The interest was overwhelming. We are considering a few options including building something on our own or partnering with an existing coworking facility (The DEC, Common Desk or WELD). I got all of your FB messages and DMs indicating your interest, but I need a little more information. How about sending me an email with the following information:

Send to: amuse@startupmuse.com

1. Level of interest: 1-10 (1 being keep me posted and 10 being I am definitely moving in)

2. Production facilities needed: (please describe what you would need in the facility)

3. Office space needed: (please describe if you would work from the space full-time or just when you were using the production facilities, would you need an office, a permanent desk or a common desk – please indicate number of humans you will have working in the space)

4. What is your monthly budget: (how much could you afford to pay if you got the facilities and space that you needed to operate)

5. Other: (anything I should know, would you be willing to loan the facility any equipment – lights, cameras etc)

6. Name of Company

7. Phone Number

I’ll create a mailing list to keep you in the loop on the status of the idea. My goal isn’t to run this facility – it is simply to find a space that is affordable and fun for my own startup (HAUL). If you are of a like mind let me know.

First we drove over to see Austin and Tiffany at Weld. In a short time they have turned an empty office/studio on the edge of the design district into a vibrant community of creative entrepreneurs. The energy generated by this growing group of startups and creatives is simply amazing and inspiring. Austin is the idea guy and Tiffany is the glue that keeps it all working. I love stopping by for their art shows and mixers – simply a great scene! If you haven’t visited them yet – get in your car and get over there.

Next we headed over to Common Desk to see what Nick has put together for startups in the Deep Ellum area. More than 26 startups call this coffee shop style co-working space home. The design and ambiance are great and more importantly there are a lot of people stuffed into the space building really cool stuff. Again, I highly recommend taking a look if you haven’t seen what Nick has built. Oh, and by the way, Nick has his own television channel to show off what he is doing, check it out…

Our next stop was the TechChurch, home to Tech Wildcatters and Health Wildcatters – two early stage accelerators for startups. Located in a former Catholic church, the facility is now home to several startups as well as each TWC and HWC class. Gabriella, Stewart and Michaela are the instigators and keep the wheels on this place. I love stopping in to catch pitch practice or simply to catch up with the latest startup news. Make sure you check out the bell tower if you make it by.

Our next stop was to Trey and Jennifer’s new collective space, The DEC, located inside of Softlayer’s Catalyst Space down in the Lower Oak Lawn area. Robert and I decided to make The DEC home to HAUL, my latest startup. There are just a couple of other startups in the space right now, but when it officially opens next month I have a feeling it is going to be BIG.

Finally, last week Tech Wildcatter’s held their annual Pitch Day at the Grenada – more than 700 entrepreneurs gathered together to watch the 11 graduates of the 2013 class give their final ‘pitch’ before going out in the world on their own. It was amazing seeing everyone together. Are you loving Dallas as much as I am? Tell me about it…

Valpak Coupons + Internet Explorer = Groupon

Scrapbooking x iPhone = Pinterest

The Sears Catalog + A mouse = Amazon

The Rotary Club x Fiber-Optic Cable = LinkedIn

Pearle Vision + Broadband = Warby Parker

Christmas Newsletters X Giant Server Farms = Facebook

Filene’s Basement + Email = Gilt

Your “Artsy” Cousin Mae x Wi-Fi = Etsy

QVC x YouTube = HAUL

Note: I added the last one…

The best part of my trip was the Startup Crawl. In less than four hours we got to visit 22 startups in their own offices. Hearing about a startup is great, but seeing where and how they work is really fascinating. I took a lot of pictures (as seen on my Facebook page) and met a LOT of entrepreneurs. Some of the companies I visited include: Trada, Simple Energy, Revolv (formerly Mobiplug), PivotDesk, Birdbox, Sendgrid, Applied Trust, Orbotix, Pivotal Labs, Linksmart, Precog, Flixmaster, Roundpegg, Quickleft, Vacation Rental Partners, Mobile Day, Kapost, Rafflecopter, Napkin Labs, Mighty Fudge Studios, Mocavo, and Victor and Spoils.

I can’t wait to talk to my startup peers in Dallas to see if we could pull something like this off in Big D. Big thanks go out to Erica O’Grady who initially invited me and provided housing – THANK!

