Bootstrapping startups have the undesirable task of balancing sales initiatives and staffing requirements with finance and resource limitation. They know they need to sell more and hire people when there’s pressure on the core team but the uncertainty of revenue is the cause of much headache.

As an outsider, why not offer your services on a purely performance basis? As a startup, why not seek out competent individuals who can offer their skills tied directly to resources. The highly skilled outsider can put a squeeze on your chunk of the bounty - if any comes in - whilst the startup is protected from more cash flowing out than cash flowing in.

This approach is different from freelancing in that freelancers have specific tasks they get paid for upon completion. Here the outsider may perform a task and work very hard at it, but if it yields no measurable revenue, no money for the fruitless help.

It’s also different from internships in that the core focus is not education and testing, it’s sales.

It’s also acutely different from commission-based work in that the ‘helping hands’ may be involved down to even a production creation level. As long as her size of the bounty if she succeeds is huge - sometimes larger than the startup’s bounty, the talent attracted and the sacrifices they are willing to make could be surprising.

Recently, I’ve performed the task of the ‘helping hand’ in someone else’s organisation, but I’m always looking to exploit the opportunity from my startup’s perspective.

Any of you had similar experiences with people being prepared to work without the promise of renumeration?

First time I’ve ever seen this:

Anybody know what they’re working on?

“We DJs. We make happy time for 21st birthday. Phone us.”

The text above is on a poster I’ve seen at UCT. Whilst I can’t stand the “Borat-like” copy, I do admire how direct and to the point the sale is. It’s also one of the few - if not the only - sales poster I can recall at will.

Can your business achieve similar results with such little text?

What do you do: DJs
Value proposition: Happy times
Target market: People having their 21st birthdays
Call to action: Phone us

That’s it. That’s all sales has to do is communicate the value proposition of using your service/product, who your service is intended for and what those who are interested need to do next.
As sales people - as all entrepreneurs almost invariably are - we spend too much time trying to convince prospects to use our products/services such that the core purpose of a sales pitch is drowned out. Richard calls this attention spam. You should avoid it.

I’m as much a part of the twitterati as any heavy net user  (follow me… follow me!) however, as an entrepreneur, their relaxed attitude towards profitability is both concerning and charming, notwithstanding somewhat awe-inspiring. I mean, what happens when VCs or big companies can/will no longer subsidize finance-hogging businesses like twitter?

That’s one question. Yet, as has been the case with Twitter since day 1, there’s still enough hype elsewhere that nobody is focusing on their finances. Case in point: Former Deputy National Security Advisor, Mark Pfeifle, says, if anybody, Twitter’s founders deserve the next Nobel Peace Prize for delaying their scheduled downtime - at the US government’s request - for more Iran specific discussions to continue.

So… wait… does this really deserve a Nobel Peace Prize? Gandhi didn’t even win the Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, Gandhi. I’m just saying. What exactly did Williams, Stone and Doherty do? Create a great communications tool? Sure. Create a popular,  service? Sure. Promote peace by delaying scheduled maintenance due to government’s request? Not so sure.

I think it would be monumental if a culturally relevant tech company’s founders won the prize. Don’t get me wrong. However, what I am questioning is whether being a “conduit” - an incidental one, at that - for peace is sufficient for receiving this prize. Notwithstanding the fact that the downtime delay was per request, not necessarily of Twitter’s own volition (and that’s not to say they wouldn’t have kept the service active for Iranian purposes, anyway. We don’t know). Is intent not a proxy for Nobel consideration?

Either the world is becoming so progressive, it’s catching even my progressive self unawares, or everybody is a bit too high on that Twitter kool-aid. Even people in government.

What do you think? The kool-aid effect or changing times?

The music business is a funny one. Basically, labels make a loss with the bulk of their artists - I’m talking majors, here. The small handful of stars each major has offsets the loss the hangers-abouts bring. Insofar as the offset is greater than the losses, the major makes a profit and all are happy. When this is not the case, no profit, no happiness.

