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Why not to start a startup

Paul Graham examines the reasons why you may be better off waiting to start your business. Anyone considering a startup should read this and make an honest assessment of their skills, weaknesses, plan and drive.

The problem with media star CEOs

UCLA analyzes the downside of having a media sensation as a CEO. While the exec will win fame for the company, s/he is often lured into more external activities, sapping the time and effort they can continue to put into the company that made them famous.

Why seed investing is less risky than later stage investing

Whether you’re looking to get into angel or venture investing, or trying to convince investors to buy into your brilliant startup idea, this article explains why buying in early is a wise move. (Want to see how startup financing works in action? Take a look at the Tequila Shots Ringside Startup Launch.)

Don’t give your software away free

If you’re planning to sell your software at some point, this article explains why it is better to charge immediately than give it away initially. Seven practical tips help you put theory into practice, and start your software empire.

Make Google Calendar rock

If you’re anything like MJ, our CEO, you need Google Calendar to stay organized. With GCal Sync you can keep your calendar synchronized with your Blackberry. Check out this article for 18 other great tips on how to optimize your Google Calendar experience.

Serph launches new real-time buzz tracker

In this age of information overload, most of us couldn’t survive without various aggregators and media trackers. Serph.com has thrown their hat into the ring, pulling buzz together from Feedster, Bloglines, Topix, Technorati, Sphere, YouTube, Digg, Podzinger, Google Blog Search and many more.

Yahoo quietly leads with API offerings

The web has become less about keeping people on your site and more about allowing people to pull elements of your site or data into their own online space and applications. As such, APIs are de rigeur, and Yahoo is now offering over 20 powerful and varied APIs. There’s something there for virtually everyone, including the sensational Yahoo Pipes for non-programmers.

Speaking of APIs… how to make money with Twitter

The blogosphere has been abuzz for weeks over Twitter. With the recent offering of an API a whole new world of mashups and monetization has opened up to the enterprising programmer. This sort of thinking can be applied to any popular or powerful web service wth an open API. Oh, did I mention that Cambrian House is offering APIs for our platform?

Allo allo out there all you movers and shakers,

When the dust finally settled, this is how the crowd voted:

* the numbers in brackets = percentage of votes

This means we have PeteC vs Fazza in the final. This is shaping up to be a truly epic battle as both ideas seem equally matched going into the finals. Congrats also to johnandPeter and Hewson for making it to the Final 4. It was close and down to the wire. Don’t wait till next Wednesday noon to get your votes in. Vote now and help decide which idea is worthy of the Hoffman title. May the best idea win! Special thanks again to the good people at 42squared.com for their financial support of the Reid Hoffman Tournament. These guys really are ninjas.

One risk an entrepreneur encounters when they launch a startup is being so wedded to their idea that they resist any change. While it’s important to ignore the naysayers, critical feedback has helped a lot of companies find their true path.

Did you know that Flickr and YouTube were both originally failures?

Flickr was a massive multi-player online game called Game Never Ending.
YouTube was originally built as a dating site.

My point isn’t that your idea will change as radically as these high profile examples. Only that when your startup becomes successful, it won’t look the same as the idea you start with. And that’s ok. It’s to be expected - not resisted.

Our good friend Patrick Lor reminded me how iStockPhoto didn’t really take off until they nailed their community compensation model - micro-payment system.

We ourselves adjusted course this year. Instead of trying to commercialize each product idea ourselves, we could do a much better job working even more collaboratively with our community.

So when you’re out there executing, don’t be afraid to change it up. A good tip from our buddy Reid Hoffman is to seek critical feedback from the 6 smartest people you know. Listen to their advice and then decide if you think you can overcome the challenges. If you can’t move on - you just saved 6 months of your life. If you can, you are in a much better position and know the first few hurdles you’ll face.

Keep an open mind, have a thick skin, and relish the critical feedback. I find it’s often more insightful than any of the positive stuff I get.