• meeting with lawyers
• shopping for office space
• working with software developers
• hiring employees
• doing video shoots
• raising capital
• selected by Google for their Glass Explorer Program
• telling friends what are you doing when they ask

We aren’t quite ready to come ‘out’ as it were, but I can tell you that HAUL addresses a market segment an order of magnitude larger than any of my prior startups combined. I’ve made almost EVERY startup mistake in the book and we’ll be doing our level best to give ourselves the best chance possible to build a billion dollar company. I can’t wait to show you what we’ve been building…

In high school and college I competed in cross examination debate, traveling nationally to argue any side of any argument (in rapid fire fashion like this young lad). By college I was really good at listening to the first 30 seconds of an argument and preparing my rebuttal as my opponent completed their reasoning and support. Back in 2006 I wrote a post titled, “Best Business Prep for High School Students?” where are I argue that debate is the perfect preparation for business. Perhaps I was right, but I think debate might be the WORST preparation for life. Throughout most of my adult life I’ve been really good at ‘winning’ arguments and losing battles. My debate experience trained me to be right – to win any side of any argument – my life experience has taught me that being right is not very satisfying.

The other day I was involved in a tense conversation with someone and for some reason I stopped listening to their attacks and starting thinking about where they were in their life. I started to realize that they were in a seriously compromised position. They felt vulnerable, at risk and generally messed up. Instead of trying to win the argument they began I simply expressed my compassion for their situation. It was cathartic. I felt at peace. Interestingly their pace slowed down and the conversation switched from a debate to a simple ‘how do we resolve this’ sort of exchange. It took us a few days to resolve our differences, but we didn’t resolve them because either of us convinced the other that we were right. We resolved our issues because we felt true compassion for one another.

Give it a try. The next time you are in an argument, stop arguing, stop trying to win the argument, stop trying to be right. Instead, try to understand where your adversary is coming from. You might be surprised how effective understanding the why is versus the what. It has helped me immeasurably. Let me know if it helps you.

In the case of our barcode scanning technology we used a combination of open source software and proprietary code for the Android version of ShopSavvy. When we began working on the iPhone version of ShopSavvy we had to start from scratch – building everything from the ground up. The upstart competitor I wrote about in my last post had just released their iPhone app – it was horrible. The scanner didn’t work very well. The product database was incomplete. It was a mess, but they were working on it everyday. We had to hurry.

Around that same time, I was in Europe helping with the launch of the G1 and stumbled across a PhD engineer by the name of Benoit Maison who lived in Belgium. He had developed shockingly good barcode scanning technology for the iPhone. I think it was better than our Android scanner at the time. I was worried, but also excited about the prospect of potentially licensing his technology to give us a jump on the competition. I talked to our engineers about the ETA of our iOS scanner, they explained we were just 30 days away from having our own technology ready. I was hopeful and yet a little skeptical that we would be ready in 30 days so I began negotiating with Benoit to license his technology for ShopSavvy. In hindsight, had we implemented his technology in our application we would have stopped our competitor in their tracks – they were light years behind Benoit’s technology.

Thirty days came and went and we were on the fence about using licensed technology in our app. We were concerned that potential investors/acquirers might think less of our company if they learned we were licensing third party technology for the CORE feature of our app. At the same time, the developers were certain we were just weeks away from having our own technology – technology that would be faster and work better than Benoit’s software. It was a constant struggle at ShopSavvy – we couldn’t come to a decision so we didn’t – we just kept building our own scanner technology.

Six months later, version one of our scanner was available. (Side note, software often takes 6X longer to finish that you expect.) It worked pretty well for a first version – not as well as Benoit’s technology but a little better than our competitor’s software. The cost for ShopSavvy was time. We didn’t have the time to work on the UI/UX of the iOS version of ShopSavvy – all of our resources were focused on the scanner technology and keeping the existing apps running. Given our resource constraints, we contracted with an Indian company to build the app. The resulting app wasn’t very good – actually it was horrible. ShopSavvy had a great reputation – built upon the Android version of our app – and as a result we were able to generate a substantial number of downloads based on that reputation. While we were good at generating downloads we couldn’t hide the fact that the app simply didn’t work very well as evidenced by thousands of one-star reviews.

