Andrew Crump

Last week I posted 23 tips for anyone starting a startup journey. They seem to have gone down well so I though I would expand. (I hope to cover them all over time – I might not do them all in order)

Tip 1. Do one thing at at a time and take time to carefully prioritise.

It is amazingly important to do one thing at at time and do that thing well. The moment you focus on two or more things you will start to deliver less than the the relative ratio of productivity for each thing.

This applies on a large scale (working on two business at once?) a medium scale (helping out with ‘x’ on the side?) a small scale (what feature should we build next?) and a micro scale (what deliverable’s shall I work on?)

Large Scale: You’re an entrepreneur, right? (I hope so at least. If not, why not?). One of the things that makes you special is that you see opportunities everywhere. Not just that, you like to do something about them. Awesome… But you can’t do everything. Decide which opportunity most deserves your attention and focus only on that one.

Medium Scale: So now your start-up is moving, but there’s lots more a diligent person like yourself can get up to. Help organise a relevant event? Write a book? Help out with x? You need to be very careful here. Don’t get sucked into things that don’t directly achieve the goals of your startup. Make sure you prioritise your own goals above others and remember that sometimes the best thing you can do to help others is to help yourself first.

Small Scale: You want your widget/business/app to do a, b, c, d, x, y and z. If it does all of these things, then it’s defiantly going to be a success. Great, but you can’t build everything at once. Which one feature/story/product/goal is the one that you must achieve before all the others make sense? That’s the one to focus on first. Prioritise the rest based on business and user goals and strictly approach one at a time.

Micro Scale: During the day it’s easy to get pulled from task to task, email to email (etc) without a clear  plan. Instead, spend every morning planning your day (take as long as is necessary). Prioritise tasks for that day only and make sure the list is achievable. Move all other tasks to ‘upcoming’ and ignore them. Time-box email reading/responding and don’t let tasks from emails creep in without reason.

All of this is is much easier said than done but, I promise, if you can learn to do one thing at a time you will reap the rewards. Be lean and remember as David Allen says; you can do anything, but not everything.

Here are some random learnings/tips for anyone starting a startup journey, hope they are helpful:

1. Do one thing at a time and take time to carefully prioritise.
2. Your idea is not valuable.
3. Your network really matters.
4. The team is the most important thing ever.
5. If you put headphones on, people distract you less.
6. If you listen to foreign music, it distracts you less.
7. Investors are real people.
8. Not all investors are clever.
9. Meetings with big companies generally suck (for productivity).
10. Don’t do this for money (If you want cash start a lifestyle business).
11. Money and possessions are far less important than you think.
12. Expect rejection, learn from it and move on.
13. Always ask for help.
14. Co-founders/CEO’s of companies ahead of you make great mentors.
15. Plan thinking time in your calendar.
16. Give people deadlines for decisions.
17. Apologise to your family upfront and keep them in the loop
18. Other than with your family, act first and apologise later
19. Be decisive, the wrong decision is better than no decision.
20. If you want to speak to someone at the top of a big company, be nice to their PA.
21. You know more about your business than anyone else.
22. You do need to practice your pitch.
23. Brilliantly executed products allow you to disrupt a market, but badly executed products sell all the time.

In a stressful world it is easy to become worried. Things don’t go to plan, people don’t deliver as you hoped, that investor you thought was in is now dragging his heels. There is a lot we feel we need to be worried about, but worrying is it-self stressful and is also a complete waste of time. 

So what can we do about it? Well actually there is one place where worrying is useful, it can be used to drive us into identifying problems and taking action. Here is my three-step process that will stop you worrying about any problem. I don’t claim invention, just refinement.

1. Identify the problem

What are you worrying about. It’s easy to feel stressed by a situation without specifically identifying what the problem is. If you are feeling uptight, I suggest taking 10 mins to write an extensive list of exactly what you are worried about.

2. Can you do something about it?

Now you have identified each problem, can you do something to sove it? Yes? Great, do it then stop worrying. No? Then stop worrying; you are not achieving anything by worrying about something that you cannot do anything about. Link each one of your problems with actions or cross them off your worry list.

3. Can you do that thing now?

Yes? Great, do it and stop worrying. No? Thats fine, schedule actions for a better time and stop worrying. You are not achieving anything by worrying about something that you can not do anything about right now.

Steve Jobs has been one of the biggest influencers of my life, and not just because of the huge impact that apple has had on tech and innovation but because of how inspirational he was as a person. The first time I listened to his his Stanford speech the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I still get goosebumps when I listen to him talk about life and death.

I originally quoted him in my post about risks but now seems like a poignant time to revisit his words. What an awesome guy. I know he will be sorley missed.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

The idea of ‘StartUp Britain’ is nice. Of course it is; encouraging entrepreneurship is brilliant, it’s very nice to have a lovely site that aggregates a few resources (it’s not like we had that already or anything) and I suppose this could grow into an ecosystem of support if the ‘coming soon’ features actually happen without bureaucracy.

But, it doesn’t solve the issues that are currently faced by entrepreneurs.

The reality is that there are lots of great entrepreneurs and lots of great companies already that are struggling to get funding in a climate/society where pre-revenue funding is not a regular thing. An issue that this does not address

@fmu tweeted me saying that the bigger issue in the UK is funding for growth and global ambitions. If he is right I dread to think what things are like at that stage. At seed stage, we have precious few investors/funds that are prepared to support very early stage companies. If you do not have a huge network built at a top university and/or are not from a background of money how does StartUp Britain/The PM envisage that these entrepreneurs get the money to make things happen?

