Archive for the ‘ entrepreneurship ’ Category

Strange Truths about the Last Two Years at Photrade.com

A week or so ago, our VP of Marketing came over and asked me for help. We were getting ready for our launch party to celebrate the launch of photrade.com‘s new beta… she came over and this was our conversation.

krista: Andrew, I just got a call from the guys who are leasing us our space for the launch party.

me: so?

krista: They called to tell me that they demolished the location.

me: WHAT?!?!?

krista: Apparently they were planning on renovating and somehow the message didn’t get through from the guy who promised it to us.

me: So what are they going to do about it?

krista: well they offered us a place a few blocks away instead but… it doesn’t have electricity or toilets.
Suffice to say, we spent the next couple of hours figuring out an alternative to that… but the incident got me thinking about all of the crazy things that have happened with our startup over the last two years. So here’s the beginning of my list, it’s going to be a work in progress…

1. my co-founder, Dan, was hit by lightning while programming our Alpha. I found out that he was in the hospital and couldn’t really see. After somewhere around 18 hours his vision came back. Apparently programming during a lightning storm is not a good idea.

2. Our launch party location was demolished as covered above

3. hmm ok maybe there aren’t as many as I thought. Will get back to this list in a few

Staying up past my bedtime to make financial models of things that will probably never happen

I love making financial models of potential futures. The irony is that I’m trying to model a company that doesn’t exist yet – is just a vision – and a figment of one’s imagination. After a solid 100+ input boxes, I’m ready to see what the model will churn out. The result may or may not look good – but not to worry, I can always tweak it.

Tweaking – this is the art of changing the variables in subtle ways to go from a bad outcome to a positive one.

Almost done and I’ll see the first incoherent babble in the form of a 5 year revenue forecast. The reality of the model is that its a good tool to help give me some kind of false security about the future, when after all, no one really knows, it’s all just guess work.