experience. Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet up with former readers (and possibly even the publisher) of Midnight Engineering magazine as well.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org. Hotel rooms at the Sheraton Denver West in Lakewood, CO are available at the conference rate of $79.

I have been attending the conference since it first started (as ME-Ski and then ENTCON) in 1992.

-- Jack Krupansky

Anatomy of a press release

PR Newswire has a succinct diagram that highlights the elements of an ideal press release. Of the 11 key elements, to me the most important is the lead paragraph:

This is the single most important paragraph in the whole release. If you don't draw your reader in here, you've lost them forever. This is your chance to set up your story in a single sentence or two.

Obviously the headline has to grab the viewer's attention first, but the lead paragraph needs to convince them that you have something to say that will make reading the rest of the news release worth their while.

PR Newswire has a good FAQ page that gives an working introduction to the world of press releases (they call them "news releases.")

Please note that PR Newswire distributes news releases, but it is up to the newsmaker to write their own news release.

-- Jack Krupansky

Are you an entrepreneur who needs an excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado?

Whether you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business or simply need a good excuse to go skiing in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect) may be just the conference you have been waiting for. It is more of an "unconference", with plenty of opportunities for a relatively small group of participants (15 to 40) to network or even give their own presentations on a very wide range of topics from technology, business strategy, legal issues, accounting issues, finance, marketing, sales, and even selling your business. And plenty of time to ski or otherwise enjoy the mountains and Denver area (great time to visit Boulder or Colorado Springs as well). Participants and speakers range over the full spectrum from wannabes and newcomers to successful young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans.

Visit the official conference Web site, EntConnect.org. Hotel rooms at the Sheraton Denver West in Lakewood, CO are available at the conference rate of $79.

I have been attending the conference since it first started (as ME-Ski and then ENTCON) in 1992.

-- Jack Krupansky

Marketing doesn't matter?

Guy Kawasaki has a post on AlwaysOn entitled "6 Helpful Clues for CEOs" that offers a list of statements that a clued-in CEO should say to their employees. Number 3 on the list is:

• "Engineering needs to make something so compelling that a $0 marketing budget isn't a problem." The pressure isn't only on marketing -- engineering needs to create something so great that the marketing doesn't matter.

I happen to agree, but this is absolute heresy. The conventional wisdom is that marketing (and sales) is everything - better to have a mediocre product with great marketing than a great product with mediocre marketing.

Two key points. First, how many products are actually truly "great", other than in the eyes of their creators? Second, I think the main intent when Guy said "marketing doesn't matter" was that a high burn rate is not the defining characteristic of successful marketing. I seriously doubt that he would advocate giving up on those "free" and "shoestring" marketing efforts as well. His preceding statement for clued-in CEOs was that marketing should focus on exploiting "free" resources and a "shoestring" budget:

• "The marketing budget is now $0, and we will figure out a way to get to market." Maybe you have more than $0, but if you adopt a much better mindset. How can you use free resources, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, etc) to market your product on a shoestring budget?

Still, I do like the mere hint that products should be designed and engineered and built so that only minimal expense on "marketing" is needed.

Maybe this is a definition of "Utopia" - a world in which marketing no longer matters.

In any case, I am certainly a big proponent of marketing on a shoestring. In fact, back in the early 1990's I wrote an article for Midnight Engineering magazine entitled "Product Promotion on a Shoestring - Low-cost Marketing Ideas for the Software Entrepreneur". That was shortly before the Web took off, but the concepts are still the same. Old wine, new bottles.

-- Jack Krupansky

Entrepreneurial casino - rolling the dice

Sure, there is risk in any kind of venture, whether it be incremental investment in a long-running and "proven" business, or an attempt to commercialize a "new idea" or enter a radically new market, but the question is how to characterize and categorize these risks so that we can properly compare and evaluate them. A "bold" move will typically have a much higher risk of failure than a "conservative" move, but when a solid wall looms ahead that may block an existing business or business model the tamer move may in fact dramatically increase the risk that the business will not survive at all. Sometimes, but not all of the time. Tough call.

With an entrepreneurial venture we are by definition invoking a significant higher level of risk as we try to make a big splash. OTOH, that big leap may have a higher probability of surviving in the longer-term if it can make it beyond the "infant mortality stage." That can be a very wise tradeoff, but it also means that the venture can begin to look a lot more like a casino bet than a rational business decision.

We can also hedge our bet by leading with a smaller splash that is calculated to have a more robust appeal to a smaller audience. That can dramatically reduce short-term risk, but may also dramatically reduce the chance of retaining the degree of boldness to later break out of the niche to a much broader market. Essentially, you are not reducing total risk, but simply shuffling it around and making an implicit statement about your depth of vision. Figuring out how to balance the short-term and the longer-term is a core challenge.

Sure, you can always reduce the chance of a loss on a casino bet but placing a smaller bet, but it is still a casino bet at heart.

And if you feel that you have hedge enough to eliminate virtually all risk, you may ultimately find that you have eliminated your chance of a reasonable return as well.

Evaluating, balancing, and hedging. Good stuff, but at the end of the day you still have to finally roll the dice and let reality judge whether your reasoning is valid.

Timing is a factor as well. Sometimes being earlier is better, but being too early can be as risky as being too late. If an emerging market is not "ready" you may or may not have the resources to wait or force readiness. To a large extent this may be a matter of personal preference, but it does have implications for your risk profile as well. Either way, the dice must still be rolled.

-- Jack Krupansky

How do you keep track of ideas that pop into your head?

I am curious how others deal with the problem of recording and tracking ideas that pop into your head. In particular, what electronic or software tools do you use to organize ideas and random information that comes up in your professional life, the information that does not fit cleanly into a PDA calendar or address book.

Half of my random information stays only in my head, some gets written down on index cards, some gets entered into text files in "My Documents", some events get recorded in my PDA calendar, and a lot of stuff is stored away in email. Sometimes ideas end up on email lists or in blog posts such as this as well.

That may be fine for recording, but without any good organizing the value of any idea falls off a proverbial cliff.

As they say, there has to be a better way.

To put the question more simply, when an idea pops into your head, what do you typically do with it? Especially when those ideas occur when walking, driving, eating, showering, etc., rather than when you are sitting at your desk and computer.

-- Jack Krupansky

Book: Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie

I was doing my usual Sunday afternoon browsing of the "New Arrivals" table at Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Center here in New York City and spent a few minutes leafing though Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Based on their research, the authors identified three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in the strengths of others, assuring that the members of your team have the right strengths, and satisfying the essential needs of your followers.

The authors have identified a long list of strengths and have an online program to evaluate your strengths and provide you with specific strategies for leading with your top five strengths and enabling you to plot the strengths of your team based on the domains of leadership strength detailed in the book.

Unfortunately the online descriptions for the book are short on details and I failed to take notes when reading passages in the book, but there is a wealth of information in the book. Whether any of it will work for you is another matter.

My apologies for not providing a better summary of the book, but by all means browse through it and decide for yourself whether it offers you any advice of value.

Note: I do get a tiny commission from Amazon if you buy a book after clicking on the cover images or link above that redirect to Amazon. Thanks!

-- Jack Krupansky

Five Questions to Always Ask on an Interview

Judi Perkins on Net-Temps reminds me of five questions that I need to remember if I ever go on an interview again:

1. What are the priorities that will need to be addressed immediately in this position?
2. How long was the previous person here? Why did they leave?
3. Tell me about your management style. How do you bring out the best in your employees?
4. What types of people tend to excel here?
5. How long have you been here? Why do you stay?

Those are great questions to ask for any business relationship situation, including consulting, contracting, strategic partners, mergers and acquisitions, key vendor deals, etc. It may not always make sense to ask them explicitly, but to at least contemplate and validate them privately so that you can be sure that you are getting into a situation that is going to work for you.

Variations of these same questions also apply to entrepreneurs considering a product or service for a target market.

-- Jack Krupansky

Motivational posters

Personally, I actually like those clever motivational posters, but I just stumbled on a Web site, www.Despair.com, which is incredibly amusing. They turn all of these motivational pictures and quotes into demotivational posters:

Introducing Demotivators(R)

MOTIVATION. Psychology tells us that motivation- true, lasting motivation- can only come from within. Common sense tells us it can't be manufactured or productized. So how is it that a multi-billion dollar industry thrives through the sale of motivational commodities and services? Because, in our world of instant gratification, people desperately want to believe that there are simple solutions to complex problems. And when desperation has disposable income, market opportunities abound.

AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators(R) designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!

Actually, the scary thing is that some of these demotivators are dead-on accurate:

APATHY - If we don't take care of the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us.

BEAUTY - If you're attractive enough on the outside, people will forgive you for being irritating to the core.

MISTAKES - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

MEDIOCRITY - It takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late.

MEETINGS - None of us is as dumb as all of us.

FAILURE - When your best just isn't good enough.

IDIOCY - Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

LEADERS - Leaders are like eagles. We don't have either of them here.

VISION - How can the future be so hard to predict when all of my worst fears keep coming true?

The most "motivating" of all...

WINNERS - Because nothing says "you're a loser" more than owning a motivational poster about being a winner.

And finally...

BLOGGING - Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.

Oops, almost forgot this one...

INSPIRATION - Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99% perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.

Actually I do like a line from the initial blurb:

... when desperation has disposable income, market opportunities abound.

So, what motivates you? Or, what really demotivates you?

-- Jack Krupansky

Only eight weeks until EntConnect 2009

Time continues to pass quickly. It is only eight weeks until the annual Entrepreneurial Connections (EntConnect) conference, from Thursday, March 26, 2009 through Sunday, March 29, 2009. Traditionally the conference consists primarily of a reunion of former readers of Midnight Engineering magazine and a few newbies who have gotten suckered into trying it out, but each year we try to figure out new ways to attract fresh blood. This usually brings the discussion back to the question of what people feel they get out of the conference and how to increase its value to current attendees as well as potential attendees.

Check out the conference Web page for an idea of what the conference was like last year. Hopefully the page will be updated very soon for the details for this year. I do know that the hotel rate has jumped from $75 to $79, despite the fact that we are in an economic recession. It will be the same hotel (Sheraton Denver West in Lakewood, CO, with great views of both the Rocky Mountain foothills and the Denver skyline.) We hope to have a notable keynote speaker, but as usual the primary focus will be sessions led by your fellow entrepeneurs.

The conference planners are always looking for new ideas, for example:

• What fun activities to plan for Friday before the conference begins.
• Where to hold our traditional Friday kickoff dinner. Unfortunately, Valente's Italian restaurant has closed.
• Suggestions for keynote speakers.
• Should there be a "theme"?
• Volunteers for Saturday and Sunday session speakers.
• How to promote the conference better.
• Any other suggestions for improving the conference.

I am sure that the effects of the current economic "difficulties" will be fodder for a lot of discussion. And probably at least a few of us will be wondering how we can make at least a little money from all of this fiscal stimulus that is about to come gushing out of Washington.

Oh, and please feel free to join the Midnight Engineers Yahoo discussion forum.

-- Jack Krupansky

Brand marketing and branding guidelines

I ran across these interesting marketing points in an email I received today from Tonnie Chamblee of Design Alliance:

To maintain visibility and market standing in today's economy, you need to remember these five key branding guidelines:

1. Know your target market.
2. Realign marketing strategies to match your businesses' changing objectives.
3. Stand apart from the crowd and invest in innovation; define your distinguishers.
4. Sustain brand marketing by maintaining frequency and consistency.
5. Focus on longer-term marketing strategies. 

Sounds easy enough, but of course the devil is in the details.

-- Jack Krupansky

Looking for work, again

I have not gotten any strong indication that my most recent software development contracting client will be needing my services in the near future, so now that the holidays are over I need to start looking for new work ASAP. I have not had any billable work since the middle of November, but I have enough cash saved from work over the previous six months to hold me over for at least a few more months.

There is still a chance that I may get some more work from my current client sometime this month or next, so I will not begin looking for work full-time until later this month, but I have already been looking around as a background task for the past few weeks. It will be my half-time task for the next few weeks.

I would like to find some work here in New York City, or at least remote work I can do at home, but I may have to relocate depending on what work is available. That's part of this business.

My recent client was lucky enough to get a substantial pile of venture capital cash in September just as Lehman Brothers was imploding, but now they, like most other VC-funded startups, are being ultra-hyper-cautious in their spending since they need current funds to last for who knows how long in this weakened economy.

-- Jack Krupansky

Still not sure what to do with an extra $20 other than to save it

I still have an extra $20 bill from last week, with no new great ideas for something productive to do with it. My default is to save it (and earn 3% interest), but I would prefer to find something to do with it that would have some more substantial, longer term impact than, say, paying my electric bill.

I would like to find something that would make some noticeable difference a year from now.

Maybe the simple fact is that $20 is small change these days. But  that begs the question of what I would do with an extra $200 or $2,000 or even $20,000.

Two ideas that come to mind are that maybe I could attend some professional training seminar or trade conference.

Maybe the real question is not the money or financial cost per se, but what can I productively do with my time, how can I more productively use an hour or two or day or two of my time for a more significant, longer-term gain.

