There is nothing I’d rather do than give up this day job with $BIG_COMPANY and survive on my writing while I whiled away the days trying to learn to code to maybe build an app that I want. Apparently (according to a thread on Twitter) startup businesses require passion and if you’re not willing to code for pizza then you’re not showing passion. And not showing any balls.

That’s shite.

I can’t do this because I have responsibilities. I have a mortgage, kids to feed, a house to run. It’s just not an option. And the answer I get? Rent! WTF? Have you seen the prices of rental properties these days? You might as well pay a mortgage because at least then you have a long term gain in equity.

Five years ago this month I was in the unenviable position of finding out that the directors of the company I was working for were in cahoots and were embezzling. I’d been hired to run the technical department which, in the end, turned out to be the only pat of the business that actually made any money - everything else just made loss after loss which is how you burn through half a million pounds worth of debt in six months. They got off scot free (typically) and disappeared to their other business in England (where, for a annual fee you can get substandard techno-luddite telephone support for your Mac). I had a couple of weeks to act and there were livelihoods to take into account. I had a young child and one on the way so I had responsibilities but the choice was to go find another job or stick my neck out. I convinced Apple’s UK MD to take a chance with us, took my savings and started Mac-Sys. During the next year I would realise that business and friendship are not compatible - and as a result I lost some friends who wouldn’t work. I would discover that the only people who truly believe in you are your children - and god bless them for that (and they’ll grow out of it soon enough). And I would find that I’m not as hard nosed in business as I should be but I’m enough of a cvnt to make something work. These were not lessons that came easily.

For the last two years I’ve been trying to start a software company. Iteration 1 was when Aidan took on SyncBridge. He worked his ass off and produced some real miracles but a shaky API and Apple undercutting us with Calendar Server put paid to our dreams. As it would happen we were a year ahead of the competition, a market for syncing that is now over-run with competitors. For Iteration 2, we hired Steve into Mac-Sys and he wrote the first rendition of ‘macserv’, a web application designed to make the running of an AASP easier. To Steve’s credit, he had a job herding cats to get the processes defined but he managed it. And this only stopped because I recruited him into $BIG_COMPANY (which had been my way of escape). For Iteration 3, we tried again with Aidan, Steve, Philip and Jordan on board but everyone is pulled in different directions. It was always our ‘other job’ and frequently lost out to family, the fact that the day job killed my enthusiasm for things and everyone had priorities. I’m left wondering what to do next.

You see. The first and third Iterations were all done ‘for pizza’. There was a promise of rewards but there were a lot of steps to bypass between now and then. Both ended up falling over because, end of the day, if it’s not putting the bread on the table, it’s not a priority. The second Iteration worked because we had someone working on it and yeah, perhaps we need to look at that again.

I don’t want to ask anyone to code for pizza again.

“If you’ve worked at enough companies in the IT industry, you’ve probably noticed that the most talented software developers tend to not stick around at one place for too long. The least talented folks, on the other hand, entrench themselves deep within the organization, often building beachheads of bad code that no sane developer would dare go near, all the while ensuring their own job security and screwing up just enough times not to get fired.

…Bruce F. Webster aptly named this phenomenon the Dead Sea Effect.”

There’s a lot of wisdom in this. I worked for Nortel for 6+ years and when I left, the relationship was over. I still had a few friends (those who were bothered to be on instant messenger networks other than MSN) but for the most part, I was the ex and not an alumnus by any means.

I have hoped, in my management of Mac-Sys that this is different. I still speak to many past employees (the exceptions generally being those who left under a cloud because they wanted something the company couldn’t provide during the first year or so when we were fighting just to stay alive.)

I think when my tenure with $BIG_COMPANY ends, it’ll be similar to Nortel which is a shame. Big companies should have more resources to hook up with past employees rather than treating them like the Ex with the onerous personal habits.

Aidan, as a Thoughtworks alumnus (never mind Inktomi, Blackstar etc) gets a lot of street cred for being a developer who gets things done. I find it heartening that Thoughtworks has an alumnus system - it’s such a positive aspect of company-employee relationships and certainly colours the way the employee will speak of the employer in years to come.

Would I rather have a good relationship with a past employer? Hell yeah. So what can you do as an employer?

