Sylar on Entrepreneurship (or Startup %u201CHeroes%u201D 101)
Guest post by Leonard Speiser.
Beyond its entertainment value, the TV Show %u201CHeroes%u201D provides tremendous lessons in the field of entrepreneurship. Three characters in particular emulate the virtues of startup leaders: Sylar (the killer who steals people%u2019s special powers), the Cheerleader (who heals instantly), and Noah Bennet (the ordinary man who hunts %u201Cspecials%u201D).
Sylar
Let%u2019s overlook the fact that Sylar cuts people%u2019s heads open to take their powers. The son of a watchmaker, Sylar has an insatiable curiosity to understand how things work. I believe one of the reasons so many great startups are founded by engineers has to do with this trait. Engineers, by the nature of their job, need to understand what makes a product tick. What is possible with this technology? How can I use this to my advantage? Once they absorb a skill, they apply it to new problems in new areas. But whether you are an engineer or a business guy, you must drill into every detail of a product to understand what is possible. Read Joel Spolsky%u2019s My First BillG Review for a great example of this characteristic, as practiced by Bill Gates. Scott Cook was also notorious at Intuit for drilling into the details of unsuspecting product managers and developers. Luckily, we don%u2019t have to tear someone%u2019s skull open to gain their knowledge. But if you aren%u2019t asking every question you can about how everything works, you are handicapping yourself.
The Cheerleader
This one is a simple lesson, albeit a sad one. In a startup you will get knocked down almost every day. People will tell you why your ideas won%u2019t work. Your product will rarely explode into a blockbuster the day you release it. Sometimes team members will leave you. Sometimes competitors will surround you. It sucks. So take a lesson from the Cheerleader, and regenerate as quickly as possible after every injury. If you are still developing new ideas days after old ideas failed, you will likely succeed at one of them. James Hong is well known for Hot or Not, the weekend project that became an overnight sensation. But James worked on at least a dozen startup ideas prior to that. Thankfully he kept at it, or there would be a lot more single people in the world.
Noah Bennet
Bennet is the most impressive of them all. %u201CWhat?%u201D you say, %u201CHe doesn%u2019t even have a special power.%u201D Exactly. Bennet holds his own against people born with amazing natural abilities because his character works harder than every other character on the show. You do not have to be that genius who gets straight A%u2019s with no effort, you just have to out work that guy. Want proof? Just ask Dave McClure, the country bumpkin from West Virginia who is still online at 5am out running all of you. If people telling you something can%u2019t be done makes you want to fight even harder to prove them wrong, you%u2019re on your way.Let%u2019s summarize Entrepreneurship 101 as taught by our %u201CHeroes%u201D: Slice open products and understand them, with each startup attempt heal quickly, and out work those %u201Cspecials%u201D.
Posted February 8th, 2010 By Leonard Speiser 1 Comment
Sylar on Entrepreneurship (or Startup “Heroes” 101)
February 26, 2010 by shkadmin
Bootstrapping Hong Kong’s Startup Community
February 25, 2010 by shkadmin
It seems like there are a few re-occurring themes that pop up when talking about HK becoming a known startup location, and why people don’t see it happening.
- HK will never be Silicon Valley:
- Personally, I’m not understanding why everyone is stuck on this. It may not be possible to have the exact options of funding or resources, but I think there are also certain resources that we have which no one else does. (More on that in a minute).
- There are no superstar entrepreneurs/developers/advisors:
- So, in that case, all successful companies are started with all of this in place already? Just like trying to grow a business, bootstrapping it all the way, I think we can build up a good community of both local resources and pull in ones from overseas.
- The government doesn’t do enough for startups:
- Does your mom still tuck you in bed each night too? The government has put together a lot of good, but limited programs to help startups. I think having the ability to offset half of my legal costs, marketing costs, and hiring recent grads is a pretty good deal that I’m not finding in many other places. I do think that this needs to be backed up with a more accessible pool of investment that understands what a startup company is about to be more effective. But, that doesn’t have anything to do with the government.
- People prefer to do X and not be in a startup:
- Ha, I think this is actually an upside of a poor economy along side the movement of a lot of the more traditional trade related jobs heading north to over the border. Just give it a year or two to kick in, how many people really want to commute to the factory every day or to be stationed up there for the whole week if there are alternatives that don’t require that. There is a void that is being created by the reduction of jobs that are stationed here that I think will create an opportunity for those that see it.
- Hong Kong has a very low entrepreneurship rate:
- This is very true. I think that this is probably due to the lack of pressure to find a good position over the last 30-40 years. In the last generation’s time, those who are the parents of the current generation of 20-30 somethings, it was very easy to find a reasonable job. Now, it is becoming more difficult, and I think it will continue to get worse. Why would there be a need for many entrepreneurs in an economy that is so driven by outside demand? But, as new people come into the workforce and do not find it as easy as they thought, being an entrepreneur becomes a more viable option.
- Without VC money, there will never be huge rockstar companies coming up:
- If I have the choice of making ten smaller, sustainable companies, or one huge hype machine of a company, I would choose the smaller ones. It is possible for the smaller ones to grow and be successful, but the hype machine has a high chance of very spectacularly crashing and burning. OK, so there isn’t a lot of chance for big money deals here, but I think if we can develop a resource for seed funding or micro-funding, then we’ve got a good foundation to grow from there.
- Hong Kong people don’t collaborate about their business:
- Yep, this is true to some extent, but I think it may be that it is a lack of some community that gives the trust to collaborate. The local HK toy factory owners have a regular lunch meeting to catch up and collaborate. These are the last generation, ones that grew the factories from small businesses to where they employ hundreds or thousands of workers. In order to grow, many times they relied on their competitors to help with overflow of work.
- If a strong community that is growing and thriving defines that they are open and that this is one of the attributes that defines the community, then others will follow by example.
Anyhow, I hope this doesn’t come across as a rant. I hope it to be a start of another conversation of what people see the prospects are for growing a startup community here in Hong Kong.
