Preparation Precedes Performance

No business plans!? ...  They either are stupid
or they are being discreet.  ...  Must have went 2
a Ivy League school or Stanford.

* A bad plan is better than no plan.
/* You can always correct a bad plan.
But you cannot never correct a plan that does
not exist*/

* A bad plan executed correctly is better
than an excellent plan executed poorly.
/*Hoping the opposition screws up more than
you do.*/

Side bar: "A bad plan executed correctly"
sounds like a Mike Nolan (Current SF Niners
Head Coach) game plan. 
All he needs is organization,
people, and team chemistry.  ...

It's a shame that he's losing ppl left and
right.

Nolan needs a Tangible Vision that his team
and the fans believe in.

# # #
In chaotic times, keep your Tangible Plan
(or Tangible Vision) flexible.
In predictable times, comply w/ your Tangible
Plan (or Tangible Vision)in order to be
efficient.
# # #

This is the Dao of the Strategist. 


/ / / / / /
No ties, no business plans and Wi-Fi in every laptop
Web 2.0? That means back for a second stab at the pie

- John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, October 7, 2005

They've come by the hundreds, maybe thousands,
to a San Francisco hotel this week to hear
the mavericks of the Internet pronounce their
vision of the future.

There was Yahoo's Terry Semel. And
IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s Barry Diller. And even Mark
Cuban, who's better known these days for his
basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, than his
Internet business, HDNet. They are all at the Argent
Hotel for Web 2.0, a quasi-conference intended to
celebrate the rebirth of the Internet and bring the
so-called digerati together for a pow-wow.

More interesting than the speakers, however, were
those who paid $2,800 to attend Web 2.0. These are the
survivors of what they like to call Web 1.0, which is
to say, those who rose on the wave of the dot-com boom
and then washed up on the rocks of failure and
disaster when the boom went bust.

"I lost my job during the fifth round of layoffs,"
said Timothy Appnel, a consultant who runs Appnel
Internet Solutions in Connecticut, referring to one of
his previous dot-com jobs. "I think just about
everyone at this conference lost at least one job. I
met a woman yesterday who lost three jobs, and I don't
think that's rare."

People came from all over the United States and
abroad, but this is a uniquely Bay Area issue.
Business and commerce related to the Internet brought
the region fame and fortune a decade ago, and then a
recession of sorts, as one after another startup went
under. And while the industry has been rebounding for
a couple of years, it's still filled with both
business suits and dreamers.

The conference seemed to be split into two camps:
those who work for the established mega-companies and
those who are writing their own code and trying to
find a piece of the pie.

The crowd was mostly male, mostly white, mostly in
their 30s. There were almost no ties. So not much has
changed over time as it pertains to dress.

Everyone carried a Wi-Fi connected laptop computer.
They were everywhere. On tables in the foyer, on the
floor next to people checking voice mail or
BlackBerrys. On laps in the conference room. As the
speakers spoke, industrious bloggers blogged in real
time. Some of their blogs were being read by other
attendees sitting a few chairs away.

Others surfed the Web with bored looks on their faces.

But overall, people at the conference were quite
animated and motivated by what they were hearing, and
some just by being there.

For years, no one wanted to sink any money into new
Web ventures, other than the really big guys like
Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. Appnel's buddy, Niall
Kennedy, called the Internet a "nuclear wasteland,"
especially as it pertained to research and
development.

But over time, some of the people who lived through
Web 1.0 remained in the field and started doing things
differently. In other words, with an old-school model
of business.

"It used to be that you wrote a business plan, went
out and got a lot of venture capital, then you hired
your team and spent all your money on salaries and
marketing," Appnel said. "Now, it's all about making a
product and making a profit."

Kennedy, community manager for www.technorati.com, an
in-the-know blog, said it's easier today to start a
new Internet-related business from scratch. The price
of hardware has dropped like a stone, and most of the
software you need is open-source or free.

"No one gets into this business and says, 'I'm going
to be a billionaire' anymore," Appnel said of the new
Net entrepreneurs. "Times have changed, and that's no
longer a possibility. I think more people are
interested in doing good work and having a good life.
It's about finding that mix. That's a lot different
than it was during 1.0."

In fact, most of the people at the conference couldn't
agree on what Web 2.0 meant. For the organizers, it
clearly meant discussions about innovations in
technology. They tossed around words like
inter-operability, cross-platforming and branding.

But the technorati who showed up saw it differently.

"I think the 2.0 stands for second chance," said Jason
Fried of Chicago, who runs a firm called 37signals.
"It's a second chance to cash in on the wealth that
came with the original dot-com boom."

Fried spoke at the conference, and was introduced as
someone whose Internet business epitomizes the essence
of Web 2.0. His message? Less is more. Don't go into
debt to start your business. Start small and stay
small. Don't hire a lot of people. Don't work long
days. Just focus the time you have on solving simple
problems for customers.

His company makes integrated scheduling and to-do
programs for small businesses. He said the company has
five employees -- two in Chicago, one in Provo, Utah,
one in New York and one in Copenhagen.

<<< "You should start with three people," Fried said.
"Don't get bogged down in meetings and business plans.
Don't try to do too much. Just do small things very
well." >>>

He wouldn't say how much the company makes, other than
that it is debt-free and profitable.

Not a lot of companies in Web 1.0 could say that.

E-mail Jon Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicle.com.

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