The landing of a series of undersea cables is going to solve an infrastructural problem that has long plagued Africa and will enable African technology developers to compete on a global stage. In order to properly realise the full potential of a global customer base, African technologists need to not only expose their work to the world, but to also expose themselves to the learnings and insights that the developed world has to offer.
- Written for TECH4AFRICA

New international submarine communication cables are starting to ring the continent, bringing with them the promise of cheaper broadband across the continent. That means Africa will soon have the infrastructure to be able to compete more effectively in the online space than it did in the past. But Africa has missed out on several years of important learning in this space. Now is the perfect time for African entrepreneurs to embrace business and technical expertise from the rest of the world and close that gap.

An all-too common and incorrect perception in South Africa and other parts of the continent is that African problems are different to those experienced anywhere else in the world, and that they should be addressed with uniquely African solutions. According to this view of the world, international best practices and experiences, especially those from developed countries, are not really applicable to African businesses. That is a misguided and parochial perspective in a world where technology and global trade have shrunk the world to a fraction of its former size.

In high-tech industries, such as Web-focused businesses, there is much that African entrepreneurs, public servants and technicians can learn from international experience. In fact, it’s imperative that African businesses embrace international experience and knowledge if they’re to catch up with what their peers are doing online in the rest of the world.

African challenges

Of course, Africa has infrastructure, political and social challenges that are not present in most parts of the world. Building an online business in an environment where the electricity supply is unreliable and where international bandwidth is slow and expensive is fraught with challenges that don’t exist for an entrepreneur building a business in the heart of Silicon Valley.

But in addition to their superb infrastructure, innovation hubs like the west and east coasts of the USA also offer an unrivaled depth of human capital. Whatever an entrepreneur’s business idea is, there are people around who have the experience and skills to help make it a reality. And of course, the more that experienced people share their skills and knowledge with each other, the more new ideas and concepts they come up with and the more successful they are turning their innovations into commercial products.

By contrast, an African entrepreneur trying to productise a nifty new mobile application or a new online service simply doesn’t have access to many local people who have the skills and experience. There is an abundance of great ideas and enthusiasm but a lack of experience in turning these ideas into commercial products.

There have been a few success stories – innovators such as Mark Shuttleworth, Elon Musk and Vinny Lingham come to mind – but they are exceptions to the rule and their skills are often lost to Africa when their businesses take off. An additional problem that becomes obvious from the above list, is that South Africans dominate the list of obvious success stories while technologists from the rest of Africa do not feature as highly.

Universal lessons

Most of the processes, technology and tools that African entrepreneurs will be using to create Web and mobile products and services will be similar to those used by people in other parts of the world. There are many universal lessons around project management, usability, product development, technology and many other areas that apply anywhere in the world, and they’re ones many American and European pioneers had to learn the hard way. Speccing and configuring a server, designing a good user interface, managing cashflow – these are all things that work the same way anywhere in the world.

So why not learn from international experience? The alternative is to stubbornly waste time and money reinventing the wheel and making the mistakes that others have already made. And that is something that no African entrepreneur can afford to do.

TECH4AFRICA

The TECH4AFRICA conference being held in August this year, aims to address the above issues by bringing a number of world famous technologists and African innovators to South Africa to share, teach and interact with Africans looking to make it in the technology space. It’s an exciting time for African technology and the opportunity that Tech4Africa presents is one that really shouldn’t be missed.

Please note that I’m writing this in the spirit of the “naked CEO” theme

About 8 weeks ago I sat down to write a blog post entitled “Why do Tech4Africa?”, primarily dealing with the negative sentiment around the lack of “diversity” in the speakers and my frustrations with what I consider a limiting and naïve point of view. After re-reading it a few times, I decided not to post it, even after 4 hours of writing until 2am on a Sunday morning.

Since then, I’ve been overwhelmed both how much positive feedback there has been, by how positive our partner discussions have been, how willing people have been to help, and by how great the team is that we’ve assembled to make it all happen. Writing something that was in response to a small part of the overall discussion felt lame and defensive, so I didn’t.

So this blog post is about why, where we are, and where we’re going.

So, why are we doing TECH4AFRICA?

A lot of people have asked why do TECH4AFRICA, so here it is:
Africans are natural innovators and entrepreneurs, and I think that gradually the conditions are aligning to create an environment where a combination of access to cheap bandwidth on cheaper hardware, and readily available commodity infrastructure, is going to spark the innovation that will create products for large local and global markets.

