Life in Balance: Amit D. Chaudhary’s Blog
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Economist has an article on Evan Williams, Founder and Creator of Blogger, Odeo and Twitter: The accidental innovator

Some snippets with minor grammer changes for continuity:

Ideas:

First insight, that genuinely new ideas are, well, accidentally stumbled upon rather than sought out; second, that new ideas are by definition hard to explain to others, because words can express only what is already known;

Controlled Passion:

Mr Williams’s passion is solving new problems. In theory he could have done this at Google with his “20% time” on the side, but in practice he found it tedious to pitch ideas to the Google bureaucracy. Left and right brains clashed in other ways.

Radical Constraints:

One mental trick is to ask “what can we take away to create something new?” When he took Blogger and took away everything except one 140-character line, he had Twitter. Radical constraints, he believes, can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things.

Loves Frustration:

For the same reason, Mr Williams loves frustration. Blogger revealed itself when he was frustrated with something bigger: collaboration software.

Jeff Jones wrote in Feature/Function Innovation: Inventing Left-Hand Columns

Real innovation is what I refer to as “inventing left-hand columns.” What I mean by this is that once users hear what is now possible, they not only realize they must have it … they now consider it a requirement.

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Buyers use this matrix to evaluate market offerings … thus the more unique features, you offer the more the X’s appear in your in your column … and this is a good thing.

New left-hand columns cause users to start asking everyone else for such capabilities.

In my experience and observation, it almost always is not a good strategy to focus on features. This is specially accurate for startups. Features in search of a product is a case often encountered in the Technology field.

When a startup or team focus on features, the customer anyways buys from their original vendor or the number one vendor,  all they do is request your features from them. And a claim of the feature as upcoming, even a year or two from now is enough to halt evaluating the startup’s products.

It has happened many times including Microsoft Active Directory with Administration Delegation (I was with Entevo then)

The key then is to solve an actual customer pain or provide a functionality never available before.

SiliconValley.com has an article on a bootstrapped startup, which shows the otherside of creating a startup, hardwork and a tough climb: Tech startup life still tough years after dot-com bubble burst

She and her boyfriend, Wan Hsi Yuan, 27, run the business, 8coupons.com, from their 500-square-foot studio apartment, meaning headquarters is, effectively, their couch. The business, which text messages discounts to users’ mobile phones, keeps Yuan and Ung, who is 28, up until 3 a.m. most nights. Then, Ung said, she sometimes finds herself lying awake, worrying.

“I need to watch a little National Geographic special on the rain forest or something before I go to sleep,” she said.

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Welcome startup life in 2007.

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“The Aeron chair is out, the Starbucks latte is in,” Shipley said.

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“We don’t go out anymore,” Yuan said. “For the past two years, all we do is work.”

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At home, they sleep in a queen bed and their workspace/living area is roughly the size of a king bed. They have Internet-only cable; their flat-screen TV shows their Web site, and Yuan works from the couch on an arrangement of pillows they call “his shrine,” typing braces on both wrists, a serving tray with a wireless keyboard on a pillow on his lap.

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At the startup camp, a partner at a venture capital firm ran through a PowerPoint slideshow on what VCs are looking for: Companies doing things competitors can’t with technology that’s either patented or incredibly challenging to create.

As he went on, it was clear 8coupons lacked nearly every attribute he listed, but Ung and Yuan shrugged that off.

Ironically enough, it is people who work long hours specially need Ergonomic Furniture like Aeron or Soma Biocomfort chair to avoid long term pain.

I noticed a trend among Colleagues and Friends who have been or are doing Part-time aka Executive MBAs, after working as an engineer for a number of years. Atleast one I know, who left work for a fulltime MBA course which costs more, directly in fees ($100,000 is typical.) and in loss of income.
The whole path should take 3-5 years including the GMAT preparation and the courses typically cost U$50,000-80,000 in fees, plus maybe U$10,000 in expenses and lots of study and hardwork in the middle.
I tried a reverse path to see if some current CEO have reached through that path and I found one, interestingly, he runs a people search company.

Jaideep Singh is CEO of Spock, a People search website & company. From Linkedin Profile, I would get the following which kind of shows the path, my friends might go through.

