"Yep," I said. "Like Hold'em Manager but Hold'em Manager is for Windows only whereas Poker Copilot is for Mac."

Oliver described how he once installed Hold'em Manager and it imported his hands. "It told me I was playing like crap so I uninstalled it."

I'll file this under "Don't Shoot the Messenger".

Want to know the single biggest problem with every single GTD system in existence? They don’t enforce specificity when defining a task. Tasks, (unlike checklists which can be semantically reduced to a single word  - “milk”), require, demand, beg for as much specificity as you can muster.

What catches most people, most of the time, is that our To Do lists are a mix of things we’ve done countless times before and already know how to do because we’ve internalized their details, and things we’ve never done before.

• clean house.
• take out garbage cans.
• add Twilio to mySuperDuperWebApp.
• SuperBowl prep.

We hit Item 3 like a mountain bike hitting a tree as high speed. Thud. Item 3 is like just about every single one of hundreds of startup tasks – is not something we’ve done before. We need to query it and break it down into things we do have experience with:

• clean house.
• take out garbage cans.
• add Twilio to mySuperDuperWebApp by
  1. Reread Twilio API,
  2. Review Twilio Rails examples:
  3. Review this Rails example:
  4. Check StackOverflow for questions tagged with ruby-on-rails or ruby-on-rails3 and Twilio.
  5. Setup a testbed app
  6. …
• SuperBowl prep.

Whether you do that breakdown into things you do know how to do when you make your list or when you’re doing your list is up to you. But you’ll find the process easier if you mark those items (I use !!!) when you’re creating your tasks – to remind you that here there be dragons.

You’re reading If you want productivity, you need specificity from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

The Russian translation of Poker Copilot is now complete:

You can download an unofficial update of Poker Copilot now with the following recent improvements:

• Russian translation
• Other translations updated
• Optionally ignore old hand history files
• 2+2 forums hand formatter
• Rake info in the Advanced Dashboard
• Some bugs fixed in Ongame Network support
• Improvement in the HUD popup panel appearance
• Extra row of HUD stats

Here is the download: http://pokercopilot.com/downloads/pokercopilot2.102_rc15.dmg

Or you can wait a couple of days at the most for the official release of Poker Copilot 3.

Photo by psiaki

Why I Bought My Next Startup (Instead of Building It)
This is part 2 in a series covering my acquisition of HitTail; part 1 went to the top of Hacker News last week and I have a slew of questions from that discussion that I will answer next week.

But first I want to address the most common question I hear when I tell someone I acquired a startup:

Why did you buy instead of building?

If you’re a developer you’re probably scratching your head wondering how I could pass up the chance to do the awesome green field development. A new project with no legacy baggage…this is the stuff we live for!

But I did indeed opt to plunk down my hard earned cash instead of hunkering down for 6 months in my dev cave, and what follows are my reasons for doing so.

Reason #1: Saved 12-18 months
I have a little theory that a v1.0 should take 4-6 months from inception to launch. This includes time for marketing (which should start before you write a line of code), planning, development, launch, etc…

And if you have the luxury of working on it full-time then by all means you should get it out the door faster. Almost without exception, the sooner you get in front of real customers the better off you’ll be.

But in general, this is “Rob’s Theory of Time to 1.0″: 4-6 months, 300-600 hours.

But there’s another time frame, and I call it the “time to flywheel.”

A flywheel is a large, heavy wheel that requires an incredible amount of effort to get moving, but once it’s moving it can continue to do so under its own momentum for quite some time, without additional effort. The time it takes to get your business to “flywheel” will vary, but I’ve found that it’s typically 6-12 months after launch.

“Time to flywheel” is not profitability, but an app is typically on a rapid trajectory towards profitability when it hits.

It’s also after you’ve confirmed you’ve built something people need and are willing to pay money for, and have found your market (some would say product-market fit). You’ll also have some marketing channels that are bringing in new customers for less than they pay you during their time as a customer.

This is the point where you have a bit more work to do in order to scale, and when smart founders who are interested in funding begin to seek it out. My typical estimate when asked how long it takes to get there is 12-18 months. Some companies can pull it off in 9, for others it takes 24 if they are ever able to achieve it.