My thinking is that Africans can compete by being innovative and creating products that are either global in scale, or that solve problems for large local markets (note that I said a “large local market”, not just “local market”).

So after 4 years of trying to get it off the ground, where the reasons have changed depending on where I was as a person, I think it boils down to anger and pride.

Anger at how far Africa is behind the US and Europe (wrt technology of course, I’m not commenting on anything else) in a 200+ million people market full of frontier opportunity, and why the tipping point seems so far away.

Pride because I can see the potential in the people I speak to, the products I’ve looked at, the interns I’ve hired and the honest intent I’ve witnessed.

So, we want TECH4AFRICA to help precipitate that innovation, give people the global perspective, awareness, skills and knowledge needed to execute their ideas, and the connections to make things happen. We want to light a spark, to let the world know that Africans can build great products.

I would derive great personal satisfaction from knowing that two engineers, a UX person and an angel met at TECH4AFRICA in 2010, and they went on to build the next 37Signals, Amazon, CraigsList, DropBox, eBay, FreshBooks, Gumtree, Jobserve, MailChimp, Mimecast, Moo, MyDeco, MyHeritage, PayPal, Salesforce.com, Skype, SongKick, Thawte, Twitter, Wonga, Wordpress or any of the current Top 10 iPhone and Android apps.

The jury is still out on a lot of current local innovation, but we’re hopeful that in the future they will be shining lights of what we can be done.
That said, the conference is not about technology for sustainable development, technology outsourcing or BPO, but it is about driving innovation on the web and mobile in Africa.

We’re bringing out international speakers so that delegates can learn from the best in the business

The hardest part of doing a conference like this for the first time is that you have to “ham and egg it”. As well as dealing with cashflow limitations until there is enough partner participation to make cashflow less of a problem, you have to get great speakers lined up so that delegates and partners take you seriously. I’m happy to say we’ve done that.

I’m extremely proud of the speakers we’ve got coming to Africa (many for the first time), because they are amongst the best in the world at what they do.
I’m really confident that anyone attending TECH4AFRICA is going to walk away better off, simply because we don’t get access to these kinds of people, thinking and experience in Africa. So I would encourage anyone attending to be like a sponge, and soak up as much as possible.

Take a peek at our international speakers.

We’ve got great local speakers too

The above notwithstanding, we’ve also got great African speakers that really do give inspiration for where technology in Africa is going.
It’s been incredibly tough finding good people who understand what we’re trying to do, as well as finding speakers who have demonstrable real world experience and success behind them. I think that we’ve struck a good balance and that our speaker lineup reflects that.
Bottom line is that for the first time in Africa, we’ve got around 70 speakers talking about cloud, infrastructure, mobile, web 2.0, social media, search, funding and startups, so there is going to be a lot of great content for delegates.

Take a peek at our local speakers.

We’re actively going after the outrage

Jason Fried asks “where is the outrage”, and I agree with him mostly, so in this regard we’re actively trying to stir the pot a little, to ruffle some feathers and get some real conversation going.

I’m a firm believer in great debate, so the conference is an attempt to bring global perspective to a small market (active users, revenue; not people) which I think for the most part lives in an arrogantly myopic bubble, lacking the fundamental skills and experience necessary to build great products. And that’s aside from government and large institutions that seem blissfully unawares of how far behind they are falling.

For me, that perspective is found with people who have real global experience and thinking, and also from people that aren’t necessarily blogging and tweeting about it, but are actually doing it.

So we’re trying to get to the bottom of some important issues, not pat everyone on the back and say “well done”, where we’re still left in the same boat we were in yesterday. We want to shake up the status quo, ask the tough questions, shine lights to show the way, and join the dots for people.

We’re stepping away from the circle jerk

I’ve had many people mention the familiar (South) African circle jerk of the same speakers at every tech conference, so we’re actively trying to avoid that and find speakers who are able to get to the real brass tacks of the issues we face at the bottom end of a dark continent, without pulling punches.

Again, often the people that are doing stuff worth talking about are not on Twitter and are not blogging, so we don’t know about them on the social web, but they are around and we’re doing our best to find them so delegates can learn from them.

We want our audience to derive real value from the event, so the combination of great speakers, going after the outrage, and stepping away from the circle jerk should go a long way to create that value.

Take a peek at our schedule.

We’re creating inspiration and momentum for the doers

A week or two ago we announced that SeedCamp will be at Tech4Africa this year.