1. Don’t be a dick. People are going to leave and while it could be because of personal issues with you, it’s more likely it’s personal issues which they cannot escape
2. Don’t be a dick. This bears repeating because sometimes the employee will make an effort to make life difficult unintentionally. They may be in all sorts of turmoil in their personal lives and dropping the job may be their response. Don’t make it more difficult
3. Don’t be a dick. Keep in contact with these folk. Why not even start a mini social network for them? Create the FaceBook group, keep their Jabber login active. For security remove their logins to core systems but don’t be doing a global find/replace on their uid in the systems - that’s stupid.

As the months pass in $BIG_COMPANY, it becomes clearer to me what I want to be doing with the rest of my life.

1. Not this. It’s not even that I dislike corporate wage slave culture. I actually have no issues with it. I loved my time in Nortel and only moved on because timing, opportunity and encouragement were right. This is just mind-numbing. And typical, of course, of worst-class pandering to executives while stripping the workers of their pay rises. Not good enough for me.
2. I’m also not sure about whether I want to get back into IT work. It’s something (I think) I’m good at, having done it for over a decade now and there are new areas of business I’d like to move into, certainly, but the allure of crawling around chasing cables in a dusty footwell under a desk just doesn’t have the same appeal.
3. There are some things I’m totally enamoured with. Ubiquitous wireless. Co-Working. Bedouin working. The ‘Presence’ aspect of social software. The tricky thing is how to get all of that to pay a mortgage and feed a dog. Yes, I have a plan. I just need the timing to be right (after all I’ve got a full dance card until around September).

At the moment, with someone leaving $BIG_COMPANY every week, it doesn’t surprise me that I feel this way (and that I’m obviously not alone). I do wonder what sort of job you have to be in to get the freedom to attend talks and trips like Paddy’s Valley. I asked to attend a 1 day Open Source event in Belfast and was told it would be annual leave - some companies have such vision!

The answer is therefore to figure out what I really want to do, get paid for doing it, and wander off into the sunset.

It’s the question that drives us.

I’ve already pledged a desk (that I’ll be unlikely to use but will pay for anyway) and Mac-Sys is pledging a couple of iMacs. A lot of this depends on other people who are interested in finding an inexpensive workplace where they will meet other ‘working’ people.

Watch David and Andy’s blogs for more.

“The proper metaphor for somebody who carries portable but unwieldy and cumbersome infrastructure is that of an astronaut rather than a nomad, says Paul Saffo, a trend-watcher in Silicon Valley. Astronauts must bring what they need, including oxygen, because they cannot rely on their environment to provide it. They are both defined and limited by their gear and supplies.”

“Urban nomads have started appearing only in the past few years. Like their antecedents in the desert, they are defined not by what they carry but by what they leave behind, knowing that the environment will provide it. Thus, Bedouins do not carry their own water, because they know where the oases are. Modern nomads carry almost no paper because they access their documents on their laptop computers, mobile phones or online. Increasingly, they don’t even bring laptops.”

This is parallel to the Co-Working strategy that David and Andy have been working on.

It’s a tall order to fill a co-working space. Even at an offer acceptance of £10 000 per annum, that still means the costs will likely be £18 000 per year (when you add £6800+ in rates and minimal electricity) not including broadband and heating - that’s £1500 a month! To bring the costs to a manageable level that people might want to pay, you’re going to have to aim for occupancy of around 15+. You could do it with less people (paying more) but you’re then really buying into the idea that people will pay for a co-working environment.

I’ve already said that Mac-Sys will put money down to secure a space (which will likely be used once in a blue moon) and we’ll also supply some of the infrastructure as well, if required. I hope it works out - I’m a little jealous of the guys involved as my dance card is totally filled at the moment (with work, babysitting, writing the new book, spending time with her indoors and trying to actually live life!).

I still have my own dreams regarding a Co-Work space that will likely never be realised due to the costs and time it would take to set up (and the fact it’s not an affair for an attic). My theory is that a co-work space needs to have it’s own identity and, if necessary, it’s own employees. Someone needs to be responsible for cleaning the loos, someone needs to keep the place running, chase up the co-conspirators for rent money - and just like in a shared house, that can be incredibly wearing on the patience. Hence you hire someone to do it.

