Lessons from WhatsApp

As an entrepreneur making decisions for your company, always go back to your first principles of what’s important to you and why you started in the first place

via WhatsApp Takeaway | Matt Mullenweg.

I do think the incredible performances/performance (say Steve Jobs as an entrepreneur or Twitter/Facebook as companies) are not good examples to follow: the incredible mix of competences, coincidences, nature and luck are difficult to reproduce as they are usually ‘out of standard’. So probably sticking to good practices and adding your own ‘first principles’ is a good way to go.

PierG

In 2001 traditional management had the idea that …

Back in 2001, traditional management had the idea that if everything was documented, things would work out fine.

via Innovation: Applying “Inspect & Adapt” To The Agile Manifesto – Forbes.

Three reasons to read this article:

1. because in 2012 90% of management DO have the idea that full documentation means “it will work fine“
2. because it’s an interesting article about agility and beyond (adding some lean startup concepts too)
3. because most of the stuff that you read comes from Kent Beck and you should read everything from Kent. PERIOD.

Tell us what you think

PierG

Startup4All Live Twitting Report #Startup4All

Yesterday I had the chance to be at the Startup4All event in Vignola. Very nice venue, very good people. A bit too long for me (I’m old 🙂 )

We had a talk from Fabrizio Capobianco, one from Fabio Lalli, and then some pitches from local startups.

Here it follows my live twitting.

Fabrizio Capobianco (twitter.com/fabricapo) Talk

#Prezi for the presentation of @fabricapo
I’ll talk about my life: it’s one of the few arguments I’m sure I know better than anyone 🙂
Funamble? Like iCloud but it works on any device
All my engineering is in Italy (Pavia) while funds (35M) come from the Silicon Valley
First answer I had from an Italian CEO? “you are 23, too young to make business with”
VC in Italy? No one in the late ’90, then they came, then they went … and now they are here again, in Italy
Silicon Valley works also because you can hire a bunch of people one day, and the day after you can fire them all and survive
My idea? All devices will have an IP address and will exchange data
US guys call it ‘timing’, in Italy we call it ‘botta di cuxo’
People thinks VCs evaluations come from some logic: I started a dinner with an evaluation of 3M at the end it was 8M
I’m thinking of my next company … with no hurry  (PierG: good ‘timing’ 🙂 )
Why Italy? we are well educated, smart and creative, hard working That’s what I say to US’ VCs
If I have to choose where to make SW I choose Italy, I’ve done it in Us, India, everywhere … I do in Italy
Let’s talk about SW designers (design = cool) and not developers
SW is creativity, that’s why Italians do it better: we were born to make SW in Italy
Our engineers tend to stay in the same company for long … that’s a plus in SW
#MindTheBridge? It’s goal is to have 1000 #Funambol
To make the new FB here we don’t miss people, we miss money to start and money to be bought
If you want the life style company don’t ask money to VCs
In Silicon Valley if you fail twice you have more chance to get money than someone who starts
In Italy we need a model, someone who ‘did it’, someone who can inspire. We will have it in the next 10 years

Fabio Lalli (twitter.com/fabiolalli) Talk

Indigenidigitali is a network of almost 5000 people
At the beginning Indigenidigitali was just developer, now we have more competencies
Italy is small and we have talents all ever the country, the Silicon Valley in Italy must be the whole country
In Italy we don’t have the culture of making real network
We need hubs not aggregators
Indigenidigitali is here exactly for this purpose: to connect dots, to facilitate connections, to find resources
Too many networking events are evil? I don’t think so: they are useful to develop a proper network
Starting from September we will start choosing startups and bring them to NY
Almost 100 persons here at Startup4All in Vignola. Impressive.

Now some of the suggestions /questions @fabricapo and @fabiolalli gave to the startuppers during their pitch

#Pasisinvictim tests your assumptions “the dream of our users is to have their own boutique” #LeanStartup
“your business statement in 1 sentence of EIGHT lines is toooo long” #suggestions #pitch @fabricapo
“If you put competitors in your slide, be sure they are HUGE: it means there is a market” #suggestion
In the US engineers sleep with economists in the University campus, in Italy they sleep with engineers (or alone) @fabricapo
A company that has no money, does the product for a single client. It does no platform. That’s why we need money: to have the possibility to say NO to a customer. @fabricapo

PierG

Ship and fail … often

As I wrote in my post Insulate Yourself  I want to explain a little bit more some of the items in the Invent More post, quoting Seth Godin.

Today we talk about feedback. Yes feedback.

Someone once told me

“communication is what the listener does”

meaning that when you communicate, it’s not THEM that are not able to understand you. Sorry: it’s you that are not able to communicate properly in that context with that person. Or at least the only thing that you can do to have a better communication is changing how YOU communicate and not the brain of the receiver 🙂

The same concept can be applied to what you do, your task, your activity.

The two senteces that I’ve selceted from Seth’s post are:

Ship & Fail often

Today we talk about feedback. Yes feedback .. the only stuff that’s able to tell you if  what you do, think, act is … what you do, think, act. Because I’ve to tell you that the real reality is what others (+ you) see on your behaviors, is what they do with what you ship, is what they get.

Shipping and looking at the result (usually failures) is the only way you can get feedback. This is useful with yourself because you can see and feel progress (so stimulating feedback for you). This is useful for your ‘job’ because you can learn from what you have done (feedback = learning).

The “often” is also very important: failing often means you ship often. Ship often  means that you ship continuously a small set of stuff.  Small set = possibility to continuously check your path … as you do with the steering wheel while driving: continuous small correction (failures) to get a great final result 🙂 And small set = small possibility of making big mistakes.

I’d love to get your feedback about this topic!

PierG

p.s. This is true for your personal day-by-day activities … we are not (only) talking about software or work 🙂

Startuppers: Run your own race

This is probably not true for everyone but it’s something to think at … and surely IT IS true for me 🙂 and for startuppers

If you’re going to count on the competition to bring out your best work, you’ve surrendered control over your most important asset. Real achievement comes from racing ahead when no one else sees a path–and holding back when the rush isn’t going where you want to go.

via Seth’s Blog: Run your own race.

PierG

Financing IT as we do with Startups

There’s something smelly about financing IT projects in return for a contracted return on investment. It’s not that there shouldn’t be some expectation about return. There absolutely should. But given the uncertainty and the risk, isn’t financing IT projects more like a funding venture? Isn’t it more about managing risk to achieve reward (the desired outcome or better) rather than managing cost and schedule? If it is, then the question to be asked more often is ‘what types of benefits are we seeing for this round of funding, and does the potential return at this stage warrant additional funding?’ rather than ‘are we on schedule and within budget?’

via Energized Work | Blog.

Another very good piece for my IT followers: stop managing assets (only), start making the difference!

PierG

On startups, lean, agile and beyond

In this video Kent Beck mixes the birth of the Agile Manifesto, the Agile Manifesto concepts, the pull and flow Lean concepts, engineering practices and many other spices to cook everything in what he calls the “startup environment”.

Watch it! and let me know what you think about this kind of evolution of the Agile Manifesto.

PierG

p.s. Wooooowwwwww Kent Beck talking about Lean .. so it means that Lean is better then XP? or SCRUM? or ..?? 🙂 🙂 🙂

CTO or not CTO, this is the question

Often I’m asked by startup CEO’s about how to best build an engineering team.  I have much experience in this domain. […] This post is designed mostly for non-technical founders.  I hope many will read this and have an answer for the question, “what’s the different between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?” – Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?.

Read this interesting post and leave your feedback in the discussion that’s taking place in the comments.

PierG