Venture Adventure

My entrepreneurial spirit has always burned strong. So, when I decided to pull the trigger, and head out on my own, one of the issues was deciding exactly what to do. I’ve detailed some of those issues and decisions previously.

Now my problem is that new ideas keep jumping into my head. Some have merit, others are easily rejected. But still they keep on coming.

So, I’m now building a ranked list, and working on the first one (with a partner). If that doesn’t fly, I’m moving to the next. I’m going to keep trying until I drop!

Too many ideas? Never!

Many years ago, I read the book (and listened to the audio recording) The Goal (Goldratt and Cox), a fascinating business book written as a first person story. There are many lessons to be learned from The Goal and its companion tomes by Goldratt. For me, however, the most important lesson is the rule of the goal itself. Stated simply:

Any action that does not take you towards your goal automatically takes you away from goal.

Recently, I forgot this lesson. I could make many excuses. But I won’t. I simply screwed up – big time.

Since I don’t have an employer, and I’m not contracting at the moment, I’ve been spending a lot of time at home (I, very luckily, have a wife who can support me for a short amount of time while I’m not generating a paycheck.) Since we needed some work done on our house, I decided to be cheap and do the work myself.

Bad Idea!

Every time I went to spend time on my spartup ideas, I would fret about the half-finished house-work. And every time I would start to work on the house, I would get very frustrated about doing boring stuff and about how I wasn’t making any progress on my startup project. The result was a viscous downward spiral of unhappiness, frustration, and depression.

I took a psychic kick in the head from my wife to open up my eyes, and remind me of the lesson of the goal. Making the decision to spend the money to have others do the house work (floors, electrical, etc.) and for me to focus on my startup ideas was like drinking 10 cups of espresso in a single sitting.

I’m amazed at my own change of attitude and motivation since I’ve made that decision. I now feel supercharged, and am chomping at the bit to get started. In fact, one of my biggest problems is that I’m now overflowing with ideas that have merit, and I have to choose among the many.

Damn, I feel good!

There’s a thread on Ask the VC discussing Should You Hire Someone to Write Your Business Plan?

I’ve posted my thoughts there – but I realize that for the person creating the post-bubble web2.0 internet yadayada startup with a nebulous business model, time is of the essence, and getting a web site up and running is cheap, easy, quick, and proof-of-concepts turn into businesses instantaneously.

For me, however, these types of businesses aren’t that interesting. My bent is towards creating a company geared for the long-run. Thus, my generic business creation project plan.

4 weeks for Market Research and Competitive Analaysis. Another 2 weeks to understand the industry value chain and ecosystem. With this research, I should be able to place my company in the a good portion of the ecosystem, segment the market and pick a profitable, under-exploited niche.

I figure it’s another 1 to 2 weeks to get the first draft of the business plan put together, along with a basic financial model.

Then 3 – 4 works of refininement and review.

At that point, I’ll have the basis for conversations with investors.

Yep – my life is no different than any one else. Or, as a friend of mine likes to say “Life just keeps getting in the way of life!”

I’m making progress. For this project (unlike some others I’ve dealt with), there is a wealth of information available in the public. That’s the good news. And the bad news. The volume is leading me to information-overload every day.

Then, of course, there’s the other life. Away from the company. And that too, is very hectic. I just replaced the roof on the house ($18K that isn’t going into the company). The previous water leaks force me to accelerate the plans to replace the carpets with wood flooring. This I’m doing myself.

I’m also taking 2 weeks to travel to the east coast. My mom is having her knee replaced, and I’ve going to help out during her recovery period. I’ll be stoppping in Boston beforehand, to visit my sister and nephew. And stopping in New Orleans on the way back, to spend a few days with my wife, who’ll be attending the ACC conference (that’s Cardiology, not basketball). Hopefully, I’ll get some good photo opportunities.

I will be working during my travels, but just won’t be able to put in the dedicated effort that I can while I’m at home.

AeroBot Labs: Next Generation Autonomous Systems

We’re going to be working in the autonomous systems space – most likely UAVs – unmanned aerial vehicles and systems for search and rescue.  Big military market, but I think there’s an equally large civilian market, expanding past SAR and into exploration and infrastructure inspection.

The domain aerobotlabs.com has already been acquired.   Basic website to be in place by the end of the week.