But the sweet spot is around 12-18 months.

Getting to “flywheel” is a slog. It’s painful (and yet also exhilarating). And frankly, I’m not a patient person when it comes to growing a business.

Given the hourly rate at which I value my time, and the value I place on 12-18 months of effort, buying an application like HitTail is a ridiculous bargain. It may be the best deal I receive on anything I buy during the next year.

Reason #2: It Has “Good Bones”
There’s something to be said for acquiring an app that’s already worked out the v1.0 kinks. HitTail has been around since 2006, and although some of the software architecture and code structure leaves something to be desired, a lot of bugs were ironed out in the early days.

Any problems that existed when I took it over had crept in over time due to changing APIs, lack of maintenance, and failed hardware.

In general, the code had been purring away for 3 years without intervention, and that indicated one thing to me: this thing had good bones.

“Good bones” is an expression realtors use about a house to indicate that the major systems like plumbing and electrical are solid, but that the house may need cosmetic upgrades like new paint and flooring. It means the house is pretty solid as it stands, and that with a bit of effort it could be more attractive and more valuable.

It’s an expression I would apply to HitTail, and one of the reasons I decided to acquire it.

Reason #3: Dramatically Reduced Market Risk
When you set out to build and launch a product there are three types of risk: product, market and execution.

• Product risk looks at whether or not you’ll be able to build the product. These days, most web apps we see have only a small amount of product risk.
• Market risk looks at whether there will be people willing to buy your product if you build it. This is the risk factor I encourage founders to look at the most, especially before they write a line of code. Market risk is the deadliest of the three because if you build something for which there is no market, it’s nearly impossible to adjust course later and fix it.
• Execution risk is whether you can pull off the whole package. Can you bring everything together, build and launch the product, and get it in front of the right prospects?

Given these, market risk is the one that scares me the most. Every time.

I have confidence in my ability to execute, but anything I can do to reduce market risk early is a no-brainer. Buying an app with paying customers is one of the best ways to ensure you have something people will pay for.

Reason #4: Better than Outsourcing
I talk a lot about outsourcing. Last year I paid $100 or more to at least 15 contractors ranging from developers to an infographic designer. And I’m a firm believe that you must learn to outsource or hire employees if you want to grow a business.

But I would take a completed product over a spec every time.

Outsourcing works, but avoiding the possibility of hiring a crappy developer, building the wrong feature set, and the enormous amount of time you need to invest to manage a development project is typically well worth the purchase price.

Counter-Reason #1: “If you buy, you’re not a real founder!”
This is from my internal monologue that attempted to talk me out of the acquisition.

At one point I actually stopped to wonder what people would think of the fact that I didn’t build HitTail myself from the ground up.

Are you a real technical founder if you don’t write every single line of code for your v1? Or at least oversee every single line of code as it’s being written by your team?

I’ve built and launched apps from the ground up in the past. Am I still a real founder if I skip it this time?

The conclusion I came to is that it doesn’t matter.

Growing HitTail into a more profitable business is the next phase of my learning (and the next test of my chops). Both personally and career-wise it’s the right decision.

Everything else is semantics.

Conclusion
If you’re interested in hearing more about due diligence, which things I attacked first after the acquisition, thoughts on valuation methods, and answers to other questions from the Hacker News discussion, stick around for part 3.

I'm an idiot. Not all of the time, mind you, not even most of the time, but every now and then, I'm an idiot. Like the time my friend and co-founder Brian Halligan asked me to read the book “Moneyball”. This was back when we had first launched our startup, HubSpot. “But, I'm not a baseball guy,” I said. “It's not about baseball. It's about data.” And, I put it on my reading list, and then still failed to read it. I even bought the book, but still failed to read it That was a mistake. 

I just got done watching the movie “Moneyball” for the second time. The first time I watched it was last night. It's the only time I've watched the same movie twice in two days. It's not just because it was a great movie (it was), but because I felt I missed so much the first time, that I had to watch it a second. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you should stop reading this article and go watch it. If you get distracted and never make it back to this article, I forgive you.