The reason I’m so happy about this is that there is a very clear disconnect in the venture funding lifecycle in Africa. It should be something like: start -> friends & family -> seed -> angel -> Series A VC -> Series B etc VC; but there seems to be a disconnect at the seed / angel / Series A VC phases. At the same time, the costs involved in taking products to the global market are almost inaccessbile for bootstrappers or organic growth, and the local market is not big enough to use cashflow from that to go overseas and be aggressive. The result of which is that it’s much, much harder to be inspired, create momentum, build and bootstrap a product to a point where VC’s can step in and help scale.

SeedCamp addresses this issue, has done so successfully in Europe, and I’m hoping will be a step in the right direction for innovators in Africa.

Find out more about SeedCamp.

We’re creating opportunities for people that should be there

This week we announced that through Old Mutual, we’re able to offer 17 seats to people that could otherwise not afford to go, which is fantastic.
Of course, we’d love to make the conference free for everyone but that’s not realistic, so this kind of opportunity really does level the playing field somewhat.
I’m hoping that next year we can add another 13 spots, and get formal mentorships going for all 30 folks.

Find out more about the Old Mutual Scholarships.

We’re modelling TECH4AFRICA on SxSW

I’ve had the good fortune to go to SxSW 3 times since 2006. I can categorically say that it really did change things for me at that stage of my life, and I can point directly to lifechanging events and thinking that was precipitated by SxSW.

I’ve been to a lot of conferences in the last 10 years, and the ones that I’ve enjoyed the most are Future of Web Apps (FOWA), and SxSW. They were enjoyable because they were relaxed, informal, the speakers were accessible (I can remember having a great discussion with Evan Williams about start-ups, when he still had a ponytail and was doing Odeo), had great content, and I met great people. The best conversations were in the hall, and at the parties.

The conferences I didn’t enjoy either had too many exhibitors, too little content, too many suits and ties, the speakers were aloof and there were not enough opportunities to meet people.

So that’s why we’ve chosen the format we have for TECH4AFRICA. We’re implementing a “no ties” policy. We’re encouraging speakers to mix and interact with delegates. We’re creating spaces where people can meet each other to talk about stuff. We’re making sure there is 15 mins at the end of a talk / panel, for delegates to ask the questions relevant to them.

Next year we’ll open up a panel picker for people to offer their own topics which other folks can vote on, and we’ll look at adding another day if it makes sense.
I’ve grown up a little more

I’m as frustrated as the next person by the lack of “diversity” candidates when looking for speakers that can sit down with globally recognised individuals and talk turkey with them (people who “have already done”, not “busy launching” or “talking on twitter”).

But I’m also fundamentally against the idea of adding people to the lineup that are simply not at the same level for whatever reason. Can you imagine what it would feel like to sit down and talk with speakers who really have cut the mustard, and realise that you’ve got absolutely nothing to add to the conversation when the microphone is passed to you?

As an inherently positive person who generally sees the good in things before the bad, I was quite taken aback at how critical or arrogant some people were with little or no real background information to inform their criticism or comments, about the above, and other issues.

But right now I’m not letting it bother me – we’re doing our level best to address all obvious concerns one might encounter when setting up a tech conference in Africa – and that’s going to have to be enough.

We’ve put together a great team to make it all happen

We’re on top of the enormity of a conference this size, with so many speakers (circa 65) and minute logistical details to attend to, and it’s only through the team that we have involved that it’s all coming together quite nicely.

Added to that, the partners that have come on board (which will be announced over the coming weeks) really have displayed a commitment to an African renaissance built on the knowledge economy, and after almost 9 years in London waiting for things to align, it’s exciting.

Thank you Bakhona, Brett, Brondie, Craig, Chrissy, Dorothy, Eve, Gerritt, Gugu, Ian, Justin, Neli, Nicolas, Sphamandla, Stephen, Tania and Thando, it really wouldn’t happen without you all

I can’t wait for August 10th!

View the page on SxSW. Listen to the podcast here.

The event, organised by Technovated, will bring international experience and perspective to the African continent and provide a rare opportunity to learn first hand from local and international speakers about the role that emerging and Web technologies have to play in African business and development.

Shirky is one of the world’s most sought-after speakers on topics related to the Web, social media and the Internet. He has spoken at events such as TED Global, SXSW, the Web 2.0 expo in New York and San Francisco, SES San Jose, the Adobe Learning Summit, New York Tech Meetup and the Aspen Ideas Festival.

