EntConnect March 29
I spent the better part of the weekend at EntConnect, a conference for entrepeneurs down in Denver. It was small (probably 30-40 people max), but interesting, as people came from all walks of life, from play publishers, to elderly private detectives, to PIC chip development tool programmers.
Going into it, I thought it would be very technical,a bunch of geeks, well, being geeks. It wasn’t. By and far, the focus was on the business side of being an entrepeneur. Which isn’t to say there weren’t a lot of geeks there, doing geeky things. But, somewhat by nature of the diversity of the group, the focus of the talks,a nd much of the focus of the adhoc discussions inbetween centered around the business issues involved with owning and running a business.
While not all of the talks proved valuable to me (I don’t really sell a product, so discussions such as how to claim R&D time as tax credits aren’t immediately relevant), I did find some really valuable tidbits:
- Am I trying to build a lifestyle company, or a wealth company? One interesting measure of this is: company value - me >= 0. In my case, no I don’t think it is, not right now anyway. But maybe I’m ok with that.
- I need to put together a clean, standard consulting contract. I head too many ugly stories of lawsuits and people not getting paid.
- Once a month, bug someone more successful than you breakfast, lunch, or dinner, their choice. This is an interesting way of having mentors, without choosing just one.
I think that’s all for now. I’m off to the components lab now, to attempt to exist in the other part of my life now.