Tenders not included

Keeping an eye on the blogosphere over the last couple of months has introduced me to a world of important thinkers that share my interests. Two themes that constantly pop-up and resonate with me are the importance of doing work that matters, and becoming good at something. These two themes are obviously interlinked, and I’m sure as many entrepreneurs can attest that doing important work requires becoming a real expert in some discipline.

When I say important work it is a subjective term and refers to doing work that matters to YOU more than money. Now this is something that requires a lot of courage (as explained by Richard Hamming) to do and can be nicely encapsulated as a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

• Microsoft: “A computer on every desk and in every home”
• Google: “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”

This should become you raison d’être, and something that you aim to spend the most of your time doing. Obviously you need to reconcile this with your life constraints, most commonly paying the mortgage and feeding the kids and you probably won’t able to spend most of your time it initially, but you need to progress to it being the bulk of your business day.

Being good at something is normally a side product of striving for your goal and will not only make you sought after (if you let the world know about your success) but also increase the rate at which you progress to you goal.

These are now my founding principles and here is my Audacious Goal -

• Webeyed: “allow social connections to put ‘their money where their mouth is’ about events”

Pretty hairy - I’ll let you know how it goes?

My company is a tenant at a small business incubator thats getting off the ground a startup in a startup -very fabergé). I was recently asked in a strategy session for the incubator about my motivations for getting into business. It’s a question that stuck with me based on the variety of responses that were given by other companies in the incubator.

The majority of responses (okay mine particularly)was scattered and incoherent. The major reason for our collective fuzziness is not because we don’t know why we got into business, or that we are terrible communicators (although I suppose this is a contributor), but rather that, well frankly …our motivations are our own. My take on motivation is that there are two kinds private and the public. The private kind is what you really think, your personal vision of success. And the public kind is what youconvey in taglines and put on business plans, websites what you say when you’re explaining your business to interested parties (i love that phrase) or when you’re bluntly asked… without any ceremony may i add … “what is you motivation” in a strategy session. Now I don’t mean to say that we are all always lying, because oft times these two motivations are identical or fairly similar but other times these motivations are like the night and day, fire and ice, zille and zuma.-

The reasons for having private and public motivations depend on the situation but can be quite varied including:

• money - hansie (the devil made me do it)
• just plain evil - ala dick cheney(friend shooting - he never laughs at my jokes)
• stupidity - george bush (i’m just reading what’s on the paper)
• drunkness - of course i ‘ll call you tomorrow
• horniness - but i love you babes
• embarrasment - your actual motivation is too bizarre to share

Here are a few anecdotes and senarios that I’d like to share which will explain why it is justifiable and sometimes imperative that you have two sets of motivations.

• You’re seventeen and pick up your date at her house when her mother/father/parent asks you…”so what are your intentions toward my daughter”, which is a another guise for “what is you motivation for taking my daughter out”. The public response is awkward and involves words like “nice, church, get to know, girlfriend”, while your private response is “i’m seventeen dude”, and involves sex or a least some “heavy petting” (who invented that phrase?)
• George Bush on the Iraq invasion before it started. “They have WMD”…”It’s a pre-emptive strike”(my fav). When the actual motivation will never be known although i suspect it’s a faction fight dating back to the mid-1600’s, or a squabble over child support
• You’re in a job interview and a panel member( normally the annoyingly cheerful, but earnest HR representative) asks you the proverbial - “so why should we hire you for this job”. And you say things about putting your skills to good use , effort level (110%),  depth of your experience and what the hiring company means to you. You don’t tell them about the Nigerian gentleman in downtown Johannesburg who would like the money that you owe him…for the week longer bender that cost you your last job.
• Cigarette companies stance before 1990’s - “there is no conclusive proof that smoking causes cancer”.

The point of this post (yes there is one) is firstly that for starting a company the private and public motivations should not be too dissimilar, and the secondly the public motivation should be practiced and top of mind (this is your consultant speaking).

If i was too tell you that my main motivation for getting into business was that i ultimately wanted to take over the world like a true bond villian. That I have a recurring dream, that goes as follows….

