I've often talked about, but not on my blog, the concept of trust. "Who Do You Trust?" In the startup world, trust is just about everything. I'm not talking about hitting a date exactly. I'm talking about do the right thing, not saying one thing and doing the opposite, work towards the goal of the end user, not stealing money, and a host of other things. Trust is so important.
With investing, trust really is everything. Do you believe that a startup will work towards a goal that is something along the lines that they have described? I'm not talking about pivots being a problem. I'm not talking about business refinements. I'm talking about trying to move forward in a respectable way. Several times in my life, I've been sitting there and listening to people openly talking about leading customers astray with low price promises and then jacking prices up. I've also sat and done all of the work to describe a project and had a middle man jerk a project out from under me. I've had other people in a startup think that I would pay for all hosting, deployment, development, everything forever for a startup out of my own pocket while they lived off of the investment money. I've watched founders empty a bank account of a startup and hit the road. People wonder why startup investors have all of these rules in their investment contracts, and this is why. Investors have had plenty of people that say one thing and do something else completely different or just plain steal and hit the road.
I went to Webb School of Knoxville, where the motto was "Principes non Homines" which is Latin for "Leaders, Not Ordinary Men." I learned the value of work. I was an Eagle Scout where truth and honesty were valued above all things. Eagle Scouts do. I graduated twice (BS & MS) from Georgia Tech (The Georgia Institute of Technology) where hard work and dedication were valued.
I did not understand these things while I was in school, or in the scouts, or at "Ma Tech." I just did the work and moved on. However, I slowly did start to understand them as I went up in the world. I remember Ed Brown at Coca-Cola telling me once, "Wally, you deliver in what you say you will do, where did you learn this? I can turn things over to you and it gets done." That was probably the first time I started to understand these things.
I remember my first work for a startup, and it was not a well done startup. I was only doing some development along with my other work. I did some side work for a startup and things got a bit rough. The finances were getting tight. One day, they called. The founder had taken all of the money out of the bank account and hit the road. Wow, how do you do that? How do you openly steal like that? How do you steal from the investor like that? How do you make promises and steal from everyone around you? How do you walk out owing people money like that?
I did a lot of work for MarketLynx. I was unsure of myself at the time, impostor syndrome anyone? I know I looked like a deer in headlights. However, I soldiered on. I've always appreciated my work with them, understanding the customer issues, and how I helped move them forward. I was there several late nights, including into 3 am on a New Years Day in a cast after foot surgery. That is dedication, desire, and hard work to move the company forward. I've never forgotten one assignment to provide a csv data output, this was pre web services days. I knew the design I was given would never work and that directly streaming the code was much better. I stayed one night, proved what I was saying was right, and presented it as a demo the following day. Unfortunately, the deer in headlights problem from the beginning cast a shadow on me all of the time, but I will always appreciate the confidence that I got at MarketLynx and from David Bolt.
Another startup was trying to do mistyped domain names. I got their system working as intended, but it just seemed to be one fight after another with all kinds of demands. Their code ideas were incredibly dumb and wouldn't scale. I finally just ripped all of their code ideas out, made reasonable decisions, and it all just worked and scaled. Nothing gives you a better feeling than proving the naysayers wrong. I never cheated them or did anything besides what was necessary to scale their system and keep things running. More than one night was spent late working on their stuff. Unfortunately, it is hard to work with people, or realistically one person, that just makes crazy demands.
I worked for one startup that was just flailing. The managing director thought that he could get the investor to put in $4-5m more. It wasn't happening. My goal through out the whole experience was to actually produce something that users would want to use, not to just get the investor to throw in more money. I went out and interviewed potential users. When most developers are staring at their shoes, I was out trying to make things happen with real live users.
I've had various startups that I've worked for. One memorable one in Dallas. The idea was ok. They closed down owing me a few shillings. I got that call that you never want to get about closing down. The guy was almost in tears. He said he would pay me back owed money. I told me that isn't how startups work. Take any final money that he makes and go treat his family.
I've done various consulting gigs over the years, but it is the work outside of that that I am the most proud of.
I've proposed and delivered on 10 books. I've written magazine articles, training, delivered conference talks, and webinars. I'm proud of the fact that I show up with material that is finished and almost always works (I have crashed and burned a couple of times); unfortunately, the crash that I remember the most was in front of a lot of people. I remember going in to record training and one of the sound engineers said, "You come in with material and are prepared, we don't quite understand this."
I ran the ASP.NET Podcast for 7-8 years. It was early in the podcasting world. I developed a listenership that went between 10-20k people around the world. Not too shabby for a guy from Tennessee.
Honestly, integrity, not stealing from customers, and making an effort to solve their problems. That is what I do, and that is what I care about. At the end of the day, your word is all you have.
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