Why this is so has been thoroughly examined elsewhere but it comes down to this: the probability of finding a huge act amongst the many somewhat talented acts is very low. So, by the law of large numbers, if enough acts are under the umbrella, someone has to cut it big.

As a result, however, given the increasing contraction of the music industry - attributable to their inability to adapt and therefore, focusing energy on the trivial? - we have a situation wherein there are way more acts than this archaic, shrinking model can sustain.

Basically, we now have a situation where there are more musicians music being produced than people can consume. Arguably, this has always been the case but the industry had been able to make money regardless, this turn of events puts forth an interesting dilemma.

Anyhow, this was a very long winded way to get to the point. Sure, the videogames business is presently doing gang-buster numbers but if the current volume of games is not curtailed notwithstanding the possibility of a future industry-wide downturn… gaming may find itself in a similar spot. It’s not as if the industries do not cross-pollinate.

Further listening: 1UP’s Listen Up  (ed: scrub to 01hr25)

Well, a cartoon, at least.

Wish I had spotted this during Bush’s time:

Remember that post where I said big companies are bloated by about 10%? It appears Myspace both confirmed and debunked it by laying off 30% of their staff - about 480 people or so - today. Ouch for those retrenched.

Sorrow for the laid off aside, the problem is this: “Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company…our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product” said Owen Van Natta, Myspace’s recently appointed CEO.

Why did you become bloated in the first place and what have you been focusing on if your product and users weren’t it? The thing is this scenario is endemic in large corporations and ways to avoid it need to be thoroughly examined.

Oh, and this raises an interesting question for a country like South Africa where job creation is so important and such a big policy focus in both public institutions and corporations. Who is really to blame when industries start hemorrhaging staff? The corporations letting people go or the policy makers who encourage and reward job creation? I’m just asking…

(Psst… between us, I think Mark is winning. I’m just saying… shhh)

You know those songs which you know every single lyric to yet have never listened to? You know, you hear the songs, and know them quite well, but don’t take cognisance of what’s being said? I once sang “F*** The World” by 2Pac when I was 10… in class… yeah.

You have employees like that, too. Really, it’s in your best interest to fire (or ease out) those who hear you and keep those who listen. In a big company, one can ‘afford’ to keep the “hearers”, if you will, because we know that the workforce is probably bloated by about 10% (yeah, that percentage assertion isn’t empirical, but in this recession, watching companies downsize by equivalent sizes and still function as well as before has me raising an eyebrow). A startup or a small company doesn’t have that luxury - it neither has the finances, the time nor the competitive scale to deal with slackers.

In one of his more recognisable quotes - an oft spoken one recently - Warren Buffett says “only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked” and sadly the same is true for all companies, but less so for those who have a vice-grip on what’s deliverable and measurable.

In a previous life I worked for a company that had daily status meetings. Sure, the industry was deadline-based and high pressure but still, daily. On Mondays the status meetings were epic. Made sense, really - after the weekend people needed to get back into the zone, and how best to achieve that but to hammer home the enormity of the week ahead? During my tenure, we began keeping pretty strict time sheets, too. Detail was everything, how we answered the phone, when we answered the phone, how we responded when clients walked in the door, everything. We also had the good fortune of the hangers-abouts easing themselves out before the tide went out, some in highly spectacular fashion and others by their own volition. As a result, with the tide being out and all, that company has a better bank balance than its ever had and recently bagged its biggest pitches, too, recession be damned.

The trick is in distinguishing the mechanical from the inspired. The difference between those who hear the music and those who listen.

Inspired by my mate Paul Jacobson’s tweet, I thought I’d compile a wee list.

1 - Watching hot girls accidentally fall down, or anyone really.

2 - Snowboarding / Freebording.

3 - Any activity that ends with me having sex (I find that the less time I spend on Twitter/iPhone, the more I get).

4 - Reading things that have more than 140 characters.

5 - Laughing so hard I fart a little

6 - Peanut ginger chicken

7 - Driving with the lid down - and tunes up

8 - My kids. Yours… maybe not so much.

9 - Not being wrong.

10 - Sliced bread (having it)…!