He currently divides his time between teaching, consulting and writing. He teaches New Media as an associate teacher at New York University’s (NYU) graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

His consulting practice focuses on the rise of decentralised technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterises the Web. Shirky consults for clients such as Nokia, the Library of Congress and the BBC.

He has written and been interviewed extensively about the Internet and his columns and writings have appeared in Business 2.0, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review and Wired. Shirky is also the author of Here Comes Everybody, which explores the effects of open networks, collaboration and user created and disseminated content on organisations and industries. He is especially well known for using the phrase “the Internet runs on love” and for his advocacy of crowdsourcing and collaborative efforts online.

Says Gareth Knight, MD of Technovated: “We’re excited to have drawn a speaker of Clay Shirky’s calibre to this event. By attracting such a strong line-up of African and international speakers to this conference, we hope to inspire a generation of Africans to go and do extraordinary things with the Web and other emerging technologies.

It is an excellent learning opportunity for any person or organisation with an interest in the African Web – whether as an end-user of the technology, as a technologist working with the technology, or as an entrepreneur or investor active in the African market.”

Shirky joins a stellar line-up of international speakers – including leaders from organisations such as Twitter, Mozilla, WordPress and Yahoo! – and African technologists from companies such as PesaPal, Ushahidi, Obami and many more.

The event runs from 12-13 August 2010 at The Forum in Bryanston. Workshops will be held on 10-11 August. The event is targeted at business professionals and technologists from businesses of all sizes, from entrepreneurs and start-up owners through to professionals working at large organisations.

Registration for the event is open and there are 300 early bird tickets available.

For further information or to register, visit http://tech4africa.com, email hello@tech4africa.com or call +44 (0) 207 788 1023.

About Clay Shirky
Shirky’s writings can be found online at:
http://www.shirky.com/

His blog about his book, Here Comes Everybody, can be found at:
http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/

His talk at the Web 2.0 Expo can be found on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoNHIl-QLQ

His talk on TED Global can be found on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_iN_QubRs0

About Technovated
Technovated is a leading Web 2.0 provider in South Africa and London. Technovated enables content management, delivers e-commerce stores and search engine marketing, provides social media management and stimulates growth for foreign markets through authentic user engagement. http://www.technovated.com/

About Gareth Knight
Gareth is a digital maven and open source evangelist. Educated as a zoologist, he is a veteran of two dot com crashes in London, one web 2.0 acquisition, and runs Technovated.

Previously, Gareth served in London as Director of Product Management for MyHeritage.com, a global family genealogy company based in Tel Aviv.

Before joining MyHeritage, Gareth landed seed funding from London’s top early stage investors to co-found Kindo.com, a global family social network with an international team spread around the world. He then led the Product team in London to roll out a localised version of Kindo in 17 languages within 6 months, as well as an aggressive search engine campaign, both of which resulted in users from circa 220 countries and an enviable growth rate.

Kindo was voted one of the top 3 most promising Internet companies in the UK for 2008, and was later acquired by MyHeritage in August that year.

Press Contacts

Ian Rodney
Account Manager
Emerging Media Communications
(011) 792 4706
ian@emergingmedia.co.za

Gareth Knight
Managing Director
Technovated
gareth.knight@technovated.com

The event, organised by Technovated, will bring international experience and perspective to the African continent and at the same time expose what Africans are doing with the Web, mobile and other emerging technologies. Tech4Africa is the premier conference and workshop for anyone who wants to understand where technology in Africa is moving.

One of the world’s top thinkers in the Internet space will be giving the keynote speech at the event. Further details will be released shortly. Other confirmed speakers for the event so far include the following:

·       Dustin Diaz, a user interface engineer at Twitter and author of JavaScript Design Patterns.
·       Joe Stump, the former lead architect of digg in San Francisco and co-founder of SimpleGeo
·       Matthew Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software that runs millions of Web sites around the world.
·       John Resig, creator of the popular javascript library jQuery, a JavaScript tool developer for the Mozilla Corporation, and the author of the book Pro JavaScript Techniques
·       Alex Hunter, former Head of Online Marketing for the Virgin Group, and now an independent digital ninja, brand consultant, company adviser, and micro-venture capital investor
·       Jonathan Snook, a veteran Canadian web designer and developer, currently working for Yahoo!
·       Andy Budd, an internationally renowned interaction and usability expert
·       Steve Vosloo, the 21st Century Learning Fellow for the Shuttleworth Foundation
·       Barbara Mallinson, founder of Obami, a web-based communication and collaboration platform for use within, and between schools
·       Agosta Liko, founder of PesaPal, a mobile payments company in Nairobi, Kenya
·       Erik Hersman, the co-founder of Ushahidi, a web application created to map the reported incidents of violence happening during the post-election crisis in Kenya

