This is going to be big.

Charlie at This Is Going To Be Big has some pretty useful ideas about building great companies, like these 10 Steps to a Hugely Successful Web 2.0 Company:

1. Solve the smallest possible problem (that is still big enough to matter) for the user and know exactly what problem you're trying to solve.
2. Get a responsive and chatty audience using the product.
3. Launch. Now. Tomorrow. Every day.
4. Distribute. Distribute. Distribute.
5. Don't hold users against their will.
6. Be mindnumbingly simple.
7. Get people hooked on free.
8. Don't waste any money on marketing.
9. Don't overfund.
10. No one sucks.

What to look forward to.

According to InfoWorld, technology execs are all throughout the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list:

Bill Gates, of course, reigns atop the pack, valued at $51 billion. His non-techie friend, the investor Warren Buffet, is second with $40 billion. Paul Allen follows, at $22.5 billion; next is Michael Dell and his $18 billion. Rounding out the top five, Larry Ellison has $17 billion.

The rest of the top 10 are all Waltons, as in WalMart Waltons.

Steve Ballmer ranks 11th, at $14 billion. Slightly further down the list, tied for 16th, are Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each worth $11 billion.

Just remember, these folks were all entrepreneurs once. And just a short 7 years ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were broke college students.

Seven Founding Sins.

David Beisel at Genuine VC outlines "Seven Founding Sins – common mistakes which often divert entrepreneurs off the path towards success". They are:

• Inauthenticity
• Sloth
• Extravagance
• Taciturnity
• Greed
• Arrogance
• Indecisiveness

David describes then in a little more detail, well worth reading for inspiring entrepreneurs.

Happy Entrepreneurs.

Divorce low, happiness high among entrepreneurs:

If you are an entrepreneur who is suffering through lots of sleepless nights, whose marriage is on the rocks and who hates everything about your business, you aren't likely to be found among truly successful Utah entrepreneurs.
These are some of the conclusions of a recent survey of more than 100 of Utah's leading entrepreneurs. According to the study, Utah entrepreneurs have low divorce rates, high levels of job satisfaction and no trouble sleeping six hours or more per night.

Tip of the hat to A Day In The Life Of A Self-Made Entrepreneur.

What is an entrepreneur?

From Wikipedia:

"Business entrepreneurs often have strong beliefs about a market opportunity and are willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue that opportunity."

Guy Kawasaki on Presentations.

AlwaysOn has a great article by Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, on realizing your ideas, and Guy comments on presentations:

One of the things I learned about in the formative stages of my career was public speaking. I learned by watching lots of presentations, and one thing I figured out early on is that most CFO-level speakers—particularly CEOs, particularly male CEOs—really suck as speakers. They're boring; they're long; they wander around. I saw speech after speech, and I discovered that if there's anything worse than a speaker who sucks, it's a speaker who sucks and you have no idea how much longer he or she is going to suck. That's a horrible feeling.

To prevent you from getting that feeling, I've developed a Top 10 format. All of my speeches are in Top 10 format, because if you think I suck, I at least want you to be able to track my progress through the speech so that you know approximately know how much longer I'm going to suck.

Chapter 3 sells out.

Okay, we aren't selling out. We haven't gone corporate. I was talking about the event itself, and it seems that some of our round table sessions are selling out.

With just over two weeks left to go before Chapter 3, the session entitled "Developing a business model: How are you going to make money?" hosted by Ray Simonson, CTO of Software Innovation, is completely full.

And "Presenting your company to investors: What are the best strategies?" hosted by Andrew Abouchar of Tech Capital Partners isn't far behind with only 10 spots left.

I don't think that we expected the space to fill up this quickly, but these are some pretty competent people who have clearly been successful at what they do.

So hurry up and get registered. The hosts of the round table sessions are also contributing generously to the Resource Guide that every attendee gets - for free. They will have hints and tips and things that got them through and helped them to succeed.

Heck, it's worth showing up for that Reference Guide alone.

Reader concerns.

A local blogger, who prefers to remain nameless, was concerned about the Chapter 3 persona here at the Chapter 3 blog. He thought the whole thing was a bit "cloak and dagger-ish", and didn't understand why Chapter 3 deserved a blog.

Well he does have a good point about the Chapter 3 persona. The blog was originally conceived as an experiment by Jacqui Murphy and me - Larry Borsato. I created the Chapter 3 thing as a placeholder for everybody who posted, and because I didn't think any single person should receive the credit (or the blame). Several blogs do this. I read The Huffington Post, where many of the posts are credited to The Huffington Post. Besides, I read about 700 blogs daily in a newsreader, and I rarely notice who the author was. But in retrospect, it wasn't such a good idea.

So now you'll notice that the new posts are correctly attributed to the author, so you know who is thinking what.

As for whether something deserves a blog, well that's a different story. If you've got something to say, then you deserve a blog. If someone doesn't like what you have to say, they are free to comment, or to stop reading.

The Chapter 3 blog wasn't created to promote an event. It was created to try to kickstart a little discussion about startups, entrepreneurs, and resources. I'd like to think that it will outlast Chapter 3. Maybe it will, and maybe it won't.

I'd also like the local community to see the power of blogs as a tool for communicating and sharing information - a tool to help to create communities.

And we like to think of it as a little window into what we're going through as we try to help entrepreneurs succeed. After all, we are just a bunch of amateurs here. We're just making this up as we go.

Update: I generally do not like changing a post, but this post originally contained the name of the blogger, and he asked that it be removed. That was done as he requested.

The startup metaphor.

I came late to the Chapter 1-2-3 party, having missed the work that went into Chapters 1 and 2, just jumping into the planning of Chapter 3. But the focused little team that puts these events together is like a little startup all by itself.

They started with an idea - to give potential entrepreneurs all of the information and tools they need to get started turning their own ideas into reality.

They created their first product - Chapter 1 - worked to get it funded by some helpful service providers, and then sold it to customers - all of you.

Tasting a little success, they built a second product in Chapter 2, ramped up the marketing, got some more funding - still running on a shoestring though - and sold it to even more customers.

Now they are completing the product suite with Chapter 3. This time they've got enough momentum to get 40 key tech folks to give up their afternoon to talk about what interests you. And you get a kickass resource guide that will give you tips and techniques that those people use to be successful themselves.

How often do you get the chance to spend time with a guy like Dave Caputo, CEO of Sandvine, who's already had one success and is on his way to the second, telling you how to get customers? Or Andrew Abouchar, Partner at Tech Capital Partners, who's going to tell you exactly what a VC needs to hear? Or Carol Leaman, CEO of RSS Solutions, who will tell you how to stretch your scarce dollars as far as you can?

Chapter 3 - the third and final part of a product suite designed to take you from that nagging feeling that you can change the world, to success in building something great.

But this isn't a demo. On Thursday, October 6, 2005 we ship.

My entrepreneur Skip.

It's all somehow more real when you have the poster in your hand. And now we have ours:


You'll start to see these posters around town over the next couple of days, and you're probably already seeing them at the universities.

Oh and the gentleman in the photo? We've affectionately nicknamed him "Skip", and he's a placeholder for all of the entrepreneurs out there. He looks like he has a goal, and he's on his way to achieving it.

Speaking of achieving a goal, we've got a big hairy audacious goal of getting over 500 entrepreneurs at this event, and it looks like we're on our way. As I'm writing this some of the round table sessions are one third full. That really doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that we still have three weeks to go.

It's generally true that people wait until the last minute to register for these kind of events, but the way it looks now, if you wait that long you just won't be able to get a spot.

So consider this fair warning. Get in there and register while you can.