The real mistake was not understanding our business. Our business was the app, not the technology. We had built the preeminent mobile shopping brand – ShopSavvy – and we were worried about owning our own technology instead of safeguarding our brand. It opened up room for our competitor on iOS and has crippled us on the iPhone platform ever since.

On the flip side our scanning technology is now one of the best in the business and used by hundreds of companies like Consumer Reports, Macy’s and Walmart. At first glance this might seem impressive, but being the BASF of barcode scanning isn’t worth as much as a consumer facing brand like ShopSavvy. If I had the chance to do it over I would have spent a LOT more time figuring out what our real business was.

This is just one post in a series of posts on startup mistakes. To start reading from the beginning click HERE.

In 2008 we released ShopSavvy, one of the first ten mobile applications in the world. The application won Google’s Android Developer Challenge and was T-Mobile’s featured application for the G1 – the first Android powered smartphone. We had a tiger by the tail – investors called us daily and even showed up in our offices uninvited. We thought we were being smart to wait to raise outside capital, but in hindsight it was a foolish decision.

First, raising money from investors is a great form of ‘social proof‘. Our early traction made ShopSavvy very attractive to tier one venture capital firms. If you can get a prestigious firm to make that first outside investment you send strong signals to potential customers, employees and other future investors that your company has a strong likelihood of success. For example, if you decide NOT to raise outside capital you spend a LOT more time trying to convince the ‘right’ employees to join your team. High caliber employees are acutely attuned to who has invested in your startup – I can’t count the number of times we missed out on great hires because we were ‘unfunded’.

Second, it should be obvious that with more capital you can move MUCH faster MUCH earlier. Not only can you hire better talent you can hire it faster. That speed means you achieve your successes and failures much faster. Without outside capital you risk missing out on the opportunity – a small, but funded, company in Boulder basically copied our application and launched it on the iPhone (using our name as a keyword) BEFORE we released our iPhone version. They generated more than a million dollars in revenue and sold to Ebay for around ten million dollars in less than a year. Had we raised outside capital we would have been able to release our iPhone application before them, easily capturing the value they were able to extract from our novel and early idea. Now Ebay is our biggest competitor instead of our acquirer.

Third, the earlier you take outside capital the more likely you will be able to attract the ‘smartest’ money. The best venture capital firms want to get in deals as early as possible – bootstrap for too long and you will miss the window for the majority of tier one investors. Tier one venture capital firms can help you find the best employees, partners and potential acquirers. Wait too long and your investor’s money might be green, but their help might be less than adequate. Worse yet their investment might preclude future deals and/or investments. For example, raise money from someone who sued the founder of Facebook and Facebook might not want to work with you (seriously, it could happen).

The good news is that by bootstrapping your startup you will have a lot more control and own a lot more of the company at the end of the day. The bad news is that your startup, by definition, will likely be a lot smaller than it could have been with the right investment from the right investors. Even if you end up building that billion dollar business it will have taken you much longer than it might have had you taken outside investment. We spent the last five years turning ShopSavvy into a hundred million dollar company – it is likely we could have done that in a year with the right venture capital partner.

This is just one post in a series of posts on startup mistakes. To start reading from the beginning click HERE.

Ralph Muse and Caroline Branch started AutoSeis back in 2010 to build a smaller, smarter and cheaper 3D seismic node – three years later the company is the second largest manufacturer of cableless seismic recording nodes in the world! Nice work guys!

The pair engineered the sale of the company to Global Geophysical Services Inc. (NYSE:GGS) a $300M geophysical services company and now serve as President and Operations Manager respectively.

I transitioned from CEO to Chairman of ShopSavvy in October and since then I have gained a new perspective. When you are in the fight (and running a startup is a lot like a war) you rarely have time to stop and consider what you might have done differently. Now that I’ve taken a step back (being Chairman of ShopSavvy is a lot like not having a job) it is hard to ignore the glaring mistakes I made. I’m just about ready to share my NEXT big thing with the world, but before I do I thought I might pause for a moment and reflect.

Part One: Startup Mistakes: Starving Your Startup

Part Two: Startup Mistakes: Building Everything Yourself