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A startup needs a small, lean team where every person can perform some key aspect of product development. This lets you get to market cheap and fast. What you don’t need in the startup stages is a superstar CxO team (CEO, COO, CFO, CxO).

Why? Several reasons:

1. High level executives are used to directing, overseeing, and building teams of people around them. They don’t usually do the actual work. I once hired a “Marketing VP” in one of my small companies, assuming she would do it all and save me money, but I quickly found out that she herself couldn’t really do the work and was used to having the “Agency” get the job done. I got far less than what I needed but it cost me way more.
2. CxOs don’t *really* want to do a startup, blood-sweat-tears-wise. They want to leverage their contacts and experience and direct *everyone else* to get the work done. This is a very needed skill, later on in the game, but not at the very beginning.
3. CxOs want (and perhaps deserve) to get paid a lot, but your company might be too small or to nascent to take advantage of what they can really do. It’s like using a steam shovel to dig a small hole. Sure, you can do it, but you could have also dug that same hole with a hand-held shovel that’s sitting in your garage.
4. True CxOs consider themselves mercenaries, and if the tide turns the wrong way, very little holds them back from jumping ship. I remember talking to a potential strategic buyer one day who was super proud of this awesome Fortune 1000 CEO he had hired, only to see the shiny new executive leave the company holding the bag less than a year later.

If it’s your startup, remember, it’s really up to you and your small band of brothers to get the job done in the early stages. Get your product up and running with some customers and ideally some revenue. Then get a *list* of potential CxO candidates who are interested so that when you start building up relationships with your investors, you’ll still be lean and mean, yet have a pool of talent you can pull from when you need to.

Thanks to Ed Sim’s “Top-heavy teams” which motivated me to write mine.

I recently received an Xbox 360 as a gift from a new family member and so far I am loving playing my favorite console/network mulitplayer game, Battlefield2 Modern Combat

But that’s not why I love my 360.

Truthfully, the games just ain’t there yet. Sure, the HD resolution is cool but so far I’ve not seen any games that have really taken advantage of the new power. But what is totally awesome is the 360’s ability to tap into my media library.

Over the years, I’ve collected hundreds of gigabytes of music (legally!) and digital photos. Up until now they’ve been relegated to being viewed on my computer screen or heard through my computer speakers. The 360 has changed all this.

Using Media Connector (a free MS download) on the XP boxes in my home network, coupled to the 360 via our home wireless lan, I can now listen to all my music and watch all my photos via our home theater system. The 360 easily connects to our Media Connector-running PCs, accesses all the content it needs, and streams it to the TV & HiFi.

So now when my wife and I have a coffee and talk, I fire up the 360, play my fav. tunes, and run a random shuffle of family photos. We get the perfect backdrop to whatever we end up talking about, and finally the thousands of kid photos we’ve taken are given their just deserve: Center Stage in the family living room.

I would highly recommend you look @ the 360 if you have a similar situation, that being:

• Tons of digital music & photos stored on XP machines.
• Wireless Lan in the house
• Home Theater

If you love the Mac, you’ll LOVE this video which has taken the audio from a Microsoft presentation about the new Windows Vista inteface and overlaid it with a demonstration of Mac OS-X.

I’ve not had a Mac since ‘84, but I’m going to take a serious look at one now, since it runs XP.

But when I look @ this video, it’s extremely (painfully) clear that the Mac is lightyears ahead in its interface. wow.

I don’t think it’s possible to achieve long-lasting wealth without the proper state of mind. Although I have not bought his book, T. Harv Eker’s “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth” does have this list that illustrates a wealthy mindset vs. a poverty mindset.

Take a long, hard, honest look at the list and decide where you belong. I think this helpful tool illuminates areas you might need to work on.

• Rich people believe “I create my life.” Poor people believe, “Life happens to me.”
• Rich people play the money game to win. Poor people play the money game to not lose.
• Rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich.
• Rich people think big. Poor people think small.
• Rich people focus on opportunities. Poor people focus on obstacles.
• Rich people admire other rich and successful people. Poor people resent rich and successful people.
• Rich people associate with positive, successful people. Poor people associate with negative or unsuccessful people.
• Rich people are willing to promote themselves and their value. Poor people think negatively about selling and promotion.
• Rich people are bigger than their problems. Poor people are smaller than their problems.
• Rich people are excellent receivers. Poor people are poor receivers.
• Rich people choose to get paid based on results. Poor people choose to get paid based on time.
• Rich people think “both.” Poor people think “either/or.”
• Rich people focus on their net worth. Poor people focus on their working income.
• Rich people manage their money well. Poor people mismanage their money well.
• Rich people have their money work hard for them. Poor people work hard for their money.
• Rich people act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them.
• Rich people constantly learn and grow. Poor people think they already know.