-- Jack Krupansky

Only three months until EntConnect 2009

Time is certainly passing quickly. It is only three months until the next annual Entrepreneurial Connections (EntConnect) conference, from Thursday, March 26, 2009 through Sunday, March 29, 2009. Traditionally the conference consists primarily of a reunion of former readers of Midnight Engineering magazine and a few newbies who have gotten suckered into trying it out, but each year we try to figure out new ways to attract fresh blood. This usually brings the discussion back to the question of what people feel they get out of the conference and how to increase its value to current attendees as well as potential attendees.

Check out the conference Web page for an idea of what the conference was like earlier this year.

The conference planners are always looking for new ideas, for example:

• What fun activities to plan for Friday before the conference begins.
• Where to hold our traditional Friday kickoff dinner. Unfortunately, Valente's Italian restaurant has closed.
• Suggestions for keynote speakers.
• Volunteers for Saturday and Sunday session speakers.
• How to promote the conference better.
• Any other suggestions for improving the conference.

I am sure that the effects of the current economic "difficulties" will be fodder for a lot of discussion.

Oh, and please feel free to join the Midnight Engineers Yahoo discussion forum.

-- Jack Krupansky

Initial Kiva loans

I forgot to mention that my primary criteria for my initial Kiva loans was to make the final contribution of $25 or $50 so that the full amount of each micro-loan would be funded so that I would be sure that the loan would proceed immediately. In reality, that is not usually necessary since many of the micro-loans have already been disbursed by the time they are posted on the Kiva.org Web site. Still, it is nice to see the process completed promptly and the loan cleared through the system. I did not want my money to be sitting around idle.

Once I start getting repayments, I will no longer use this as my top requirement. Hopefully I can get to the stage where every month I get enough repayments to contribute to a new micro-loan regardless of how much of the loan has been funded.

Funding micro-loans in Kiva is a great response to all of the global anger about all of these big banks that require all of these bailouts and are not lending to people who can really use the money anyway. If you want a new world order that is not controlled by big banks, Kiva is a great way to go. It is an alternative to begging or forcing big banks to give "handouts" to "poor people."

-- Jack Krupansky

Trying out Kiva.org for micro-lending around the world

I still have not decided what to do with my extra $20, but I did decide to go ahead and try out Kiva.org which lets you participate in micro-lending around the world. I actually funded my Kiva account with enough money to fund a dozen micro-loans in the $25 to $100 range. The actual micro-loans are in the $225 to $2,500 range with a number of lenders such as myself kicking in $25 or more for each loan. I figured that since there was a chance that a single loan might fail, a dozen loans would have a better chance of giving me reasonable success and personally give me a broader perspective on the failure rate as well as exposure to different parts of the world and different types of micro-entrepreneurs. Note that Kiva micro-loans do not pay us "lenders" any interest, but they do pay us back our principle, unless they fail.

I believe that the micro-entrepreneurs (borrowers) are in fact paying interest, but that the local micro-lenders keep most or all of that interest to fund their operations and expand their capital for additional loans. I do not know whether Kiva gets any of that interest. I just know that Kiva does not pay any interest to us lenders. In addition, Kiva "suggests" that you make a 10% contribution to Kiva. I decided not to make any donations at this time. I will see how things work out as the loans become due and then decide whether to make a donation.

You fund your Kiva account via PayPal and then make loans from your Kiva account. When loans get repaid you can then choose whether to use the proceeds to fund additional loans or to take your money out.

It will be interesting to see how the current economic recession impacts these micro-entrepreneurs around the world.

Note that the borrowers are very small businesses, typically individuals. The loans are to support their businesses. These are not consumer loans.

Also note that Kiva does not loan directly to the borrower. There are a number of micro-lending "banks" (Kiva calls them Field Partners) in areas around the world. Lenders like me are providing the capital (through Kiva) that these micro-lenders are then disbursing to the micro-entrepreneurs.

The micro-lenders also provide support and advice to the micro-entrepreneurs. Some also require borrowers to collaborate in groups to support each other. The goal here is to increase the likelihood that the micro-loans really will improve the business of the micro-entrepreneurs so that they do earn enough to repay the loans.

The term of a micro-loan may only be five to eight months, but sometimes a year or maybe even eighteen months. The idea is that the loan should have an immediate impact on business. The first payment may not be due for three months or so. For my initial loans a bunch have an initial payment in February or March. One does not have an initial payment until June.

I am not particularly thrilled that I earn no interest, but it is nice to be able to see the face, name, and details for each micro-loan. The theory is that this money is really making a difference in the lives of real people around the world.

It is also nice to know that these micro-loans are actually helping "the working poor" to maintain and even enhance their income, rather than simply offering them a "handout."

It turns out that many of these micro-loans have already been made by the micro-lender by the time we see them on the Kiva web site, usually within the past few weeks. The micro-lender has decided that they have enough funds on hand to go ahead with the loan and is essentially selling the loan to us micro-lenders through Kiva and then the proceeds of that sale is capital for making other loans.

Now, I still need to figure out what to do with my extra $20. It is not even enough to make the minimum Kiva loan of $25.

-- Jack Krupansky

What to do with an extra $20

I have an extra $20 bill right now. What can I do with it? That is, what can I do with it which would make a noticeable difference in my life or anybody else's life? Sure, I could simply put it in my wallet and spend it eventually on something or put it in one of my savings accounts, but it really would make a negligible difference. Even if I donated it to some allegedly "worthy" cause, would it really make any noticeable difference six months or a year from now? Sure, maybe $20 would buy a fair amount of food for some starving people somewhere in the world, but once again, what difference would that make a year from now?

Actually, I did just remember that there is something called Kiva.org which lets you participate in micro-lending around the world. I keep meaning to check into it. That may be my answer. It is a way to "make a difference" that that is not necessarily just a one-time thing or recurring cost.

-- Jack Krupansky

Questions to ask for your great new business idea

So, you have a great new idea for a product or service or business. Now, you need to ask the following questions which were developed by former DARPA Director George H. Heilmeier:

1. What are you trying to do?
2. How is it done today?
3. What is new in your approach?
4. If you are successful, what difference will it make?
5. What are the risks and payoffs?
6. How much will it cost? How long will it take?
7. What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?

I especially like the part about asking "what difference will it make?" So often, we have new and great and exciting ideas, but will they really make that big a difference?

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect conference coming up in only four more months

The next annual Entrepreneurial Connections (EntConnect) conference is coming up in barely four more months, from Thursday, March 26, 2009 through Sunday, March 29, 2009. Traditionally the conference consists primarily of a reunion of former readers of Midnight Engineering magazine and a few newbies who have gotten suckered into trying it out, but each year we try to figure out new ways to attract fresh blood. This usually brings the discussion back to the question of what people feel they get out of the conference and how to increase its value to current attendees as well as potential attendees.

You might want to take a look at the current conference Web page and see if it seems right on target or if you think there is anything missing or in any way "off-key."

See: http://www.entconnect.org/

Although I do try to keep in touch with people, I have no idea how the current recession has been affecting the business and professional lives of past attendees. The say "No news is good news", so maybe everybody is actually doing fine and the so-called "crisis" is just another media scare.

Actually, I do have a fair number of former attendees connected in my LinkedIn network, but I have not seen many job changes since the last conference. Feel free to join my LinkedIn network.

Although the overall conference tends to be "business as usual", I suspect that this year things might be at least a little bit different.

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect conference coming up in less than six months

The next annual Entrepreneurial Connections (EntConnect) conference is coming up in just under six months, from Thursday, March 26, 2009 through Sunday, March 29, 2009. Traditionally the conference consists primarily of a reunion of former readers of Midnight Engineering magazine and a few newbies who have gotten suckered into trying it out, but each year we try to figure out new ways to attract fresh blood. This usually brings the discussion back to the question of what people feel they get out of the conference and how to increase its value to current attendees as well as potential attendees.

You might want to take a look at the current conference Web page and see if it seems right on target or if you think there is anything missing or in any way "off-key."

See: http://www.entconnect.org/

One thing we need to do this year is come up with a better solution to the kick-off dinner on Friday night. Traditionally, we had an Italian "feast" at Valente's in Wheat Ridge, CO, but this year there was some snafu in the planning and it did not happen, so we simply ate dinner at a restaurant across the street from the conference hotel. It did work out, but the group was a bit split up. I just found out that Valente's is closing on Columbus Day, Monday, October 13, 2008.

-- Jack Krupansky

New Yahoo discussion group for Entrepreneurial Engineers

Lee Devlin has been bold enough to start a new Yahoo discussion group, MidnightEngineers, dedicated to the interests of entrepreneurial engineers. As his introductory description states:

This is a discussion group for entrepreneurial minded engineers. We welcome those who are running their own technology companies, free agents, and of course, those who are trapped in corporate cubicles but aspire to someday join or run their own tech startup.

At one time, there was a magazine called Midnight Engineering targeted at people like us, but unfortunately it is no longer published. However, a loyal group of that magazine's readers still gets together once a year during the last week in March for a conference in Denver called EntConnect. There's a link below to the EntConnect confernce website.

We have an announcement mailing list for EntConnect, but a few of us wanted to have a ongoing discussion group that was more conversational, where people would not get too concerned if a topic got discussed for weeks (since one can always turn off email on a Yahoo group), hence the decision to start this group. We hope to find more people by having it on Yahoo Groups where it should be easy to discover.

The only rules are to be polite and helpful, and please, no spamming. To prevent the latter, each member's first message will be moderated.

So, if you are a "technie" with your own business or even if you simply inspire to build and run your own business, or even if you are simply a former reader of Midnight Engineering magazine or a formaer attendee of the ME-Ski or EntConnect conferences, please join Lee's new group. And, please do post any information or opinions which you feel might be of interest to fellow entrepreneurial engineers.

I am Member #2. Who wants to be #3 or even round out the "First Ten"?

-- Jack Krupansky

Moving to NYC

My decision has been made and the deal is done. Yesterday I signed a lease for a studio apartment in New York City. Rent is $1695 and I only had to fork out one extra month of security (two months total) due to my bankruptcy on my credit report. Since it was before the middle of the month my lease starts on May 19th.

The place is somewhat "funky", but works for me. It does not have a kitchen sink (only in New York!), but it does have a door onto the rooftop terrace, so it is probably a net good deal for me. It also has plenty of natural lighting, with a window and door (to the roof) on one wall and another window on the opposite wall, so I can get a cross-flow of air as an alternative to using the air conditioning as much as I might need to for a "normal" city apartment. The building is mostly surrounded by taller buildings, so it gets decent shade for much of the day. And since it is facing the interior, street noise is somewhat muted. The floor is linoleum tile, which is fine with me. A lot of NYC apartments have hardwood floors.

It is on the 10th floor of an older building. It does have an elevator, but also has a really nice wide stairway and I like to walk a lot anyway. When I had my apartment in Tudor City I used to walk up eleven floors all of the time.

The manager has a full-time office in the building, which assures better service for issues that might arise. I dealt directly with the manager (with my broker), who makes all of the management and operating decisions, which is much better than a lot of situations, especially for the typical "walk-up" apartment building you find in the city.

I went through a broker, Century 21, so I had to pay a fee of 15% of the annual rent (typical in Manhattan). Ouch. Yeah, that is a lot of money, but it gave me access to an apartment that I might not otherwise have been able to find on my own or as quickly. Total time from initial meeting with the broker to walking away with a signed lease was just under seven hours. I did look at a couple other apartments and a lot of other listings, but I was able to focus my priorities and the initial listing was a great match to begin with. I did find this listing on Craigslist.

I think I was lucky to get this apartment. People were calling while I was sitting in the manager's office filing my application and still calling when I was signing the lease and the manager had the card for someone ready to file an application if I backed out. Finding an apartment in a doorman building in midtown east in Manhattan with a terrace for less than $1700 is quite a good deal.

Electricity is the only utility that I have to pay. The apartment has an electric range, but I don't cook. It has steam heat. It does have an air conditioning unit left by the last tenant which is in so-so condition, so the good news is that the apartment is wired and set up for A/C, but I may have to buy a new window A/C unit depending on what shape the old unit is in, especially in the middle of the summer.

Now I need to decide what to do about telephone and broadband Internet access. Since I need broadband for my work, I may go with cable-based phone service from either Time-Warner or RCN. I do not watch TV, so I do not need normal "cable" access, but the package price may still be a decent deal, especially since traditional phone service is so pricey these days.

I flew to NYC on a one-way ticket. I still haven't decided when to fly back to Bellevue, WA. I need to make some arrangements for window shades and whatever else I may need to do to make the apartment ready for occupancy. One of my priorities for an apartment was to get a "doorman building" so that a lot of services can be arranged even though I am not at the building.

The location is quite decent (for me), in midtown east, on 50th Street just east of Lexington Avenue. That is a block away from Ess-a-Bagel, the best bagel shop in the world.

The really good news is that the most anxiety-provoking part of the move is done. Sure, plenty of the remaining tasks will be annoying and distracting, but manageable and with minimal uncertainty.

-- Jack Krupansky

Moving to NYC?

Last week, Anonymous left a comment on one of my blogs asking:

So - what did you ever decide about the move to NYC?