The scene - South african parliament. The minister of finance is reciting his budget…” And defense will be given an  additional R 200 billion to offset the escalating internationally payable maintenance costs for those weapons we never use.” And the gallery sounds their approval. The minister acknowledges their approval  and continues. “Peter Ogle will be given an additional R 700 trillion”. The gallery erupts from the benches in an uproar, where the following phrases can be heard “Not again”, “I thought we were done”, “Why”. And from above the  furor the head of the opposition voices the sense of reason, with a sigh of inevitability - “But we really do need him”.

Now if i were to tell you that that would you give me any any finance, business etc…I don’t think so, you probably have me on the first train to the redroof in Pietermaritzburg.

Below is a brief public motivation, in priority order, of why i’ve got into business.

• Anti-job -Prevent barrynose (to be explained in a later post)
• Usefulness - Create tools (internet software) that is used by people - it improves their lives, makes their business more productive etc.
• Excellence - Create tools that are recognizedby my peers for their awesomeness
• Money - Create a sustainable company that rakes in the dough
• Culture - Create a place that employees want to come too everyday, and gives them a sense of allisrightwiththeuniverseness (like people who shop at hilton weiner)

There are some private additions to the list and they are just that…private .

Okay, so I quit my job about 6 months ago and have been in stealth mode of my startup business since then. And the biggest lesson i’ve learnt so far…Stealth mode should have been done while I was still employed. Seriously there is tons of preparation that I should have done before I left the corporate realm.

Okay I’m getting ahead of myself with the lessons learnt schpeel…lets stick to the blog title. I was supposed to start this blog at the beginning of this journey but I was so eager I just started stepping( one foot infront of the other) with a sketch for a map, just striving for forward momentum, that the blog introspection never really took. But now that I’m crawling I decided to stand up (this metaphor has gone to far) and step more methodically. This blog is my pledge to do just that…look a bit more carefully before I leap. So lets start at the beginning by resurrecting what was supposed to be my first post:

3.30am - 17 October 2008

Okay its 3:30 in morning and brain refuses to switch off. I’m 2 weeks into my 4 week notice period, don’t yet have another income source so maybe I’m a little stressed, anxious, fucked…whatever. No, I wasn’t fired it was a voluntary move, actual dare I say, I think my employers quite like me (some of hem anyway…i think…okay one). Why? Well the reason for resignation comes down to a couple of factors, firstly I have kids and the prospect of raising ( hell - I’d hardly know hem) them in Johannesburg doesn’t really match up to the Cosby-like (I’m a child of the previous millennium- what can I say) vision of family life I had for my family. Secondly I’ve been bitten once again by the entrepreneurial bug that bit me after varsity and this time I think I can make it work. Thirdly I’ve recently turned 30 and that’s a kak age at which to have no real money, and maybe midlife crisis’ are coming earlier because of the hyper-accelerated 21^st century live we’re all now living in. Fourthly and probably most importantly (or at least for the sake of decent storyline for this blog genesis) its barrynose, cryptic I know but my own personal euphemism on the pitfalls of corporate life (which I saw myself becoming accustomed too). Now this diatribe is no judgment (maybe a small one) on barry, I just don’t see that life for me. So essentially I want to prevent petersnose. I will illuminate on the full meaning of barrynose because I think it warrants its own post when I am far enough from barry not to feel overly guilty.

This is blog is mostly gonna be about starting and hopefully running a successful software business in South Africa, but apart from that i’m going to write about politics - ZUMA(love him, hope he annexes Swaziland), sport - SHARKS. Okay to paraphrase the wisest man to die in an apartheid jail cell – “I’m going write what I like.” – and hope like hell the Zuma Government is not as sen-a-tive as the Nats circa 1960 <check>.  The main tone of these posts will be dripping sarcasm with an over-arching theme of social satire, and if I offend any readers (move to Swaziland…no really I’m not joking). I will sometimes, but if you are re-pulsed then you have a pulse so rejoice – yah you survived FranenMantu, and Nqakula. I really want David Bullard and Stanley Bing, to stand-up and say –“Damn that blogger is sarcastic”, I want to put a smile on Patricia De Lille face (if you see it happen send pictures - I wanna make t-shirts).

For sake of transparency let me also say, that this ain’t no coincidence, this blog has also just now morphed into my first entrepreneurial experiment at micro-publishing. So I’m gonna get Google Adsense, and hustle other ads if I can. So click on the ads for fucksake readers…cos’ baby needs new shoes, and your 10c might be the only cash I see in a while.