BuildV1 Blog I started. I failed. I started again.
Apology to the BuildV1 Community
August 31, 2007
We’re back and we’re so sorry. Our webhost melted down and it took us a while to pick up the pieces. It’s a long depressing story, but the bottom line is that we lost a month of activity on the site. We’re devastated and have taken steps to make sure we never lose data again. If there’s anything we can do to help, please let us know. – Eric, Ben, and Michael
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Don't Wait For Things to Get Easier, Just Build V1
July 17, 2007
We all lose focus sometimes. We get caught up in an episode of 24, head out with friends for a drink, or get lost in mindless chores. The problem is when we don’t recognize and acknowledge procrastination. The only way to win the battle is to call procrastination out and pro-actively fight back.
There are many reasons why you might be tempted to put off work, but I’ve identified a particularly dangerous class of reasons for procrastinating: there’s some change you’re waiting for that will make it easier to work. The perception is generally that the change will create more time to work, boost productivity, or create a less stressful environment.
→ Keep reading "Don't Wait For Things to Get Easier, Just Build V1"...
Filed under: entrepreneurship | Comment
Do you want money or freedom?
July 04, 2007
Waking up every morning and being able to decide exactly what you want to do that day is freedom. Being able to travel whenever you want is freedom. So how do you get there?
Everyone seems to think you need a lot of money to be free. Until recently, that’s what I thought too. As a result, people spend their lives working in the hope that they’ll be able to make enough money to retire and finally be free. For most people this means working for 40 plus years to retire in their sixties. Entrepreneurs tend to be a bit more ambitious and aim to cram that 40 years into five to ten insane years, but at the end of the day it’s the same thinking.
The problem is that money doesn’t lead directly to freedom and more often it becomes a trap.
→ Keep reading "Do you want money or freedom?"...
Filed under: entrepreneurship | Comment [1]
Not quite ready to go all the way? Be a catalyst.
June 26, 2007
Not everyone is ready to be an entrepreneur. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype when everyone is telling you how easy it is. But jumping into a life and career you aren’t prepared for isn’t always the best thing to do. Too often when you try something new that you aren’t fully prepared for, you can end up turned off to it forever because of that one bad experience. Marc Andreessen does an excellent job of bringing to light some of the cons of being an entrepreneur that you may not have heard. If you’re working 9-5 and not quite ready to take the leap, consider being a catalyst in your organization. While proposing a change to your boss and co-workers may not keep you up at night worrying about whether or not you’ll be able to pay the next month’s rent, it is sure to give you more confidence in your abilities while providing more independence that will help you decide if you crave more. That doesn’t mean it’s a job that should be taken lightly. You should know why you’re doing it and why your company needs you to do it. From the timing to bringing others on board, there are many considerations that must be weighed carefully in order to be a successful catalyst.
→ Keep reading "Not quite ready to go all the way? Be a catalyst."...
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How to find a co-founder online (a success story)
May 16, 2007
Finding a co-founder is a painful problem for many aspiring entrepreneurs:
“The number one question people ask us at Y Combinator is: Where can I find a co-founder? That’s the biggest problem for someone starting a startup at 30… Most of the questions people ask Y Combinator we have some kind of answer for, but not the co-founder question. There is no good answer. Co-founders really should be people you already know. And by far the best place to meet them is school.”
I have to disagree with Paul Graham on this one. I think there is a good answer to finding a co-founder. It’s not easy, but it’s very possible.
The key is to help great potential co-founders find you. How you ask? Prove to potential partners that you’re passionate, have vision, and can get things done. Get started, build a rough prototype, and start a blog to document your progress. If you can’t build a prototype, consider learning how to and blog about your idea; how it came to you, why you’re passionate about it, and how you plan to realize your vision. Explain why you’d be a great person to work with. What’s your experience? What are the key lessons you’ve learned? Do you have a philosophy about how companies should be run? Why do you want to start a business? Why won’t you give up when things inevitably get tough?
As you build a blog that demonstrates why you’d be a great person to partner with, network like crazy online and off. Find local groups of entrepreneurs. Meetup.com is a great place to start and if you’re in nyc, check out nextny.org Learn as much as you can about the business you want to start and figure out where great potential partners are likely to hang out online. Engage those communities and post comments and messages that add value and include a link to your blog to help people who found you insightful learn more about you. Joining the BuildV1 community is a great place to start : ) By submitting great links and posting insightful comments, you can promote yourself, add to the body of evidence that you’re a great person to partner with, and help other entrepreneurs find great info. Other great sites to check out are news.ycombinator.com and www.startupping.com
As you promote yourself through an online prototype, blog posts, and insightful comments, you’ll be amazed by the interesting people who start to contact you. Engage everyone who reaches out to you and try to figure out whether they could be a good fit. If you want to accelerate the process, create a job posting on your blog and find online job boards where great co-founders are likely to hang out. BuildV1’s job board is a great place to start. When you create a job posting, it pays to be as specific as possible about what you’re offering and exactly who you’re looking for. Try to communicate your personality and vision. The goal of your job posting should be to weed out everyone except for the best potential co-founders.