Maybe I’m the only one that thinks this, but IMO Google seems to be throwing every idea up against the wall to see if it sticks, and so far has been extremely unsuccessful in getting anything other than Search, News, and perhaps Gmail, to work.

Take this simple test:

1. Go to their “More” page
2. How many of those services have you tried?
3. Out of the ones you’ve tried, which ones do you regularly use?

For me, I just use Search & News. I use Google mail when I will travel to far-off lands that won’t let me use my laptop. That’s it.

I’ve tried Picasa, then uninstalled it. Google Earth: was extremely impressed 2-3 times and haven’t used it since. I don’t trust their privacy policies so I stay away from Desktop or Pack.

Google seems like an “infant” company. Infants touch everything they can get their hands on and quickly put it in their mouth. And right now the press just loves a new baby.

My prediction is that over time, the Google honeymoon will be over and we’ll look at them just a little more critically than we do today. It’s already started w/ their stock prices taking some hits.

I think Adsense/Adwords is highly assailable. Competition will either erode their share paying by higher rates, or erode their profit by forcing Google to pay a higher percentage of the gross revenue.

Gmail is cool, but I’d like to see how much revenue they actually get on the clickthroughs. It’s one thing to click on a relevant ad when you’re actually searching for something, but I’ve NEVER clicked on an ad while I’m trying to get my email work done.

I love Google News, but they aren’t making $0.01 off it. And if they ever do decide to monetize, I think MSM will sue the crap out of them for copyright infringement.

Time will tell if I’m right on this.

2006 will be the year we all predicted that Web 2.0 will crash. The real question of course will be whether the prediction will be true or not. You’ll just have to watch this graph and see.

Posts that contain Web 2.0 Crash per day for the last 60 days.

Get your own chart!

Hat tip: Steve Rubel’s post on the pending Web 2.0 crash. “Sell GOOG!”

This is really a great time to be a programmer. With the combination of all the Web 2.0 apis plus great OSS code sitting out there, one guy can hammer out cool services, create neat-o value, and then flip it to Yahoo.

Congrats to Lucas Gonze whose 1-man shop did it all w/ zero funding. Rock on baby! Too bad he’s going to relocate to the mainland. Damn.

Read Kevin Burton’s post on the acquisition.

Search through other blog posts on the acquisition

Three-person Meebo just got funded by Sequoia Capital at a $10mm pre-money valuation. From what I see, it’s a site that gives a web interface to IM. I think this an of itself is a really cool idea, but if I apply some very simple tests to it, it fails miserably:

1. No barrier to entry. If 3 ppl can create this, a small army of India programmers can too. Cheap.

2. No lock-in. If/when GYM (Google/Yahoo/Microsoft) launches something similar, what’s to keep the customer at Meebo?

3. No money. I didn’t see any apparent revenue model (other than perhaps seeing some ads) on their site.

Clearly, Sequoia is not stupid and they obviously see something I don’t. It will be fun to find out what that is. Right now, I can’t see how I would value this at $10M other than because they have 250k subscribers and delicious with 300k subscribers just sold for probably $30m. And if that’s the case, this is a case of more hot air inflating a bubble, meaning that one no-revenue company’s valuation is pushing up another no-revenue company’s valuation.

When you start seeing zero revenue companies getting $10m A round valuations, you can’t help but yell “Bubble!”.

The next time you pitch to an investor, keep a simple thing in mind: this person is not a God. They are human and make huge mistakes just like you and me. The wisdom they do have (assuming they are experienced) is that they’ve seen many, many business plans and pitches cross their desk and have the experience of seeing many, many of their own investments take off and die.

This context gives them some insight to decide if they like you or not.

And just in case you ever think they are God, just read this article about the recent death of a Bubble 1.0 artifact. Read the big names. Read the big dollars invested. Read about the stupid expenses, then read about the big failure.

Then repeat the mantra: “They put their pants on one leg at a time”.

Congrats to the recent del.icio.us acquisition but I can’t but wonder: what does it indicate when a zero revenue company that has 300k hard-core geeks as non-paying customers is acquired for millions of dollars?

What kind of a signal does this send out to startup X that’s dreaming up stupid Web 2.0 app Y and pitching it to investor Z that just read about the Yahoo acquisition?

Here’s a cool quote from Paul Kedrosky’s blog that kinda says it all:

“What risk? If the company doesn’t work out, we’ll sell it for $150 million. If the company kind of works out, we’ll sell it for $500 million, and if it really works out, it’ll be worth between $2 billion and $10 billion. Tell me how that’s risk.”
– Geoff Yang, Redpoint (Fortune; 12/06/99, Vol. 140 Issue 11, p177-188)