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"To me, the 'idea' is how you would describe the product to a customer in one sentence." Yes, that seems to be a better definition of the 'new', Web 2.0 defini

"To me, the 'idea' is how you would describe the product to a customer in one sentence." Yes, that seems to be a better definition of the 'new', Web 2.0 definition of an 'idea' than I was able to formulate. I just don't think it is a very appropriate, significant, or meaningful use of 'idea'. I regard the important ideas as the crucial, difficult, powerful 'secret sauce' and the 'execution' as the routine stuff that comes later, especially after customers arrive. With a sufficiently good idea, say, the first Xerox machine, TWA in its first months as it had the only Lockheed Connies in the world, and more, as relatively 'routine' and this because the work before was so darned good. The US is absolutely awash in ability to do routine execution, from a corner store up to a giant corporation, well. For my project, I've worked out more than the math: The math is now in code ready for production -- tested, timed, documented. It's shockingly fast. I've worked out a server farm 'architecture' that is dirt simple and looks like it will 'scale' beyond what the world could use. Much of the simplicity is because there is a lot of parallelism and redundancy and a lot of data that is read-only for at least a day and maybe a week. Actually, all the big data is read-only in this sense. And, it does appear that in production this big read-only data can be just in virtual memory off either rotating magnetic disks or the newer, faster solid state disks (that love read-only data). Windows Server 2008 (I'm staying with Microsoft) can have 16 TB of virtual memory, and my software does the accesses with very nice, and, thus, fast, locality of reference. The role of the math is to take the available data, 'crunch' it, and give the desired results. The quality of the results is key and where the work of the other guys sucks. There is a 'larger business plan' beyond just the crucial, core math: As a byproduct of the work itself, the Web site gets some data from the users. The users give that data as part of getting the results they want and won't mind giving the data because there is no privacy threat. But from some subtle results in advanced math (the Radon-Nikodym theorem), that data will be the main source of 'base data' for the whole system for everything. So, in particular, compared with the other guys, I have some new data, of unusually high quality, and especially valuable. People won't see why the data is valuable, but it is! In particular, the data will let me do some good ad targeting, and that's where the 'monitization' and 'revenue model' come from. I don't really want to use third party cookies to connect with the ad targeting of the ad networks, and I should be able to do better ad targeting just with my own data and some more of my math. The software promises to be astoundingly efficient: From the timings, data rates, and data sizes, it appears that for the on-line production servers, four racks should be enough for about $4.5 billion a year in revenue, and 2000 square feet of on-line rack space should be sufficient to serve the world. Right: If 4 racks can give $4.5 billion a year in revenue, then 2000 square feet of rack space should give one of the most valuable companies in the world. Of course would want more space for redundancy, backup and recovery, testing, and development. For more reliability and lower latency, might want more than one data center. Could make a little use of some caching on the network. I'm not eager to say what the problem is much before I'm ready to go live. Actually, telling people what the problem is seems to have no upside at all: Plenty of people in venture capital have had descriptions of the work polished to more luster than any gold and really don't give a hoot. The situation is very much as in, "before good ComScore numbers, the project is just an idea, and ideas are easy and plentiful. Execution is everything and doesn't start until after the ComScrore numbers." The flip side of this thinking is an opportunity for me. Net, what they care about are ComScore numbers. But, as threatens to be increasingly the case, for a successful Web site, there will be a window narrow in time between when the ComScore numbers are (1) good enough for the VCs to invest and (2) so good that I won't need or take their check. The advantages of being 100% owner of a 100% private, very profitable Subchapter S corporation, or even a C corporation, are just huge. Actually, I'm terrified of having a Board: (1) They could kill my company just from taking up 25% of my time developing information to report to them. (2) There is no way they could possibly understand anything significant about the future of the business and no way I could explain it to them or keep them happy about it. For the 'algorithms', I would say that they are trivial because the real content is in the math; the only claim of power or quality from the code is the math it implements; actually, given the math, the implementation was not difficult. So what matters is the math, not the algorithms. This is a general situation in newer computing: An algorithm standing alone has little to recommend it, and just 'experience' will be a long, slow path to 'validity'. Instead, for 'validity', quality, whatever, an algorithm needs a prior 'specification' of what it does. Often that specification will have to be some relatively advanced math. Currently this math is a huge bottleneck for promise in computing.

