Over the last few months, many people have asked me to help on their respective projects. But I’ve turned down many. And it’s not necessarily because the business idea was not viable. I just did not feel an affinity for that particular product, project, or business.
If there is anything I’ve learned in my years in developing product, it’s that not everything should be worked on by me. It is true that the principles I apply (user-centered design approaches and processes) can work in every situation so it’s not about my training or education. It’s just that I don’t have some sort of connection to that project. The project just does not resonate with me.
What is this resonance? It is an intrinsic feeling and connection that one has for a given project. This may have developed from one’s background, or from one’s training, or from one’s point of view. Some are gender based; should I, being male, work on a product for women? Others can be cultural in nature. The best examples of this are international products. Creating a community based application in the U.S. is something I could effectively work on because I grew up here and lived in the U.S. all my life; creating one in a foreign country is not something I should do alone. Sometimes it’s age based – could I create a product for teens, being not a teen myself? It can also be belief based. I was once asked to work on a company who wanted to employ its patents; I declined because my view of the whole patent system is that it is in serious need of overhaul. Morals can come into play as well; For example, I could never work on a email spam generating engine. To resonate means that there is an understanding within my brain, body, and soul which comes from a variety of sources and, I believe, makes me more effective at working on that project than not.
So while my user-centered design training can theoretically create a great product in any situation, I believe that if I resonate with the project, I can take the result beyond just a solution. I can make it better than just whatever comes out the end of a successful application of the process. And it’s simply because I resonate with the project.
My affinity for that project allows the “art” to come out in the application of the design process. Consider this: anyone can take a pencil and draw with it. The pencil is a tool; it’s simple to use and just about anybody can learn how to use it. But not everyone is a Da Vinci. Da Vinci could do things with a pencil that you or I could never do. He had a natural affinity for art and creating it. It’s stick figures versus works of art and expression.
I want the “art” to come out in everything I do. I want to give my projects the best that I can give them. I want them to be the best I can create. And I want that for the people I work for. If I can’t give it, I walk away from it.

Over the last few months, I’ve encountered something that has been fascinating me. I call it “Microinvesting”. And I think it can only exist in the world of internet businesses.
Microinvesting is very much like angel investing. You put in very small amounts of money, in the range of $10K to $50K, and still can make great returns. But the difference between a $25K investment going into a traditional business and an internet business, is that the $25K can take you to market with at a minimum a working beta, and sometimes with an entire site.
A few things that have created such a possibility:
1. Lots of entrepreneurs who have made small fortunes during the first dot-com run-up, and now can support themselves while developing their website.
2. The cost of development for internet products is significantly lower than in other businesses. Chalk it up to open source code and outsourcing to places like India.
3. The possibility of acquisition at small amounts of cash to a larger entity. By small, I mean producing an exit at $5-$20MM. Large companies like Yahoo or Google are looking for great engineers to join their team, and will acquire them and their technology for relatively low amounts of cash. This still can generate huge return on money invested. And Yahoo and Google aren’t the only ones doing the acquiring…
4. Certainly development of a prototype, working beta, or full blown site creates opportunity for a true series A fund raising round, as you show that you have developed something and it’s not vaporware.
I’ve started looking into this area. I think it brings a whole new meaning to early stage investing and the entrance of a new class of angel investors at the lower end of traditional angel investments.

As heard at the Artiman Ventures Concepts 2006 conference:
There are 3 things you need to do to be successful as an entrepreneur:
1. Get your product almost right. Don’t obsess over getting it perfect. You’ll potentially waste time or the window of opportunity may pass as you try to reach perfection before going live.
2. Hire well. As you achieve item 1., you must have a great team to help iterate towards perfection. If your team is mediocre, you’ll never get there.
3. Be lucky. Luck brings opportunity.
If you master item 3., it supercedes items 1 and 2.
As told by Basil Alwan, panel moderator and President of IP Products at Alcatel and Founder/CEO of TiMetra Networks.
I have always thought deeply on the role of luck in career, business, and in life. I have always thought that luck is a huge modifier in whether you’ll be successful in those 3 areas. It can supremely increase your chances, or likewise it can severely limit them too.
As you go through life, observe the people around you. It seems as though there are people who walk through life with luck following them wherever they go. No matter what they do or where they go, they seem to have good things happen to them no matter what. They lead charmed lives.
Then there is the other group. These are the people that seem to never have things go right. Bad things happen to them, or they never seem to get it right. They always seem to have things going wrong. It doesn’t mean they are bad people. Some of them are decent citizens and great friends. But fortune always seems to make them roll snake eyes.
Is this phenomenon fate or controllable? Some would say that luck is part of fate, and some higher power has granted you this power. Others would say that it is somewhat controllable, that you may manipulate events around both in large and in subtle ways to influence the overall outcome of things in your life.
I, for one, am in the camp that you can influence the odds. I believe that you can subtly and greatly influence events in your life to stack things in your favor. Think of the ways you can build your career, by carefully walking through companies, gaining promotions, and building your personal brand, so that you can actually craft success. Reducing impulsiveness and being more deliberate about how and where you invest can again stack the odds in your favor. These are just two examples – It is certainly better than just sitting around and waiting for things to happen, is it not?
As you go through life, can you pick out the lucky and unlucky people? Is it possible to surround you and your activities with lucky people to increase their chances for success?
Are you yourself lucky or unlucky?

This last week I was up at AdTech in San Francisco. It was the first time I had ever gone to AdTech. I had always felt that being in the business (while I was at Yahoo!), that it wasn’t worthwhile to go. But this year, I decided to go as I had heard there were many friends who were attending and I wanted to catch up.
There was one thing that stood out. As I walked through the exhibition floor, I felt very confused. I imagined myself as a publisher website looking for interactive advertising services. I scanned the booths as I walked by. And I saw the same messages over and over again:
“Interactive Marketing”
“Search Engine Marketing”
“Click Fraud”
“Rich Media Advertising”
“Optimization”
Every booth said exactly the same thing as every other booth. It just goes to show that the Internet marketing space is hugely crowded. It seems as though there are so many firms doing exactly the same thing. Yes, potentially doing it a little better, or a little different. But as a naive conference attendee, I had no idea who was better and who was not.
Some notes:
1. If you’re going to market something, you need to figure out messaging that stands out from the rest. Escaping conference floor “blur” is critical.
2. If you’re going to start a company, don’t start one in a crowded space with many competitors.