Joe Hanko

I’m siting here revising a business plan that I’ve put hundreds of hours into over a few weeks. Consequently, I’m asking myself why.

So, what’s a plan for anyway? I guess it all depends. It can be really helpful when you’re looking for seed funding. I’ve heard that it can also be really helpful in consolidating your ideas and keeping you on target.

But it can also be really distracting and take away from your valuable time as you’re starting a venture.

I’m a huge fan of the Anti-Plan, which its more or less a rulebook that reminds you what you’re NOT going to do. It’s a short document (one or two pages) that says what things are core to your business, what your critical success factors are, your motivations, and the mistakes you need to avoid are.

In some cases, it’s more helpful than a business plan because it allows you to just start working and worry about the rest when you get to it.

You’ll hear it from plenty of self-starters, “I wasted an incredible amount of time calculating exactly when I’m going to break even, and as it turns out, I missed the mark anyway.”

Think about which is right for your venture. It’s a trade-off between time doing things and time calculating things, so maybe you’ll be able to compromise with a shortened business plan and a goals sheet. Either way, give anti-planning a try. You might be surprised by how much you get done.

@WealthOfNations

If Adam Smith had Twitter during his time, without any doubt, he’d be rolling over in his grave today. Of course China and Saudi Arabia want tighter “control” over the internet, but I wonder how far this thing will go in the continuing UN debate.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this debate, or SOPA (Stop Internet Piracy Act), today is the last day in a series of talks within the UN about an internet treaty that puts internet content under tighter and more efficient controls (in effort to stop piracy and make the internet a better place, and all that touchy-feely stuff, don’t make me cry).

One of the main issues with these controls, in my opinion, is that they leave room for the International Telecommunications Union to make limitations to the internet in the name of “progress”. I don’t want to sound overly negative, but this could be the start to a whole spectrum of discussions about how the internet needs to be made more “efficient”. Honestly, it scares me a bit.

The US and UK refused to sign the Communications Treaty in the UN - a good decision being that there needs to be more discourse in their own countries before they proceed if they choose to do so. I can’t say confidently that this won’t be SOPA all over again, but at least our leaders aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid.

Why You Should Care

Don’t care too much yet, but get informed on what the ITU does. Companies like Google don’t like this kind of thing because it could make using their products a bit more difficult and decrease their bottom line with lots of UN Police Tape. I believe that the internet should be free to govern and regulate itself, look how much we’ve done with it in the past two decades!

The most important aspect of this debate is that the UN’s member states can make decisions that affect your use of the internet. Think of all the power users there are out there, all of the companies that help make our internet a place where ideas grow uninhibited by international law. We need to make sure that this communications tool has room to grow, because we simply don’t know what sort of effect “efficiency measures” will have on the growth of this 21st century tool.

Internet Capitalism

I think there’s also some fear (not surprisingly) that the US and other countries that have neocapitalist and neo-liberal views on how the internet should operate will cause a shift in attitude of their own nations. China sure doesn’t want its people to have a preference for a more democratic methodology, wouldn’t that be scary? China is the definition of interventionist, and yes it would kill them to be more Keynsian about it.

In all seriousness, there’s a sort of manifest destiny of internet capitalism that presents an issue for more culturally conservative countries, especially those with a higher power distance index (see Hofstede). What makes me even more concerned than the internet regulations themselves is that this countries that don’t believe in the self-regulating features of the internet will break away from the pack (and there’s quite a few of them in the eastern world).

Why this concerns me? Well, it reminds me of the current debate within the EU about a two-speed or multi-speed Europe. It would cause some major disparities between countries and even within some countries that have a disproportionate income distribution. A two-speed world where some countries are limited to a very intranet-like communication model makes me wonder how we will ever fix this widely heterogeneous issue of living standard disparity. How will children maximize their potential in Africa, when the African infrastructure is increasingly funded (and influenced) by asian countries?

Think about what these limitations mean for you, but more importantly, the rest of the world.

I’m hardly qualified to be a doctor. My medical experience is limited to googling cough sounds, exploring achy symptoms on WebMD, and taking over-the-counter drugs at the prescribed intervals on the back of a labelled pop-top bottle of pills.

I’m not exactly a web-design expert either, I know enough HTML and CSS to get me in trouble, and Photoshop’s Slice tool still bugs the crap out of me (yes, it is very helpful to someone who knows what to do with all the pieces).

After renouncing these qualities as possible qualifications, I have to admit to you that I wouldn’t give myself these titles. So why has the word “entrepreneur” been awarded so loosely?

Here are four things that separate an “entrepreneur” from a creative person.

1. Application: “Entrepreneurial” has become a blanket term for creative activity. A bagel cutter that slices bagels into three layers may seem like a good idea to you, but until you’ve got a plan to active turn out John’s Bagel-o-matic 3000, you’re just another guy with an idea. Entrepreneurs make things happen!
2. Risk: Entrepreneurship involves taking risks that could turn your idea belly-up or empty your wallet. Quite a few entrepreneurs will tell you that that fear of insolvency was the one thing that kept them up nights.
3. Drive: An entrepreneur doesn’t usually have too many interests while they’re thinking up their next big thing. An idea can become a virus that completely consumes their thoughts until it comes to fruition, and a creative can often easily switch to their next activity.
4. Resourcefulness: You’ll be surprised how often an entrepreneur doesn’t have resources - but they can almost always tell you where they’ll get them. Whether its capital, knowledge, or skill that they need, an entrepreneur has a gut feeling they can make it work.

You’ll find that the word “creative” is often substituted for the word ”entrepreneur” because it’s quite de rigueur. Remember these four things and you might see the difference too!