Time.
Money.
It's challenging these days figuring out how to spend these. After some pondering this week I think that money is best spent moving faster. This means outsourcing chunks of work or hiring others to free founder time for the most important tasks. Figuring out what those are exactly is the challenge.
Our largest product-related expense so far has been crowdsourcing our logo on 99Designs. I think this was a very good way to spend money. Within one week we had an identity with only a few hours of work. But then I wasted several hours re-sizing our logo to fit and upload into various social media profiles when I should have just paid someone to do it.
"How should a startup founder value her time?" by Jason Cohen is a great gut check for this.
For any given task that takes more than an hour I'm going to try to get into the habit of asking myself, "is this the most effective use of my time right now?" "Should I be doing this or can I pay someone else to do it?" These are new questions for me as I'm used to doing work without having to manage budgets or time. Ah, I guess this is a little taste of what being a manager is like?
On the other hand, my productivity has been quite good. This is all-absorbing work and I love it. I get into a "flow state" quite easily every day. Even on my walks to and from work I'm always thinking about what to do next to move us forward.
Weekly Summary
We're progressing, hoping to have a demo to show a piece of our product at the pitch next week. I've done a couple of more interviews (still friends and warm contacts at this point). Figuring out the right questions to ask is tricky but I'm learning. What I have to get going on is interviewing enterprise customers as this is where the success or failure of our business model lies.
High of the week: I went to see Lady Gaga with a bunch of fellow entrepreneurs in the program. She's awesome. It was a pretty epic show and sexy as hell. Seeing a major concert in another country is uber fun.
For one thing, it was in a huge open-air stadium. We don't really get that at home. And the cheers are different. "Ole, ole, ole, ole...ole, ole." "Ole, ole, ole, ole...Gaga, Gaga." Or the cheer for an encore: "Otra, otra, otra."
Lady Gaga in Chile!
Low of the week: I can't think of anything for this. It was a good week. :)
Lesson learned: Spend money to move fast.
Interesting thing: Chileans know how to party. Everything is both later and longer here. You go to a club at 1:00 am and party until 5:00 or 6:00 am. I've only been out once so far. I was done at 3:30. Hard core.
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