Platitudes & Wisdom

Scott Tolksdorf

  • UW & Velocity
  • Co-founder of Smile.io
    (formly Sweettooth)
  • Freelanced (MappedIn, DraftingSpace, Linkett...)
  • Currently at Thamic, Rapid Prototyping team

Fun facts

  • Have over 150 Open source projects
  • Written core code for jQuery
  • Had one of my prototypes demo'd to the richest man in the world.

History

Platitudes And

Wisdom

Platitudes

  • Fail fast
  • Build the right thing, then build it right
  • A founding team is like a family
  • Last 20% takes 80% of the time
  • Only hire employees who love your company
  • Focus on your "AIMUs"
    (an Acronym I Made Up)
  • Don’t try to stick square pegs in round holes
  • Don't Imitate, Innovate
  • Market, team, product.
  • Make Something that Makes a Difference

You've probably heard a lot of these.

Good Culture

Right Market

80/20

Have a Good Culture

Really easy to do early on

Only crazy people want to work at startups

Where we fucked up:

Nepotism, Management Rot, & Blackberry 

Loss of culture isn't a conscious decision

it's a slow burn

Find the right Market

"Market, team, product, in that order"

TBH, Myo just a cool piece of tech

Interest

Money

Publicity

Potential Markets

  • Military & Medical
  • Hackers & Creators
  • Business Professionals

Where we fucked up:

We chose a market that didn't need our product

Last 20% Takes 80% Time

Where we fucked up:
Humans are hard

It's really easy to make a demo/prototype

Very difficult to make a polished product

Every additional percentage of accuracy took exponentially more effort then the last 

In Conclusion

you hear these things,

but it's hard to know these things

Thanks

Questions?

Doesn't have to be about the talk.

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