When you need the public exposure (e.g. need more customers that you can’t get without the public exposure, Need to raise more money and the exposure might help raise awareness from VCs, you are having a hard time hiring employees because no one knows you and the market is competitive.). While The trend today is the “minimal viable product” and tell the world as early as possible what you are doing, I would argue that this advice assumes a consumer web services orientation. First you need to ask yourself what are the pros and cons of telling the world what your start-up is up to. A few cons to launching as soon as you have your first “viable product” would be:
1. You might not be able to process all the feedback you get and even those early adopters who wanted to use your products might be discouraged.
2. You need a few cycles of customer iteration to be able to explain the world what your product does in their words
3. If you do have a good product and interesting vision, by launching too early, you are might miss the opportunity to have a coordinated planned launch and these things tend to have more impact if they are covered simultaneously.
4. We are not in the business in which any coverage is good coverage and having your first coverage a negative one can be something that can take a while to recover from.
It’s not black or white and you can get feedback and customer engagement without coming out of stealth mode. For example, if what you want is to get customer exposure, you can still work with early design partners (especially if you are selling enterprise software) or selected alpha/beta testers. If need a proof that early is not always better, look at serial (successful) entrepreneurs and you will notice that as their achieve more, they become more calculated with how they time their move from stealth to public launch and time events they can control to their benefit for maximum impact

The brain of the future

An NPR story http://goo.gl/0l2GM covers the fact that human brains have actually been shrinking for the past 20-30 million years and our brain tod

ay is a tennis ball size smaller than the brains of cro-magnon man that lived in Europe (10% decrease).

The answer to the mystery lies in a common phenomenon in biology in which domesticated animals like pigs and dogs have all seen their brains shrink compared to their wild ancestors or contemporary wild relatives (e.g. wolves vs. dogs).
There seem to be two evolutionary factors that play here, the first is that specialization requires less total cognitive effort and so the reduced brain conserves energy (the brain accounts for about 20% of the energy we spend).
The second  relates to the fact that in civilized species, the ability to cooperate with other members is rewarded and overly-aggressive members are in disadvantage (another example cited in the story is that Bonobo monkeys, that have smaller brains than chimpanzees, are better at solving problems as a group because the chimps refuse to work together to solve the problem).

Looking at this from an entrepreneurial perspective, two things come to mind:

1.      Entrepreneurs might be the exception in the way we favor foraging in the business world instead of specializing within a lager cooperation.
Personally, in past experiences working in larger organizations I was often reprimanded for questioning rules and creating a lot of friction in the process (an analogy to tarzan jumping on ropes in the jungle as opposed to civilized driving in the highway was once used in an effort to help correct my ways..)

2.      The flip side to the foraging brain of the entrepreneur is tendency to not be very good in cooperating with others (fellow entrepreneurs particularly). The ability to look at the world in a less competitive way and instead look more at symbiotic opportunities around us is key to creating what eventually can become large companies.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-willpower-paradox

A recent study shows that our perception of something as simple as distance to an object is affected by how desirable we find that object to be (the more desirable the object, the closer it appears to us).

Salvador Dali - The Enigma Of Desire 1929

In the entrepreneur angle or the broader goal attaining perspective it is important to note two things:

1. Our brains are not the objective data-crunching, truth-seeking machines that popular belief holds and we should be be aware of it. All data we acquire is skewed to achieve one goal or another.

2. I would bet that this mechanism works in different strengths in different people, meaning that some people would see the same object with the same level of desire in different proximity. I would further guess that those drawn to reaching goals on their own terms, tend to neglect their peers’ advice and success statistics because in their mind, the object is more desired and even closer than the to the rest of the world.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/14/startups-or-behemoths-which-are-we-going-to-bet-on/

Another interesting point he makes is in regards to the productivity gap of the same person in a large company and when he is set “to the wild” in a small company.

Always thought so but never had the numbers to back it up..

In tribute to one of the most epic rock bands of all times..

For the life of me, i am continuously amazed as to how many precious minutes are wasted before and in the middle of presentations because of technical challenges. Laptop is not booting, projector is not working, projector is not syncing with laptop (extra points for Mac owners that forget the VGA converter) , the screen is not coming down, the video conferencing is not connecting, etc.

In the midst of an important presentation or demo, it’s easy to forget that the presentation technology of choice is just the means and not the end by itself. When preparing for a presentation, one must have a contingency plan for what happens in different scenarios incurring various failures ranging from the minor like projectors to major like power outages. For each scenario there needs to be cascade of options to keep the show going at minimal cost of interruption getting you through your main point in as much time that is allocated.

From my experience, here are the top 3  things that need to be addressed in your presentation contingency plan:

1. Variable length of presentation – it doesn’t matter what the invitation says, it’s how much time the relevant people in the room have. If there is one person in the room that has to “get it” and he has 5 minute because he is double booked, you need to have a 5 minute pitch after which you will start rolling back to the details for those who are there and demand the other 40 minutes left of the show.

2. Projector – decades since the VGA invention and we are still pleasantly surprised when our our laptop’s screen shows up on the projected wall like a baby playing peekabo over and over again. Get there 30 minutes before (don’t forget to let your host know to expect you early) and get that projector synced before there is anyone in the room. -10 minutes to the presentation is when you power the portable projector you brought with you (and you know works with your laptop). +5 minutes and no external projection options left, first try projecting on a regular screen for small audiences and for large audiences this is when you take out the printed presentation that you copied 15 times and hand them to attendees. Coupled with a whiteboard you do your magic. Demos can also be done with screenshots printed on paper in this scenario.
The above applies also to eternal question of  “Does this room have a projector? Oh, did you ask for one?  let me go 5 building away to dig that portable projector that may or may not come with a power cable but will not be here in less than 30 minutes anyway”.

3. Laptop/presentation – Needless to say laptops fail. Make sure you have an extra laptop that can run a presentation and a presentation copy in it’s original form (such as powerpoint) along with a simpler JPEG /PDF version that can be run from any browser. Store those versions both on a USB key as well as somewhere accessible online (meaning a place that can be accessed by any browser in the planet).

For web conferences – make sure you send an email version of both presentations to attendees before hand and don’t wait more than 10 minutes into the presentation to move the offline version (the one in which you have to actually tell people what slide you are on..).

Once you get through enough of these presentations in variable situations, you will start gather your own contingency plan (all the way to what happen when the presenter is not able to speak..).

Feel free to share if you got a good one!