Startup Wing Chun - Intent

I once read in Wing Chun Compendium that Intent is more important than force, muscle pressure, energy etc. The book explains the concept of intent (in my paraphrase) as

"Just think about it. The hand will hit the target, the foot will raise and kick the target, all by themselves."

Doesn't it sound as magical as the Law of Attraction folks?

The I recalled what I often see in TV documentaries on wild life.

Fish flying from holes to holes in their muddy banks. Fish climbing walls, scaling mountains.

Birds diving deep into waters. Birds swimming across waves.

But fish remain fish and never leave the essence of fish. So do birds.

Apple engineers did study Jelly bean factories. But they are not turning Apple into Food and Beverage business. They were there to study how to make Jelly bean colors of their iMacs enticing.

Adaptability doesn't mean scattering, splintering, dispersing one's time, attention and resources.

Startup Lessons from Chinese Classic Literature

Last 2 or 3 days, I read

1. Water Margin (or Outlaws of the Marsh). This was Mao Zedong's childhood favourite and adulthood manual. Both version, 70 or 120 chapters, are good. 
2. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 4-volume version and 10-volume comics version. This was also Mao Zedong's childhood favourite and adulthood manual.

As usual, I draw some weird lessons:

1. Water Margin methods are good for rebelling against your own emperor, but not against the Mongols!
2. Zhuge Liang was so full of ruses and stratagems that even Sima Yi had to admit a few times that, "Zhuge Liang is a genius," "Zhuge Liang's methods are out of this world," "I am no match for Zhuge Liang" etc. Still, Sima Yi won.

Thus, Zhuge Liang's methods are good enough to win battles, but not wars.

No wonder, Carl von Clausewitz didn't think much of initiative.

What Business Are You In?

One of the late Peter Drucker's famous questions is : What business are you in?

Theodore Levitt too asked this question, observing that the rail road businesses in the US in the early 20th century failed to become players in aviation because they myopically stuck to a narrow definition of their business as "rail road business" not as "transportation business."

Here is a collection of such definitions.

What business is Starbucks in? Coffee business serving people or people business serving coffee? Business of making people feel valued at a personal level or business of running stylish coffee shops? The source of these ideas.

What business is Coca-Cola in? Like Pepsi, in "taste" business or in "fun" business?

What business is Revlon in? In perfume business or in business of selling hope, dreams and fantasy? I got this example from E-Myth Revisited.

What business is a tuition center in? In the business of teaching certain concepts and skills to youth, or in the business of inspiring and instilling confidence in them?

How you define your business will determine how you define your value to your customers, how you position your offerings to those of the competition, what acquisitions you go after, how you do your R & D, and so on.

Therefore, take your time until you get a crystal clear and compact answer that excites both yourself and your troops.

Entrepreneurship, Buddhist Style, Building One's Means

Entrepreneurship is defined by the Harvard Business School as, in my paraphrase, the pursuit of opportunity regardless of the resources that one controls.

It sounds as if the entrepreneurs were setting themselves up for failure, courting failure by deliberately biting more than they can chew.

What we often miss is their ability to build their means as they go. In the Jazz improv style, they create as they go till their resources become commensurate with their goals.

This is most lucidly illustrated in the following Buddhist story.

The Mouse Merchant

Volume 1. Story Number 4: CULLAKA-SETTHI-JATAKA

1. The young man picked up a dead mouse on a street and sold it for a farthing at a tavern for their cat.
2. With that money, he bought molasses and drinking water, and gave them away to flower-gatherers returning from the forest. He sold the flowers they gave him, to some customers.
3. After a storm, he noticed fallen branches and boughs and leaves in the king's pleasure garden. Children's playground gathered them for him, "by bribes of molasses". He sold the branches etc to the king's potter.
4. "... the vicinity of the city-gate with a jar full of water and supplied 500 mowers with water he struck up an intimacy with a land-trader and a sea-trader a horse-dealer with 500 horses .." He was setting up trade intelligence networks of his own!
5. "... his sea-trading friend brought him news of the arrival of a large ship about a hundred merchants came down to buy the cargo ... " He seized the chance to obtain the exclusive rights to the whole cargo of the ship, and sold these rights to other merchants for profit.

Reference

The Jataka, Volume I, tr. by Robert Chalmers, [1895], at sacred-texts.com
THE JATAKA OR STORIES OF THE BUDDHA'S FORMER BIRTHS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE PALI BY VARIOUS HANDS
UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF PROFESSOR E. B. COWELL.

Business and Technology Lessons for Web Startups

on December 27, 2009

I am describing these lessons from my own personal perspectives. However, these lessons apply to most web startups, esp. those with severe restriction on resources.

First, you need to ensure the smooth distribution. Translation : Choose your platform well. Ask, "Can we really deploy your applications? Can we really pay for the costs of deployment? What about scaling up or down?" You must consider these issues even before you write a single line of code.

Second, you must keep the development and research costs down. A small web application that takes 2 years to research is not worth doing. You had better find better things to do instead.



Third, dogs must really like your dog food. Like Guy Kawasaki says, if you are not sure about this point, you should just develop the product for yourself. Be honest, do you really like your own app? Is it useful to you in a real way?

Finally, --- now you have got a cost-effective, deliverable, really useful product --- but that is not the end of the game. Like Trout says , your app/product/concept must "explode" in the potential customers' minds. Or else, you will have to burn wads of dollars to promote your stuff and still the success is not certain. Your site or app will be drowned out in the multitudes of similar offerings. How are you getting your buzz in an over-crowded market space?

In short, distribution, cost, usefulness and buzz, not necessarily in order of importance.