The conference runs from 12-13 August 2010 at The Forum in Bryanston and pre-event workshops will be held on 10-11 August 2010. The event is targeted at business professionals and technologists from across Africa, from entrepreneurs and start-up owners through to professionals working at large organisations.

Attendees will gain practical, first-hand knowledge about the funding landscape in Africa; what cloud computing, Web 2.0, the mobile Internet and other emerging technologies mean for their businesses and societies; how the most successful African technology and Web businesses are leveraging technology to succeed; which new Web and technology-related business opportunities are emerging in Africa and the rest of the world; and how the Web can help African societies to succeed.

Says Gareth Knight, MD of Technovated: “This is the first conference in South Africa to bring together so many international and local speakers of such high calibre. It is an excellent learning opportunity for any person or organisation with an interest in the African Web – whether as an end-user of the technology, as a technologist working with the technology, or as an entrepreneur or investor active in the African market. An event of this nature has previously only been available to those who could afford to travel to international conferences.”

Registration for the event is open and there are 300 early bird tickets available.

For further information or to register, visit http://tech4africa.com, email hello@tech4africa.com or call +44 (0) 207 788 1023.

About Technovated

Technovated is a leading Web 2.0 provider in South Africa and London. Technovated enables content management, delivers e-commerce stores and search engine marketing, provides social media management and stimulates growth for foreign markets through authentic user engagement.

Press Contacts

Ian Rodney
Account Manager
Emerging Media Communications +27 (011) 792 4706
ian@emergingmedia.co.za

Gareth Knight
Managing Director
Technovated
gareth.knight@technovated.com

A message to all members of The Silicon Cape Initiative

Visit The Silicon Cape Initiative at: http://www.siliconcape.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

So, does everything look OK to you? If you spot anything dodgy, would you mind dropping me a line to let me know? Thanks in advance!

Check it out at:
http://www.homecomingrevolution.co.za/woza/

Hope to see you there!

For a long time this blog focussed on technical stuff with a few other distractions here and there, but for the foreseaable future tech stuff will remain an element of it, but certainly not the focus. I’ve never been one of those original guys that wrote about how to do stuff, I’ve always been one of those guys that reads and digests what those other guys say, then passes it on – and I don’t see much point in regurgitating what other folks have already done.

My own focus is changing.
I’m entering a new season of life, where a lot of the things I used to do are no longer that interesting to me, and a whole bunch of things are new and interesting. Weird huh? Yup, but I’m rolling with it.

I think the bottom line for me is that I’ve realised what my strengths are, so I’m going to play to them instead of trying to do too much. And where something is specific to another audience, I’ll write about it on the Technovated blog or the TECH4AFRICA blog. I’m also going to focus on quality not quantity.  For quick updates and quick links to interesting stuff, checkout http://delicious.com/oneafrikan and http://twitter.com/oneafrikan

A lot more about product development and management, so that will definititely be a part of what I’m going to talk about.

I’m building Technovated into a great, stable business that we all love to work in, so I’m going to talk more candidly about that. Over the last few years I’ve been fortunate enough to learn some really strong fundamental business and personal lessons, relatively early on, so I’m going to be passing those on in a way which is both honest and prudent.

I’ve focussed on making TECH4AFRICA a success. So I’m going to be talking about that as well

So in no particular order, I think the following is a good snapshot of what I’m going to write about for the foreseaable future:
business & entrepreneurship & startups, health and fitness, personal growth, photography, product development and management, search, the tech landscape in London and Southern Africa, tech and particularly Ubuntu, web stuff.

Thank you, the one reader I have, for reading thus far, and I hope you’ll join me for the next chapters

Oh, and I think this blog needs a facelift and an upgrade!

I’ve been quiet here for a while now, as I’ve been super busy laying foundations for next steps, so just wanna say Happy Christmas for 2009, and Merry New Year for 2010.

See you on the flip side

As an aspiring social entrepreneur and increasingly part time geek, I’ve had my theories on why technical / programmer / geek / web type people stick to certain kinds of focus areas when trying to make a living for themselves, and yesterday an intuition I’ve had for some time now was reinforced.

