Start Up Blog

Sometimes looking cool is enough. Some stuff exists only because of how it looks. Cool, groovy, different, unusual… yes unusual.

It’s not how things of this ilk usually look. So they are created, so they exist and we are thankful.

Being eyeball worthy is often enough.

How does your startup look?

Does anyone out there know of an entrepreneur / startup business which commenced as a ’side project’ - but ultimately grew and thrived into a large successful business?

(successful defined as - financial enough for the founder to leave employment to run it - without a dip in income. Excluding sole traders)

Just curious.

What if email was invented before the telephone? It would have been viewed as a ‘reasonably’ innovative business tool. Better than traditional mail certainly. Also better than a telegraph message.  We would have become quite reliant on it given the advantages it has over other forms of written communication.

Imagine if the phone came next, after email. Imagine the conversations we would have had as we spread this idea and new product virally…. just stop and imagine for a second what the conversation might have been like the first you were told about ‘the telephone’:

“There’s this amazing new service called a telephone! It’s a killer app. So cool. Each phone can be directly connected to another phone just by dialing numbers. Then, you can have a discussion with the person at the other end – in real time. A live conversation. No back and forth required. No confusion in what the written words mean. You can hear peoples emotion… It’s really great. You’ve got to get one. It’s so much better than email!”

So why are we emailing people when we can call them? Is it but covering, fear of direct conversation, laziness?

Startup blog says. Call first, communicate directly. Pretend the phone is the new technology.

It will take twice as long

It will cost twice as much

It will be twice as difficult

What ever we happening to be starting will take up more than we could have imagined. Which is why it’s worth doing. In all probability the end result will be twice as rewarding.

We ought stay the course.

We’re entrepreneurs – we’ll have different objectives. but generally we’ll want to do one of the following:

Build a business (revenue focus)

Change behaviour (social focus)

Introduce a new method (technology focus)

It’s important we know which ones apply. The we ought remain focused, and ask ourselves if what we are doing today leads to revenue, creates social awareness or drives usage of our technology.

Here’s a list of things which actually do matter:

Our diction and vernacular

Our personal presentation & dress code (Doesn’t mean a suit, but to wear what we wear well, have a sense of style)

The way we engage people and treat them

Our smile and attitude

How neat  and organized our workspace is

Being on time

Our posture

Knowing our next steps every day

Making sure our technology is in working order

All these things and others, matter all the time. Not just the day you have to do it right, have the big VC presentation or the day you’re meeting your biggest customer. 

And here’s why – they’ll become habit. Good habits. And when things are habit, they’re performed much the same way – time and time again.

If we do them well when it doesn’t matter, we’ll do them well when it does.

If we do what they do,

then we’ll become what they are.

“Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”

Timothy Ferriss

Startup blog agrees, and adds – if we blame our employers for the above, there’s no locks on the door…. and we’re still being lazy.

I love lots of stuff from the old school, including but not limited to:

Old school break dancing

Old school pinball machines & arcade games (think Galaga)

Old school computers (think Commodore 64)

Old school rap music (think Grand Master Mel)

Old school Airline service & the general airport experience

Old school hamburgers from the local greasy Joe’s

Old school cartoons

Old school slow food & home cooking

Old school architecture and buildings

The truth is the new versions of these are often better, more advanced, cheaper and more useful. (some not)

The reason we love old school stuff more than the new versions is this:

The original version was ground breaking. And ground breaking is exciting. So it builds an emotional connection.

Startups out there - become the old school 20 years from now, by being ground breaking today.

We finally got ‘crunched’ - with a little spiel for rentoid on Tech Crunch.

In the first instance it’s given us a large membership boost and a very positive response. But it’s also given us our share of negative armchair experts, naysayers in the comments.

We say:

“That’s Ok – revolutionaries like us don’t care what naysayers think.”

But it’s a few thousand more people that know about rentoid.com too.

Actually we do care about what they think as it pertains to ideas to improve the service. We turn their negatives into a positive. But we always ignore an attitude which says something won’t work. It won’t for them - their attitude has already predetermined that!

In fact, some context here: We had many more positive comments and only a few negative. Also, both our membership and listings have been boosted as has our unique visiters today. But I thought I’d make this ‘blatant piece of self promotion’ worthy of a startup blog story by providing some insight!

You can check out the story here.

And add some comments here on the Crunch Base or on the story. We want to hear negative and postive sentiments. We want to improve our offer.