This is why my idea for it was based around the coffee shop. The idea being to straddle the space between public coffee shop and serviced office. I was never 100% sure if Belfast was the right place for it but I still would like to give it a go.

It needs more than just an office though. It needs to be a network.

When Robert left Microsoft to go to a short gig at Podtech, he said that working for a startup was exciting. Fair enough, Robert, this still isn’t what most of us were doing from day to day. We were running our own startups.

So, not long after, Robert moves to FastCompany.tv as the Managing Director and that’s his first real experience of a startup. He’s got an established brand (no matter what you may think of Fast Company), he’s got some funding, he’s got the A-list blogger hype machine and he pulls in some old pals to help him. He has advantages that most startups never have (yeah, start again by being a nobody, having a 300 sq ft office, 5 employees who have just been laid off from the last bit of work, £10 000 in your personal savings and no clients - you have enough money to pay salaries and taxes for one month and that’s your nest egg gone - now tell me it’s hard work).

So he gives it a go with all of this.

And it’s a disaster.

I’ve yet to finish a Scoble video because halfway through I just click off. Is this attention deficit on my part? I guess I can take the blame?

Tyme White writes about the recent stink with Fast Company, Loren Feldman and Shel Israel:

“The core problem, in my opinion, is that Fast Company picked the wrong people to accomplish their goals. These people are probably “good” people (nice, kind, considerate, etc.) but they aren’t placed in positions where their strengths would benefit the company. There isn’t a system in place to overcome their weakened positions. It is my opinion if people were placed in positions they were more qualified to fill, these issues would not have happened in the first place and now that they have, they would be mitigated.”

What’s my take? I’m broadly in agreement with Tyme. Robert Scoble is an A-list blogger and he has enough interest from the net to make someone a shedload of money. But why put a ‘producer’ in a ‘manager’ position if not just for the kudos. The recent hubbub with Shel Israel just highlights how Robert isn’t a hiring manager (and Shel doesn’t have a thick enough skin yet to take the criticism that being a public figure buys you.). You want to be an internet sensation, you have to be able to take the hits too. Robert has, for the most part, weathered most hits but it seems inevitable to me that his idle boast of ignoring 17000 people on Twitter is going to bite him in the ass at some point in the future. You can’t manage a company and fulfill the ‘legend’ of Robert Scoble. Not just because there isn’t enough time but because only one person can fulfill that legend and he’s not a manager (yet).

Of course, I’m a classic armchair CEO pointing out the discrepancies in someone else’s work and I’m 100% sure that my own little companies bring in a small percentage of the revenue required to keep FastCompany.tv ticking over so there may be something I’m missing. I know my brand sucks.

You are invited to attend a Frameworks Entrepreneur workshop to be held at Northern Ireland Science Park, with a presentation on:

Programme Overview:

Raising money in today’s environment is no easy task — but it can be done if you focus on the right priorities and avoid common deal-killers. In this workshop, Peter Stafford from A&L Goodbody will provide you with a framework that will prepare you for raising capital from venture capital funds.

Benefits of Attending:

• An overview of venture funds and venture financings;
• Identifying the best approaches in dealing with investors;
• How the venture capital process works;
• Common terms used in transactions and what they mean.

Who should attend:

Founders, CEOs, and managers who are seeking venture funding, as well as scientists and technology experts considering a business start-up in need of venture financing.

About the Presenter:

Peter Stafford is a partner in the Belfast office of A&L Goodbody, Ireland’s leading law firm. He specialises in corporate finance work including public and private company acquisitions and disposals, management buy outs, private equity transactions and commercial contracts. Peter regularly works for venture capitalists, business angels and investee companies and is “particularly highly rated as a deal lawyer in the jurisdiction” (Legal Week, July 2006).

Confirmed Panelists

• Peter Stafford, Partner A&L Goodbody
• Alan Mawson, Executive Chairman Clarendon Fund Managers
• Sarah Bearder, CTO Datactics

Join us on Thursday 15th May for a panel discussion featuring several savvy entrepreneurs of Northern Irish companies that have successfully sold to, and worked with, some of the largest companies around. Learn how they’ve been able to get the attention of big companies, how they’ve closed the big deals, how they’ve made the most of big company relationships, and how they’ve been able to avoid the pitfalls. And since some customer relationships or partnering arrangements with big companies can turn into acquisitions, our panelists will also address “next chapter” issues in relationships with big companies. See you there!