Things I realised:

1. Most industries have been working just fine without the internet for much longer than I’d given them credit for, so start operating on different levels
2. Competition is everywhere, learn how to deal with it and be better than it
3. The only limits to what I thought was possible were in my own head
4. Business is like an onion, you have to unravel it

So the take home is that after figuring out one or two things, I’m starting to move faster and not feel like I’m walking through molasses = progress.

_ For Your Voting Pleasure: Ten Startup-Related Panels from the SxSW Panel Picker – ReadWriteStart

When you think about South by Southwest Interactive, your memory may serve up warm recollections of open bars, awesome booth swag, and the occasional keynote worth remembering. But amid the festival atmosphere, thousands of would-be entrepreneurs, web developers, and VCs mill around looking for (or pitching) the Next Big Thing.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the SxSW Panel Picker is replete with startup-related panels. Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration (and votes and comments), here are ten could-be-awesome proposed SxSW panels all about the space we love best. Look closely, and you just might see some themes, such as bootstrapping, revenue models, and life outside the Valley.

Seeya there!

So I’ve held off writing this post for a while, as I felt I needed to eat my own dog food before writing something public about goal setting. I’ve just started a new chapter in life, so there was a period where I was figuring out what I wanted to do, and how I was going to go about doing it – and that required a lot of introspection and goal setting

There’s so much literature out there on setting goals that there’s little point in me trying to add to it. So instead of going into too much theory, I’m going to talk about why I think it’s important, what startups need to do, and what has and hasn’t worked for me thus far. I’m quite happy to state that I’m evolving, and so I’m pretty certain that how I think about goals will be different in 5, 10 and 25 years from now.

To start with, let me ask you this:

When you’re setting out on a journey for the weekend, do you get into the car and just drive, choosing random turns and directions as you go, or do you decide where you want to end up to begin with, and then find the most appropriate route there? I’m guessing that you probably start with the end in mind and work backwards.

Lay down a clear beacon you can work towards

So my general point of view is that we should be doing this with the direction of our business and personal lives too, and proactively rather than reactively. The problem in in my view is that we’re either too wishy washy with what we want to do, or we’re just not persistent enough about it to realise progress. Buzzwords here are focus and persistence. Either way, we’re generally held back by what the goals require (the focus and persistence part) rather than the individual goals themselves.

Over the last few years I’ve often argued the idea of setting goals, and one mate often brings up the John Lennon quote which goes something like “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” (which may of course be out of context with respect to John Lennon, but is in context here). I agree that life is about the experience and the journey, but also believe that you don’t get anywhere in life unless you know where you’re going, work hard and fight for it. There’s just too much competition today for it to be otherwise.

If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”, you’ll have read that The Beatles spent a long time working on their performance in Germany, doing 12 hour sets 7 days a week often the whole night through (I didn’t know that, so now their route to fame and fortune makes sense to me). It wasn’t conscious goal setting in the fuzzy way we think of it now, but it was a burning desire to be a great band (which is a goal in itself) and a relentless determination to succeed (which is a character trait of successful people). I would argue that in their context it’s the same thing as goal setting (We’re going to play gigs in Berlin until we’re good enough to break England), John Lennon was just to cool to admit it. So my take is that if you have a place you want to reach, then anyone who tells you not to set goals is going to hold you back. Remember to distinguish between the “how” (tactical work to achieve goal) and the “why” (the goal itself).

On another note, most people set goals internally in most areas of their lives, but somehow we’re socialised not to be outwardly vocal about them. My take is, don’t tell others if it doesn’t feel right, but be religious about your goals with yourself. If you can find people that will understand your perspective, even better.

Example:

I’m at 15% bodyfat, running 5km in 20mins, and living a healthy lifestyle.

Sharpen your saw

Abraham Lincoln once said something along the lines of “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” I’m pretty sure that’s not the exact quote but you should get the idea. If you’re familiar with Stephen Covey’s work, then you’ll be familiar with the context. If not, its the idea of figuring out what you’re going to do before you start so that you’re as efficient as possible while doing it. This applies to virtually everything you can think of, and produces a massive saving in time and energy when done right.