Good question, but I did not have an immediate answer. The short answer was that I had decided that the first week in May was when I was going to decide both whether to renew my apartment lease in Bellevue, WA and whether and where to move if I did not renew the lease, including whether I would move to NYC.

Unfortunately, I focused on my bill-paying work last Monday and Tuesday and didn't seriously dive back into looking at apartment listings in Craigslist until Wednesday. I had been checking the listings off and on over the past month or so, but was disappointed that prices didn't seem to be falling due to the weak economy. Sure, there are some apartments in the $1450 to $1550 range (or even below $1200 in Harlem), but they are somewhat... depressing. I was considering a couple of apartments in the $1600 to $1650 range in Tudor City, but the ones I knew about were actually rented by the end of the week. I probably could have picked up one of them, but I was not yet comfortable with paying $1600 in rent. When I lived in NYC back in 2004, I was paying $1275 in Tudor City.

So, by the end of the week I still did not have a new place lined up and the deadline for giving notice not to renew my lease (Sunday) was looming.

Friday afternoon I finally bit the bullet and went ahead and gave notice on my current lease. I felt that I had enough options in New York, or that I could move to Washington, D.C. or Atlantic City if New York didn't work out.

One of the reasons I did not get one of those apartments in Tudor City is that with personal bankruptcy only a little more than two years ago, the apartment co-op board might not approve my application. My broker had a call in to the board to find out, but unfortunately a couple of people snapped up the apartments before the board called back. The only other apartments in Tudor City that the broker had were in the $1800 range. I should call the broker back to at least find out what the board's answer was.

This morning I talked to another broker who had a place listed for $1695 that actually sounded fairly decent. I gave him all the details of my financial situation and he said I should be fine as long as I was willing to prepay rent, and that pre-paying maybe six months or even the whole year would sway a fair number of landlords.

So, I went ahead and made the decision to fly to New York City on Monday and meet with the broker on Tuesday morning.

I decided to fly one way since I have no idea how long my search will take and I will want to fly back to Bellevue ASAP to starting sorting through junk and packing.for my move. I will probably ship all my boxes via UPS.

I checked out prices on Priceline but decided to make a reservation directly with Continental since I did not see any non-stop flights that would get me into NYC at a reasonable hour. I booked a flight leaving Seattle at 11:30 a.m. that arrives in Newark a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. for "only" $460, one way. I could have gotten a round trip on Priceline for $500 to $550 (with stops and connections), but I had no idea when to schedule the return and staying an extra night or two in NYC would erase any savings on the flight. And, Priceline was not showing any non-stop flights. I will book a round trip from New York City to Bellevue, WA as soon as I finalize my new apartment. That could take a single day or two or could take an entire week or even longer.

Then I bit another bullet and used Priceline to reserve a hotel in NYC at least for the first couple of nights. I tried to get a place for $250 for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, but had no luck. I checked and it turns out that the rate jumped dramatically from Tuesday to Wednesday. So, I bid again for just Monday and Tuesday nights and did get a place for $250. Unfortunately, Priceline put me in the Wellington Hotel, which it did as well back in November on my last visit. My first night there in November was horrible, with poor heating incredible noise and a rather drab and depressing room that was in desperate need of renovation. Not something worth two and a half stars. A Holiday Inn Express would have been much better. I complained (back in November), but since I had checked in late in the evening they had no other rooms. They did put me in a much better room the second night, but that still did not make up for the disappointing experience of the first night. I tried to call the hotel today to put in a request for a decent room, but they said there was nothing they could do yet since it sometimes takes 24 hours before the Priceline reservation gets into their system. I also called Priceline to complain, but they simply suggested that I go ahead and check in and then call Priceline immediately if there is any problem and then Priceline will directly call the hotel on my behalf. The problem is that since my flight does not arrive in Newark until about 8:00 p.m., even the 8:30 p.m. shuttle bus will not drop me off in New York until about 9:30 p.m., so I will get to the hotel around 10:00 p.m., which almost guarantees that I will get one of the last remaining rooms and make it difficult for even Priceline to fix things up for me. And then, that is kind of late to find a decent restaurant on a Monday evening. I could go to dinner as soon as I get off the bus, but then I would be checking at after 11:00 p.m., which only increases the probability that I will have to hassle with the front desk. I will give the hotel another call tomorrow and see if they can flag me for early check in and somehow verify that my "standard" room is not as defective as the last time I was there.

If I need to stay beyond Wednesday, I may try Priceline again or take the casino bus to Atlantic City and stay down there for a couple of nights. That is a long commute, but it is cheap on the casino bus and a lot cheaper than paying more than $250 in NYC -- as long as I do not dump the savings into a slot machine! And depending on how things are going in NYC, I may also look around for a cheap place to rent in AC as a backup plan. Or, I could even take the bus from AC to DC (Washington, D.C.) and check out some apartments there.

Olympic Trailways runs the CoachUSA bus between Newark Airport and midtown Manhattan. The round trip ticket costs $25 and can be purchased online to avoid hassling with cash and you can get right on the bus. It is nominally a 50 minute ride. They stop at Port Authority, Bryant Park, and Grand Central Terminal.

So, I have my flight, my bus to the city, my hotel for two nights, and my appointment on Tuesday morning with a broker who claims to get "a hundred" new listings every week. I am good to go, so far.

The broker emailed me their "requirements" just to get started. Being self-employed, I need copies of the first two pages of my last two years of income tax returns, a letter on company letterhead from my accountant verifying the income reported on those returns and my forecast income for this year, and a debit card that can charge the last month's rent and one month's rent as deposit since they do not take personal checks or credit cards. And then there might be application fees and credit checks by individual landlords.

AND THEN, brokers in NYC typically charge a 15% fee on rentals. And that is 15% of the annual rent. So, if I manage to rent an apartment for $1750, the broker fee would be... $3,150. Ouch. That's life in the big city. Yes, there are brokers and owners  who do not charge fees, but they are typically managing a single property or small collection of properties, so you would have to bounce around to more owners and brokers to get access to a comparable number of properties. And, in my case, I would have to repeatedly tell my financial story about bankruptcy and part-time self-employment. This broker can figure out which properties to focus on and which to skip. I do want to find a doorman building for security, deliveries, handling mail and package issues, etc. That may add another $100 or $200 to the price for an apartment compared to a non-doorman building. And I would prefer to be in midtown east for convenience, which is a little more pricey.

So, that is where my infamous move to NYC stands. But until I finalize a deal for an actual apartment, I will not have made a final decision.

-- Jack Krupansky

Summary of the EntConnect 2008 conference

I have been struggling to catch up since returning from Colorado Monday evening, but I do intend to put up a few comments about the EntConnect 2008 conference, eventually. Meanwhile, Lee Devlin has already posted a great "recap" of EntCOnnect 2008 on his blog.

-- Jack Krupansky

Budgeting for moving to New York City

Since I resigned my job at Microsoft in February, I have been working part-time remotely for a stealth startup on the East Coast from home here in Bellevue, WA since my apartment lease runs through May. Soon I have to decide whether to renew my lease for another year, go month to month for another $300 a month, or move on.

My big interest is to once again live in New York City. Places like Bellevue and Boulder, CO are certainly "nice" if you like the suburban small city lifestyle, but I really enjoy the energy level of Manhattan. Affording life in "The Big City" is a separate question. I have looked at my budget carefully and decided that although it will be tight, I can (barely) swing it. My short-term savings rate will fall to near zero, but I expect to increase my income level gradually over time.

There are two big costs associated with a move to Manhattan: 1) higher apartment rent, and 2) New York State and City income tax. There are plenty of things in Manhattan that are more expensive, but a little budgeting can keep most of the other expenses under control.

On the other hand a big expense is eliminated for me by moving to Manhattan: the cost of budgeting two trips a year to Manhattan. In fact, a big advantage for me living in Manhattan is that I can take trips by train and bus to Boston and Washington, D.C. much more cheaply. Also, I can enjoy life in Manhattan without the need to travel expensively just to get to some place where I can enjoy life more than I can in Manhattan. Sure, I would eventually like to do some world travel, but I am unable to afford that today anyway, so it will have to wait until I (eventually) strike it rich.

I am hoping to get a studio apartment in Manhattan for $1,400 or $1,500, but I may have to pay $1,650. Ouch. But, that included utilities. In fact, if I were to renew my lease here in Bellevue, I will be paying $1,060 once I add in utilities, so the incremental rent is not totally outrageous. In truth, a lot of people will spend a lot more than $590 a month for entertainment and recreation out here in the Seattle area while I simply get a lot of entertainment and recreation for free simply walking around the streets of Manhattan.

I haven't finalized my decision to move back to New York City, but I am almost "there."

Incidentally, I have lived in Manhattan twice before, back in 1994-1997 and 2000-2005.

My next step is to contact my old real estate broker and see what prices and availability are like. I have already been scanning Craigslist for a couple of weeks now, so I know roughly what apartments are going for.

I will probably gravitate back to Tudor City which is in Midtown East, at the east end of 42nd Street across First Avenue from the United Nations, since it is convenient, safe, economical, and has a reasonable level of service.

I will need to budget for a "house hunting" trip, the cost of moving my stuff back East, and a final, one-way trip to Manhattan. I have been thinking about taking the bus or Amtrak train for that final trip. I was originally planning on a trip back to New York City in May or June anyway, so the money I will save by not having to pay for a hotel for 10 days (at $250 to $300 a night) will actually pay for a big chunk of my move.

Other options I have for comparison purposes are moving back to Boulder, CO, to Washington, DC, or to San Francisco. The latter would be interesting, but the simple fact is that as much as I like visiting San Francisco (or Seattle for that matter), I simply really, really enjoy living in Manhattan much better.

The basic downside of moving to Manhattan is that I will be forced to budget myself extremely tightly, but that is probably a good thing in any case. As I said, the nice thing about Manhattan is how much I can enjoy for free.

-- Jack Krupansky

Win an HP Media Vault at EntConnect!

I was just reading over on Lee Devlin's blog that he has arranged for HP to offer a free HP Media Vault Pro network storage device suitable for small businesses as a door prize for the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference, that is coming up on Thursday March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008.

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect coming up... tomorrow!

Yikes! It is now time to do my final trip planning and preparation for the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference, Thursday March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008, since I will be flying out to Colorado from Seattle tomorrow morning. I won't be joining the ski crowd of EntConnect tomorrow, but will be heading up to Boulder from the airport for the afternoon and will then catch up with the skiers later Thursday evening.

Ugh... I have to get up at 4:00 a.m. to catch the 5:00 a.m. bus to catch my 7:20 a.m. flight.

And then I read that there might be snow/rain here in the Seattle area.

AND THEN I read that American Airlines has grounded a large number of planes for safety inspections. It turns out that my AA flight is actually operated by Alaska Airlines and supposedly not an MD-80.

What next?

The most annoying thing this time of year is that you cannot predict whether the weather in Colorado will be cold and snowing so that you need plenty of winter "gear" or mild and warm and then you feel silly carrying all of this stuff around.

I look forward to meeting up with a passionate group of entrepreneurs and business owners this weekend for some serious networking about starting and running your own business. I do hope that a couple of venture capitalists will show up. And maybe even some lawyers and accountants.

Even if all you have is an outline for a business plan or even only some ideas scratched out on a cocktail napkin, EntConnect may be your best bet to accelerate your path forward.

-- Jack Krupansky

Only a few days until EntConnect

Now time is really moving fast. There are only a few days left until the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference, Thursday March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008. In three days I'll be out in Colorado. In four days hard-core EntConnect long-timers will be starting to gather to chat before the Friday Italian Feast. I can hear it now... everybody asking the same question: "So, what have you been up to for the past year?"

I believe that we are going to have about 30 people this year, although, as usual, not everybody is there for the full conference or all at the same time.

So, if you are an entrepreneur with a technical background or even maybe just thinking about starting your own business, or maybe you are a lawyer or accountant or venture capitalist interested in hanging out with some entrepreneurs who might need your services, check out EntConnect.

Although some of the discussions center on hard-core technology, most people are interested in how technology can be used to leverage their entrepreneurial efforts, as well as non-technical skills such as marketing, product planning, sales, business development, selling your business, finance, legal, etc. In truth, the main thing people are interested in is hearing how business is going for everyone else and how they are tackling issues that arise in their businesses. Leveraging the efforts of others is the main name of the game.

-- Jack Krupansky

Update on self-employed 401(k) retirement plan

I blogged on Saturday about the possibility of setting up a self-employed retirement plan but wasn't sure about whether I could do a post-tax Roth plan. I pinged Fidelity and they responded today that they did not offer a Roth option for self-employed 401(k) accounts but that you could do it through a third party:

Fidelity's Self-Employed 401(k) does not allow for Roth contributions. However, you can use Fidelity as the investment vehicle for a Roth 401(k) plan provided by a third party. We recommend the following two companies that provide this service:

PenServ 903-455-5500
NPIN 800-443-6746 [National Pension & Insurance Network, Inc.]

These firms would provide you with the Roth 401(k) plan document, plan administration, and assist with tax reporting and filings. These companies are not financial institutions, but rather third party administrators. You would be directed back to Fidelity to open an account to hold your investments. We call this type of account a "Non-Prototype" which simply means you are using a prototype plan document provided by the third party. You can download an application by using the link below:

http://personal.fidelity.com/products/retirement/getstart/newacc/fidelity_nonprototype_plan.shtml

I have not pursued this any further or contacted those two firms, but either way, it does look promising.

