Project On hold

I have my eye on other things right now. I am putting this effort on hold for now. I should let Brian know.

Getting out of my own way

• Manage your own execution like you would manage a subordinate.  Your body works for your mind and needs to manage the body to do what the mind wants.  Explore more why this is useful.  This gets rid of the need to feel your way into something.  Sometimes I don't feel like doing something but I work for my rational side not my feeling side.  Too often my feeling side takes precedence and that does not work out for me in terms of how I am spending my time.

Lessons from Braintree...hard to disagree

Aside from the strategic considerations specific to the payments industry, I wanted principles to build upon that were colored by my life experience. I settled on three: 1) we’d be the preferred payments platform by engineers; 2) team members would say that Braintree was the best company they’d ever worked for; and 3) our customers would write us love letters. I made these three objectives the heart and soul of the company and we built everything else on top of them.

Financial Models

http://www.kpcb.com/blog/how-to-craft-a-concise-pitch-investors-will-care-aboutHere is a great resource I found on the web showing different models:
http://www.exinfm.com/free_spreadsheets.html

Here is a great article giving an overview of what you want to accomplish and the critical moving pieces:  http://teten.com/blog/2011/11/09/startup-financial-models-best-practices-in-spreadsheet-design/

I have found some great resources on Financial Models and have started to modify them.  This will be good background for working with Brian. I could easily go into analysis paralysis mode but have started with Teten model and it is working out okay.  So far so good.

Here are some random links that I want to take a look at later and so I want to document them for now:

• Equity:  https://foresight.is/learn/employee-equity
• Mistakes raising money: http://blog.samaltman.com/fundraising-mistakes-founder-make
• y-Compinator Funding:  http://paulgraham.com/fr.html
• Funding Pitch: http://www.kpcb.com/blog/how-to-craft-a-concise-pitch-investors-will-care-about
• Pitch Decks: http://nextviewventures.com/blog/free-startup-pitch-decks-template/
• http://venturehacks.com/articles/deck
• Financial Model Information:
• http://www.seedstagecapital.com/2011/01/your-startup-financial-model-is-work-of.html
• http://www.starterfinancialmodel.com/
• http://guykawasaki.com/glenn-kelmans-f/
• https://foresight.is/standard-financial-model
• Financial Metrics:
• http://tomtunguz.com/ten-financial-metrics/
• http://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/
• Employee Options
• http://teten.com/blog/2011/11/17/valuing-startup-employee-options/

Other resources that could be useful:

https://davidcummings.org/category/entrepreneurship/

Getting started on Travella LLC or whatever it turns into

I have an idea of the business that fits my personality and would be an opportunity for me to contribute to this life I was born into.  I have an idea of who I would like to go into business with and the world is my oyster.

I want to keep track of my insights and realizations here.

I am looking forward to working with Brian Butler as we move forward together.  The current approach is to start in Tahoe CA and then expand from there.  We want to be very owner centric.  We have some innovations and ideas that would allow us to do that at least as well as Turnkey and certainly better than Vacasa and besides other local competition, they will be our biggest competitors.

I am looking forward to the challenge.  I have read through some descriptions of my personality: ENTJ. I find it very useful to look at that type of information because it reminds me of the best of my personality.  Sometimes, we get caught up in dysfunction and lose our strengths.  Sometimes the expression of those strengths is at the mercy of our weaknesses too.  Never fun.

Maximizing energy is an important thing to pay attention to.