• Engineer & Manager at WindRiver systems for around 8 years, from 1994 to 2002
• Did his MBA at Wharton (I would guess the program they have in San Francisco, see link below) from 2000-2002.
• Changed to Product Management and Business Development at WindRiver from 2002 to 2006 as well as consulted with Clearstone Venture Partners as Investment Professional
• Did a stint as EIR(Entrepreneur In Residence) for six months from late 2005, again at Clearstone Venture Partners
• Started Spock in 2006 as Co-Founder and CEO.

Definitely a pretty good career path so far. I would calculate, nine years from decision (say 1997 to 2006) to CEO.
If you are in the San Jose aka San Francisco Bay Area aka Silicon Valley, some Executive MBA options are

• Wharton in San Francisco
• Haas School, Berkeley
• Leavey School, Santa Clara

PS: Marc Andreessen, Founder of Netscape mentions Sales and Finance among skills to maximize your potential in his career guide.

If you never got around to starting a company earlier in your life like right out of college or withing a few years after that, I do believe you missed the best time to do it. But there are a few advantages on doing it later in life, say in yours 30s or 40s.

• You would ideally have enough saving to create it with you own funding. No need for the typical $5000 per founder put in by a startup school like Y Combinator or TechStars.

• You probably have expertise in the area you have been working. You can tell if and what channel is needed, what expertise is needed at different stages, how long and what kind of effort does it take to get a project done.

• You already have or can get the connections needed for mentoring and guidance. These are people who worked with you, who you meet at a conference or some friend mentioned they know him or her. If it is none of the earlier, you can just Cold Call or Email them, Nivi actually asked people to do it on his blog.

More reading on Age and Entrepreneurship:

Valleywag: Is 30 too old to start a company? Valleywag does a quick survey on the software and internet superhits:

The most spectacular successes are launched by founders still in their twenties. The peak age: 26.

Paul Graham: Why to not not to start a Startup

Talks about reasons and phases as to when to not start a startup and on starting on right out of College.

A VC: The Mid Life Entrepreneur Crisis:

Nine of our eleven entrepreneurs are in their 30s. One is in his 20s, and one is in his 50s.

My earlier blog entries on the topic:

Startup Thoughts 1: What to look for in a Startup co-founder

Startup Thoughts 2: Lessons from when I was exploring creating a startup

Startup\Entrepreneur tips from Po Bronson’s Wired article on Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail from 1998

1. Used a decoy plan to shortlist the Good VCs(Investors)

So in August 1995, Sabeer began shopping around a business plan for a Net-based personal database called JavaSoft. This would become, in effect, the front for the Hotmail idea. With venture capitalists skeptical of the software market - it was too hard to get good distribution and rise above the fray - JavaSoft wasn’t likely to fly, but Sabeer kept showing the plan, and saving Hotmail for those VCs he’d tested and respected. Hotmail was such an explosive concept, Sabeer didn’t want a less-than-ethical VC to reject him, then turn around and copy it. In order to keep the Hotmail idea under wraps, he and Jack Smith even put the JavaSoft name on the front door of their first tiny office in Fremont, California.

Key takeaways: Secretive, Smart and Paranoid.

2. Inspite of earlier rejections, Negotiated with DFJ for double the initial investment offer

One might have presumed that since Sabeer had been rejected by 20 previous VCs and was virtually a nobody, he was grateful to accept Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s $300K on their terms. “He’s the most interesting negotiator I’ve ever met,” Jurvetson says. Tim Draper made the perfectly reasonable offer of retaining 30 percent ownership on a $1 million valuation. Sabeer held out for double that valuation - their cut, 15 percent. The negotiations got nowhere, so Sabeer shrugged and stood up and walked out the door. His only other available option was a $100,000 family-and-friends round that Jack Smith had arranged as a backup - not nearly enough money. “If we’d gone that route, Hotmail wouldn’t exist today,” says Jack.

Draper and Jurvetson relented; they called back two days later to accept their 15 percent. And Sabeer and Jack stretched that initial $300,000 all the way to launching the service before needing a second round.

Key takeaways: Confidence and Self-Worth.

3. Negotiated with Microsoft every week for months and went from initial offer from US $40 million to actual sale price of US $400 million

When Microsoft came bidding in the fall of 1997, they came as a small army. Six at a time, they flew down from Redmond and sat in Hotmail’s small conference room across the table from Sabeer. They offered a figure, something that would have put tens of millions of dollars in Sabeer’s pocket. Sabeer rejected it, and they stormed out. A week later they were back, and every other week thereafter for two months. hey flew him up to Redmond to meet Gates and have a little get-friendly conversation. At that point, it’s easy to see it all as funny money - when you’ve got a week to think about it, it’s hard to really see the difference between 50 million and 60 million. Are you really going to risk losing the deal for another 10 million?