Here is another thought I had: make pre-tax contributions in years when your income and tax bracket are higher, and then convert to a Roth account in any "off" years when your income and tax bracket are much lower.

I have been enamored by no-tax Roth accounts, but in truth a Roth account may only be beneficial when your tax rate in retirement is higher than your current tax rate. That may happen for some people, but I actually expect that my income level and hence my tax rate will be significantly lower than my current income and tax rate. Something to think about 

-- Jack Krupansky

Adding to the entrepreneurial skills list

I have added a few skills to my list of Entrepreneurial Skills:

• Plan B - Always have a "Plan B" backup plan in mind in case your primary and "best" plans run into unforeseen difficulties.
• Presence - Your appearance, focus, competence, and attitude leave those around you attentive and anxious to hear what you have to say.
• The world does not owe you anything - Success is earned through effort and merit and is never automatically guaranteed.
• Quality of introductions - A lot of networking opportunities can be dead ends, so you need to focus on arranging initial contacts that have a much higher potential both succeeding and for delivery superior results.
• Friendship - Colleagues who are also friends can be a very invigorating source of energy and ideas, helping to make your work both more satisfying and more productive
• Confidants - You need people with whom you can discuss problems with great candor, helping to free your mind to explore a wider range of alternatives in a low-risk way

I still have a few more in mind.

-- Jack Krupansky

Self-employed retirement plan

Now that I am out on my own again, I need to set up some sort of retirement plan. I already have several Roth Rollover IRA accounts that I could make IRA contributions to, but I would like to get a formal plan set up to contribute more than $5,000 or $6,000 this year. Without going overboard, I could simply set up a SEP-IRA or a Self-employed 401(k) plan. The latter allows me to contribute more, but also requires annual paperwork filing.

If I understand the rules properly, if my compensation was $60,000 (working part-time), with a SEP-IRA I could contribute up to 25% or $15,000, but with a self-employed 401(k) I could contribute that same 25% plus another $15,500 plus another $5,000 catch-up contribution since I am over 50 or a total of $35,500.

Ah... I now read that your only have to file the annual IRS Form 5500 for a self-employed 401(k) after your plan assets exceed $250,000. Excellent.

And, I think I can still make a $5,000 or $6,000 IRA contribution as well. Have to check on that though.

One lingering question is whether either plan can be Roth, or whether it is all pre-tax money and I would be deferring income taxes.

 -- Jack Krupansky

Only a week until EntConnect

Time is moving fast. There is only one week left until the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference, Thursday March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008.

My main complaint about the conference is that it is too short. By early Sunday afternoon the conference winds down and people head off on their separate ways. There is usually a small group left for a late lunch, but by then the energy of the conference has largely dissipated.

I may stay around for the Sunday lunch, but I may bug out in order to hitch a ride to get up to Boulder.

I had been planning to stay the last night at the conference hotel before catching my flight back "home" on Monday afternoon, but I just changed my mind yesterday and decided to head up to Boulder for Sunday afternoon and evening, spending the night at a cheaper hotel in Boulder and enjoying dinner in Boulder, and then I could wander around and enjoy Boulder some more on Monday before I head off to the airport early Monday afternoon.

If there is anybody from the Boulder area with an entrepreneurial spirit, please do consider attending the conference. And maybe we could schedule an entrepreneurs dinner Sunday evening, or even a lunch on Monday.

-- Jack Krupansky

Got my temporary business cards

I ordered a small batch (250) of temporary business cards from VistaPrint on Monday, March 10, 2008 and paid extra for two-week delivery. They actually arrived only one-week later, on Monday, March 17, 2008. That was quite reasonable service. The cards looks fine, both professional looking and decent quality. The VistaPrint ad on the back feels a little strange, but that's what saving $4 costs. I am still bummed that these "free" cards cost $9.38, but overall I did get decent value for the price I paid.

Overall, I am reasonably satisfied, especially since this was only a temporary solution.

-- Jack Krupansky

Entrepreneurial skills list

As I continue to contemplate entrepreneurial skills to blog about, I have consolidated the lists from my past posts (Skill development, More entrepreneurial skills, Being in touch with your market at an intuitive level, A few more skills for entrepreneurs, and Yet more skills for entrepreneurs) into a single comprehensive list of Entrepreneurial Skills on my web site.

Feel free to suggest additional skills to add to the list of Entrepreneurial Skills.

I already have a few more in mind.

-- Jack Krupansky

Agenda for EntConnect 2008 now available

With the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference  a little over a week away, the agenda for the conference is now available. There are currently about 30 attendees signed up, including Bill Gates, the former publisher of Midnight Engineering magazine.

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect less than two weeks away!

Wow, it seems like only yesterday that I was blogging about the annual EntConnect Entrepreneurial Connections Conference being another "three months" away, but now it is less that two weeks away, on Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008. I'll be flying out from the Seattle area a week from Thursday morning and catching up with the leading edge of the EntConnect gang on Thursday evening in the hotel lounge, and then joining the rush of a larger contingent of conference attendees on Friday evening. I am looking forword to this. It is one of the highlights of my year, every year, since 1992.

If you are in the Denver area, the Front Range of Colorado, anywhere in Colorado, the Rocky Mountain region, or anywhere else for that matter, and looking for an exciting entrepreneurial networking event for the last weekend of the month, EntConnect should be on the top of you list.

If paying $299 for a conference that you are not sure about is not comfortable for you or not in your budget right now, just show up anyway and maybe some kind of deal can be worked out. As far as I know, the conference organizers have never had security guards at the door!

In short, consider EntConnect if any of the following "shoes" seems to "fit" your situation:

• You just started a new business
• You are thinking of starting a new business
• You have been running a business of your own for some time but wish to network with others who understand what running a business is all about
• You have some new ideas about how to run your business better and wish to get some professional feedback
• You have some great (or even simply amusing) stories and tales to tell about your experiences as an entrepreneur
• You are a student and attracted to the entrepreneurial spirit
• You have a business but are trying to find a way to take things to the next level
• You encountered a disaster in your business and are prepared to share your story of how you coped with the challenge, either successfully or not
• You have a business of your own, but are feeling that you need to get out of it
• You have a business with some employees and you wish to give them an experience to pick up some of the entrepreneurial spirit from others
• You want to exchange tips and techniques with other entrepreneurs
• You know you need to do better marketing but just aren't sure where to start
• You have marketing, legal, accounting, or other professional services that you you think would appeal to entrepreneurs
• You are an angel investor or venture capitalist and always looking for new prospects and new ideas
• You are a teacher or professor looking to tap into entrepreneurial resources for your students

Although the conference has traditionally catered to technical entrepreneurs, namely engineers and software developers and related professionals, and former readers of Midnight Engineering magazine, anybody with even a hint of entrepreneurial spirit is certainly welcome.

There is a rumor that Bill Gates, the former publisher of Midnight Engineering magazine, will be at the conference for the Saturday sessions.

-- Jack Krupansky

Bus transportation to and from Denver International Airport and EntConnect

If you are flying in to the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference and will not be renting a car, the Denver regional bus system (RTD) has an express bus the runs between Denver International Airport and the Cold Spring Park-n-Ride, which is right next door to the EntConnect conference hotel (Sheraton Denver West). The bus is called a "SkyRide" bus, but you have to get the bus labeled "AF" for Cold Spring. Bus far is $11. Travel time is approximately 80 minutes. The bus runs roughly hourly (but not on the hour.)

You can also buy a round-trip ticket for $20 and even charge it to a credit card at the RTD counter in the main terminal at DIA. If you buy a ticket on the bus, make sure to have cash and exact change. You cannot buy a (discounted) round-trip ticket on the bus or pay on the bus by other than cash.

You can take other SkyRide buses to downtown Denver (AF stops there as well), Boulder, and other locations in the Denver metro area.

-- Jack Krupansky

Looking for the ME SKI or ENTCON conferences?

The ME SKI and ENTCON Entrepreneur's Conferences have been superseded by the annual EntConnect Entrepreneurial Connections Conference, which is coming up on Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008. EntConnect has the same content and format as those original conferences. John Gaudio now runs the conference, but Bill Gates (former publisher of Midnight Engineering magazine) is frequently an attendee.

So, if you are looking for the same kind of interactive networking experience with fellow technical entrepreneurs that you enjoyed at ME SKI '92 or the ENTCON conferences, you should attend EntConnect.

There is still Colorado skiing on the agenda (Thursday) and other fun activities on Friday, but Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning are 100% entrepreneurial networking, some in semi-structured presentations, but plenty of time for small group and one-on-one networking.

We are fairly tolerant of "service providers", so if you offer any kind of service that may be of interest to technical entrepreneurs starting and running their own small businesses, you are wlecome to attend on the same basis as any entrepreneur. This would include lawyers, accountants, marketing service providers, angel investors, venture capitalists, etc. Technical attendees are always interested in gaining access to the latest and best tools to help them start and run their businesses.

-- Jack Krupansky

Getting temporary business cards

I went ahead and ordered a small batch (250) of temporary business cards from VistaPrint. Nominally the cards are "free" and all you pay is shipping. For some reason I thought shipping was $3.99, but it came out to $9.38 for two-week delivery. It would have been over $5 even for ultra-slow 21-day delivery. AND, this is for cards that have advertising for VistaPrint on the backs of the cards. It would have been another $3.99 to have blank backs. AND, these are matte finish and it actually costs more than another $9 to get the glossy finish. AND, you have to click through all sorts of promotional and "extra value" screens before you can finish the order and even then there is yet another promotional screen. Overall, I found it to be a tedious and frustrating and disappointing experience. We will see in two weeks whether the results are worth the wait, the cost, and all of that hassle.

I did stick with my old DBA, Base Technology, my old business email address, Jack@BaseTechnology.com, and my old title of Software Entrepreneur. My "message" on the card is "Advanced Software Research, Design, and Development."

Now, I need to consider what message and content to put on my old web site.

-- Jack Krupansky

Should I get business cards?

Now that I am back out on my own again, one question that comes up is whether to get business cards. One issue is that I may move after my apartment lease comes up for renewal at the end of May. One solution to that would be to have a card that only uses an email address and web site address rather than my work address (which happens to be my home address.) But since I can order 250 full-color business cards from VistaPrint for $4, there is no harm reordering business cards in two or three months.

In truth, since so many of my contacts are via email and the Web, I rarely need a business card anyway. Still, on those rare occasions it is uncomfortable to not have one. Besides, it is so much easier to exploit serendipity if you can simply hand someone a business card.

A second issue is what name to operate under. For almost 20 years I operated as a DBA (doing business as) sole proprietorship, with a DBA of Base Technology. Since I do not currently offer a product or service other than my personal service and my online web sites and blogs, a business name is not essential. I may simply operate under my full, legal name, John W. Krupansky. Or, I could use my familiar name, Jack Krupansky, as my DBA.

I could simply revert back to my old DBA, but one question is whether the name is still appropriate, relevant, or even has much business value. In truth, people always knew me more by my own name than my business name. I did have a software product for a while, but that was quite a few years ago.

Or, maybe I should invent a new business name to represent my new "brand", whatever that might be.

What is my brand? I do several different things:

1. Independent computer software development consultant/contractor.
2. Independent software developer for my own products and services (not currently.)
3. Independent writer of technical articles, web pages, and blogging.
4. Independent research and writing about software agent technology and semantic web technology.
5. Independent writer of technical articles, web pages, and blogging about Entrepreneurial Engineering.

Now, if I can only resolve my business name and address, I could order 250 full-color business cards from VistaPrint for $4.

Another complication about my old business name is that it is too blandly descriptive and not very distinctive. I once had a registered U.S. trademark on it to protect my web site, but I have let the trademark lapse. I also had been talking with a Canadian company using the same name to sell my domain name to them. I would like to resolve that issue soon.

So, on the one hand there is some advantage of continuity with the same name, but the value is somewhat minimal since there is only a modest association of my name with that business name. OTOH, I do have thousands of web pages that say "Copyright John W. Krupansky d/b/a Base Technology." That fact alone leads my to want to stick with Base Technology.

I was hoping to sell the domain name and consolidate the pages from that web site under one of my other web sites, but that was before I decided to go out on my own again.

Part of me really wants to come up with a new business name, to start fresh, but since I don't have any big new business prospects other than my personal service consulting, research, and blogging, it is not an urgent priority.

I suppose my default will be to resurrect my old Base Technology DBA as well as my old "title" of "Software Entrepreneur." My domain name registration is paid for another two years and my web host is paid for another 10 months. Besides, I could change the name in a year or so anyway, once I have a clearer direction for my new independence.