So, without further ado, here are some great quotes from Moneyball

Brilliant Startup Lessons From Moneyball

1. He passes the eye candy test. He's got the looks, he's great at playing the part.

Spectacular startup success often becomes a game about scouting and recruiting. A common mistake entrepreneurs make is recruiting team members early on simply because they look the part. In the long run, it doesn't matter if on paper, someone's perfect. You want people that can actually do the job. That VP of Sales candidate that has 15 years of experience at Oracle? Likely not worth it for you. They'll look the part, but they're not guaranteed to be able to actually do the job. And, like Johnny Damon, they're going to be expensive. Get good at seeing talent where others don't.

For example, at HubSpot, most of the early team did not look good on paper at all.  Most of us had little or no prior background doing what we were setting out to do.  

2. You're not solving the problem. You're not even looking at the problem.

Identify a fundamental problem and then focus, focus, focus on solving that problem. Don't get distracted by all the the things that are swirling around the actual problem. Don't listen too closely to those that have deep industry expertise and are emotionally attached to the status quo — it's possible that they're part of the problem. Figure out what the actual issue is, and solve it.

For example, look at Dropbox.  Drew set out to solve a really hard problem -- getting data to synch across different devices.  He had many people (including me) that were telling him that this particular idea had been pursued so many times before.  He didn't get distracted by all that noise.  He dug in and fixed the problem.  Today, Dropbox is valued at billions of dollars and has millions of happy users.

3. We've got to think differently.

Reminds me of Apple. Only, Steve Jobs wrote it as ”think different” (intentionally going with the grammatically incorrect version because it “sounded better”).  Like the Oakland As, your startup too is working under constraints.  Often, big constraints.  Often, unfair constraints.  If you're trying to disrupt the status quo and beat competitors that are much bigger and better funded, you're not going to do it by playing their game.  You'll need to think differently.  Playing the old way when you're at a disadvantage is a sure-fire way to lose.

This is one that I'm personally very passionate about.  When we started HubSpot, everything we had learned about startups -- and the convention wisdom was "do one thing, and do it very, very well."  Generally, that's really, really good advice.  Except when it's not.  Like in our case.  The problem we saw was not that there weren't great marketing apps out there -- the problem was that none of it was integrated or worked well together.  So, we thought different.  We decided to do the crazy, crazy thing of doing it all.  Why?  Because that's what we believed the problem was.

4. First job in baseball? It's my first job anywhere.

Experience is often over-rated. Some of the most successful startup teams consisted of people that lacked relevant experience at the time they joined. But, what they lacked in experience, they more than made up for in sheer talent and hunger. In the early days, hire athletes. People with raw talent and a propensity to get things done. Don't be resistent to recruiting people that are early in their careers.  You're looking for arbitrage opportunities.  You're looking for the future stars -- because you likely can't afford or convince the current stars.  

5. Your goal shouldn't be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins.

I'm going to illustrate this point with a quick paraphrasing with a conversation I had with an entrepreneur last year. It went roughly like this:

Me: What do you need?

Them: We need to build a management team.

Me: No, what do you actually need right now?

Them: Well, right now we need a VP Engineering.

Me. What for?

Them: Well, we need head up our product development effort.

Me. No, you actually need to write code and release a product. You need to respond to customer issues. You need to iterate quickly so you can learn quickly. You don't need a VP of anything, you need a doer of stuff that needs to get done. Don't think about buying titles — think about buying outcomes.  Think about plugging gaping holes in the company.  Signing up customers so fast that you can't respond to all the support emails?  Don't hire a head of support, hire someone that helps you tackle the support issue.  Someone that's maniacally committed to customer happiness.  They can become your head of support some day.

6. He really needs to accept this as life's first occupation, a first career.

This statement was made to the young Billy Beane when he was trying to decide between the full scholarship to Stanford and a career in Major League Baseball. Billy's mom asked if he could do both. The answer was, he couldn't. And, that's true in baseball, in startups and just about any hyper-competitive activity. You can't straddle the fence, because you will get your ass kicked by someone who's almost as good as you, but much more committed. You can't take that investment banking job and do a startup. You can't maintain two feet firmly planted on the ground and take the leap of faith. You have to pick. It's not an easy choice, but you have to pick. And, if you're in school, my personal (and unpopular in some startup circles) advice is stay in school . Make learning and building connections your “first occupation”.