I was lucky to be in a position where my exploits at quite a relatively young age enabled me to put a year unpaid and 20k into bluefields.com but most people are not in that situation. Recently at a ‘Springboard’ session I spoke to a VC who said (like all do – even the ‘seed stage’ ones) that he wanted to see 50k users and a more committed team before he would invest. I asked him how much most companies spend and where do they get it from, to get to that stage. He said 100k and from family. This is the Seed problem.

@scoutu mentioned to me on twitter that the new EIS will help improve this, and I agree; but we need dramatic change if young companies are to be really encouraged.  Springboard had over 280 applications, and I believe Seedcamp gets more than this (this is just tech!). There is just not enough seed money.

The EFG scheme is balls, banks don’t lend unless you know someone or have revenue or stock; to speak to angels you have to pay thousands and if you apply to a seed programme your odds are very short.

My point is that the amount of money needed to fix this early stage problem is not a big. For hardly any money the government could fund the set up of 10 Seedcamps for example. I also recently met a guy who believes that 5k is all that most entrepreneurs need (he works with Uni grads to get them money so they can get something going, but has too many people to fund and not enough cash).

We also need a way to being together the angel community and make them directly accessible (through tech ideally) at no cost, something that StartUp Britain could easily work at.

Then there is the StartUp Britain ’deal’….

It’s basically 10% off from 15k worth of things that you don’t really need / should not be spending money on as a start up. Seriously, if you are a start up and you are paying for MS office you have a problem; and this deal it pails into insignificance compared to the recent AppSumo lean deal.

So, StartUp Britain is nice. That’s it. It’s more PR that substance, it won’t solve any problems, it won’t really help the community but it’s nice. If the idea is to bring together the experience and knowledge of successful entrepreneurs then that is great, but the deal is balls and the it goes nowhere to solve the issues currently faced by entrepreneurs.

Ps. Read Glen and Nick’s thoughts too.

I would highly recommend that you read all of the following books.

Excuse 1: I don’t get enough time to read
Answer: Audiobooks
Excuse 2: I don’t have the money to buy all these books / audiobooks
Answer: Steal them and add them to the list of things you need to repent for / pay for when you have the money

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it. – Roy Ash

Have the end in mind and every day make sure your working towards it – Ryan Allis

Lend your friend $20, if he doesn’t pay you back then he’s not your friend. Money well spent – Ted Nicolas  (AC: I have done this a few times, and there are few other tests you can do that are similar. You will find out very quickly who you can trust)

It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission – Grace Hopper

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism. -Herbert Hoover

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress. —Alfred A. Montapert

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic. – Dale Carnegie

Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking - William B. Sprague

Levels of drive and motivation seem to vary greatly between us all. Some have bundles of it but direct it towards the wrong things, some have direction but lack the drive to get there, some have both dirve and clear direction; but it is not just motivation that leads to success, its also the ability to take ‘risks’. Most of our population is risk adverse but these ‘risks’ are not risks.

Last night I was having a beer with a close friend and the conversation turned to a mutual friend of ours. This mutual friend is extremely intelligent and a few of years ago graduated from a top university with top marks in an extremely hard subject. He now works at the indursty leader in his field; however this has meant he has had to re-locate away from friends and family. I was shocked to find out how much he was getting paid. Its was much less that I expected.

So the question I posed was why doesn’t he take a risk and change industry, or move to another company, work freelance for more money and a better lifestyle, or start his own business with this skills he has learnt.

(The point of this story is not to point out the situation of our mutual friend, I am sure he is extremely happy with his huge achievements and I know he will continue to go from strength to strength. The point is to hi-light the subject brought up by the response to my question)

The response from my close friend was that not everyone is like me. Not eveyone is willing to take the risks I take by being entrepreneurial.

So now I will ask a question. What risk?

Seriously, if you quit your job today and tried to start an online shoe store, what is the absolute worst that could happen? In fact what is the worst possible outcome to any decision?

This could be compared to the trap of the middle class’s as described by Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad Poor Dad, but it is not just a middle class thing. Its endemic.

For me I have always tried to look at the bigger picture. When you compare any decision you make to the fact that there are at least 100 stars in the universe for every grain of sand on Earth then you can gain some real context to your decision. (Thats a low estimate of 10^22 stars, or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe, of which our planet revolves around just one). Our lives and deaths, yet alone any decisions we make during them, are totally insignificant.

In fact just realising that at some point in the very near future you will die will give you motivation to make things happen and to enjoy what you do. Fear of failure and worry about ‘risks’ diminish.  I would go on, but there is a quote from Steve Jobs that puts it more beautifully then I ever could. This was given in 2005 at Stanford University:

‘Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear or embarrassment or failure; these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to loose.

… there is no reason not to follow your heart.’

I will go as far as to say that I hate it when a person is accused of being closed minded because they don’t accept the nonsensical at first glance without looking for evidence or proof or at least looking deeper. It is actually the accuser in that case that is being closed minded.

More on how being open-minded helps entrepreneurship later… but for now here is a very good video explaining the details of the above.