guptaneil 16y ago
You just provided a whole lot of technical information about the efficiency of your algorithm, and even some financial projections for your company. That's the sort of information that you should keep to yourself unless specifically asked for because it is the valuable part of your company. The problem you are trying to solve is the part you should actively talking about, because that's what's going to get people's interest. You clearly have a great understanding of the technical side of things, but the business/marketing/financial side is just as difficult. It's impossible to be good at everything, you will want help, either in the form of a cofounder and/or a board that can advise you. Another saying that my prof used to repeat was "you can be rich or you can be king, but not both." Entrepreneurs like to have control, that's why we start companies in the first place. We think we can solve a problem better than anyone else can. As a result, we try to control every aspect of the company. Unfortunately, this is the fastest way to hurt the company. If you want to control 100% of the company, you will only be able to grow so much. If you are hoping to own a yacht as you mentioned earlier, you're going to have to be willing to give up control and accept advice and help from others. Think of it this way: 25% of a big number is better than 100% of a small number. Do you think Zuckerberg could have built Facebook to where it is today without help from more business-savvy people? Do you think Google would be as big as it is today if Page and Brin had maintained control instead of bringing in Schmidt to be CEO? Do you think Woz would have built Apple without Jobs? These are all examples of extremely intelligent people who needed help to grow their company. Like I said, it is impossible to be good at everything. Running a startup is like raising a kid. It's hard enough to do that under normal circumstance. Why make it harder by making yourself a single parent? Just some advice based on my own experiences, observations, and advice I've received from others.
- NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
  For "interest", venture capital wants to see, first, just the UI/UX and then, second, ComScore numbers. For the UI/UX, that's the last software I'm writing, not the first. Nothing else I said here interests venture capital at all. Nothing. Actually, for the advantage and technological barrier to entry from the math, they just get torqued because they know it's not within their 'deep domain knowledge' and they want to feel that they know more than the entrepreneur. And I tell them the problem I'm solving as the users see it, and that doesn't impress them, either. It's like, and I suspect, and this is much of the reason for the recent rise of the angels, that to stop another bubble the few, large LPs got together and wrote on the back of a 3 x 5" card the dirt simple criteria for each of seed and Series A, B, C, D. The criteria rule out considering anything I've said here or even the users' problem I'm solving. With these rules, could teach a dog to be a VC in a weekend. So, the LPs won't let the VCs actually 'review' a business plan and apply 'judgment'. So, that's why some VCs blog: That's about the only advantage they have left, that is, to get the 'deal flow', and otherwise are reduced to being just another dog following the 3 x 5" card. I've seen a lot in business, from small companies to large and successful ones to large and sick ones. I helped start a large, successful one and learned a lot there. One of the main things I learned is, there isn't a lot to learn. I've been a B-school prof where I also ran a consulting company with four important clients in business. So, for someone doing a startup, I am relatively well informed on business and how to start and run one. None of this background impresses VCs either! Actually, I learned that the most important thing to learn for business is People 101. Besides, on Main Streets all across the US there are sole proprietors being successful. Actually, they own nearly all the yachts under 100 feet long. My business is really different only in the advantages of Moore's law, the technical core, and the potential. They do it; I should be able to do it, too. The Koch brothers never went public; they just ran their business. That I have some technical knowledge doesn't really mean that I have too little 'business knowledge'! Sure, if I go public, then I'll have staffs helping me entertain Wall Street, the institutional investors, the WSJ and the NYT, CNBC, keep the SEC happy, keep me out of trouble with Sarbanes-Oxley, entertain Congress, etc. I'm eager to learn: E.g., I work hard on the Internet to learn, from AVC.com, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, C|Net, SAI, HN, and the best I can get. AVC.com has some of the best information, mostly from people who comment. Early on I won't try to do bookkeeping, accounting, or legal. ASAP I will just get the best paid technical support I can from Microsoft and deliberately resist learning all the details of Windows Server administration. Same for Cisco's products: I have a basic understanding of TCP/IP, DNS, and even MPLS and have written socket software, but I will work to 'outsource' as much as possible on networking to the right people at Microsoft and Cisco. But a pattern is developing: I have to get this