This has been a massive learning curve for me because in the early part of my career I applied brute force to pretty much everything I did, thinking that it was normal and good work ethic. If I needed to work harder or longer I did, making huge sacrifices in the “family”, “friends” and “fun” areas of my life. Now I can spot people who are applying brute force alone from a mile away, as well as recognising it in myself. Similarly, I’m finding that applying the “sharpen the saw” thinking is making a huge difference for me. A side effect is that I now have to reserve brute force for special occasions (I’ve taken a a lot out of the tank thus far), but when I do apply “sharpen the saw” thinking along with brute force the results are far greater than either factor alone. When I look back I don’t regret it, and I sure have learnt a lot from it, but I wouldn’t recommend the brute force only approach to someone who is smart and doesn’t want to make the same mistakes.

Building processes around common or repeatable tasks is another way to sharpen the saw. After each iteration of the process, build a culture which says “how can we do this better every time”.

Examples:

In a startup, having everyone running around in a headless panic working extremely hard at anything and everything is not going to help much; having a clearly defined structure with priorities, roles, responsibility and expected outcomes, does. You don’t want to build a corporate mindset, but you do want to build a crack team of ninjas that can punch way above their weight every day, and adapt to changing circumstances at will.

So where to from here for the startup?

That was the theory, easy eh? Aren’t these lifeskills? So how does this apply to building a startup? You aren’t trying to convert me to a cult are you?

Good questions! The cult stuff comes last… The reason I’m writing this post is because I think goalsetting is one of the cornerstones of building a startup that will succeed, as well as developing yourself so you succeed. On one level, businesses come and go, but developing good life skills is something that will always be useful. On another level, your route to success is probably going to be shorter if you are focussed on very clear specific goals and you consistently work hard and smart.

Define what success looks like for you, don’t fumble around and be wishy washy.

Everyone has their own ideas and parameters for what success is, so you need to know what yours are ideally before you start. Some people want to earn a good salary of their own making, others want industry accolades, others want lots of people all over the world to use their stuff, some want to change their life and circumstances through an exit, and others simply like the idea of building things with new technology. It’s important to understand that we’re all wired differently, and so in a startup, especially in the early days, its super important to figure out two things:

1. what the individual motivations are for the people involved
2. the short and longer term goals of the business

When everyone is aligned in the same direction and feels like they’re achieving what they want to achieve, then you’re on the right track.

My own past experience of this has been painful and sad, so it’s something I’m acutely aware of. When I really dig down and ask the hard questions, it’s become clearer to me over the years that on the surface we had the same goals, but deeper down our motivations and aspirations were different. This difference created friction, which eventually led to things falling apart. Spend the time up front to make sure that everyone is on the same page 100%, it’ll stand you in good stead.

If you’re starting up on your own (go find a co-founder!), then it’s more about understanding why you’re doing the startup, and what you want to achieve from it, so that you push in the right direction.

Good places to start are:

1. Why are you starting up?
2. What kind of personal cashflow are you happy with?
3. What kind of business cashflow is needed to keep things afloat?
4. What kind of people do you want to work with?

Ask yourself what kind of business you’ll love. Then start.

Are you building a product that you need to ship? Are you selling your expertise and time as consultants? Are you a service organisation with many standard commodity products? Are you selling widgets? Whichever model you decide, you should be doing something that you’d love to do every day, good times and bad, good cashflow and bad. You need to be willing to get into the trenches and fight long and hard, so enjoying what you do is a fundamental requirement.

The best ways to start are either to start generating revenue while you’re working (moonlighting), or to build up enough cash to start and have a few months cover. If you’ve been let go by your (previous) company, then start right now on your revenue stream as you’ll be running out of time. I don’t want to encourage rotating credit through credit cards, but it is viable (if not expensive due to the high interest rates). Whichever way you go, make a clean cut, and move on. Progress is infectious, and the freedom you feel from starting something with your own bare hands is worth it.

There are many kinds of businesses, that do many different things, so there are no shortages of example to follow. The trick is not spending too long trying them all out because you’re going to waste a lot of time. I’ve seen quite a few people startup, then spend literally years figuring out what their product or business model is whilst getting deeper and deeper into debt, and it’s fairly obvious a lot of the time that the people involved don’t know themselves what it is that they do and how it differentiates them from the competition (they just apply brute force). Figure this out, then give yourself long enough doing it to decide whether you’re making any progress. Then in a fixed amount of time, be brave enough to draw a line in the sand and call it a day if things are not working out as you’d hoped.