But whatever you do, don't sit on the fence.  Commit to something.  Don't hedge.  Give it all you have.  Make it your life's first occupation.  If you can't get excited about it -- find something else.  I've made lots of stupid mistakes in my professional career -- the stupidest was trying to run two startups at the same time.  That's a story for another day.  I'm going to close with a quote from my co-founder at the first startup: "If you sit on the fence too long, your genitals are going to hurt."

7. Why do you like him? Because he gets on base.

The startup world is filled with superstars that get overlooked or don't quite make it because they're "quirky" or otherwise don't fit preconceived patterns of what you think a person in a given role should look and feel like.  None of that matters.  When recruiting engineers, find brilliant people that write code that solves the problem simply, effectively and can be maintained without brain damage.  When hiring sales people find those that have high emotional IQ and care about truly understanding customer problems -- and selling them a solution.  Figure out what success looks like for a given role, and ignore the irrelevant details.  (Note:  Culture fit is not an irrelevant detail.  Things that are irrelevant are age, nationality, gender, etc. -- things that have no bearing on the outcome).

10. Hey, anything worth doing is hard. And we're gonna teach you.

Your ability to teach is one of the single biggest levers you have in a startup.  Why?  First, because it's one of the biggest benefits you can deliver to your team members.  They can get a higher salary somewhere else.  They can get better perks somewhere else.  But, at your startup, they can learn things.  Second, it's unlikely you're going to find the "perfect" 5-tool player.  Even if you found them, you likely couldn't afford them.  If you're willing to help people with a specific super-power fill in gaps in their knowledge/experience, you create lots of value.

12. It's day one of the first week. You can't judge just yet.

Be a little bit patient.  Often, your best people will take a little time to really shine.  Don't judge too early. Determine the context.  If someone's not cranking yet, is it because getting up to speed is hard?  Everyone's too busy to show them ropes? Their lack of early performance could be the context, so be patient

But, don't be too patient.  If someone isn't at least moderately productive in the first month or two, it's unlikely they're going to be super-productive in the following year.  The really great people tend to deliver some value almost immediately.

14. Where on the field is the dollar I'm paying for soda?

It is good to be budget-conscious in an early-stage company.  Instills the right kind of discipline that will help long-term.  But, don't be a penny wise and a pound foolish.  There are little things that don't cost that much, that makes people happier.  It's not about the money (they can all afford the soda), it's about the inconvenience and the principle.  Remember, deep down inside, people are human.  [smile] 

One quick example from HubSpot:  We launched a book program whereby any employee can request any book they think makes them a better HubSpotter.  I personally handle all requests and send out a Kindle version of the book immediately.  It's not that expensive, but it's been super-well received.  

15. These are hard rules to explain to people. Why is that a problem, Pete?

One of the best segments in the movie.  Pete is troubled at how different what they're doing is, and why it's hard to get others to understand and accept it.  But, the point was, when you're transforming something and making massive change, not everyone is going to understand.  The important thing is to be right -- and then make the change happen.  The best way to convince people that your theory was right is to be right and show them (not tell them) you're right.  Most people will never be convinced otherwise.

16. I'm not paying you for the player you used to be, I'm paying you for the player you are right now.

Hard-hitting advice.  I'd extend this to say:  Recruit on potential but reward on performance.  Customers are not going to be delighted by the code a brilliant engineer could have written.  On a related note is the quote "If he's a good hitter, why doesn't he hit good?" Or, "If she's such a good sales person, why can't she sell?"

17. We're going to change the game.

And really, that's what it's all about.  It's not about exiting for millions of dollars or going public.  It's about changing the game.  It's about seeing something that's not quite right in the world, and deciding you want to fix it.  For me, personally, it was observing that marketing is broken.  Most people hate marketing.  we want to transform marketing into something people love.  It's hugely ambitious, but I have this feeling, deep-down inside, that we're right.

How about you?  What is the flaw (big or small) that you're seeing in the universe that you're trying to fix?  Any favorite lines from Moneyball that you'd like to share?

