Never be "Too Proud"

One of the things that I've had to do in my life is "a lot of things." I've never been too proud to get dirty. In fact, I just retold a story last night showing this. At one time, my father owned Western Plaza Bowling Lanes. Probably 30 years ago, we had a major snow storm in Knoxville with intense cold. A pipe burst at Western Plaza and was leaking into the bowling alley. The bowling lanes had a lot of wood, and wood with water means a disaster. My father and I went up there as quickly as we could and got the water cut off. I had to get the water out. I took a shopvac, which sucked up the water, and poured it out of the side door. While I was doing that, people walked in and asked if we were open. My father ran the front and the grill while I worked on getting rid of the water. And we did all of this in the frozen cold.

I share the above to show that I'm not too proud to work. I've also been at a startup until 3 am on a New Years Eve, getting home at 3:45 am. So, while you crazy people were out partying, I was working, and I have done this more than once. I've worked Friday nights, Saturday nights, and all weekends. Writing books and magazine articles on software is another thing. You don't get paid much for it, but it is a good excuse to learn new things, get paid, crete marketing material, and move forward. I've dealt with people that are "too proud" to do work, and they are not good to work with. You want to work with people that say "yes." not "no."

I've also been involved with real estate. I've had to take over the family's real estate business, and I have my broker's license. I write plenty of software today and help startups. I also know and do real estate. As I often say, "work is just part of the gig of life." I write code, I handle real estate, I handle land development, and I do a bunch of startup stuff.

McClure Realty

PS. Not many people know that my family owned Western Plaza Shopping Center at one time.

Bad Startup Ideas - MVPs should never cost more than some small amount

i love reading about startups. I love reading people's opinions. i love reading from people that have been through them because I love reading about how people solved problems. I also love reading from people that have never been through them because it gives me a bunch of laughs. I've read some interesting advice that I've previously talked about

• Bad startup advice
• Bad advice part II

The most recent thing that i read is that "MVPs should never cost more than (insert some small number here)." This is another laughable statement. on the surface, the statement makes a lot of sense. however, there is a problem. What is the development on the MVP and what should be assigned to the development? Clearly, that should be any payment to a developer? Really? Most founders don't understand development, so they dont know what they should be doing to help developers. first off, let's start with what the problem is. Founders don't know how to translate an idea into something that customers can use. Founders don't know how to document what things should look right, or the business rules, or the database schema, or customer expectations, or testing, or talking to users, or much else that will help developers. trust me, founders think that they can do all of this. the problem is that founders haven't done development before, so they can't be of much help. Founders think that they are helpful, but they aren't so, all of this will fall to the developer. when you factor in that developers only spend 20% of their time writing code, you start to see that estimates don't really provide much value beyond something to beat over the heads of developers.
"Oh I'll just outsource this and it will be cheap and i'll hit that magic number." No that doesn't tend to work. Why? Because Outsourcing is about cheap. Startups are about adding value. There is a big difference between the two. When you look at companies like IBM, GE, Kmart, and Sears, you see the results of concentrating on customer value vs. cost.
My suggestion as always is to find people that you can trust. That means asking your network of comtacts. that means making some calls and seeing how people work. What is the background of a person? That doesn't mean just looking for cheap. That doesn't mean beating someone over the head about money. did someone work all night? did someone work all weekend? Did someone produce a product that worked? i do get it, founders can afford to spend a gazzilion on an mvp. this ismwhere the sales and negotiaon skillsets of people come up. what can you do? how much money vs the featureset? Hint, it is better to cut features and make products better than to have more features that dont work right.
anways, these are my thoughts and how i operate. If you want a "yes" man developer, i'm not it. If you want someone that can make your startup sucessful and a cofounder, contact me and let me know about your startup idea.

What’s the best MVP? Is a perfect UI the best?

A shipping product is 1000x better than a non shipping product. Let’s start there. Next, I don’t release my MVPs to the world. I have a set of users that can understand what I am talking about and will give me feedback. The problem with an mvp and “releasing” it to the world is that fact that it takes marketing to get to users. Marketing tends to be a solid rocket powered icbm with no self destruction, once fired, you can’t stop it. ICBMs and marketing share this one crucial feature, the inability to recall. you rarely get a second bite at the apple. Put something out and get feedback from those trusted users. Iterate on the feedback. that is the lesson of time. Good luck on your startup. if i can be of assistance, let me know. https://www.linkedin.com/in/wallymcclure/