-- Jack Krupansky

Yet more skills for entrepreneurs

I have a couple more skill areas I need to develop or improve in addition to those that I have already blogged about (Skill development, More entrepreneurial skills, Being in touch with your market at an intuitive level, and A few more skills for entrepreneurs):

• Connectors - Identify, cultivate, and utilize "connectors", who are those people you know who have their own network of contacts that is broader than your own immediate network of contacts. They are the people who can give you introductions and information that can really open doors that you could not open as easily by yourself.
• Overlap - Exploit opportunities to overlap projects so that you can get started much sooner and be able to complete the ramping up process much more quickly than if you had waited for current projects to completely wind down before even contemplating the start of new projects. Recognition of the length of the sales cycle is one example.
• Enthusiasm - Others can readily and effortlessly sense your passion and energy in a way that will tend to rapidly "infect" them and cause them to become interested in, if not thoroughly passionate about, your products and services.

Geez, how much longer can my list of skills needing improvement get? I already have a couple more in mind that are not quite jelled enough to put into readable form.

-- Jack Krupansky

Details on two EntConnect conference sessions

Bill French, co-founder of MyST Technology Partners, will be presenting two sessions at the upcoming EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference (Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008):

Gadgets: The Trend Toward Meaningful Web Services (about 1 hour)

• SOA's (services oriented architectures) begin to leverage web services packaged in lightweight components
• Widgets, gadgets, gizmos, minis - they deliver on the promise of a loosely coupled web
• How gadgets can help your business
• A quick romp through the popular gadget sites
• Innovation opportunities for entrepreneurs
• Building basics - how to create, publish, and earn revenues from gadgets

"Kick Bill…" -- Critique the MyST Advertorial Marketing Pitch (about 1 hour)

• I'll run through a 20 minute presentation designed to help marketing and PR folks understand the benefits of the MyST Advertorial solution.
• The audience will take ten minutes to compose suggestions for improvement or just complain about aspects of the pitch, the product, or whatever comes to mind.
• The suggestions will be read and voted on; the suggestor earning the highest number of votes will win an iPod Shuffle.

See that last part... an opportunity to win an iPod Shuffle. But please trust me, hearing Bill speak is worth the entire price of the conference, iPod or no iPod.

-- Jack Krupansky

Only one more day to make your EntConnect hotel reservations

I hear that tomorrow is the cutoff date for booking one of the discounted hotel rooms for the upcoming EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference (Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008.) So, if you haven't already booked your hotel room, do it today or tomorrow! See the conference web site for details.

-- Jack Krupansky

Giddy excitement of a Hannah Montana concert? Well, we wish!

Although some of us longtime participants of the upcoming EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference (Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008) do tend to get excited about the conference, I do have to admit that the conference does not exactly have the energy level of a Ruby on Rails technical conference or a Hannah Montana concert. I had to laugh (and sigh) when I read the lead paragraph of the WIRED article on 37 signals:

To the 300 software developers packed into a Vancouver conference room, David Heinemeier Hansson was more than a programmer. He was a visionary, the creator of Ruby on Rails, a software template that powered an increasing number of hot Internet applications. He was a philosopher-king whose minimalist ethos suggested a new way of thinking about business and software. And he was a celebrity, with boyish good looks, precocious self-possession, and fans who invoked his name so frequently they used his initials as shorthand: DHH. As Hansson took the stage at the British Columbia Institute of Technology for this, the first Ruby on Rails conference, the room was filled with the kind of giddy excitement that greets the opening chords of a Hannah Montana concert.

Yeah, we wish we were achieving that level of excitement, and attendence.

But if you are a technical entrepreneur or anybody with entrepreneurial aspirations or a former reader of Midnight Engineering magazine please do come and check out the EntConnect Conference anyway. After all, there is a money-back guarantee.

Disclosure: I actually have no idea who Hannah Montana is.

-- Jack Krupansky

37signals profiled in WIRED

There is an interesting profile of 37signals in WIRED by Andrew Park entitled "The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep it Simple, Stupid." They are a distinct alternative to the traditional tech venture which may have started small but with aspirations of growing large. They have a philosophy that eschews appealing to the interests of the Fortune 500 and prefers to keep things simple and at a human scale.

The article does criticize 37signals for not worrying more about scalability and complexity, but it is not at all clear how that will play out in the end.

What we really need is an auto-scaling cloud computing infrastructure such that application development tools such as  those from 37 signals do not need to reinvent scalability for every tool and every application.

Nonetheless, 37signals is a venture to watch in the coming months and years. I would not count them out out.

Maybe some entrepreneur will come along and invent a virtual machine emulator that is automatically scalable and gives 37signals apps a scalable sandbox to work in.

-- Jack Krupansky

Venn diagram for a successful venture

I do not recall where I originally saw this concept, in other words it is not my own personal invention, but the essence is that a typical successful venture will be the intersection of three elements:

1. A market for your product or service.
2. Your passion for your product or service
3. Your ability to create and deliver your product or service

All three are needed. Your success will be dependent on the degree of overlap of the three factors.

As a Venn diagram, the Venture Venn Diagram, a successful venture exists at the intersection of the three components:

-- Jack Krupansky

A few more skills for entrepreneurs

I have a few more skill areas I need to develop or improve in addition to those that I have already blogged about (Skill development, More entrepreneurial skills, and Being in touch with your market at an intuitive level):

• Compelling presentation and narrative - organizing and packaging your ideas, facts, rationale, arguments, benefits, etc. in a form that comes across as an appealing and believable story that literally compels your audience to agree with your proposal. The visual and verbal are equally important.
• Humor and fun - how to balance serious discussion and serious work on the one hand with light moments and at least some amount of play or at least a playful tone, with the goal of raising the overall energy level and leaving people feeling invigorated rather than merely exhausted and spent.
• A little drama and theater - nobody wants dark melodrama in their work and business environment, but a little suspense and unexpected turns can raise the energy level and prevent people from sliding into a lower-energy rut of lower productivity
• Surprise - even modest positive surprises can dramatically boost excitement, energy, and attention.
• Serendipity - being open and flexible and attentive so that you are able to fully exploit new opportunities that pop up in an unexpected manner. Setting yourself up for greater potential serendipity as well.
• Situational Awareness - being hyper-aware of all details of everything that is going on everywhere around you so that you can respond promptly to things as they are rather than as you imagined they might or might not be. Sometimes things are right in front of us and we still do not see them.
• Roadmap - Have a long-term succession of products and services in mind so that you can do a better job of trading off short-term gains in favor of long-term benefits.
• Rapport - How to establish and build a great working chemistry with partners, colleagues, employees, customers, investors, etc., with the ultimate goal of more effective and easier comunication and better and easier business results.
• Making a better first impression - getting started on the right foot is a lot easier than starting with a struggle for credibility.
• Managing money and a budget - it sounds easy, but so many bad decisions get made because we let income, expenses, or our cash balance get out of whack.

Just when I think I finally have my full list of needed entrepreneurial skills, a few more come to mind.

-- Jack Krupansky

A few more skills for entrepreneurs

I have a few more skill areas I need to develop or improve in addition to those that I have already blogged about (Skill development, More entrepreneurial skills, and Being in touch with your market at an intuitive level):

• Compelling presentation and narrative - organizing and packaging your ideas, facts, rationale, arguments, benefits, etc. in a form that comes across as an appealing and believable story that literally compels your audience to agree with your proposal. The visual and verbal are equally important.
• Humor and fun - how to balance serious discussion and serious work on the one hand with light moments and at least some amount of play or at least a playful tone, with the goal of raising the overall energy level and leaving people feeling invigorated rather than merely exhausted and spent.
• A little drama and theater - nobody wants dark melodrama in their work and business environment, but a little suspense and unexpected turns can raise the energy level and prevent people from sliding into a lower-energy rut of lower productivity
• Surprise - even modest positive surprises can dramatically boost excitement, energy, and attention.
• Serendipity - being open and flexible and attentive so that you are able to fully exploit new opportunities that pop up in an unexpected manner. Setting yourself up for greater potential serendipity as well.
• Situational Awareness - being hyper-aware of all details of everything that is going on everywhere around you so that you can respond promptly to things as they are rather than as you imagined they might or might not be. Sometimes things are right in front of us and we still do not see them.
• Roadmap - Have a long-term succession of products and services in mind so that you can do a better job of trading off short-term gains in favor of long-term benefits.
• Rapport - How to establish and build a great working chemistry with partners, colleagues, employees, customers, investors, etc., with the ultimate goal of more effective and easier comunication and better and easier business results.
• Making a better first impression - getting started on the right foot is a lot easier than starting with a struggle for credibility.
• Managing money and a budget - it sounds easy, but so many bad decisions get made because we let income, expenses, or our cash balance get out of whack.

Just when I think I finally have my full list of needed entrepreneurial skills, a few more come to mind.

-- Jack Krupansky

Engineering simplicity

Sometimes we yearn for the old days, when life was so much simpler:

You only need two tools in life - WD-40 and Duct Tape. If it doesn't move and should, use the WD-40. If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape.

There must be an equivalent rule for entrepreneurs, such as a sales and marketing equivalent to WD-40 to "move" product, and the marketing and customer service equivalent to duct tape to retain customers. Hmmm.

Maybe that is what Duct Tape Marketing is really supposed to be all about?

-- Jack Krupansky

Bill French speaking at EntConnect in four weeks

One of the regular attendees and speakers at the EntConnect Entrepreneurial Connections Conference has been Bill French. Bill was one of the inventors of LapLink (yes, that Laplink!) He also created one of the early GUI WYSIWYG editors for web site creation (QuickSite.) In recent years he was co-inventor of the MyST Technology Partners, Inc. MyST Blogsite blog site management software and service, a high-end (costs more than I earn in a month) product and subscription service that makes it easy for busy businesses to quickly and effectively establish and maintain a high-visibility profile on the Web with minimal effort on their part. Bill has a wealth of knowledge and experience with the Web and technology in general and is always on hand to share it with us at the conference. This year will not be an exception.

I personally got started with blogging after repreatedly listening to Bill patiently explain the value of high-quality content blogging for enhancing findability on the Web and in Web search engines.

Bill is both an entertaining and insightful speaker. One of my favorites: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon." He is also qlways quite patient with those of us who ask annoying questions because we just don't quite "get it." Ignore what Bill has to say at your own peril.

Listening to Bill speak is well worth the entire price of the conference, and then some. And, becuase of the open and interactive nature of the conference, you get plenty of time to interact with Bill as well as listen to him speak.

The conference runs from Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008. Thursday and Friday are reserved for skiing and other group activities. Friday evening is the kick-off dinner. Saturday is the main body of the conference sessions. Additional sessions are held Sudnay morning. A group lunch for the lingering diehards is held early Sunday afternoon. See the official EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference web site.

-- Jack Krupansky

Former readers of Midnight Engineering magazine to gather in a month

One of the functions of the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference that is coming up in exactly a month is to serve as a meet-up for former readers of Midnight Engineering magazine which was published by William E. Gates (Bill Gates, but not the Bill Gates of Microsoft infamy) back in the 1990's. Back before the Internet and the Web became a dominant media for entrepreneurs to communicate and exchange ideas, "The Magazine" was a monthly must-read for electrical engineers and software developers who were running their own small technology-based businesses or hoping to bootstrap such a business working on their own projects at night and on weekends as they slaved away at so-so day jobs until they were ready to strike out on their own.

In 1992 Bill held his first conference, ME SKI '92, up in Breckenridge, CO. A combination of skiing and a weekend of conference sessions, the idea was that "The Conference" would be like "The Magazine", but in real-time.

The Magazine has not been published in a number of years, but its spirit lives on in the form of the EntConnect Entrepreneurial Connections Conference held every year on the outskirts of Denver.

-- Jack Krupansky

Being in touch with your market at an intuitive level

I have blogged recently about entrepreneurial skills that I feel that I need to develop (Skill development and More entrepreneurial skills) and I did in fact mention the need to be in touch with your customer needs at an intuitive level:

In touch with customer needs - beyond basic market research and technical requirements, what is it that the customers in your market segment really need to feel that your products and services are worth paying for, as well as your intuitive sense for changing needs without the need for market surveys

I keep coming back to that skill as one of the biggest skill deficits I have that holds me back the most.

That is all well and good, but identifying a deficit is not the same as effectively addressing it.

How does one go about developing that intuitive sense for a market?

Other than the obvious approach of spending a lot of time with customers in their environment, I do not have the answers yet.

-- Jack Krupansky

Wi-Fi at EntConnect

I was just talking with John Gaudio last night and he assured me that one way or another there would be Wi-Fi connectivity available at the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference that is coming up in just over a month. Alas, the hotel charges about $8 a day for Wi-Fi in guest rooms, but we should have something "free" in the conference meeting room.

Not that many years ago it was unheard of for anybody to be online at the conference, but these days it would be unconscionable not to have always-on connectivity.

I actually find it helpful to follow along a presentation by visiting the presenter's web site and any web sites they mention, or to simply lookup terms that they mention for a definition or examples.

-- Jack Krupansky

Turning off the alarm clock

Although I like getting up early and getting up with the sun, I had chosen to get up at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. every day of my brief career at Microsoft. Although there is a portion of the year when the sun actually is up before 5:00 a.m. in the Seattle area, much of the year it is dark at that hour, so I cannot depend on the sun. I used my old Sony Clie PDA for its alarm clock feature to assure that I would be awake in time to catch the earliest bus from downtown Bellevue to the West Campus of Microsoft in Redmond at 6:05 a.m. and be at my desk by 6:35 a.m. every weekday. I enjoyed the quiet and getting a lot more work done by the time a lot of people came in at 10:00 a.m. or so.

