Since I am way more entrepreneur than market investor the last few years, I have had trouble blogging consistently. A play by play of my life as an entrepreneur has just never felt right. Looking back, that was a mistake.
Since I started this blog in 2005 I have written many times and through many different markets that ‘It’s always a good time to start a business’ and this Labor Day is no different.
While investors/traders worry about the next 100 Dow points, you should be focusing on your business and customers.
I still think back to the year 1999 when the Dow crossed 10,000 and CNBC had a party. Sadly, I remember where I was..on vacation…and watching CNBC.
We spoofed the whole idea on a Wallstrip back in 2006 when the Dow crossed 12,000:
Now the Dow has rallied 50 percent to get to 9,500 .
Now, Michael Moore will cash in on crashing the AIG offices even though we did this same stuff back in 2006 with Goldman Sachs $gs when few cared what went on behind those walls:
Timing is sometimes everything, but not something you can bottle or buy.
Basically we have gone backwards since 1999 yet billions have been made by entrepreneurs not focused on the stock market.
In a global sense, only a handful of people will make money on the Dow moving to 12,000 or 8,000 next.
The market is so fantastic because it is a great way to keep score. That’s why ESPN has been so successful and why the market moves towards 24/7/365 and not 2 days a week. I blogged recently that the world would be more productive if we closed our markets for three more days/week, but it’s just an opinion and would probably lead to further chaos.
Just because the market is open though, does not mean you need to watch it.
Just like time goes faster if you do not watch the clock, your business will grow faster if you stop staring at your present situation.
The opportunities are greater today than ever, whether the world is shrinking or expanding – where there is globalization or localization.
The chaotic and dire market and economic arguments are perfectly documented. To speak of opportunity is taboo. We have 24 hour television networks for EVERYTHING save entrepreneurs. That’s a shame, but also an opportunity (note to self).
Paul Graham had a great essay this weekend on ‘The Anatomy of Determination . If you are not out there making it happen for YOURSELF, than you are just in the prediction business which seems kind of sad. Predicting is fun and can be profitable, but rolling up your sleeves and making shit happen is the road to fulfillment.
Few get rich trading and fewer flipping their businesses.
It’s time we all got back to building and supporting great businesses and the entrepreneurs that will drag us out of this trough in the business cycle.
Paul Graham’s essay – The Future of Web Startups – has become pretty viral in the VC and Nerd Community. Rightly so…it’s awesome. Not so much for the thoughts, but for the organization of them and the structure.
I have spent the last few years thinking and trying to prove that it does not matter where you call home to a web start-up. I still believe that the management and investor group make the difference, but Paul has a different point of view and a great one:
The question of whether to be in a startup hub is like the question of whether to take outside investment. The question is not whether you need it, but whether it brings any advantage at all. Because anything that brings an advantage will give your competitors an advantage over you if they do it and you don’t. So if you hear someone saying “we don’t need to be in Silicon Valley,” that use of the word “need” is a sign they’re not even thinking about the question right.
I have long thought that college for my kids will not be very important. We have lost the education race to China and India. Sorry…over! It’s just not important to our leadership. We try and encourage creativity in our house. We believe strongly in EQ not just IQ in our home.
If the best hackers all start their own companies after college instead of getting jobs, that will change what happens in college. Most of these changes will be for the better. I think the experience of college is warped in a bad way by the expectation that afterward you’ll be judged by potential employers.
One of the most obvious changes will be in the meaning of “after college,” which will change from when one graduates from college to when one leaves it. If you’re starting your own company, why do you need a degree? We don’t encourage people to start startups during college, among other things because it gives them a socially acceptable excuse for quitting, but the best founders are certainly capable of it. Some of the most successful companies we’ve funded were started by undergrads.
I grew up in a time where college degrees seemed really important, so I’m alarmed to be saying things like this, but there’s nothing magical about a degree. There’s nothing that magically changes after you take that last exam. The importance of degrees is due solely to the administrative needs of large organizations. These can certainly affect your life—it’s hard to get into grad school, or to get a work visa in the US, without an undergraduate degree—but tests like this will matter less and less.
As well as mattering less whether students get degrees, it will also start to matter less where they go to college. In a startup you’re judged by users, and they don’t care where you went to college. So in a world of startups, elite universities will play less of a role as gatekeepers. In the US it’s a national scandal how easily children of rich parents game college admissions. But the way this problem ultimately gets solved may not be by reforming the universities but by going around them. We in the technology world are used to that sort of solution: you don’t beat the incumbents; you redefine the problem to make them irrelevant.
The greatest value of universities is not the brand name or perhaps even the classes so much as the other students you meet there. If it becomes common to start a startup after college, people may start consciously trying to maximize this. Instead of focusing on getting internships with companies they want to work for, students may start to focus on working with other students they want as cofounders.
What students do in their classes will change too. Instead of trying to get good grades to impress future employers, students will try to learn things. We’re talking about some pretty dramatic changes here.
The whole section brings back memories of one of my fave Rodney Dangerfield movies.. ‘Back to school’ where in his keynote to graduating schools his advice is to “GO BACK”.
I am ready to angel this idea if someone can bring me the right plan.