The workshop will be led by John McKee, CEO of Linkubator, a business development organisation working with CEOs and senior teams in creating successful strategic growth for companies.

About NISP’s Frameworks Entrepreneur Workshops

NISP offers ongoing educational opportunities for entrepreneurs building and growing innovative Hitech, Biotech or Cleantech companies and offers member companies the opportunity to provide expert content to a responsive, interactive audience.

Many of today’s business founders and future entrepreneurs have scientific and technical backgrounds but have had limited experience in industry, so they often lack exposure to critical information which is essential to leading a start-up. To fill this gap, NISP offers InnovaNET Entrepreneur Workshops to provide these bright leaders with the vocabulary, foundations and framework around which they can build awareness of the many disciplines they will oversee as “C” level managers”.

“Borrowing ideas is fair game, but copying an entire app is wrong. And it’s creepy, in a Microsoft-of-the-’90s way, when it’s a $150 billion company cloning an app from a 10-person company.”

This is the #1 demotivator for me when it comes to software development. It’s an unreasonable fear and like all unreasonable fears it has to be overcome. Being afraid to do something because someone else will do it is simply stupid as is giving up when a big competitor comes on the scene. If they see it as a viable market then it’s actually an exceedingly viable market for the small business. You’ll have to fight against their ability to leverage market pressure and the two biggest issues there are going to be:

• They can offer for free what you’re selling
• The end user likely already has a login to their authentication system

Yes, it’s hard to fight against that kind of pressure but who told you that being an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) was going to be easy?

There are a lot of big company projects out there that start as skunkworks where someone has an idea and a project manager gives them enough rope to run for a while as long as they don’t step out of the yard. Google somewhat circumvents this with the 80:20 work week - 20% of the time you’re permitted to work on projects that interest you. It’s a sneaky way to use/abuse geeks who have a persistent work ethic (the things they love working on, that others would see as ‘work’, they see as enjoyment!). This kind of behaviour is why Google, though massive, still retains some agility and is able to throw out new and exciting stuff on a relatively regular interval. Compare this to Yahoo or Microsoft who haven’t given us anything interesting in years.

Just because Google has completely ripped off the look and feel of your app doesn’t mean you should stop. And that also goes for Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, Yahoo or any of the other 900lb gorillas in the market. You’ve got a good product I hope, you have some first mover advantage (in that people have already been paying you money) and you’ve already been thinking of what to do next with your application (which means when some copycat clones you, you can wait, see the effect on sales and then release your planned upgrade).

That said: if you think you could lose 80% of your customer base to this new free service run by one of the big nasty companies out there and this would cause you to lose a significant percentage of income and endanger your company, then you need to start diversifying.

Nothing is harder on your laurels than sitting on them.

Hank Williams on “Why does everything suck” writes:

“VCs generally don’t add that much value beyond cash. They will try to say otherwise. Unless they are famous for adding such value (check Google) they are probably lying. Aside from the fact that they are probably incapable of adding much value, even if they could, VCs are extremely busy managing their portfolio, meeting new companies, dealing with limited partners, etc. If you want your company to succeed, you will really have to do it yourself. Believing that a VC is going to add some incredible value that is going to help make your company is foolhardy.”

That’s almost the opposite of what I said back then and these days I’m inclined to agree. I’ve done enough networking over the last decade to see me through though I’m always interested in meeting new people and listening to new opinions (which is why I’m enamoured with NiMUG, OpenCoffee and other social events).

I’m certainly man enough to admit that I don’t know everything and that there are people that I want to spend more time with just to learn the pearls of wisdom given out so casually (and no, I’ve not met any of them at $BIG_COMPANY.) I’ll also admit that last night, while furiously tapping in code, it dawned on me that I might actually be too old to do anything else entrepreneurial. I had my shot and created a moderately successful company that will likely last a long time but never buy me a sports car. Since then I’ve been too pre-occupied to do much more than plan.

The new plan, after the wedding is all done, is to finish off some things I’ve started. I’ve got half a dozen domains sitting as constant reminders of unfinished work. And the code I’m writing is a means to an end so that I can stop depending on other people to do the graft and start depending on myself. Eating my own dog food so to speak.