When you start to get great responses to your blog and/or job posting, the fun begins. You get to meet and learn about great potential co-founders. If you’re fortunate enough to have a few great potential co-founders, don’t agonize. After talking with the best candidates, make a quick decision and agree to work together on a mini-project to test working together. It’s critical to test working together with a small, well-defined project. As you start working together, you’ll quickly discover whether you enjoy working with the person and whether you think they’re smart and able to get things done. You’ll also quickly learn whether they’re as committed to the project as you are. At the end of the mini-project, or even before, evaluate whether you want to continue to work together. Be ruthless. If you question they’re capability or commitment at all, thank them and move on to one of the other great candidates you spoke with or start your search again. Don’t worry about the time you spent, it’s a sunk cost, and it’s critical to find the right person. The goal of each mini-project should be to figure out whether you want to work with the person as quickly as possible. If a mini-project goes well, start a new mini-project and keep going until you’re convinced that you’re working with the right person. When you get to that point you’ll know, trust me. It’s an amazing milestone. At that point it’s off to the races.
Still skeptical? This approach worked for me. I found an amazing co-founder, Ben, online. It wasn’t easy, but it worked out and it’s incredibly rewarding.
Here’s the short version of the story:
I tried to build a simple contact manager/crm app with a great friend. We hired a designer to build out our wireframes and a developer to bring our application to life. The designer and developer were very talented, but it was clear that they weren’t anywhere near as excited about our app as we were. We were bootstrapping and couldn’t afford to pay enough to be anyone’s top priority. I realized that if I was going to bootstrap I would need to build as much of the product as I could by myself and I would need to work with people who were passionate about the idea. I had learned html and css in the past and decided to design my next project myself. I spent a lot of time improving my chops and it’s paid off.
As we looked for a new developer to help us improve the contact manager, I became frustrated by the idea of hiring another programmer who wasn’t passionate about the project but through the process I met a great programmer who I pitched my next idea, BuildV1. We spent the next few months building the first version of BuildV1. We enjoyed working together, but it became clear that he just didn’t have enough time for the project. I realized I needed to find someone else if I wanted to ramp up and expand BuildV1 the way I wanted to, so I created a post on BuildV1, my blog, and a few other job boards. I received a bunch of responses and considered working on a mini-project with a few different people. I planned a mini-project with a developer, but he ended up not having time and it never got off the ground. I moved forward and received an email from Ben. Ben stumbled on to BuildV1, saw my post, thought it was a promising idea, and had been looking for an interesting project. He had a few great ideas and after a brief phone call we decided to work together on a mini-project. Since then we’ve been off to the races on the new BuildV1.
BuildV1 has already helped me and Ben and a few others, and we’re just getting started. Please let us know if you’ve found great people through BuildV1 and if there’s anything we can do to help. Good luck!
Thanks,
The BuildV1 Team, Eric, Ben, and Michael
Filed under: entrepreneurship | Comment
The New BuildV1 is Live
May 14, 2007
We’re excited to announce the public release of the new BuildV1:
The new site features:
- Great content (links about entrepreneurship submitted by entrepreneurs)
- An improved job board that lists the number of responses each post receives
- Profile pages to help you connect with other entrepreneurs
- A list of the most active and newest members
- A list of the top sites
Feedback
We’d love to hear your ideas for how we can improve the site.
You can post your suggestions here: www.buildv1.com/suggestions or email: eric@BuildV1.com
Thanks!
The BuildV1 Team
Eric, Ben, and Michael
Filed under: Announcements | Comment
Thank you Twiistup
May 10, 2007
A big thank you to Twiistup and all the attendees.
We had a great time meeting everyone and demoing the new site.
Watch us demo the new BuildV1 at Twiistup in Santa Monica on May 9th
April 29, 2007
We’re very excited to demo the new BuildV1 at Twiistup in Santa Monica on May 9th. If you’re in the area, check it out and if you can make it, drop by our booth. We’d love to meet you.
The Details:
Twiistup one, May 9th, 7pm to midnight, at Zanzibar in Santa Monica, $25
From the organizers:
Be one of the first to find out what some of the most innovative southern California startups have been working on. Scheduled to demo are yourminis, buildv1, verse studios, oovoo, mymint, urbaniacs, crazyegg and goodreads.
So that it’s not only a big web geek-out, we’re also going to have Joseph Kosinski, who directed the Gears of War and Halo 3 commercials, talk about the tech behind his work. This will be a highly social and inspiring environment which will include what you would normally find in a nightclub setting enhanced by activities, prize giveaways, food and beverages, networking and robotics. There will be lots of opportunities to get exposure for something you want to show off and lots of opportunities to generate blog posts, podcasts, flickr sets and video.
New BuildV1 Coming Soon!
March 04, 2007
For the last few months Ben and I have been hard at work on a major overhaul of BuildV1. We just started to invite people to take a look. If you’d like to start using the new site, please shoot me an email: eric@BuildV1.com
Thanks!
Filed under: entrepreneurship | Comment [4]
Two 18 year-olds start to build a business after connecting on BuildV1
December 31, 2006
Congratulations to James and Luca for getting started. We wish you luck!
In September i made a post on buildv1.com, this site “connects entrepreneurs”, i thought i would give it a shot and see what would come of it. I got a couple of emails which didn’t really sound to promising, then in late November i got an email a novel sent from Luca, he explained about himself, what his previous experiences were and what he can program in. I thought as he took the time to type this out i would at least give him a shot. I spoke to him over emails some more, then over MSN, i found him to be an extremely great guy, he shares the same goals and is talented in a good few programming languages, what else could i have asked for.
So now we had both agreed to work on the app together splitting everything we make 50/50.
You can follow their progress on their blog, which, inspired by Bare Naked App, is an online diary tracking the development of their new web application.
Have you made meaningful connections through BuildV1? Please let us know in the comments or via email
Good luck to everyone in ‘07! We’re working on a major new release, so look to hear more from us early next year.