No more now that I am once again independent.

I am going to revert to my old form and simply rise when I happen to, whether it be due to the sun or construction noise across the street (at 5:30 a.m.?!), or simply that I have gotten enough sleep. In truth, I have frequently woken up by 4:30 a.m., but there is no sane need to punctuate the bliss of the early morning with the shock of an alarm clock.

Actually, I have no idea how my work habits and sleep patterns will evolve, but I do intend to get back to a more natural rhythm that makes sense for me.

Alarm clock be gone!

-- Jack Krupansky

Getting my weekends back

As I transition from full-time employee at The Evil Empire on Monday to working as a part-time independent software development consultant/contractor for a stealth startup on Tuesday, one of the transitions I will have to cope with is the prospect of getting my weekends back as free time. For the past 21 months I have been working 12 to 13 hours a day during the week at The Empire and have been simply too tired to engage in any of my own projects during the week, so my weekends were the only time that I had the time and energy to "work" on any of my own projects such as blogging. Sure, I got in a little relaxation such as watching a movie or two, but I inevitably consumed a fair number of hours on the weekend on activities other than idle relaxation.

Starting Tuesday, I will have plenty of time to pursue my own projects every day during the week, so the odds are that by the weekend I will want to focus much closer to 100% of my weekend time on relaxation, or at least on personal projects that don't feel as much like "work."

Alternatively, I can easily take off an entire day or more during the week for relaxing activities, and shift only a little if any of my work-like activities (e.g., this blog) into the weekend.

Another activity I would like to bring back into my life is to spend a fair number of hours each week simply reading books. Lately I have crammed so much into a seven-day week that I have had zero time to simply take out an hour or two a day for reading books. The closest I come is stopping by the local Barnes & Noble store and leafing through new books for fifteen or twenty minutes.

-- Jack Krupansky

Things to know about the Semantic Web

For future reference, Bernard Lun on the ReadWriteWeb blog has a post entitled "11 Things To Know About Semantic Web" that makes a number of key points about the current state of affairs with the Semantic Web. One that stood out as far as potential for me personally was:

3. If you have a firm grasp of the theoretical underpinnings of the semantic web, things like RDF, tuples, Sparql and OWL that make my brain hurt, you will be able to charge a fat premium in consulting fees for a while, as not many people really understand this stuff. But make hay while the sun shines, as some entrepreneur will surely figure out how to abstract this stuff and make it accessible for the masses.

Yes, that is what I aim to do: "make it accessible for the masses." I want to be that entrepreneur, or at least one of them.

There is a lot of great research work going on with the Semantic Web, and some initial industrial and commercial uses (e.g., RDF for blog web feeds), but most of the true power of the Semantic Web is still very far from being ready for general consumption by "the masses."

Consumers are the ultimate audience that I am really after, with software agents mediating the interface between consumers and Semantic Web data.

I will have more to say about this once I start my new blog dedicated to Semantic Web technology.

-- Jack Krupansky

What can I talk about at EntConnect?

I am now wondering what I can talk about at the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference that is coming up in just over a month. I could have talked about what it feels like to be an entrepreneur "trapped" in a full-time job, but since I will once again be independent after Monday, that topic is moot. And since my initial part-time independent work will be for a stealth startup, by definition I will not be able to say even one word about it.

It was not my intention to speak at a formal session, but there is usually some sort of informal session where everybody is given a chance to say what they are up to.

Actually, I was thinking of proposing to moderate an informal, purely interactive session focused on the question of what skills attendees feel they need to work on over the coming year to take their business (or ideas for a business) to the next level. A secondary question might be the extent t which we can build a thriving online community cased around the concept of helping each other work on and build those skills that we as a group identify as high priority.

I may propose this interactive session for Sunday morning when the conference traditionally starts to wind down and the energy level tends to dissipate.

-- Jack Krupansky

Freedom

Monday is my last day as a full-time employee at The Evil Empire. Tuesday I will start doing some part-time work for a "stealth startup" -- which I of course can not talk about. But, this should still give me plenty of time and energy to get involved in other projects of my own.

Although plenty of projects instantly come flooding into my mind, the immediate question is which projects will deserve my attention and have the best potential to deliver real business value.

One potential project that has at least some business potential is that I am seriously considering getting deeper into the Semantic Web, especially since the technology and tools are beginning to mature and there is significant, real, long-term potential. At a minimum, I will start watching this field a bit more closely. I actually have been subscribed to a number of the relevant email lists, but not really paying close, deep attention for the past two and a half years. I may start a new blog dedicated to my efforts following Semantic Web developments. Whether this becomes a primary project for me or just a sideline remains to be seen.

One thing I do have to be careful about is to do a better job of firewalling my true business ventures from research-oriented projects which simply do not have short-term business profit potential.

In any case, it is good to be getting back to an entrepreneurial state of mind.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made my hotel reservation for the EntConnect conference

I went ahead and made my hotel reservation for the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference. Ultimately I did succeed, but I ran into a couple of potholes along the way. I used the link on the conference web page, but the hotel web page then insisted that there were no available rooms. I then tried to make a reservation directly on the Starwood web site, but I could not find a way to request the EntConnect group rate. I gave up and directly called the hotel reservation number (1-800-325-3535, which is not listed on the conference web site.) Starwood had the $75 EntConnect special group rate for Thursday through Sunday nights, but claimed to be sold out for Thursday night and could only offer me a $125 rate for Thursday night. I went ahead and made the full reservation over the phone and then sent an email to John Gaudio to try to get him to get the hotel to adjust the rate on Thursday night to our group rate.

Incidentally, the tax rate is 10.60%, so that $75 rate will actually be $82.95. Corporate reservations was unable to tell me what the fee was for Wi-Fi access.

-- Jack Krupansky

Ted Goff cartoon

This is just a test to see how a Ted Goff cartoon displays in this blog:

-- Jack Krupansky

More entrepreneurial skills

In addition to my previous list of skills and skill areas that I must improve to be a top-notch entrepreneur, here are some other entrepreneurial skills:

• Morale - how to build it, maintain it, and grow it
• Team building - not all interesting ventures can be accomplished by a lone entrepreneur
• Community - customers and partners can provide a foundation for growth of your venture far beyond the financial value of business transactions
• Inspiration - how to help people feel that they are part of something special, an opportunity to be a part of something much more satisfying than their financial compensation and work environment
• Inspiring faith and trust - the ability to get people to accept your vision and apprach because they really believe in you rather than strictly because you sway them with detailed logic
• Vision - beyond simply the product or service ideas at the heart of the business, an entrepreneur needs to supply the aspiration for the business, in "big" terms, what the business is really trying to achieve
• Creativity - the ability to handle the unexpected and even thrive when operating in uncharted territory
• Energy, reserve energy - just when you think you have no energy left to give to your venture, you need to have the ability to find more more energy than you thought you had
• Balancing long and short term - some people are good at focusing on the long term and some are good at focusing on the short term, but really good entrepreneurs figure out how to balance both
• Decision making - discarding cherished options and pursuing risky options can be devilishly difficult for many people to do
• Delegation - figuring out what responsibilities to retain and wish to offload to others can be painful as well as uncertain
• Pricing - putting a financial value on your products and services, especially if they are new and innovative or your cost structure is non-traditional, or especially if you lack the confidence to ask for more money
• Confidence - even if you have the right answer or product or service, lack of confidence destroys its value
• Self-motivation - not needing to look to others for your motivational energy or inner drive
• Leadership - the ability to set out on a path and get others to follow along with you because they find your vision and approach compelling
• Building value - beyond the value of your core innovation, how to layer additional product features and services and package them in a way to maximize total value
• Focus - pushing aside all manner of good and interesting ideas and approaches in favor or a core set of ideas and approaches that will lead to rapid success in your chosen market
• Cherry-picking - no person or business can do it all, but the ability to sort through the many options and select those options that will really matter is a critical skill
• Flexibility - ability to change and discard what may be intensely cherished as change is warranted for maximizing success of the business
• Partners - always looking for partners to leverage your resources into a larger business success than
• When to walk away - persistence is a crucial skill, but sometimes it really is best to cut your losses and move on to greener pastures
• In touch with customer needs - beyond basic market research and technical requirements, what is it that the customers in your market segment really need to feel that your products and services are worth paying for, as well as your intuitive sense for changing needs without the need for market surveys
• Peripheral vision - ability to avoid being blindsided by new competitors, new technologies, and other emerging changes in your business environment
• Improvisation - even the best of plans can go astray, as well as the emergence of unexpected opportunities that demand a response faster than normal planning would permit
• Mentoring and coaching - sometimes you or people you work with simply do not have all the answers or all of the skills, so you want to leverage the skills and insight of others or to help others leverage your skills and insight
• Good enough and excellence - sometimes good enough really is good enough and sometimes aspiring for much better than good enough is really what is needed, but balancing between the two is the critical skill

All right, what else am I missing.

-- Jack Krupansky

Bought my plane ticket for the EntConnect conference

Since the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference does not start until Thursday, March 27, I wasn't planning on buying my plane ticket for another two weeks or so, but I figured I should check the prices to get a handle on my budget. I was even thinking of using the "Name Your Own Price" feature of Priceline to get an even cheaper fare. I checked Expedia to get a ballpark view of air fares from Seattle to Denver. I could get a round-trip for a decent schedule for $247. Priceline is a little cheaper, typically about $5, and came in at $243 (tax and fees included) for the same flight schedule times. With prices this cheap, it hardly seemed worth the trouble to get involved in a bidding process that would likely end up with schedule times that would not be optimal for me and I figured prices would probably move up over the next week or two. So, I went ahead and booked the flight directly on Priceline at their published price of $243. Actually, Priceline showed me a fare of $221, but then told be it was no longer available. Ditto for $241 and $242. Then it finally gave me the fare for $243. This morning I see that my flight is priced up in the $270 to $290 range.

My flight from Seattle is very early, at 7:20 a.m. I will just barely be able to make it taking the earliest bus at 5:09 a.m. that gets to Sea-Tac airport at 5:46 a.m. I usually do not like to cut flights that close, especially since even a modest traffic problem can cause a significant delay, but at that hour there is unlikely to be any significant traffic issues on the way to the airport. The flight arrives in Denver at 11:00 a.m. I haven't decided whether I will wander around Denver for the afternoon or go up to Boulder for a few hours. My plan was to go up to Boulder on Friday.

My return flight is on Monday morning, at 4:07 p.m. That allows me to enjoy Sunday afternoon and evening and part of Monday in Colorado and take my time getting to the airport. I may in fact go to the airport a little early and then hang out in the Continental President's Club to catch up on email and news with their free Wi-Fi (and breakfast as well.) Monday is another possibility for my desired visit to Boulder if I choose alternate plans on Friday.

Now on to the hotel reservation. The conference hotel has a very cheap conference rate of $75, so it is simply not worthwhile looking around and getting a hotel that is less convenient.

-- Jack Krupansky

Thinking of starting your own technology-based business venture?

Starting your own technology-based business can be a very scary and daunting task. Sure, it can be very appealing, very seductive, and possibly even very successful, but there are many pitfalls and potholes and curves along the way. One way to help you get started or to help you deal with the inevitable challenges along the way is to attend the annual EntConnect Entrepreneurial Connections Conference that is held near the end of March every year out in Denver, CO. It is less about collecting information, but much more about having a great opportunity to network with other entrepreneurs of all skill and experience levels.

So, whether you live in the Denver area and just want to drop in, or even if you live far away and simply want an excuse to go skiing or check out what Colorado is all about, EntConnect is a great way to pursue your entrepreneurial passions.

Sure, you can succeed in your entrepreneurial quests without EntConnect, but the conference is a great way to share expertise and experiences with a great group of like-minded individuals.

And even if you had not been considering a new business before you read this post, ask yourself whether you are really confident that being an entrepreneur is not a role that would you would ever consider. Even if you have no entrepreneurial experience, this conference might just give you the push that you need to break out of your "day job" (or no job!) and become a master of your own destiny.

Just to be clear, this conference is not about franchise opportunities or MLM or any kind of get rich quick scheme. Rather, it is all about building real value that real people will be willing to pay real money for.

For details and to register online, check out the official EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference web site.

Oh, and venture capitalists are welcome as well -- provided that they bring some of their venture capital with them!

-- Jack Krupansky

I'm registered for EntConnect 2008

I am now officially registered for the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference at the end of March. I used the new online registration system. I haven't made any travel arrangements yet, but I should try to get a cheap airfare ASAP.

From the conference web site:

Need a single word to describe EntConnect? Serendipity.
You'll discover something you're not expecting.

I really do appreciate the number of "Oh, really? Wow, that really is interesting" moments that occur at the conference.

I will probably travel on Thursday in time to arrive for dinner.

I do not intend to participate in Friday's fun activities but will likely head up to Boulder to wander around and see how things have changed in the past two years and make do a little walking in the foothills.

I intend to get back to the hotel by 4:30 p.m. or so to help greet Friday arrivals while the Friday activity people gradually straggle in from all of their exciting activities.