Looking for other startup fanatics?  Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group.  130,000+ members and growing daily.

Oh, and by the way, you should follow me on twitter: @dharmesh.

Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.

By focusing on our mission and building great services, we believe we will create the most value for our shareholders and partners over the long term — and this in turn will enable us to keep attracting the best people and building more great services. We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money, but we understand that the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company.

This is how we think about our IPO as well. We’re going public for our employees and our investors. We made a commitment to them when we gave them equity that we’d work hard to make it worth a lot and make it liquid, and this IPO is fulfilling our commitment. As we become a public company, we’re making a similar commitment to our new investors and we will work just as hard to fulfill it.

The Hacker Way

As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”

Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.

To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.

To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.

The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these principles into five core values for how we run Facebook:

Focus on Impact

If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.

Move Fast

Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.

Be Bold

Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.” We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.

Be Open

We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.

Build Social Value

Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.

Thanks for taking the time to read this letter. We believe that we have an opportunity to have an important impact on the world and build a lasting company in the process. I look forward to building something great together.

After about a week of coding, Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com last Wednesday afternoon. The website combines elements of a standard House face book with extensive profile features that allow students to search for others in their courses, social organizations and Houses.

“Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard,” Zuckerberg said. “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.”

As of yesterday afternoon, Zuckerberg said over 650 students had registered use thefacebook.com. He said that he anticipated that 900 students would have joined the site by this morning.

“I’m pretty happy with the amount of people that have been to it so far,” he said. “The nature of the site is that each user’s experience improves if they can get their friends to join it.”

Two of my favorite tools for managing my startup are Evernote and Followupthen.com. You’ve heard of Evernote – the in-the-cloud information storage for practically every kind of non-databased information in your life. Followupthen.com is a nifty service that will send you, or someone, or both of you reminder emails, free.

Since you can now share an Evernote note via email, and you can send that email to future self via Followupthen, you have a powerful tool for making sure you periodically tackle tasks in your startup.

For example, here’s my monthly WordPress workflow that’s stored in my @Marketing Evernote notebook. (At least once a month you should go into your WP site and update plugins, check your comments log, take a look at your stats, and at least note what’s popular on your site.)

WordPress Monthly Maintenance Workflow:

For each of my WP sites:

1. Go to Plugins>>Installed Plugins. Select all, update.
2. Go to Comments>> All Comments. – for the last 30 days, any spam sneak in? Any comments I need to act on (::create task)? Any comments I should followup via email (::create task)?
3. Go to Jetpack>Askimet Stats. Any Missed Spam in the last 30 days?
4. Go to Polls>>New Poll and create a new poll for readers. Change in Appearance>>Widgets Poll Name and active poll.
5. Go to JetPack>>Site Stats. Look around.
6. Check Search Engine Terms – any surprises there?
7. Check At a Glance>>Weeks. Up or Down?

End

I emailed it to every1st@followupthen.com so Followupthen will email it back to me on the first day of each month. (I wrote a pretty good cheatsheet on followupthen – download it from this post: Remember the future with FollowUpThen.com

Here’s what the email looks like when it arrives in my inbox:

Don’t rethink – reuse

Two quick points about how I approach this “workflow” First, having thought this through once I don’t have to ponder this again – just follow instructions, and get it done. Second, the first step only works if your detailed and specific – as you should be whenever you describe a task. Third, when in the future I hand this task off to a virtual assistant, it’s ready to go, making efficient use of their time and my money.

So what workflows do you repeat that can be done more efficiently by creating a workflow in Evernote, then emailing it to every1st@followupthen.com?

You’re reading No-excuse Workflow Reminders from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

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Download this episode, in which Gavin and Andrey talk about rewarding achievements, punishing failure, psychological barriers, Retro Dreamer’s next game, Eyegore’s return, piracy on the BlackBerry, retiring underperforming apps, expensive bugs, getting paid, Retro Dreamer’s Android sale figures, Antair’s changing reseller landscape, the 5 millionth turd, ad-supported apps, Adobe Air on iOS, porting from PlayBook to the iPad, native Air extensions, pricing questions, optimization, and what ifs.