First, I’m sorry. Very sorry. I’m very sorry for ever (E-V-E-R!) calling your business a “nice lifestyle business.” The only thing I can think of that would be a worse insult? Throw a shoe at you. Seriously. If an investor uses the term lifestyle business, YOU throw a shoe.
Right now, I am creating this blog post as my break from ten jobs. The good news is we are living in a world where it is simply amazing what you can do from one chair in front of one computer.
Job 1: Product Management
Enter Pivotal. I am posting stories, watching velocity, accepting code, and trading comments with the developers.
That would be tab 1 in Firefox.
Job 2: Logo/Web Design
Enter 99designs. I’m dealing with concepts, tweaks, adds, colors, etc, all with some super good talent.
That would be tab 2 in Firefox.
Job 3: Accounting
People want to get paid, what’s with that? Simply Accounting and I’m the accounting department.
Running in Parallels on my MacBook.
Job 4: HR
Get more with less. If you haven’t watched this TED talk, you should, it will change the way you think about rewards and incentives. That free iPod or gift card? Fuhgettaboutit.
Job 5: Recruiting
Let’s see, blog post up on jobs; check. Use Odesk, RentACoder, and Elance for guys to write specifics; check. Note: Odesk is a very nice/slick place to effectively recruit people to work on specific tasks where you can interview them and do as much as you can like a real hiring manager vs. RentACoder which, while good, has started to get long in the tooth with the design, usability, etc. Elance, unfortunately, just doesn’t do it for me.
Odesk is tab 3 in Firefox.
Job 6: Research Analyst
What APIs are available on this phone, that platform, that OS? Who has market share and what trends? Etc, etc. Not surprisingly, Google is Tab 4 in Firefox.
Job 7: QA/Testing
DeviceAnywhere is but one of three different guys I’m testing out to do the full testing for our products.
Tab 4 in Firefox.
Job 8: Fund Raising
Second mortgage; check. Seed capital raised from some seriously smart people who have honored me with their hard earned dollars; check. Keynote presentation at the ready; Pages open with constantly updating the summary; check and check. Excel open with forecasts being fine tuned. Continual sucking up to likely references; check.
Job 9: IT manager
Google handling domain for mail and other goodies (free); check. GoDaddy’s functional web hosting for now (cheap); check. MobileMe for virtual drive (cheap), check.
Job 10: Custodial & Catering Services
“No, don’t get up, code, I’ll take out the trash and get you some food. Will that be Sushi? Pad Thai? Veggie Burger?”
Various menus open in Tabs 5, 6 and 7 in Firefox.
Lifestyle business? Right.
[Note: It’s here where you’d normally expect either a VC lifestyle tennis/golf shot but, well, see Job 8. I know, wimped right out! :-) ]
Welcome back to the game big guy.
I'll buy the next beer,. or apple juice or whatever.
Posted by: Jevon M | September 23, 2009 at 16:57
ah! Love seeing you hard at work. Awesomesauce. Now: don't forget the power of fantastic coffee as fuel :) You would have been dead meat in pre multi-tab browser world!
Posted by: Leila Boujnane | September 23, 2009 at 17:14
yes I recall the days of being my own tech support for my firm when our server crashed and wiped out our whole database. so i called real tech support at compaq and they asked me questions like, when was the last time you rebooted the server? I answered, um, 1992?.....[long pause on phone]....'sir, that was four years ago.'
one day, rick, you'll discover your server rebooting moment. you can't do it all... ;-)
Posted by: terry donnelly | September 23, 2009 at 18:43
And this is precisely why it should be required for VCs to have done what you are doing now. Call it an internship. Nothing like a little character building and perspective by scraping together payroll, building a product and team, dealing with 500 things on fire right in front of you and still coming up swinging.
Best of luck with your venture.
Posted by: twitter.com/jfedor | September 23, 2009 at 19:08
wow..great posting Rick....and game on, eh!
Jim
Posted by: Jim Rudnick | September 24, 2009 at 07:33
Great post. Handy pointers to Odesk, etc. A friend recently used 99Designs. Fabulous process, fabulous results. Work hard, have fun!
Posted by: joycej | September 24, 2009 at 07:55
Lifestyle business is where it's at Rick. Why don't you try it sometime.
Life's too short to be incessantly "building value". I spend most of my time with my kid. Traveling a lot (recreation, not business).
Rarely get into the office more than twice a week.
Nice work if you can get it. You VC types would hate it.
-mark
Posted by: Mark J | September 26, 2009 at 18:59
So funny to hear you recant all this. Sounds eerily familiar to the tabs currently open in my browser!
We couldn't live without Tracker. oDesk is a fabulous platform; although we currently don't employee any devs via. oDesk.
And... 99Design is a brilliantly refreshing way to get design work done fast and with MANY options.
Here's to the hustle!
Ethan Bloch
Posted by: twitter.com/ebloch | September 27, 2009 at 20:41
Do NOT fund a business using a mortgage on your home. That is a horrible, horrible idea. It is only slightly better than using credit cards.
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=758374322 | September 27, 2009 at 21:52
Rick, I tried 99designs as you suggested. At first it seamed nice...I won the very first contest I entered...rock on!, right?
Well not so much. After doing designs for 99 Designs over the past few weeks I have had this experience:
You submit a design with no guarantee of payment (ok so im not going to put "my all" into the design) The people get you to do all this work revising your submission, "Can you change this colour, change this font" (Still no payment) Then they can decide not to award anyone the design and they get their money back! What a scam! Erin Gordon with Kim Law Advisors of San Francisco, California (http://www.kimlawadvisors.com) Got me to work on their logo and provide 3 different revisions, and she got 2 other designers in the same contest to do the same. Erin lets the contest close then after almost a week she decides not to award the contest to anyone and gets her money back. Thats Lawyers for you I guess, scamming the little guys trying to make a buck. I have no recourse to go after them even if they do use the logo I created for them. I do NOT recommend designer use this site. For the people looking for designs, well you may have a large advantage over your designers using 99designs but its not really a good reflection of what is available to you in the design community. Paying bargain prices get you bargain designs. Rick you know that ... garbage in ... garbage out!
Posted by: Keith Glover | October 09, 2009 at 15:09