This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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I really admire Jason Calacanis. Okay, so I’m probably not alone. The guy is just brilliant. I can say that in the wake of his $25 million sale of Weblog, Inc. to AOL earlier this week. But really, get this statement he made yesterday.
"Mark Cuban (who’s the best investor you could ever have btw) always said “let’s not drown in opportunity†when he, my
partner Brian and I would talk about the business. That’s why we didn’t launch an RSS reader or blog search engine, and
that’s why we told everyone who wanted to do “business development†that there were only three ways to work with us: 1.
read our blogs, 2. write our blogs, or 3. support our blogs with advertising."
They were swimming in opporuntity. Opportunities to collaborate. Opportunites to partner
with god knows who. Probably some pretty reputable companies, I’d
guess. But they said NO. They said, "If you want to do business with
us, there are just three ways. Read, write or support our blogs.
Period."
Talk about belief in your product. Talk about focus. Talk about balls.
Yes, I said balls. The balls to say, "this is the way we’re going to
be. This is the way we’re going to do business. If you want to play
along, here’s how you can do it. Otherwise, have a nice day."
What’ll it take to get yourself to that point?
Hmmm …
More form Jason:
"I have to say my one piece of advice to startups is to focus on building your product and revenue and don’t waste time
on partnerships. Maybe when you’re a huge company these things can work out, but the most important things in any
startup are: 1. the product and 2. the bottom line." (emphasis mine)