jason_tko

10 ms·

31.
by jason_tko 12y ago
Seems like I can't reply to your message, maybe we've hit the limit of tree replies. That's a hard one... and it's hard to offer advice because it's very situation specific. I might be able to help, or at least act
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by jason_tko 12y ago
We ended up roughly splitting the equity. I think what I did in finding and validating the market was table stakes. I could have made a strong argument for more equity, but when it comes to actually building the product, there is still a tr
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by jason_tko 12y ago
This is definitely an interesting discussion. However I think a startup requiring no business co-founder is very rare. At the very least, if there are two technical co-founders, one has to spend a lot of their time doing business activitie
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Again, I think you're mischaracterising me a little bit. I can't code. I'm not a technical co-founder. My first business was not a software business, it was an IT infrastructure business. In my first business, I discovered a
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Argh - I'm going to give this one more comment and I promise myself I'll stop. The idea that the business aspect is in any way 'much less demanding' is like chalk on the blackboard of my brain. This is not an idea or att
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by jason_tko 12y ago
It seems as though you're coming at this with a very different world view and set of experiences than me, which is fine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. To give two sentences of background, I've been running business
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Sure - best of luck. Finding a great co-founder is really, really hard. In fact, chances are you will spend more time with your co-founder than your significant other. I'd advise spending as much time as possible, and trying to work to
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Out of curiosity, have you successfully worked with business co-founders on equal footing, with a written scorecard, reviewed weekly? This seems like the business equivalent of judging performance based on lines of code written.
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by jason_tko 12y ago
My advice still holds, and yes, it is also completely reasonable. You found a terrible co-founder. A terrible co-founder, business or otherwise, will generate terrible outcomes. One thing that is very important to understand is that a great
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by jason_tko 12y ago
1. You don't. This is a legitimate fear. You get through it through communication. You say to the other person: "In the past, when I've co-founded projects; I felt I was doing a lot more than my co-founder. For instance, once
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by jason_tko 12y ago
I don't think I missed the point, I think we agree. It's not that all managers are bad. Good managers are invaluable. Bad managers are highly destructive.
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Interesting - when you have 20 people working for you, and you need someone to manage your clients and their projects and timelines, and also figure out what your your staff should be working on, and also balance staff requests for holiday
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by jason_tko 12y ago
I'd also be happy to help out and hop on a call with you. I'm generally pretty good with this sort of stuff. My contact details are in my profile.
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by jason_tko 12y ago
The standard for communication for new business relationships is ideally face to face, and if that's not possible, then a phone call. Good sales people also do not waste their time in endless meetings that result in nothing.
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Frustrating article to read. Take the freaking call already. The act of taking a call does not commit you to anything, and gives you options on all the potential opportunities they want to discuss. If they're contacting you, the onus i
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Or they're looking to partner and introduce you to some great opportunities. Or they're shutting down their division and introduce you to all their customers. Or they're desperate for your solution, but they're more com
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Really? I view that as a very straight-forward problem to solve. Leave the company.
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by jason_tko 12y ago
Very cool - looking forward to welcoming you and Kevin.
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by jason_tko 13y ago
This is one of the best books ever written about this exact subject: "Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition" http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-E...
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by jason_tko 13y ago
>> you end up with an offering that is designed for the enterprise, which automatically pushes out the smaller fish. Can you think of a utility or service that serves the needs of a wide range of businesses, from freelancers all the w
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by jason_tko 13y ago
Well, I would not assume to guess what Colin would enjoy, or how he would enjoy it. However I agree, it does depend on Colin's motivations. If Colin doesn't want more users, and doesn't want more money (for even the same amou
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by jason_tko 13y ago
What better way to destroy the enterprise, as you put it, than taking their money. And it's less about 'catering to the enterprise', and more about doing business on your own terms. >>Yeah, I'm the guy who would ra
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by jason_tko 13y ago
Right, because geeks never buy services from traditional businesses. Oh, wait. >>Colin is going to be competing in a huge market with a bunch of other players. He's also likely to enjoy his business a whole lot less. Also painful
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Example Founder Dilution Over Multiple Financing Rounds(davidcummings.org)
2 points by jason_tko 13y ago|1 comments
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by jason_tko 13y ago
If your co-founder is not as equally a driver before and after an arbitrary business event such as a fundraising round, you picked the wrong co-founder.
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by jason_tko 13y ago
I started running a business in Japan in 2002-2003. After around 2 years when the company had grown a lot, we started having all sorts of problems trying to manage quotes and invoices. Unfortunately there was no shrink-wrapped solution that
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Benefits of the $1 Million Recurring Revenue Milestone(davidcummings.org)
1 points by jason_tko 13y ago|0 comments
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Essential SaaS Services We Use to Grow and Support Our Startup (in Japan)(makeleaps.jp)
1 points by jason_tko 13y ago|0 comments
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by jason_tko 13y ago
We're a B2B SaaS product too. For customer support, we started with Zendesk, but we switched over time to Helpscout. We felt that Zendesk was getting too large and complicated for our reasonably straightforward requirements. Plus, we r
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by jason_tko 13y ago
A few of the big things that are dampening the startup scene in Japan are as follows: * Weak ecosystem - Very few angels available to fund and support early stage startups, although accelerators are popping up that are starting to fill this

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