Denny K Miu writes on lovemytool.com about VCs:

“VC’s have been my best friends and my worst enemies, in ways that are not always within my immediate control. In the process, ironically, I have come to respect Venture Capitalist as a profession, which I believe is the least understood if not the most misunderstood. And I am convinced that mistakes I have made with VC’s (eventually turning many of them into my worst enemies) were a result of my inexperience as a CEO compounded by a total lack of understanding of who VC’s are and what they do for a living.”

I’ll be honest. I don’t even like the idea of a Venture Capitalist: I just want the money. Doing stuff on the side just means it remains small fry and you don’t get to realise the big plan that kept you awake until the birds started twittering (presumably from their mobile phones) the next morning. So what do you do? Get in a VC, beg your way through the interviews (trying not to sound like an insufferably arrogant prick) and then be happy with the 3% of equity you retain?

I am amused by how my own opinion has changed over the last two years, borne out of frustration.

“There’s no choice about how or when you’re expected produce, or under what circumstances. Here is your computer, here is your workstation, you have the tools, the florescent lights are turned on, why don’t you go ahead and get to work, thanks, bye.”

“In a best case scenario, they do a mediocre job and feel OK at the end of the day. In the worst case, they’re miserable.”

The article mentions co-working in passing but I want to focus on the above paragraph. There is an idea that co-working is a “phenomenon” and there are some who think it might be a panacea to their productivity woes.

Looking at the quote above gives one aspect that can’t be ignored. You arrive in $BIG_COMPANY and if their processes are working correctly, you should have a desk, a computer, a phone and it’s just a case of getting your userid for the system, setting your passwords and starting to work (which may or may not include weeks of reading documentation). For some people this will idyllic, for others sufficient and for some of you, it may sound like hell on earth.

So what to do about it? The co-working movement assumes some things.

1. You are a self-employed knowledge worker with current income (or have a really understanding boss). You can make money at this or this is what you need to do to make money in the future or past.
2. Ideally you’re not going to need large equipment, a precise (and expensive) model of printer or a lot of space reserved for yourself. This is about sharing. You should provide your own equipment and it should all fit on one desk and use your fair share of power sockets.
3. If you’re lucky enough to have the capacity for a meeting space in addition to a communal work and break area, then great. If not, it’s perhaps not a great environment to bring customers for face to face meetings.
4. Working alongside people who are not your colleagues will benefit what you do (via the idea that networking is more valuable to you than teamwork) and you’re not just going to try to turn them into customers.
5. You have the equipment, data and resources online to help you do your work (or have some storage space at the co-work facility). You’re also pretty good with fixing your own problems. Don’t depend on your co-workers to sort out your issues. Most of them might help but they have their own jobs to do.
6. These interesting, creative, co-working people you have shacked up with won’t prove to be more of a distraction than your Wii, the postman, two cats and significant other which you’d have to contend with if you just stayed at home. And you’re not going to be a distraction to them either with tales of your last dentist visit or the how well you’re doing on Metroid.
7. You don’t have too many odious habits, you shower regularly and you know how to use a litter bin. If you smoke, you’ll have the sense to stand outside someone else’s door rather than just outside the co-work space.
8. If the facility is for more than just bedouin workers who hot-desk from day to day, then respect others personal space and property. Seems obvious but I came into an office a few years back where the keyboard was sticky and the screen was smeared. Apparently another worker had his kids in the office at the weekend.
9. Co-working is about shared responsibilities. You owe it to the other occupants not to be a prick to them, their colleagues, their customers and, if necessary, their children. Establish the rules early about who does the washing up, who cleans the toilet and who knows how to operate a vacuum cleaner. Remember it’s a co-work facility so it will likely be a good bit more freeform and chaotic than the standard cubicle farm.
10. Pay your share of the rent and utility bills without complaint. It’s my opinion that the base cost should be your percentages of these plus 10% for eventualities. If this means it’s not economical for you or you can’t pay on time then don’t be surprised when they ask you to leave.

In short, you need to be a good co-working citizen and expect the same from others.

If you are considering a co-working facility, you could do worse than to have a look at David Rice’s blog where these questions are being considered.