Crazy crazy crazy last few weeks

It’s been a crazy last few weeks.

Minh, Simon, and I have been working on our web start-up Guts Up! which has subsequently become part of a much larger venture with Justin (our business development guy) pulling in contacts and lining up all sorts of stuff.

We’re now looking to form a parent company and various subsidiaries with very specific business models (one of them being Guts Up! with a focus on web development). We don’t really like to think about it in those terms though. Essentially, we are a deeply committed team and we want to collaborate with other people when it makes sense. So we’re viewing the parent as a band or record label (but less like The Man) and the subsidiaries as collaborations.

It all feels very exciting and we’re getting an amazing amount of stuff done each day. The lunch-time conversations and camaraderie are fantastic. Perhaps more important is how we resolve problems when they arise. We all want this venture to succeed, so we raise concerns with little reserve and work together to resolve them quickly. It can be a bit emotional at times (since we’re very passionate), but we produce much better outcomes and get to know each other on a deeper level.

I could write more about the last few weeks, but I’ll just list some practical tips:

1. Work the same hours at the same location
2. Write about what you are doing while you are doing it
3. Talk to people (in person, on the phone, or over Skype)
4. Have some methodology and time-frames (we use Agile)
5. Share a vision for what you want to be (individually and as a group)
6. Your gut feeling is right 99% of the time

Some of the above tips may be pretty specific to us (eg. other people may be super-productive even when working remotely), but I would imagine that they would apply to lots of other people.

The relevance of the last tip may be conditional on your having a highly-developed gut. I guess what I was getting at is: don’t work with people or on projects that give you a bad vibe. Assuming that you’re not a judgemental jerk, there’s probably a good reason for the bad vibe.