Here is the final installment of Tony Perkins[base '] [base "]Confessions.[per thou] To recap, Perkins was the founder of Red Herring, the Bible of the so-called Web 1.0 business bubble. That magazine ballooned to 600+ pages twice a month in the late [OE]90s. Its editor, Jason Pontin (now with Technology Review), wrote editorials about meeting with Internet entrepreneurs for luncheon interviews at San Francisco[base ']s most expensive restaurants. The pages were filled with investment bank announcements of their IPOs (initial public offerings of stock from which they all dreamed of great wealth). Then the bubble burst. Perkins is reflecting on lessons learned and whether the current Web 2.0 entrepreneurs have learned anything. These are lessons for all of us (including the small group of us involved in starting a new magazine in less than glorious times).
Here are his four additional lessons (see a summary of the first three here).
4. Customers (and Prospects) Are Everything
You don't have to be Jack Welch to understand that the only way to create a real company is to have lots of real (that is, paying) customers. When you launch a new company, the entire startup team needs to be involved in the sales process until the company figures out exactly what it is selling and how to sell it. Smart entrepreneurs also rein in their "innovation egos," and don't just rely on the "buzz in the blogosphere" to determine if their companies are on the right track. As soon as they can get the attention of prospective customers, they start showing them their products, and to increase interest they quickly incorporate the most valuable input. Another thing many successful new companies have in common: They help their customers do something they already do at least three times faster, cheaper, and/or less painfully.
5. Bring in the Design Experts
As far as users are concerned, you hardware and software interface design is your product. If you are going to splurge your company's precious resources on anything, invest in the outside experts who understand and translate the science of user-friendliness. [Go online for a good story of Steve Jobs offering advice to Dean Kamen of the Segway flop fame.] The other great design success story, of course, is the elegant simplicity of Google search. Clearly, the more mass-market consumer-driven your product or service is, the more you'll need to invest in making it easy to use. [Gary note: I think this is valuable for automation companies, too. And I[base ']m beginning to see companies realize this.]
6. Base Your PR Strategy on the Principle of Attraction Rather than Promotion
Most people have heard of the "twelve-step program" made famous by the non-profit Alcoholics Anonymous to help people stop drinking. But few know about the "Twelve Traditions" that AA groups are encouraged to use as operational guidelines. The Eleventh Tradition simply states "Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion." By practicing this amazingly humble PR principle, AA has blossomed into an estimated 100,000 groups with over two million members in 150 countries since its founding in 1935.
[We] can start by controlling whether we overpromote ourselves and our companies (as Snappy People and Web 2.0 frat rats often do)-since if you don't overhype yourself, you're less likely to experience a bad market backlash or all kinds of other trouble.
[Gary note: I see way too much over-hype in press releases. Hint to marketing communications people, facts speak louder than hype[~]especially when speaking to engineers. That includes the use of meaningless [base "]buzz[per thou] words. It[base ']s amazing, especially from software companies, when you can read the first paragraph about a new product and not have a clue as to what they are really talking about.]
7. Do it for the Passion, Not the Money
Veteran venture capitalist and friend Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson has been pitched by thousands of wanna-be entrepreneurs over the last 20 years. Tim will tell you that in retrospect, the folks who came in and told him they had a "big vision" and were intent on creating products and services that were going to "change the world" were the best VC bets. "During the Bubble, we saw lots of people who showed up in designer sport coats telling us how much money they were going to make for our fund, and invariably they possessed very little authentic passion or staying-power," he explains. "When the Bubble popped, these kind of people became scarce real fast."
In my journalistic career, I have made the same observation. In 1994, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos wanted to change the way we all conduct commerce to make our lives easier, and Yahoo founders Jerry Yang and David Filo wanted to index the entire web to make it more useful for the average person, while Pierre Omidyar of eBay wanted to use the web to match formerly disconnected buyers and sellers. These guys are the real deal, and their mega-wealth was more of a side-benefit than a driving force. Sun Microsystems cofounder and power-VC Vinod Khosla once told me that his only financial goal in the beginning was to reach a point where he did not have to balance his checkbook. He also reminds other aspiring entrepreneurs that his success had as much to do with luck as with anything he did.
One of the sayings Steve Jobs is famous for is "The journey is the reward." To me, that's the bottom line. If you are not in it for the journey, then you might as well do yourself a favor and go get a real job.
With passion pray.
With passion work.
With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God.
-Rumi
Poet, jurist, and theologian. Born 1207
(Afghanistan) - died 1273 (Konya, Turkey)
Amen, Tony.
10:35:00 AM 
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