project to some ComScore numbers with just my own eight fingers and two thumbs. And I won't want the ComScore users much before I have some ads to get me some revenue. Then my planning arithmetic indicates that if I do get users, early on the 'free cash flow' from two weeks of revenue can pay to double the capacity of the server farm. Why? Take reasonable values for charge per click or charge per 1000 ads displayed, take the small size of my simple Web pages, add in current prices for servers and bandwidth, and conclude that in two weeks a busy server can make money enough to replace itself. The key is to get the server busy! So, after a few doublings, there's a good chance that I'll have so much revenue that a Series A check for a few million dollars would not be very interesting. So, the venture capital people want me to wait so long that they are very close to having me wait so long I won't want venture capital. Or if I've been live for a few months and go for venture capital, then it's because my business is less good than I planned! For my having a good, complete, well rounded team, on the Internet no one can tell that a Web site is run by a team, one person, or a dog. If people really like the Web site, then I'm awash in money to 'outsource', hire, etc. Really, the next key, nearly both necessary and sufficient, is just for people to like the Web site. Maybe the LPs think that VC is like PE where just wait for an owner of a good business to go for fast women, slow horses, and cheap booze, get into a nasty divorce, etc. and then buy him out cheap, put in their own CEO to do just routine things, rebuild the company, and sell it. There is the example of Plenty of Fish: A romantic matchmaking site in Canada, ads just from Google with no additional targeting, $10 million a year in revenue, two old Dell servers, and one guy. So, right, his business is worth ballpark $1 billion. For examples, I liked Gates at Microsoft, Ellison at Oracle, Viterbi at QUALCOMM, and a few more. For Schmidt at Google, it seemed to me that his main role was to make the investment bankers and institutional investors happy. Now he's booted himself upstairs. Seemed to me that Page and Brin were doing fine and now are again. Even if my company could be the most valuable in the world, I don't much care. When someone offers me $1 billion for it, I'll sell, buy the yacht, and write music. The buyer can take the company and run it up to $300 billion if he wants. If no one wants to buy and I have a Board eager for the rest of the value, then I'll stay and help, out of obligation, and for some pride in seeing the success, but it will delay my work on music and physics. There is an issue of power and public responsibility: A company or a person worth $300 billion has a lot of power. I would want at least to see that the power was not abused. It would be ugly music to write to leave the company and have someone else take the power of $300 billion and abuse it. For some of the best advice I've seen in business, I'm not super thrilled. I'm crossing rough waters in a small canoe, and it's not clear to me that having someone else in the canoe will make the crossing easier. I just have to get that canoe across the water. That work is my responsibility, and there's no way I can 'outsource' or really even share that.

guptaneil 16y ago

You just provided a whole lot of technical information about the efficiency of your algorithm, and even some financial projections for your company. That's the sort of information that you should keep to yourself unless specifically asked for because it is the valuable part of your company. The problem you are trying to solve is the part you should actively talking about, because that's what's going to get people's interest. You clearly have a great understanding of the technical side of things, but the business/marketing/financial side is just as difficult. It's impossible to be good at everything, you will want help, either in the form of a cofounder and/or a board that can advise you. Another saying that my prof used to repeat was "you can be rich or you can be king, but not both." Entrepreneurs like to have control, that's why we start companies in the first place. We think we can solve a problem better than anyone else can. As a result, we try to control every aspect of the company. Unfortunately, this is the fastest way to hurt the company. If you want to control 100% of the company, you will only be able to grow so much. If you are hoping to own a yacht as you mentioned earlier, you're going to have to be willing to give up control and accept advice and help from others. Think of it this way: 25% of a big number is better than 100% of a small number. Do you think Zuckerberg could have built Facebook to where it is today without help from more business-savvy people? Do you think Google would be as big as it is today if Page and Brin had maintained control instead of bringing in Schmidt to be CEO? Do you think Woz would have built Apple without Jobs? These are all examples of extremely intelligent people who needed help to grow their company. Like I said, it is impossible to be good at everything. Running a startup is like raising a kid. It's hard enough to do that under normal circumstance. Why make it harder by making yourself a single parent? Just some advice based on my own experiences, observations, and advice I've received from others.

NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
For "interest", venture capital wants to see, first, just the UI/UX and then, second, ComScore numbers. For the UI/UX, that's the last software I'm writing, not the first. Nothing else I said here interests venture capital at all. Nothing. Actually, for the advantage and technological barrier to entry from the math, they just get torqued because they know it's not within their 'deep domain knowledge' and they want to feel that they know more than the entrepreneur. And I tell them the problem I'm solving as the users see it, and that doesn't impress them, either. It's like, and I suspect, and this is much of the reason for the recent rise of the angels, that to stop another bubble the few, large LPs got together and wrote on the back of a 3 x 5" card the dirt simple criteria for each of seed and Series A, B, C, D. The criteria rule out considering anything I've said here or even the users' problem I'm solving. With these rules, could teach a dog to be a VC in a weekend. So, the LPs won't let the VCs actually 'review' a business plan and apply 'judgment'. So, that's why some VCs blog: That's about the only advantage they have left, that is, to get the 'deal flow', and otherwise are reduced to being just another dog following the 3 x 5" card. I've seen a lot in business, from small companies to large and successful ones to large and sick ones. I helped start a large, successful one and learned a lot there. One of the main things I learned is, there isn't a lot to learn. I've been a B-school prof where I also ran a consulting company with four important clients in business. So, for someone doing a startup, I am relatively well informed on business and how to start and run one. None of this background impresses VCs either! Actually, I learned that the most important thing to learn for business is People 101. Besides, on Main Streets all across the US there are sole proprietors being successful. Actually, they own nearly all the yachts under 100 feet long. My business is really different only in the advantages of Moore's law, the technical core, and the potential. They do it; I should be able to do it, too. The Koch brothers never went public; they just ran their business. That I have some technical knowledge doesn't really mean that I have too little 'business knowledge'! Sure, if I go public, then I'll have staffs helping me entertain Wall Street, the institutional investors, the WSJ and the NYT, CNBC, keep the SEC happy, keep me out of trouble with Sarbanes-Oxley, entertain Congress, etc. I'm eager to learn: E.g., I work hard on the Internet to learn, from AVC.com, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, C|Net, SAI, HN, and the best I can get. AVC.com has some of the best information, mostly from people who comment. Early on I won't try to do bookkeeping, accounting, or legal. ASAP I will just get the best paid technical support I can from Microsoft and deliberately resist learning all the details of Windows Server administration. Same for Cisco's products: I have a basic understanding of TCP/IP, DNS, and even MPLS and have written socket software, but I will work to 'outsource' as much as possible on networking to the right people at Microsoft and Cisco. But a pattern is developing: I have to get this project to some ComScore numbers with just my own eight fingers and two thumbs. And I won't want the ComScore users much before I have some ads to get me some revenue. Then my planning arithmetic indicates that if I do get users, early on the 'free cash flow' from two weeks of revenue can pay to double the capacity of the server farm. Why? Take reasonable values for charge per click or charge per 1000 ads displayed, take the small size of my simple Web pages, add in current prices for servers and bandwidth, and conclude that in two weeks a busy server can make money enough to replace itself. The key is to get the server busy! So, after a few doublings, there's a good chance that I'll have so much revenue that a Series A check for a few million dollars would not be very interesting. So, the venture capital people want me to wait so long that they are very close to having me wait so long I won't want venture capital. Or if I've been live for a few months and go for venture capital, then it's because my business is less good than I planned! For my having a good, complete, well rounded team, on the Internet no one can tell that a Web site is run by a team, one person, or a dog. If people really like the Web site, then I'm awash in money to 'outsource', hire, etc. Really, the next key, nearly both necessary and sufficient, is just for people to like the Web site. Maybe the LPs think that VC is like PE where just wait for an owner of a good business to go for fast women, slow horses, and cheap booze, get into a nasty divorce, etc. and then buy him out cheap, put in their own CEO to do just routine things, rebuild the company, and sell it. There is the example of Plenty of Fish: A romantic matchmaking site in Canada, ads just from Google with no additional targeting, $10 million a year in revenue, two old Dell servers, and one guy. So, right, his business is worth ballpark $1 billion. For examples, I liked Gates at Microsoft, Ellison at Oracle, Viterbi at QUALCOMM, and a few more. For Schmidt at Google, it seemed to me that his main role was to make the investment bankers and institutional investors happy. Now he's booted himself upstairs. Seemed to me that Page and Brin were doing fine and now are again. Even if my company could be the most valuable in the world, I don't much care. When someone offers me $1 billion for it, I'll sell, buy the yacht, and write music. The buyer can take the company and run it up to $300 billion if he wants. If no one wants to buy and I have a Board eager for the rest of the value, then I'll stay and help, out of obligation, and for some pride in seeing the success, but it will delay my work on music and physics. There is an issue of power and public responsibility: A company or a person worth $300 billion has a lot of power. I would want at least to see that the power was not abused. It would be ugly music to write to leave the company and have someone else take the power of $300 billion and abuse it. For some of the best advice I've seen in business, I'm not super thrilled. I'm crossing rough waters in a small canoe, and it's not clear to me that having someone else in the canoe will make the crossing easier. I just have to get that canoe across the water. That work is my responsibility, and there's no way I can 'outsource' or really even share that.