I was reading a very sad, frank, and wise notice from Russell Beattie about the death of Mowser, his mobile browser project. I know, and you know, that most startups die young, the ones that don't mostly become zombies living on consulting, and the small remaining percentage are bought for peanuts by larger companies lusting after their IP and management team.

But it is still sad.

And before anyone misconstrues anything I am about to say, I've been there, so I am very sympathetic.

The Aftermath

I think Russell can say it better than I can:

Seriously... A salary will be a good thing to have again. I'm *thousands* of dollars in debt to my family and friends, maxed out on every credit card (all of which are in collections), on my last chance for my apartment (if I bounce one more check...), had my car repossessed *twice*, electricity turned off, cellphones switched off, landline canceled outright, and on more than one occasion (this weekend in particular) eaten little more than buttered macaroni as I waited for an overdue PayPal deposit to arrive (3-4 days? Come on!). Having a steady income will be a welcome mental break, believe me.

So, here's the thing, did he make a mistake or, even in hindsight, was this the right way to fund his company?

VC or Credit Card Debt

Well, that's the question, unless you're Guy and have been rich and famous for so long you forget why.

There is no answer. I know that's all very Yoda, but there it is.

The Third Way

Jeff Bezos is supposed to have sat down and gone through all the different items that could plausibly be purchased via the internet (pet food: no) and settled on books.

My last startup we went though a host of things we could startup that had serious FY money potential and that could be started while we were still consulting and earning our basic dough.

You see, we'd both done it the VC way and the credit card way and, since we didn't like the outcome of either, we went for the third way.

India

If I wanted to start a company without going into debt and without selling my soul to a VC, I'd go live in India and insource my project. 

A good mid-level manager who was willing to move to India could easily make $50K USD, which is the equivalent of $400K in SFO.

Take your partner with you, share an inexpensive room. You now have $70K to play with to hire technical people.

Which, in the good old US of A might get you a semi-palatable Flash programmer, but in India one can get a very good technical programmer for $15K.

Bootstrap four or five good programmers and be there to supervise them.

Plus, should things go badly, as they likely will, you now have an impressive resume to take home to the US.

You can rinse and repeat this process in China or Vietnam if you like, but I prefer curry to eel.

Keep A Stiff Upper Lip

Personal advice to Russell and everyone else swimming in the dead pool - it's all very survivable, and likely you'll take another run at the brass ring. I did, and I believe you can catch it if you work hard enough.

I am not a big fan of "top 10" lists because my teeny tiny dinosaur brain can only remember two or three of the points, which makes me feel like I'm treading water watching eveyone else evolve their way ashore and I've left my proto-feet behind somewhere. But someone recently sent me this ancient (1994 era) email that had Bonnie McElveen-Hunter's:

The Ten Commandments For Failure

• Thou Shalt Have Little Faith
• Thou Shalt Pick Thy Partners with Wanton Abandon
• Thou Shalt Make the Quick Buck
• Thou Shalt Have No Enthusiasm
• Thou Shalt Seek Easy Street
• Thou Shalt Do It Alone
• Thou Shalt Not Be Accountable
• Thou Shalt Have No Sense of Humor
• Thou Shalt Give Nothing Back
• Thou Shalt Believe Failure is Final

Wow, there is a lot in there, but let me divide this into three piles and then I'll pick the three that I need to remind myself to remember!

No Brainers for Business Success

I think that a few of these jump out at me as being really important and obvious:

• Thou Shalt Hav No Sense of Humor
• Thou Shalt Believe Failure is Final
• Thou Shalt Not Be Accountable
• Thou Shalt Do It Alone

Anyone out there who is overly serious, self-important, arrogant, and the Lone Ranger? You are so headed for a fall. I know guys like Steve Jobs like to be the famous front man, but it's not like he's actually designed or built or programmed anything that was famous. Sure, he makes decisions and micromanges and drives people to nervous breakdowns, wait, dang, don't work for him - it's a trap!

An Embarassment of Riches

But some of these are things that most startups have too much of, not a dearth:

• Thou Shalt Have Little Faith
• Thou Shalt Have No Enthusiasm
• Thou Shalt Make the Quick Buck

Have you ever seen a zombie startup that is running on denial, manic positivism and leaping from the last big thing to the next big thing? Uh, huh, you sure have and so have I. It's hard to write off your dream, but sometimes you just have to move on.

Remember these Three Rules for Success

I liked these a lot, not because I don't "know" it already, but because it's good to be reminded of important ideals in a new way:

• Thou Shalt Pick Thy Partners with Wanton Abandon
• Thou Shalt Give Nothing Back
• Thou Shalt Seek Easy Street

Now these, these are good.

When you're decideing on people to hire or companies to partner up with, take a deep breath, You've got to live with those people for a long time. Read our A Managers Hire A People article - it distills down 40 years of hiring experience in high tech.

And when things are going well you need to help someone else prime the pump. Take on an intern, pick an office charity, free your people up to do service work.

Finally, if what you're doing seems easy, well, you're probably about to step into an open manhole cover. Time to do some risk management!

Today's article at Bruce Clay was about avoiding a PR nightmare. He rightly suggests that the easiest way is to be smart and not get into one in the first place, which is easy advice, but then he knocks one out of the park by giving a 1-2 punch to the most human of impulses, retaliation:

1. Refrain from personal attacks. At all costs. There are no exceptions.
2. Refrain from responding to personal attacks. At all costs. There are no exceptions.

Not content to summarize a Dali Lamaesque ("We are not anti-China, we are pro-Tibet" - how clean is that?) truth clearly, he goes on to give you a good physical marker you can use to guide yourself:

As a general rule, if your hands are shaking after you have finished typing out your five page rebuttal to their argument, DO NOT PRESS PUBLISH.

Perfect.

Politics

Not the politics of the personal, which is what the above is all about, but the politics of, er, politics. For example, I was using Brian Schaler's Digg Status tool and got an interesting error message.

I'm not sure if he's kidding about how people complain about Bush on Digg or is encouraging people to complain about Bush on Digg.

It doesn't matter, but the possibility of offending a large number of people is certainly present.

Around here we have the usual mix of big-L and little-l libertarians, democrats, liberals, conservatives, and republicans. I think we even have a communist and an economist. But our ironclad rule is:

1. No politics while you're representing the company

If a client brings up politics we are polite (no matter how much we agree or thing he's crazy) and move right along.

I have an English friend (nu-Labor if you follow that stuff) who finds American's willingness to talk politics at work with customers appalling. I think I agree with him.