Execution and the Thrill of Self-Reliance

When you have a great idea on your hands, it's really easy to keep pushing the boundaries of what might be possible. In a startup, it's one of the most important things you can do - more than a few companies have gotten their big break because they kept pushing forward, innovating, thinking up crazy schemes about how to their product could take over this or that market, be tweaked to fit this or that need. And often those other implementations turned out to be the real gold - PayPal and Twitter are the first examples that pop into my head. Pie in the sky sometimes works out great.

But what makes the entrepreneur different from all the other crazies with great ideas is one simple thing: execution. In business, just like in sports, execution is the simple key to success. You've to have a good gameplan, a good team, and be well prepared, but in the end it comes down to how well you play when all the marbles are on the line.

For us, it's time to take a little break from dreamworld and get right down to it. Now that we have a working product with almost all of our core functionality intact, we're concentrating on making it work exactly the way we want it to, with no exceptions. Until now, we've been able to get away with saying "of course, we'll obviously fix that before release." Not anymore.

And to a certain extent, that's a really gratifying feeling, because we're all invested in the product and want to make it great. Unlike a hulking corporation, we can see a problem and fix it with our own two hands. There is a direct correlation between how hard we work and what kind of results we see, and it has nothing at all to do with financial compensation. It's about taking pride in your workmanship and owning the success or failure that comes along with it. That's the real point of addiction in startups, and it's why successful entrepreneurs go back and do it again even after they've struck it rich. It's the thrill of self-reliance and the unqualified gratification of knowing you've built something wicked cool that actually works.

And on that note, it's time to get back to work.

Walking the (Bottom) Line

Yesterday's Alpha release coincides with a big week of business for us when we return from Saturday's festivities, and it got me thinking about the need to balance the internal and external aspects of our company. One of the hardest things we have to do as a small team is find the right balance between product and production, by which I mean spending the right amount of time on product design and development and the right amount on networking, marketing, positioning, and pitching. It's a tough line to walk but one that I think we're doing pretty well with.

As a team, we're in agreement that we should spend as much of our time and energy developing the best product we can. Without that focus, we're nothing more than words on a page. But the need to raise capital isn't going away, and as a group we understand the importance of keeping our eyes wide open when it comes to the market opportunity and the way we position our business. Yes, we think Pinyadda is the coolest thing in the world, but it's first and foremost a business venture that demands our constant scrutiny and focus.

The great thing about our team is that everyone clearly understands both sides of this equation. Each product innovation represents a new business opportunity, which in turn leads to more product improvements. When done right, the interaction between business strategy and product strategy creates a positive feedback loop that drives both innovation and ROI.

As much as preparing for meetings with investors may seem like a chore to some entrepreneurs, it's an amazingly useful exercise. Considering an outside perspective is crucial to avoiding the groupthink trap, and formulating our value proposition forces us to constantly evaluate our long-term vision and make sure our short-term actions are directly related to achieving those goals.

As entrepreneurs who are absurdly obsessed with our idea, our initial urge is to think of raising capital as a necessary evil that will allow us to get back to work on the product. But in reality raising capital is great a way to always be asking ourselves the question "is this idea worth the work we're putting into it?" As long as the answer remains a resounding yes, it's more likely that both users and investors will find value in our product. If not, it's a sign we're doing something wrong and need to re-evaluate the direction we're heading in.

At XSITE last week, Tilman Genross, the CEO of Adimab, kept hammering away at an idea that I think is often overlooked by startups. The first thing to do, he said, is to figure out exactly what the problem is, and then ask yourself if there is real value in finding the solution. The short answer is always "of course, why else would I be working on this?" But being honest with yourself and regularly holding your own feet to the fire is enormously important.

We happen to think that the disjointed and scattered nature of the huge amount of content on the internet is a real problem, and we see enormous value in creating a system for people to get that content in a manner that is relevant and entertaining. And we hope we can pass that value along to our users.

Alpha Rising

After months of product development and testing, our Alpha is being loaded to the live site right now, and it's really exciting. We've come a long way from that first spark of imagination, and we still have a long way to go. But it's the little pieces of gratification along the way that make the startup ride worth taking. And today is one of those days.

This update includes a whole host of stuff that is just plain cool. All the functionalities of our core product are here, along with a bunch bug fixes and UI updates that make using Pinyadda a truly enjoyable experience. The difference between this version and our prototype seems infinite, and the product is really starting to come into its own.

A new, way more intuitive Build page, better Pintax navigation, and host of back-end improvements are all up and in working order, and we're pumped. When we look at the big picture these seem like small changes, but when we put on our user hats and try it out we realize that these improvements make a big difference. It's an encouraging and exciting milestone, and as we start to refine the product, the tech, and the business model, the amount new opportunities and ideas seems to be multiplying almost daily.

With all this comes an ever-expanding to-do list which has required us to begin developing and implement some key workflows and processes that are already helping us to stay better organized and be more productive with our time. Scheduling our time better, setting and achieving measurable small goals, and using collaboration technologies have been a key focus over the last several weeks as we begin to think about growth phase. While we're still really small and everyone is definitely wearing multiple hats, we're very aware that streamlining our processes and workflows and documenting our systems will be a key component of how fast we can ramp things up and how much we can squeeze from each dollar of investment. Two of our key organizational philosophies are agility and resourcefulness, and making sure that we can get new people up to speed quickly and adapt to changing conditions are tasks that affect every aspect of the business.

As we ramp up this summer we're making it a point to share our experiences on this blog, and we're always interested in hearing what you have to say. Post a comment, drop us a note, tweet us, whatever. We're also going to schedule a couple of external work sessions where anyone can drop by and shoot the breeze about tech, Boston, Pinyadda, or pretty much anything else. We'll post those times and locations up here and tweet them as well. Hopefully we'll get to meet a bunch of new folks who are down with what we're doing and love the internet in the same freakish way we do.

Today's a great day for Pinyadda and for us, but we're already logging bugs, testing features, and thinking about ways to make it better. With every milestone reached comes a new starting point and a new opportunity for improvement, and we can't wait to get moving on the next round of stuff as we head toward Beta. It's part insanity, part geekiness, and whole lot of obsession with our product and our vision.