Meanwhile, I am in the middle of arranging for some part-time software development consulting for a stealth startup. Also known as "moonlighting." I look forward to returning to more of an entrepreneurial mindset. Alas, they are in stealth mode, so I won't be able to blog about them or even very much about my experiences with them. But at least this help me get into the spirit of EntConnect.

-- Jack Krupansky

Keywords for entrepreneurial ventures

I was thinking about how to come up with a set of keywords to describe the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference. Those keywords might be used for an AdWords advertising campaign, categorizing the conference for event listings, searching the web and blogs for web sites with similar interests, etc. Although obviously a lot of keywords are used to describe the conference, the real question is what keywords relatively uniquely describe it in a narrower sense to minimize overlap with unrelated events and topics.

In any case, here are some of the initial keywords and phrases that I came up with.

• Entrepreneurial conference
• Learn from other entrepreneurs
• Meet with other entrepreneurs
• Meet with technical entrepreneurs
• Meet with entrepreneurial engineers
• Networking with entrepreneurs
• Technically-inclined fellow entrepreneurs
• Technically-inclined entrepreneur
• Technical entrepreneur
• Technology entrepreneur
• World of entrepreneurs
• New venture
• Startup
• Garage strartup
• Bootstrap business
• New business
• New technology business
• Grow your own business
• Start my own business
• Start my own technology business
• Start my own technology-based business
• Entrepreneur
• Entrepreneurial
• Entrepreneurial activities
• Entrepreneurial business
• Entrepreneurial business opportunity
• Entrepreneurial connections
• Entrepreneurial engineer
• Entrepreneurial engineering
• Entrepreneurial friends
• Entrepreneurial insight
• Entrepreneurial interests
• Entrepreneurial intuition
• Entrepreneurial network
• Entrepreneurial networking
• Entrepreneurial opportunities
• Entrepreneurial pursuits
• Entrepreneurial serendipity
• Entrepreneurial startup
• Entrepreneurial training
• Entrepreneurial venture
• Entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurship conference
• Share entrepreneurial insight
• High-tech entrepreneur
• Technical entrepreneur
• Technology venture
• Small technology venture
• Self-funded venture
• Midnight engineer
• Engineers interested in starting their own business
• Run your own company
• Run your own business
• Your own company
• Your own business
• unconference
• Bar camp
• Open space conference
• Share ideas
• Small business
• Small business camp
• Small technology business
• Business opportunity
• Marketing
• Marketing effectiveness
• Technology trends
• Networking event
• Networking opportunity
• Technology networking event
• Technology networking
• Entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Entrepreneurship summit
• Entrepreneurial development

That is an initial seed set to get the process started.

Any suggestions?

-- Jack Krupansky

Skill development

If I am really going to get serious about being an entrepreneur again, there are a number of skills and skill areas that I must improve:

• Sales and salesmanship - at least starting with a more positive attitude
• Communications in general and interpersonal communications in particular
• Empathy for whoever I am dealing with as well as customers
• Negotiation - when to push harder, when to back off and give a little, and when to walk away
• Ambition - how badly do I want something, is it achievable, is it worth the costs, how to manage it
• Patience, persistence, and pacing - going the distance but not off into the weeds
• Demographics - deep understanding
• Popular culture - deep understanding
• Buzz - how to get it, promote it, leverage it, how to do something with it, how to manage it, how to keep it alive
• Passion - understanding its role, but like fire mishandling can lead to either an incendiary disaster or dead lack of activity
• Trends - which ones matter, how to measure, what to watch
• Hits and blockbusters - do they matter for a given business, how they matter, how to get them, and how to manage them
• Appearance, perception, and image - understanding their importance, cultivating them, managing them, exploiting them, evolving them as the world evolves
• Reputation - what factors are controlling it, what forms of influence do you have, responding to weaknesses, responding to attacks
• Public speaking ... ugh!
• Graphics design - their role, achieving competence and credibility, measuring value
• Brand - conceptualizing, creating, cultivating, managing, and evolving
• Value proposition - getting the elements right and then getting the formulation right, how it manifests itself in every aspect of the business, products, services, and reputation
• Generosity - role in making a business a valuable part of society as a side effect of delivering great business results and how that perpetuates a "virtuous cycle"

Obviously there are many other aspects of starting and running a business, but these are some that I would definitely need to improve dramatically to achieve a reasonable level of business success.

-- Jack Krupansky

Logo for your business

I personally am quite "graphically-challenged", but even I recognize the need for the visual aspects of a brand, which includes both a name and a logo. Nominally a name is non-graphic text, but they do have a visual factor. Logos are clearly 100% visual. How to conceptualize, visualize, create, and refine a logo is a process at which I personally have no apparent skill. Nonetheless, I found the blog post "The Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos" quite interesting, although I have only skimmed it -- mostly for the visual aspects!

I suppose even a blog should or could have a logo or at least a recognizable visual theme.

-- Jack Krupansky

More EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference details

The official EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections Conference web site now has updated details as well as support for online registration (button is at the bottom of the page.)

The really good news is that there is once again really cheap early-bird pricing of $99 for a few more days.

See you at the conference!

-- Jack Krupansky

Have I been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug again?

I have a suspicion that I have been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug again. After 20 months of slaving away at The Evil Empire, I have finally decided that it really hasn't been working out that well for me and that I need to "get out of my little box" and once again consider entrepreneurial opportunities. I intend to continue at The Empire for at least another year or so to finish off my current assignments and consider some part-time moonlighting opportunities during that period, but a year or eighteen months from now I expect that I will be on my own again. There are lots of interesting projects inside The Empire, but the overall style and approach just isn't such a great fit for me. There are plenty of people who fit in fine (tens of thousands of them), but I have never been much of an organization man.

I do not have any clue what sort of entrepreneurial opportunities I will pursue or even consider yet, but I do intend to keep my eyes and ears open and to be willing to be patient to wait for something which will really "sync" for me.

My initial thoughts are that within a couple of months I will seek to take on ten to fifteen hours a week of part-time work of some form. I do have to be careful that such work does not conflict with my current assignments or otherwise conflict with my employment agreement and company rules, but moonlighting is permited. You used to have to ask permission, but they changed that policy so that you do not need permission but are nonetheless expected to assure that outside work does not conflict with company policies or otherwise interfere with your work for the company.

There are four main approaches I might take:

1. Hook up with a start-up company as an employee.
2. Continue my old mode of freelance work (possibly at a start-up) to pay my bills, while contemplating my own ventures.
3. Focus on my own ventures exclusively.
4. Take a part-time job as a skill-building exercise.

There are lots of advantages and benefits to working at The Empire, including the opportunity to work with a lot of really smart people, and I will really miss them, but I find myself way too constrained (and pressured) by the organizational structure. I need a bigger box to work in. There are plenty of different boxes for a very wide range of opportunities, but each is still a relatively confining box, at least the ones that I can aspire to.

One additional option is that after leaving the company in a year or so I could in fact turn around and continue to work at the company on a contract or "contingent" basis. It is amazing how many people do this. It offers additional flexibility, albeit without a lot of the direct and indirect benefits of being a Microsoft "FTE." I do not think I will go that route, but it is an option. Sometimes, people even go from FTE to contingent and then back to FTE again in a different group. There are so many different groups within the company and opportunities are popping into existence on almost a daily basis. These really are great opportunities for a lot of people, it is just that I am not one of them.

BTW, managers at Microsoft frequently post ads in Craigslist, which is how I found my job. Also, another path into the company is by getting a position at one of the firms that supplies contract staff to the company and then apply for a FTE position once you have established a track record inside the company. Craigslist is useful for those positions as well.

-- Jack Krupansky

Crucual Conversations: Do your communications skills really suck or what?

Well, do they? Do your communications skills really suck, or what? Not to boast, but mine really suck.

Sure, some of us are truly gifted "communicators", and a lot of us have fairly decent communications skills or at least a "mixed bag", but some of us are really lacking in key skills when it comes to crucial conversations, those high-stakes situations when there is a yawning chasm of expectations between the parties and emotions (of at least one of the parties) are extremely high. These are the situations when your "natural" instinct may be to get very angry or to totally withdraw from the situation, either option causing a potentially great loss on your part. Sure, all too often one of the parties is instigating the sense of confrontation for their own gain, but that is not a very acceptable excuse for failing to meet your own goals in such a situation.

There is actually a book by the title Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High and a training series run by Vital Smarts that focuses on helping people understand and develop skills to excel in such crucial conversations. Such skills are applicable to our personal lives and relationships as well as business and public life, but are especially essential for ambitious entrepreneur-types, or anybody who want to accomplish anything where you run into situations where the communications are "sticky."

I would dearly love to say that I have mastered all of these skills, but in fact I do quite poorly at them.

I have not yet read the entire book or taken the training, but I have read the first chapter which is online. The summary from that first chapter tells us that:

When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions start to run strong, casual conversations become crucial. Ironically, the more crucial the conversation, the less likely we are to handle it well. The consequences of either avoiding or fouling up crucial conversations can be severe. When we fail a crucial conversation, every aspect of our lives can be affected -- from our careers, to our communities, to our relationships, to our personal health.

As we learn how to step up to crucial conversations -- and handle them well -- with one set of skills we can influence virtually every domain of our lives.

What is this all-important skill-set? What do people who sail through crucial conversations actually do? More importantly, can we do it too?

I only ran across this book and approach to communications yesterday, but it certainly seems worth pursuing as a big bang for a modest buck.

Here is the book on Amazon:

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference details trickle in

As promised, the EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference will be held from Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008. This is an excellent opportunity for engineers with an entrepreneurial interest to get together and share ideas and experiences related to starting and running your own technology-oriented business. It is not restricted to technology types per se, but that is the main focus and primary interest. Many of the attendees are former readers of the now-defunct Midnight Engineering magazine.

Finally, at least a few details have been finalized (as if that word had any meaning for an unconference!) by conference MC John Gaudio:

• Once again we'll be staying at the Sheraton Denver West. Rooms are $75.00 per night.  They now have a workout facility, lap pool, hot tub and steam room, all available at no additional charge to those staying in the hotel.
• Skiing will be Thursday, March 27th, followed by drinks in the hotel bar.
• Friday is still open, though we're looking at possibilities including go cart racing, (with some pretty serious go carts!) shooting a little trap, and/or geo caching.
• Friday evening will be the Italian Feast at Valentes!
• Saturday and Sunday we'll have sessions
• There will be some sort of fun and entertaining events on Saturday evening.
• John Gaudio's pictures from last year are up on Flickr.
• Dave Shaver's pictures from EntConnect 2005.
• Dave Shaver's skiing pictures from Entconnect 2006.

In addition, there is a rumor that registration will be online. Pricing is hidden somewhere on the official conference web site.

For nostalgia sake, here's an old cover of the magazine:

This is not a large conference and may total fifteen to thirty participants, but that gives it a more personal and interactive feel. In some sense, it really should be categorized as an unconference since it is fairly informal and the participants help to structure the conference based on their interests.

FWIW, here is the definition of unconference from the Wikipedia:

An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants (generally day-by-day during the course of the event) rather than by one or more organizers in advance of the event. The term is primarily used in the geek community. Open Space Technology, however, is an unconference process that has been around since 1985 and is now in widespread use. Open Space Technology is an energizing and emergent way to organize an agenda for a conference.^{[citation needed]} Those coming to the event can post on a wiki ahead of time topics they want to present about or hope others will present about. The wiki can also be used as an attendee list.

There are parallels with science-fiction fandom, in which a low-key convention with less structure is called a Relaxacon.

As unstructured as EntConnect is, it is in fact somewhat more structured than a pure unconference or Open Space Technology event.

I have my own web page for the conference, EntConnect 2008, which includes some info about past conferences, including pictures, but there is also a  Official EntConnect Entrepreneurial Connections web site as well. Also, you can check John Gaudio's A Better Blogsite for information as it may become available. John runs the conference.

The audience is primarily technical, engineer types, but also non-engineers as well as students who have an entrepreneurial interest. I would say that the audience is "eclectic." So, if you are entrepreneurial in any way and in the area or just want an excuse to go skiing in Colorado, check out this conference.

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference in 2 months

The EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference will be held just in over two months, from Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008. This is an excellent opportunity for engineers with an entrepreneurial interest to get together and share ideas and experiences related to starting and running your own technology-oriented business. It is not restricted to technology types, but that is the main focus and primary interest.

I still do not have any details yet, but presumably it will be similar to past years, when it was held at the Sheraton Denver West hotel in Lakewood, CO.

The main part of the conference is usually a Friday evening dinner and discussion, presentations and discussions all day Saturday, dinner and more discussions and possibly a group activity Saturday evening, and a few more presentations and discussions Sunday morning. Thursday is resrved for skiing, if you wish. Friday is reserved for a combination of either skiing or some other activity (such as a tour of the Coors brewery.)

This is not a large conference and may total fifteen to thirty participants, but that gives it a more personal and interactive feel. In some sense, it really should be categorized as an un-conference since it is fairly informal and the participants help to structure the conference based on their interests.

I have my own web page for the conference, EntConnect 2008, which includes some info about past conferences, including pictures, but there is also a  Official EntConnect Entrepreneurial Connections web site as well. Also, you can check John Gaudio's A Better Blogsite for information as it may become available. John runs the conference.