Make sure you have a clearly defined direction

I’ve seen a lot of people mistaking hard work for progress. If you’re in a rowing boat, and you’re rowing furiously with one oar (and consequently going in a circle), are you making progress?

Direction is one of those absolutely essential things that you cannot, in my opinion, do without. Your direction is often the result of a long term vision, but on a day to day level, should be much smaller tactical (monthly / quarterly) goals that push you towards that vision. Both the lofty vision and the monthly / quarterly goals should be crystal clear so that you know whether you’re reaching them or not.

Example:

We ship an updated version of product X every 3 months, in all English speaking territories, priced for the middle and upper end of the market. Our targets are architects who use our product to manage complex architectural and building projects with distributed teams. Our revenue model is a monthly subscription, and we’re growing that at 10% per month. We require £35,000 revenue per month to break even and once we’re reached a monthly revenue of £50,000 we’re going to launch in Germany and Sweden.

Embrace your fears. They are only fears.

I’ve also seen a lot of people mistaking fear for a good reason not to do something, when in fact the fear is what’s holding them back, not the lack of opportunity itself. The only way to make progress is just to start. The lack of committal (for whatever the reason) is probably going to hurt you more than if you started and focussed. There’s never a “right” time to get started, so just do it and work things out as you go. Along the way, don’t let other people impose their fears and personal baggage into your thinking, as it will only muddle you further.

So jump off the cliff and make sure you pack your water wings

And that in my opinion, is all there is to understand about setting goals. The rest is all semantics and daily execution of the above.

I would summarise it as: do something that you love to do every day, state very clearly where you’re going, making sure the interests of the people involved are aligned, then do as much preparation as needed to make the journey as smooth as possible.

That said, the devil is in the details, so that’s what we’ll focus on now.

Use SMART goals

SMART goals really work for me. I first came across the concept when working with a life and career coach in 2003 (thanks Rachel) and over time have come to realise how important they are, and how to tap into them. To be specific, goals should be SMART, positive and in the present:

S – specific

M – measurable, motivational or meaningful to you

A – achievable or action-oriented

R – realistic

T – timely or trackable

It feels weird initially, but writing goals in the present tense does work. Your mind tunes out to negative and/or past or future tenses. Check in with your goals regularly to see if you’re on track. A weekly review is a great time for this. Remember too that setting goals you can’t achieve is no use and defeats the purpose, focus rather on goals that motivate and stretch you but that are still achievable.

There are loads of references to this on the Interwebs, so spend some time reading more to fully understanding the concept.

Practice the Golden Hour

Start every day by thinking about where you want to go, where you are now, and what you’re doing about it. Writing down your goals, and working through your schedule for the day could be a part of that too. I’ve read and heard about this for a long time, and I’ve always resisted doing it as I thought it was too “self helpy”, and then one day after listening to an audiobook on a flight, I decided to give it a try…

…And what a difference it makes! Today I’m more focussed and driven than I’ve ever been, simply because each and every morning I’m reinforcing my purpose. If I veer off track, I know it the next morning; and if I hit my goals then I’m happy, so it’s a very self motivating way of keeping on track.

Use a trusted system to keep your sanity

I’ve often felt that my internal unrest, that feeling of floating without any real direction, has been a result of not knowing where I’m at or where I’m going, so I’ve evolved a system for knowing where I’m at (it’s a combination of GTD/Kaizen/Pareto/7 Habits). So the take home here is that any effort you put into developing systems that keep you in control, and keep you aligned with your goals, is time and effort well invested. I’d hazard to say that as you get older, it will start to pay massive dividends, ‘cos you’ll simply start to pull away from the maddening crowd who aren’t doing it.

The corollary to the above, is that being very specific is the most important thing you should do within your systems. I don’t think that you can be too specific – at first I started off not really believing or understanding how the mind tunes into things that are specific, but after doing it I’ve found it makes a significant difference. I still don’t understand it however

As for systems, use what works for you, there are many options out there. Key benefits should be freeing up your mental RAM to do other more productive things, managing all the things you have to do, and flexibility for your own adaptation.

Examples are:

I’m earning £xxxxx per year at £1^st December 2009;
as opposed to:
I’ve increased my salary.

And that’s it!
Post any comments you may have below and I’ll answer them as best I can. Good luck

This is an in-depth post, which is part of a series on Building a Startup You Love.
The original (short) version is at: Building a Startup You Love is Hard.
The first post was written for ISLabs, and is at: Starting up is a state of mind. Which is also linked to from this blog.