Generally speaking Silicon Valley has the rap of being a place where experimentation and innovation have deep roots. A place where we will try anything and have fun doing it.
Unfortunately in my experience over the last decade that is more of pleasant self-delusion than the real character of the place. Our true nature is that we behave according to smalltown backwater politics. We operate with cronyism and fear as our primary driver of our decisions.
Don't get me wrong, we love our own ideas (but hate everyone else's). We are great critics! But we are actually horrible early adopters. But this is what gives SV start-ups a Darwinian edge. If you can succeed in place where most people make themselves feel good by dissing other people's ideas (before they try and steal them for themselves) your edge is pretty sharp.
Consider that most start-ups face an environment where most of the investors, businesses, and pundits are so incredibly chickenshit that unless they are paid 10k and see their 5 closest friends doing it they are not going to touch a new idea with a ten foot pole.
The pleasant part of this is that great ideas and products will succeed in broader markets if they can succeed in our myopic subculture. And here I am, a deep part of our little backwater where we pretend to take risks. But most of us, really, are all huddled around the card table of our little ideas ever afraid the big bad wolf is going to come and blow our house down.
I have met dozens of entrepreneurs who have crushed their own ideas by locking them in a box under their beds, ever afraid this guy or that guy or this business or that investor is going to steal their oh so brilliant idea. They are chickenshit. Chickenshit of failure.
Chickenshit their idea wasn't really that good in the first place. Those other businesses the entrepreneur was afraid of? They are chickenshit too...and if they do steal your idea that behavior will come around and crush them in the end anyways. Those investors you are so afraid of that are going to take a struggling portfolio business and make them execute on your idea--they are chickenshit too.
So for better or worse as I push PhlooQ's engagement widget into the marketplace I have decided I will not act like a chickenshit nor will I do business with people who are chickenshit. This means that I am interested in people from the design firm I am choosing, to the investors we connect with, to the publishers we engage with, I will not operate as if the sky is falling.
I have gotten more email in the past few days from tire kickers than I care to deal with. If you really want to implement PhlooQ's widget I can turn a widget over to you in a few minutes but if all you want to do is talk, and talk, and talk some more--please move on.
At PhlooQ we are moving toward a self service model. In the next iteration, publishers will just login, push a few buttons and have customized PhlooQ code and widget for their site. In this way those who really want to implement PhlooQ's social engagement widget can do so quickly and on demand. Then chickenshits will have no reason to call me at all! Wahoo!
This does not mean PhlooQ does not want to provide every possible piece of information you need in order to implement. On the contrary, we want to be completely transparent in our process. So not only will we answer all the questions you need to feel comfortable with an implementation, but we will even implement for you on your behalf for free!
The implementation of a widget involves 2 steps. One placing a script source tag in the header of your pages and then dropping 75 characters or so of HTML into the place where you want the widget and you are done. Want a second widget for your site? Change one value of one parameter (and you can automate this) and you have a second widget...and so forth.
I have a self-image that I carry around that I fit this Serial Entrepreneur mold. Perhaps I am delusional but I am, for better or worse, typical ( if one can use that word ). I am a geek who graduated from one of the geekiest of schools: Carnegie Mellon. I watch Project Runway. I dive with great white sharks, love skiing and snowboarding and art. I buy in when the market is down. I watch the UFC. And I am constantly generating new ideas for products and helping other entrepreneurs execute on such ideas. I have spent alot of time around alot of people who take risk and make it work. And I have spent too much time around people who claim to be entrepreneurs and risk takers but have never actually taken any risks.
So how does this apply to choosing a design firm? I did not explicitly include "willingness to take risks" in the dimensions of my decision making in my last post. But I should have. I don't believe the willingness to take risk means be "flamboyant." Sometimes, the riskiest thing to do is be reserved and minimalist. That said if I perceive people I work with as assurance seekers, as people disinterested in really taking risk in a project,that will count against them.
I am not a one issue voter--so if I sense a design firm is risk averse this will not eliminate them from contention. But it won't help.
A little self-examination: do you "think" you are a risk taker or are you really a risk taker?
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