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Startup Life

Entrepreneur

The Global Startup

April 11, 2009

One of the hardest things you can attempt to do is to turn a startup into a successful company. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say the startup I am part of is a success, we have made significant strides toward it. I have heard that startup companies fail for many reasons. From poor leadership to lack of funding, the odds are against you, but that is how we like it.

Aside from the common obstacles that most startups face, we at Future Delivery have a unique obstacle that most other startups don’t encounter. While I wouldn’t call our obstacle a problem, I would say that it poses a wild-card element to the startup life. Over last 2 years our company has gone through many changes. The biggest of which is the relocation of our CEO and the addition of new members to our team from different parts of the map. With 2 core team members in Los Angeles and 2 in Silicon Valley and several others in different parts ranging from Texas to Turkey, we are not just a startup, but a global startup.

Our CEO, Yu-Kai Chou moved to Silicon Valley in a move that he felt would make the company stronger in terms of being able to network with tech savvy individuals in that area as well as meet investors for our company. Currently, Jun Loayza and myself are here in the Los Angeles area working primarily on marketing. With such a great distance between us, the question is how does this affect us? Now it would be a lie if I said that everything is fine, but in all honesty we would love it if we could all be in the same area working together. This past week I was able to meet up with Yu-Kai and spend some time working along side him as well as getting to know him better.

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College

College: Name Brand or Generic?

March 29, 2009

When you go to fill your prescriptions one of the first decisions you have to make is whether to go for the name brand or generic drug. While most may say that their is a huge difference, if you ask a doctor if their is, they will tell you their really isn’t. Just like with medicine, everyday brings new choices, and among those choices is whether to choose the name brand, or the run of the mill generics.

Currently, we are recruiting talent college students to be part of our Entrepreneurship Internship Program. For our internship program we listed at the top 50 schools across the nation. After interviewing many students who are interested in the program, I began to think how big of a role a college’s name has to do with getting a job. On a resume, one of the first things that you list is where you went to school. For my own personal opinion, if someone wrote down on their resume that they went to the best school in the nation, I would be impressed. But the question I asked myself was why? While I didn’t want to create a bias against other applicants, it is hard to not to have some expectations of the applicant. Still, the interview proved to me that a college’s name can only get you so far.

The applicant that I interviewed was anything but stellar and made me realize that ‘brand names’ are just a name. The applicant was incoherent during the interview and was obviously unprepared. No matter what your resume says, your resume cannot speak words nor can it tell others why you should get the position. After having more interviews that resulted in the same way I began to think if we were targeting the right colleges. As a startup company you face many big decisions, one of which is finding the right personnel to join your company. If you think of your company as a boat, then your employees are the propeller that moves you.
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Entrepreneur

From Start to Finish: Watching Your Project Grow

March 18, 2009



Many adults say that one of the greatest gifts in life is having the opportunity to watch their kids grow from infants all the way to adulthood. While some may say otherwise, there is nothing more rewarding than watching something that you have invested a great amount of time in and watching it flourish. As an entrepreneur, you are the parent and your projects are your children. Whether you are a startup tech company looking to create the next best thing, or just trying to start your own restaurant, whatever it is you put those extra hours in becomes your ‘kid’.

Speaking with many entrepreneur’s one of big reasons that they chose to leave the corporate world and enter the startup life is because they wanted the satisfaction of being able to create their own project and help guide it in the right direction. So what the big question then becomes is what drives an individual to continue to put in the time to make a project grow. To best understand this it is helpful to use the analogy of being a parent and watching your child grow.

I myself don’t have any kids, but from what others who have kids have told me, you lose a lot of hair along the way, but in the end, it’s worth it. Just like when a child is in its baby stage and they need your attention 24/7. So is the same with a startup project. When you have a great idea you can’t wait to get started with it. You love it so much that you are willing to work late into the night and live off only powerbars and energy drinks. Sleep is hard to come by, but you tell yourself that it is all worth it. Why? Because the project is yours.

As a child grows from infant to adolescent, this is where they learn by exploring and they begin to ask questions. As a parent they are proud to bring their child to school and are eager to meet other parents to setup play dates and to share tips on the best way to pack a lunch. Similar to that, as your project begins to take form and you are eager to share it with your close friends to get their opinion as well to show it off like a prized possession. For an entrepreneur, hearing positive feedback from others is equivalent to your child bringing home a good report card. Still, it is a growing process. During this time, you still need to put in those long hours for your project, but you are beginning to have an idea of what exactly your finished project may look like.
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