Comments on: A Founder's "Daily Flash" for Executing in the First 6 Months

By: sam

sam — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:31:51 +0000

hi..

you guys (for the most part) are ludicrous. sure, you can throw together a site in a few days if you have the skills. but if you don’t, what then.. are you guys offering to help/be a part for free/equity. i say hell no!! you want to stand on the sideline and bitch. but let’s assume that you do create the site.. how the hell are you going to attract the customer base.. oh, that’s right.. you have no f*ng idea!! you just build it and it’ll somehow work..

not saying that his way is the best.. but his approach allows him to build a base of others who might have pointers/access to talent and the ability to make the damn thing happen.

you guys are a joke….

peace

By: Lauren E

Lauren E — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:26:37 +0000

Interesting thoughts. I like the listing of the “Daily Flash.”

By: Brain flashes » GigaOM: 6 month exploration plan

Brain flashes » GigaOM: 6 month exploration plan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:07:34 +0000

[...] Shea posted this excellent 6-month company launch ‘exploration’ plan. It’s a milestone based operating plan that doesn’t conclude with a decision or a [...]

By: The man who procrastinated his startup for six long months | Jessica Mah Meets World

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:27:26 +0000

[...] is, until I read this post on GigaOM this morning. Meet Ian Shea, sole founder and employee of what’s to be Project Maestro. [...]

By: Jessica Mah

Jessica Mah — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:51:36 +0000

I love the idea! However, I also doubt his ability to execute such an idea. Building a nice prototype website can probably be done within a week. If Ian has little experience with technology and/or product management / UI, I’m not sure how good his product might be.

I hate to say this, but it’s easy for code-monkeys to launch something over the course of a single weekend. Bring in another equally as talented biz dev / marketing guy, and you have yourself some fresh competition :)

By: jenkins

jenkins — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:40:18 +0000

Mike is dead right! Add Ian to the deadpool. His approach sounds wonkish and will likely fail.

By: PabloC

PabloC — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:58:05 +0000

Take the best of everything.

This process is great. If you can compact it an do that in 6 weeks, thats better for you. Do it.

By: mike

mike — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:31:33 +0000

This is one way to look at starting a company, but if you look at a lot of internet companies that have been successful over the last 10 years (yahoo, google, youtube) they started with a good product that fit a need in a growing market. I think some entrepreneurs can get too caught up in vision statements. In this case Ian could have prototyped and launched the product in less than three months and gotten three months worth of real customer feedback and potentially had a business instead of a business plan at the end of month 6. Personally, I’d rather go fast and succeed or fail in that time.

By: jenkins

jenkins — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:01:22 +0000

This doesn’t sound like a good way to start a company. Add Maestro to the deadpool!

By: Stephen Bulfer

Stephen Bulfer — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:26:10 +0000

Ian, nice process you developed and followed for customer discovery on your new concept. I think there is great value in using this type of structure to manage the risk / level of commitment in moving forward with a concept. One challenge is the opportunity cost of the time spent – but learning more about the foundation of the company, its potential market, and its potential and specific customer base is powerful and quite important for a new company. Not to cross talk – but I disagree with the comment made earlier in the post about other successful companies not following this ‘old school’ process. The examples such as Google, eBay, and the like are not comparable in my opinion. There are many approaches to startups and company vision. If you were a swing for the fences only company, the statement earlier might have held. However, there are startups that have followed variations on this process that have market caps less than a nine or ten digit number that are still quite successful. We can overlook or forgot those in the population of companies considered…
Just a few late night thoughts – all the best
sb

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:56:02 +0000

Dave’s right, TiVo and ReplayTV developed in parallel. And while ReplayTV *announced* first, TiVo *shipped* first – the end of March 1999. TiVo had boxes on shelves before RTV.

And there was no ‘turn around’ for RTV. RTV basically went bankrupt, then SonicBlue picked them up, then SonicBlue went bankrupt and D&M Holdings picked up Rio and ReplayTV for a song. From that point on D&M pretty much ran RTV into the ground. They stopped all new hardware development, the 5k platform they picked up in the buy was the last, they never updated from there. They killed several promised software updates that were in progress at the time – MP3 support, USB WiFi, and RTV 4k-5k file sharing interoperability. There was one final major software update under D&M, then it coasted for years until they sold out their existing stock of hardware – and that was that. D&M tried a PC-based DVR package under the ReplayTV brand, but it really had nothing to do with the legacy products and it never sold well.

And Dave’s right on with the DirecTV purchase – DirecTV acquired the Intellectual Property, but not the customers (and therefore no burden of continued support). The customers, and that burden, stayed with D&M Holdings/DNNA.

By: damon

damon — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 03:27:37 +0000

Please note, very very few (if any) of the successful internet destinations today started like this…

flickr, youtube, facebook, google, ebay, craigslist, and on and on and on …

Can you imagine Chad Hurley spending 6 months “transcribing notes”.

Can you imagine in the list of accomplishments after 6 months, actually mentioning “transcribing notes”.

By: Asiaman

Asiaman — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:35:58 +0000

Great article! Thanks.

By: Darren Stuart

Darren Stuart — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:45:39 +0000

I don’t want to bash anyone here but it seems like not alot was actually done. Is there an alpha or beta of this product? This sounds like an old school way of doing it. The cost of development is pretty low these days.

By: Nag

Nag — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:17:22 +0000

Very nice post. It shows the good steps for making a successful START UP.

Cheers, Nag

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:04:02 +0000

I wouldn’t label ReplayTV a TiVo predecessor – in the scheme of DVR evolution I’d say they were peers in launching the concept. (RTV’s hardware launched 2-3 month’s prior to TiVo in 1999.)

Not sure which “turnaround” you’re referring to. I’m not aware of one. Which is unfortunate, because ReplayTV was superior to TiVo early on – grid guide, component output (480p), the ability to connect via PC to manage unit, including pulling content off, automated commercial skip, etc.

I imagine DirecTV bought ReplayTV for their IP/patent portfolio – not their customers. So daily metrics of a service (that hasn’t produced hardware in years, PC software killed, relatively few active customers) may be of little importance.