The good news is that Trivop.com is already doing this for the hotel industry.
I have not seen this idea done yet in many verticals that need it. Golf would be a winner. Good demographics for advertising dollars and great exit potential.
Me, I look a a poker table these days. If you have cash, you are in. You can’t be held back. The only entry fee. That’s why poker champions are also 18, soon to be 12. It is almost purely frictionless. Pay to play. They learn online. No big media company says you have to have this or that experience or degree.
Same with internet investing. You just need an app with users. No VC can deny you if you have that and the net natives bring it.
We will probably have a 9 year old win the world series of Poker and be a CEO very soon of the hottest widget or facebook app in the world.
I am grooming Max today on the Wii and online poker myself. He has ideas. I can’t wait till he can spell. I can’t read his plans.
I spent some quality time chatting with Bambi on my last trip to New York and we had some serious chuckles. She can talk the walk. I like the idea and if a few entrpreneurs get funded and the VC’s start hunting at Vator it could get serious traction. I can’t wait to post some hairbrain late night business ideas posted.
I think it would be cool if Peter and crew committed $1 million to the best community voted pitches. I would be cranking out videos for them left and right .
I am just an entrepreneur, investor and consumer so the US Dollar slide has been ‘beddy beddy’ good to me.
As an entrepreneur, there is massive deflation in startup costs. Let’s just call that one GOOD. Shit…GREAT!
As an investor, the massive printing of money has surely crowded the private equity market of late, but I am a small investor and a rising tide lifts all/most boats. I will call that good (at least for me), but dangerous. I believe it’s dangerous because it is inevitable to make way more of my investment choices expensive. I have too much education for me to be comfortable with that, even as a trend follower. Maybe this time it’s different .
As a US consumer that consumes way too much, it has been SPECTACULICIOUS because I have been fortunate enough to be able to afford the fuel increases, travel and leisure cost increases and food price increases and buy more basic goods at lower prices because of the whole ‘China Thing’. A trip to London would probably change my opinion of what is affordable.
Back to the investor thing…who is making the real MONEY off this trade? Can it and/or will it continue?
Today the Canadian Dollar rose to 92 cents. You Americans could care less. Where the hell is Canada on the map anyways. The trend followers have been printing money. There is money in this trade still. The decline may well accelerate. I posted on the trade in February and it has been a good one. With oil still likely to go much higher, the Canadian dollar should follow suit. A simple view, but one I believe in.
The US Dollar is so weak that even tiny Israel has seen their currency – The Shekel – rise to 15 year highs against the US Dollar. It can’t be oil, Israel is the only country in the region without it. The investor in me considers this a wacky thing considering the daily danger of having most of your neighbors hating you. Seems like the last currency I would want to own on a fundamental basis.
While most of the world’s currency are rising sharply against the US dollar, the Chinese Wan stands relatively still. How? Why? Should we care? The ‘experts’ will tell you we should care. The manipulation is masking the deterioration and stress on the financial system. They say something has to give. I tend to agree with the experts, but when?
My ‘tell’ is oil. As oil prices stay strong, there is mucho stress on the system. The price of oil is priced in US Dollars so we are seing a rise in price for sure, but not nearly what it could be. I still consider it cheap and us lucky so far. The Europeans have had a strong Euro so the big price increase has been in US dollar pricing and their currency appreciation has masked the price increase. I don’t trust that one at all, but a trend is a trend.
In China something has to give. By keeping the Wan closely pegged to the dollar, the rising price of oil will surely work it’s way into higher prices for Chinese goods. So far, the ‘forces’ have kept this one at bay.
Trading the markets can make your head screwy. Reading Bill Fleckenstein or Jim Rogers can make you look at the world as ‘All Empty’. They can afford to think like this. Remember that!
I have learned that I am a ‘3/4 Full’ guy. I am naturally enthusiastic and although I know guys like Bill and Jim are smart and successul, reading them does not make me money. It actually messes with my head.
It’s good cocktail banter for an asshat party.
Same thing in the entrepreneur world I live in. I have blogged about it somewhere, but I believe it is always a good time to start a business.
It seems silly to me that one would worry about the general market when starting a company, but obviously it’s a bit of a common theme. So, that led me to wonder what would cause you to have that kind of mindset, and what I think I am really hearing is fear of failure. I think the questions are really “is this environment one in which it will be harder for me to succeed?”, and I will therefore provide a simple answer to this question: Every market is one in which it will be harder for you to succeed. If access to capital is plentiful, then there will be more companies chasing that capital and more well-funded ventures against which you must compete. If access to capital is scarce, however, it will be harder for you to raise money and you will have to endure more investor-friendly terms on financing and have to show more business model progress in advance of further funding. If there are few competitors in your market, then you need to evangelize your value proposition more passionately to the market in order to gain traction. If there are many competitors in your market, then you need to distinguish yourself from competitors more thoroughly. If you’re a first-mover, why should anybody need your new service, if you’re a follower, why should anybody switch to your service?
Lot’s of awesomeness in this post. Dick’s a cool guy and I have chatted wih him a few times. Glad he is blogging regularly.
.
