Found+READ: Comments on stories by Ursula Schwuttke

liguini ragu — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:46:41 GMT

AH!!! What a masterful piece of advise. It’s sad Marvin was too stupid/selffish/immature to heed your advise. The thing that gets me is if you ask for someone to advise you on something, you’d better be prepared to take the worst possible outcome. I agree with Anthony—-Marvin is not cut out to make the Ragu.

Anthony Kuhn — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:26:04 GMT

Ursula:

Thanks for a great post on what it means to be able to take advice, critial and otherwise, when trying to get a new venture off the ground. I think not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, and having a thin skin might just be one of the factors that leads people to decide they don’t want to join the ranks of the business startup successful. Your post is exactly on topic for my audience, so I cross-posted on your piece, along with some comments, at http://blog.innovators-network.org The Innovators Network is a non-profit dedicated to bringing technology to startups, small businesses, non-profits, venture capitalists and intellectual property experts. Please visit us and help grown our community!

Best wishes for continued success,

Anthony Kuhn
Innovators Network

David Mullings — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:55:26 GMT

I agree as well – many people don’t understand how to take constructive criticism, they just see it as criticism.

When I founded my company, I brought on advisors that didn’t understand the web but I avoided saying that they “just don’t understand” and then firing them. They were vital because they also asked “Why are you trying to do it that way when you could do it this way?” and in the process provided less costly methods based on solid business principles rather than what the other ‘web’ companies were doing. They also forced us to justify an expense or a strategy.

I now have an angel investor as an advisor and the other day he indicated that based on his criticisms we might not want to continue our monthly meetings.

I responded by saying we DO want to continue because he forces us to justify decisions and also tests our pre-conceived ideas of what will or won’t work. I love criticism because it forces me to think harder than compliments.

Ben Young — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:00:17 GMT

Totally agree. In my experience, tearing it up and starting afresh gives you a totally new perspective. I have done this many a time and bounced back with a much stronger strategy or proposal.

Its like the whole change management metaphor. Think of your idea/organisation/strategy as an iceberg, to change you need to break it up, rearrange it and refreeze to get back. Hopefully this process will make it stronger.

Vera Bass — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:20:32 GMT

Great story, Ursula.

One of the measures of risk, which we rarely examine closely, is relevant to your story, and this the full extent and meaning of the risk being taken by a person (people) in a given situation.

A venture fund may be willing to take risks on unproved startups, but how much risk are they really taking, using OPM spread across multiple investments?

An angel or entrepreneur may be risking their own funds or savings, but they aren’t risking their lives or even their future ability to earn a living should they fail.

Your story tells of people willing to risk everything, including their lives, not even for financial reward, perhaps, but only to live in freedom or to have access to expanded opportunity.

This view of risk helps explain why the hardest person to compete against is one who has nothing to lose. When you have nothing to lose but your life, then you’re risking the most valuable thing of all.

Vera

Gerry Fornes — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 02:10:24 GMT

Great story. Glad to hear you are pursuing your dream re sailing your own boat, Ursula. I’m truly happy for you.

Guda Venkatesh — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 19:57:48 GMT

I wonder how realistic it is to compare a start-up do-or-die-trying to these people on the boat where it is the literal truth. There is no practical way to create the sense of desperation, despair and loss of hope that drives such feats nor is it necessarily the right thing to do for a startup. All entrepreneurs have viable choices to make unlike these people. There is no such thing as “risking everything” for educated people in the land of opportunities (unless you become a test pilot for an experimental aircraft company or something similar).

The relevance to entrepreneurship and risk taking that I noticed in your story actually has to do with the quick decision you had to make whether to approach the boat. We are all faced with making these kinds of decisions every day, especially as a founder or an executive. It could have turned out very badly for either boats based on that decision. This is where a good mix of intuition, courage, lack of fear of failure, wisdom and blind luck can result in good decisions (in retrospect). You don’t always have the information to make a fully-informed decision.

Building a team of people that individually can make such decisions in their respective roles from top to bottom would be the “dream team” for a startup. And if I knew how to do it….

Blair Swedeen — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:06:20 GMT

Excellent story and takeaways.

Raseel Bhagat — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:28:28 GMT

I wasn’t as impressed by the story per se, but more so by the “morals” derived by the author.

Dean C. Smith — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:26:59 GMT

Ursula, simply courageous. It is so inspiring to read your experience. Kudos to both you and Dave for your faith in the human spirit! I wish we could all have such conviction. I only wonder what became of the ten men on the boat. What a tale they must be telling about you two.
Cheers!