Agile Racecar: Software, Magic, and Life

Your Conscience is Your Compiler! The following is the exact transcript of an IM chat about "Conscience" I had with a friend: Friend: I follow my instincts. Me: Animals follow instincts - humans follow their conscience. It's the only God I know. Your conscience always tells you what's right or wrong. Friend: No murali, I disagree. How do you define what's right? Me: Your conscience tells you- always. If you do something you believe is wrong, you'll feel guilty. If you don't believe it's wrong, you won't feel guilty Friend: Yeah, but why do you do things? Me: Because we are human. Friend: No, it's because we want to survive. Me: It takes a lot of character to always obey your conscience, a lot of strength.We survive either way. But if you and your conscience are on good terms, you have unshakeable self-belief. Friend: Yeah Me: And you'll care about little things like pride, self-respect, principles, character, reputati...

... continued from "Milk Money for Meebo.com" I’d put the percentage equity that the VCs took for their $3.5 million at Meebo at a lot closer to 20% pre-money given how hot Meebo was (again, based on all the buzz about them on Sand Hill Road). Still, let’s assume 25% pre-money . That makes the pre-money valuation of the company 3.5 * 4 = $14M. In other words, Sequoia put in $3.5 million and got 25% of Meebo, putting the company’s value at $14M pre-money. After the investment, Meebo’s post-money valuation is $17.5M (i.e. 14 + 3.5, the value of the company + the cash). That means, Sequoia now owns 20% of Meebo, post-money. Like I said, that’s about the minimum any self-respecting VC firm in the Valley would like to hold in a startup after Series-A financing. And Sequoia is right up there with Kleiner-Perkins at the top of the VC hierarchy in the Valley. --- Note that at the other extreme of 40% post-money, Meebo’s post-money valuation $8.75M. That puts the pre-money ...

The Agile entrepreneur has a choice all too common these days. Implement it yourself. Or hire smart people for equity only- easier to do in the Silicon Valley than anywhere else (it's amazing what a single ad in Craigslist can do). Or pay young, super-smart programmers in India for a fraction of your monthly salary- you may not be able to afford it for a whole year, but we're talking about 3 weeks (i.e. iterations) here at a time. Regardless of the approach, practically every software entrepreneur in the US now has the ability to incrementally implement the features defined by the customer(s) , one iteration at a time. And get valuable feedback. And sooner or later, you'll have a paying customer as long as you stay true to the principles of Agile- "The Customer Is Always Right At The Beginning Of Each Iteration" (apologies to Sam Walton and Kent Beck:). Alternately, the customer(s) might realize soon enough and declare that the product doesn't have as mu...

Ok, so you've all heard zillions of quotes on success- and how to achieve it. Here's my take on it- that takes all extraneous factors and mind-games out of it, and puts the responsibility for success squarely on *your* shoulders: You can Choose to have an Excellent Reason for Failure; or You can Choose to Succeed It all depends on how much you want to succeed!

Here’s something that I highly recommend y’all read: “ milk money …” - parts I, II, & III It’s an amazingly detailed and honest account of the fund-raising process from someone who raised the money just over a month ago - in December 2005! One thing that’s not mentioned in the story is the amount raised from Sequoia. I know it’s $3.5 million- straight from the horse’s mouth. So let’s do the numbers . $3.5M in Series ‘A’ means anywhere between 20% to 40 % stake was given away, based on how much leverage each party had. Note that regardless of leverage, any experienced VC will typically want to own *not more than* 40% and *not less than* 20%, “post-money”. [VCs taking more than 40% drastically reduces the founders’ feeling of ownership and thus, their incentive to succeed. Taking less than 20% would mean the VCs will spend very little time or effort on this company- instead choosing to focus on the other companies in their portfolio where they have a greater “interest”.] ... continue...

Too often wannabe entrepreneurs fade out because they do not have the resources to put their ideas to the test. They may be able to talk to a customer or two, but there they often reach a dead end when the customer asks for a prototype or demo. It costs money - and takes time - to build one. And most aspiring entrepreneurs don't have a lot of money- or not enough - at least that's what they think. If you're an aspiring software entrepreneur, without an infinite capacity for risk, your prayers have just been answered. Imagine this scenario. The entrepreneur uses an online (web-based) agile project management tool to define the requirements. He then meets with potential customers, gets their feedback and refines the requirements, and prioritizes the features. Next the entrepreneur defines a short Release that contains the bare minimum functionality needed to "validate the business model". In plain English, this means that there's a customer out there who...

Mark my words, it is going to start happening within a year. I can see it in my Crystal Ball :) And remember, you read about it here first- Friday, Jan 27, 2006! Agile methodology, XP, and Hosted Agile Project Management tools (like Rally) are poised to take software entpreneurship and offshore outsourcing to the next level. India is finally going to shake off it's mentality of servitude and take major steps towards fostering Silicon Valley style innovation. How? Agile/XP approach of rapid, iterative development with customer feedback at its core is screaming from rooftops with a megaphone for very very v... early stage startups and budding software entrepreneurs to notice it. It's a marriage made in heaven! I can't think of a more natural fit of a solution to a problem. Agile development is for software entrepreneurs what lithium is for bipolar disorder (ok, so I guess the analogy proves that I can actually think of a more natural fit). ... contd. in "Ag...

UPDATE: Feb 2010: I wrote the following in Jan 2006 before I had enough exposure to User Stories and before I got stuck in the quagmire that Rally - at least in that version - turned out to be. I stopped using it a month later. The problem was ironically the same problem Agile development evolved to solve- Rally itself was over-engineered, tried to do much and did the simple & important things not well enough-- if at all. To make matters worse, it was very slow and highly cumbersome to input info into- these were the early days of Web 2.0 and Rally seemed to be going overboard with use of AJAX. I've heard good things about Rally again lately but haven't validated it for myself. I'll do a separate blog post on this topic when I do. I'm smitten by the Agile software development methodology. It's not as if I've heard about it only today, but now I have a tool that can (I believe) help me manage the CommuterStation product development in India more effectivel...