Sabeer went back to Microsoft and asked for $700 million. “You’re crazy,” the negotiators shouted, followed by a few expletives. “You’re out of your mind! You’ve blown it!” But Sabeer knew those were only tactical outbursts.

But negotiating alone allowed Sabeer to present a unified front; it prevented Microsoft from taking Jack Smith to dinner and saying, “Jack, you’ve got a wife and a kid - c’mon, they’ll be set for life.” But Sabeer wasn’t psychologically alone - his backers and colleagues kept the faith.

Key takeaways: Patience, Courage and Partners

4. Neither he or his partner had knowledge or experience in the field they were starting, they hired the experience.

Sabeer believes he’s damn lucky to live in this place and time. “Only in Silicon Valley could two 27-year-old guys get $300,000 from men they had just met. Two 27-year-old guys who had no experience with consumer products, who had never started a company, who had never managed anybody, who had no experience even in software - Jack and I were hardware engineers. All we had was the idea. We didn’t have a prototype or even a dummied graphical interface. I just sketched on his whiteboard.”

The first 12 Hotmail employees signed on entirely for stock, forgoing salary - not very common in the Valley, where the unemployment rate is nil.

Key takeaways: Business and Personal skills over technical and Location

Guy Kawasaki wrote about How to Get the Attention of a Venture Capitalist.

My own belief, it is not that big a problem, it is a VC’s job to find Entrepreneurs. They might miss some like Bessemer missed Intel, Apple Computer, Ebay, Google and others, but their goal is not to.

Just find a reference, know what stage are you, Bootstrap, Angel or VC and give it a good shot.

Here is a reference on the importance of deal making: Getting a Job in Venture Capital

• A co-founder is critical, he\she gives suggestions or pushes an idea in a different direction than you would, recommends changes to approach, and will ideally complement things (If you rush to implement, she\he would explore more) and finally is the first person to sell a concept to.

• Ideas do not matter that much. Somebody might be doing or has done what you start with and things will change.

• Remember it is a for profit venture, you should at least plan to ensure it quite useful to many users and maybe some plan of making money. Otherwise it is a personal project.

• A startup will require a lot of focus, time and energy to do it justice. It should ideally be the only thing in your life, the Frog if you may.

My thoughts on What to look for in a Startup co-founder. These apply to Technology startups and assumes the life cycle would be bootstrap(3-6months)->angel(1 year)->VC

• How to find a co-founder: Your first list should be everyone you have worked with or studied with.

• Role: For most firms, the ideal co-founder would be an Engineer or Product Manager, if selling to the corporate world, a Channels (Sales) persona is also a choice.

• Personality match: Will your co-founder both pushback and yield as needed. This can also be put in under maturity.

• Interview: Take an interview and make them take your interview. Do these on different days and on neutral grounds, a coffee shop or hike. People and priorities change, this is a good time to get some clarity.

• Minimum Qualities: They should be good in their field, be ready to make some risks and someone you are comfortable with. Ideally you both should be from the same field. It is hard, though not impossible to move a Software Engineer or Product Manager from Storage to Internet or vice versa.

• Test Run: Work with the person for a small project or spend sometime brain storming. Two months might save you years of grief.

• Full Time: Almost always, be ready to start full time on this as soon as it might be needed.

• Minimum investment: If not plunging in full time (not yet needing a place & time as Don Shapiro said) right away, agree to a minimum time commitment per week from each.

• Backup plan: Consider keeping a vesting period for founder share and what would happen if only one of you decides to run with it.

Also on the same topic, Questions to ask about your startup or idea from TechStars

Triggered by Andrew Chen, EIR at Mohr Davidow Ventures: How do you find a badass co-founder?

Product design methods from IDEO for Entrepreneurs, Engineers and Product Managers.

IDEO Method Cards which are available for $49 and allow product designers to use various angles (Learn, Look, Ask, and Try) and methods related to the same to help in brain storming,  gather more information, better design products and in general empathize better with the potential users. These can be useful for anyone creating or designing something including in Technology: Entrepreneurs, Engineers and Product Managers.
FastCompany has an article on using IDEO Method Cards for fictional product ideas: Out of the Box

For more on IDEO and it’s methods, consider the book:

Amazon.com link: The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm

The book’s official page: The Art of Innovation