The audience is primarily technical, engineer types, but also non-engineers as well as students who have an entrepreneurial interest. I would say that the audience is "eclectic." So, if you are entrepreneurial in any way and in the area or just want an excuse to go skiing in Colorado, check out this conference.

-- Jack Krupansky

The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It?

There is a good article in The New York Times by G. Pascal Zachary entitled "The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It?" which warns us that "the truth is that no one can tell in advance which innovations people will adapt to and which will become the next example of the Picturephone." This is of course why the primary focus of any entrepreneur should be to identify a need and then work on addressing that need through innovation. Unfortunately, that is difficult (if not impossible) advice to swallow for us technologists whose primary reason for existence is to innovate new technologies, hoping then to find or create a market for our new technological marvels.

-- Jack Krupansky

Achieving wealth and happiness

I just ran across this quote when reading a listserv exchange about patents related to the Semantic Web:

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

- Henry Ford

Time to start focusing on services that are in fact useful.

That is in fact what I try to do, but it sure seems that a lot of ventures are filled with noise and randomness that is of only very marginal utility.

-- Jack Krupansky

LinkedIn public profile

The LinkedIn professional networking site now allows you to make your profile public and even personalize the URL for your profile. Mine is at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jackkrupansky.

My own LinkedIn network is still fairly small at 91 connections, but I do get a slow trickle of incoming acceptances of old invitations and an occasional new invitation.

I still have not gotten any great business value from LinkedIn, but it is a useful "rolodex" and makes it convenient to keep track of former associates. I occasionally get an email from LinkedIn highlighting job changes for people in my network.

-- Jack Krupansky

Leantech

There was an interesting article on Portfolio.com by Russ Mitchell entitled "Would You Give This Kid $500,000?" which profiles a prototypical 19-year old technology entrepreneur by the name of Jared Kim whose new business is categorized as leantech or technology-based but with very low overhead and a very small staff. In this case he has managed to score some funding for his new online video venture.

The big question is what level of funding is appropriate for such a lean startup. Is it better to go for a significant level of funding and move into markets rapidly but with higher risk, or remain as a self-funded effort until some results can be seen?

In the current environment of an excess of capital, the "game" seems to be to get a substantial pile of cash and then "roll the dice" and "go for it."

It may be more a matter of personal style and preference.

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference in less than 3 months

The EntConnect 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference will be held in less than three months, from Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008. This is an excellent opportunity for engineers with an entrepreneurial interest to get together and share ideas and experiences related to starting and running your own technology-oriented business. It is not restricted to technology types, but that is the main focus and primary interest.

I do not have any details yet, but presumably it will be similar to past years, when it was held at the Sheraton Denver West hotel in Lakewood, CO.

The main part of the conference is usually a Friday evening dinner and discussion, Saturday (and evening), and Sunday morning. Thursday is resrved for skiing, if you wish. Friday is reserved for a combination of either skiing or some other activity (such as a tour of the Coors brewery.)

This is not a large conference and may total fifteen to thirty participants, but that gives it a more personal and interactive feel. In some sense, it really should be categorized as an unconference since it is fairly informal.

I have my own web page for the conference, EntConnect 2008, which includes some info about past conferences, but there is also a Official EntConnect Entrepreneurial Connections web site. Also, you can check John Gaudio's A Better Blogsite for information as it may become available. John runs the conference.

The audience is primarily technical, engineer types, but also a few non-engineers as well as students who have an entrepreneurial interest. I would say that the audience is "eclectic." So, if you are entrepreneurial in any way and in the area or just want an excuse to go skiing in Colorado, check out this conference.

-- Jack Krupansky

Saving the world and making money at the same time

There is an interesting article in The New York Times by Stephanie Strom entitled "Businesses Try to Make Money and Save the World" concerning the blurring of the boundaries between profit-oriented businesses and organizations focused on social benefits, the environment, change, socially responsible corporate governance, sustainable development, and other aspects of improving the lives of real people. This is still a nascent effort to "harness capitalism" and has risks of significant downside, but also has great potential for dramatic upside on both the financial and social fronts.

From where I sit, the issue is not about some "aging hippie types" attempting seizing control, but young, fresh MBAs and clean-slate entrepreneurs who have a passion for the social side of life without being blinded by outdated political dogma that was so common among The Left in the 1960's. The act of making money was never the source of evil, but rather the lack of passion for improving lives while pursuing money was the root of so many evils.

The key here is not a bunch of left-wing nuts, but a shift of the hard-core mainstream form being by-the-book bureaucrats to focusing on making money from social change, which social change being a core passion.

For now, businesses with such a "focus" are considered a distinct "fourth sector", but I suspect this is simply because we are not quite "there" in terms of a transition for the mainstream. Give it another five years, and then we may see some significant socially-minded businesses doing things like manufacturing cars, running communications networks, and generating and distributing electricity.

-- Jack Krupansky

Willingness to lead versus unwillingness to be led

Six weeks ago I wrote about the importance of leadership to being an entrepreneur and my own deficiencies in that area, but I neglected to mention what had been one of my primary motivations for pursuing the entrepreneurial way: an unwillingness to be led.

I had gotten tired of working for people whose own leadership was not inspiring me. My immediate goal was to escape from being led.

In other words, it wasn't so much that my goal was to lead as that I had a very intense non-goal of being led. The flip-side of a reverse-passion for a non-goal is not a passion for the goal.

Alas, escaping from being led is not a great substitute for actually leading and I grossly underestimated the motivation, passion, discipline, and raw energy needed to actually lead rather than to simply avoid being led.

I do have a renewed interest in leadership, but I am unable to say with conviction that I have a passion for leadership. I can say that I have an appreciation for it, and a willingness to learn, but that's about it, for now.

And I can also say that I have a new tolerance for being led since I now know that unless I do develop a passion for leading, I really don't have anything to blame anybody else for.

-- Jack Krupansky

My own hotel chain of "haven" lodges?

I was thinking a bit more about retirement planning and in particular what form of housing would make sense for me. I truly do not need or want a full house or even much of a condo or even a multi-bedroom apartment. In fact, a studio apartment is more than enough for my tastes.

That got me thinking back to an idea I had a number of years ago for a nationwide chain of hotel lodges. I originally got the idea while visiting Ecola State Park near Cannon Beach on the coast of Oregon. I thought it would be really cool to have a moderately big hotel-like lodge that offered comfortable rooms and scenic public spaces. Not a big, bland chain like Marriott, but with impressive public spaces as the first priority, coupled with very comfortable rooms. The idea is not to put all of the effort into the rooms themselves, but to go overboard on the public spaces so that each guest can find a nook somewhere where they can feel like they have a little semi-privacy without being completely off on your own. You should be able to find a quite corner and sit down or lie down on a sofa and take a nap. Each lodge would  have a wide range of rooms, all the way from high-end suites, down to rather small rooms or even Japanese-style sleeping chambers that emphasize spending more time in the public spaces than in individual rooms. One idea is that the savings from smaller guest rooms can be leveraged to provide much higher value in the public spaces for an overall lower per-night cost than a major hotel such as Hyatt or Westin.

Some of my lodges would be in semi-remote locations like Cannon Beach or Lake Tahoe or Jackson Hole, but some would be right in major cities with an emphasis on providing havens within the hustle and bustle of urban settings. In fact, the design should be such that people living in the city might simply stay at their local lodge to "get away from it all." I can envision having a dozen in Manhattan alone.

The DisneyWorld Wildeness Lodge conveys at least a slight sense of what one of my lodges might be like, but is still on too large an industrial scale to give the feel of a "haven" from the world. Although I imagine that some of my lodges would have this "rustic" feel, I also imagine that some might be the opposite and have a 'futuristic" feel. And, the focus would be on a vast maze of public spaces that people could lose themselves in, rather than expecting that people would retreat to their rooms. My lodge and the average room would be significantly smaller than the Disney Lodge, but there would be much more in the way of public spaces. As an example, bunk beds or a loft bed would dramatically decrease the floor space needed to accommodate a given number of guests.

I also imagine a variant of time-share where you could buy anywhere from one week to the full year and use that "pass" at any of the lodges. Thinking ahead here, I personally would have a 46-week pass that would let me live in my lodges all year except for six weeks of travel to places that didn't yet have my lodges.

A more recent twist to my lodge idea is to offer nutrition services so that someone could check in for a few days to focus on improving their nutritional habits. That would include counseling, group discussions, cooking lessons, and dining itself.

Anyway, my ideal retirement living arrangement would be to own this chain of lodges and simply spend my time traveling between them. I personally do not need a lot of personal junk in my living space, so spending every night in a different room would be fine for me.

Is this a crazy idea? Yeah, sure it is. On the other hand, crazier ideas have worked out.

I don't intend to seriously pursue this idea, but on the other hand it is a great "thought project" to occupy my idle moments.

Who knows, maybe someday I'll meet someone who has expertise in the hotel business and can actually work with me to turn this idea into a reality. You never know.

So, I've gone from not wanting a house to retire to, but wanting a nationwide lodging chain. Sometimes, this is the way things work out.

Did I say nationwide? Why limit it? It seems like the concept would apply globally. Not that I would need to own the entire worldwide chain, since a quality standard-oriented franchise concept such as McDonalds would permit travelers to get the same level of quality around the world.

Or maybe, I'll just end up working part-time in hotels to pay for my retirement. As I said, you never know.

-- Jack Krupansky

2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference (EntConnect 2008) scheduled

I've created a web page with some preliminary info on the 2008 Entrepreneurial Connections conference (2008 EntConnect.) I'll update the page from time to time.

Next year, the conference will be Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008 at the same hotel (Sheraton Denver West.)

-- Jack Krupansky

EntConnect 2008

The 2007 EntConnect conference is starting to wind down. We're discussing expectations for the 2008 conference.

We always talk about what to change, but we tend to keep things roughly the same.

On the one hand we would like to grow the audience, but we don't want to lose the interest that is already here.

Next year, the conference will be Thursday, March 27, 2008 through Sunday, March 30, 2008 at the same hotel (Sheraton Denver West.)

We spent part of the morning with various attendees giving mini-presentations on what entrepreneurial activities they have been engaged in over the past year.

-- Jack Krupansky

Bill French on cow bells and his new Mac notebook computer

Bill French of MyST Technology fame is speaking this evening at the 2007 EntConnect conference about some issues he has encountered in his business and also showing off his new Mac notebook computer.

The main subject of Bill's presentation was "Selling What You Have" and the need to be willing to "Say No" to business opportunities that simply aren't consistent with your stated business aim. He says that MyST sells "cow bells" and doesn't sell "church bells" or "jingle bells" or any other kind of bell or coat rack or whatever.

He gave an example of a new Blogsite that has yet to go live and has cost MyST much more effort than they have gotten paid for their work.

He also gave an example of a projects which brought in significant revenue but required only a minimal amount of effort. It was a great "fit" for their service.

He used the term "fitness of purpose" to describe matching the customer business needs and you business interests and actual capabilities.

The bottom line is that you have to be willing to walk away from business which is not a "good fit."

He also mentioned the need to define what "done" really means. Otherwise, projects can drag on and not be worth the effort.

He's having a lot of fun with his new Mac notebook computer with all its fancy features, but the PC is still important to his business.

-- Jack Krupansky

Bill (William E.) Gates on professionalism

Earlier today, Bill (William E.) Gates of Midnight Engineering fame spoke to the 2007 EntConnect conference about professionalism. In the past he has spoken at length about personal productivity, but has now become much more interested in professionalism, in particularly how it has been "leaking out."

He asks us what the marks of a professional are, or how we define professionalism.

He gave an example of a service employee who acted in a very professional manner, but shortly later he encountered that employee delivering bad service. So, maybe professionalism is something transient.

The discussion with conference participants centered on service and how good service really sets a business (or employee) apart from service that is merely predictable but not helpful in solving problems.

A counter example is McDonald's where you get what you expect even though the service is very predictable and quite bland.

Someone gave an example of thousands of employees being layed off to be replaced with lower-cost employees since the existing employees are not being productive enough relative to their cost.

Time to run to lunch.

-- Jack Krupansky

Blogging via email from EntConnect 2007

I was able to successfully mail my previous post from the 2007 EntConnect conference meeting room once I manually mangled my main email account to use the SMTP mail server for my website (Opixia.com) and Port 587. I tried port 25, but that was blocked by the hotel Wi-Fi. Port 587 works fine.

I had spent over an hour back in December to figure out this port setting, but luckily I had blogged about it and was quickly able to do a web search to find that blog post.

-- Jack Krupansky

Blogging from EntConnect 2007

The Saturday session of the 2007 EntConnect conference is now underway.

This message is simply to make sure that I have figured out how to configure my email to send a post to this blog using the free Wi-Fi in the conference meeting room.

First, I'll test if I can use my ISP's outbound email.

That first test failed, with the following error message:

Response received is: 452 4.4.5 Insufficient disk space; try again later

I believe that this is simply the response of the hotel Wi-Fi blocking the outbound email.

Next, I'll re-configure my main outbound email account to use my website domain name and Port 587 to bypass any port blocking.

-- Jack Krupansky