When I was a kid I thought my parents were always right.   Whether it was the best way to dress or the best way to write a sentence for english class; if my parents said it was the better way then it was.

It wasn’t until 8th grade that I realized my parents really didn’t know much about a lot of things like clothes or music or grammar but they would have never admitted it.  Eventually I learned to weigh my parents views as opinions that I respect, while at the same time using my own brain to decide on the right way for me.

If you are an entrepreneur, keep that in mind when you read something from people, companies or bloggers with authority.   If you find yourself always accepting what they say and do as correct then you are probably like me in 7th grade.

I’ve been thinking a lot  about what it means to be successful and researching how others found success.
A lot of successful people will admit their wins involved a bit/lot of luck. Or as Guy Kawasaki puts it good karma.  Others believe they are the masters of their universe and they cannot fail (this seems to fade with youth though…)

I recently read a great book called “Fooled By Randomess” by Nassim Taleb, that talks about the role randomness plays in life and specifically financial markets.  Nassim’s success as a trader came from his acceptance that failure will always occur and that you must place yourself in the position to expect and capitalize on those random failures.

I think this idea is applicable here since most successful entrepreneurs fail many many times before they succeed. In fact they often succeed because they bootstrap themselves from failures (I hope to be one of these).  The best example of this is James Dyson’s story where he failed hundreds of times before succeeding at creating his famous vacuum.

That’s not to say that you can’t be successful when you are young, look at Mark Zuckerburg or even The Million Dollar homepage guy, but these two aren’t exactly the norm.  I imagine if you suggested to them luck was why their ideas took off over everyone elses they would be terribly insulted.  We all want to believe deep down that we know exactly how to build the next big thing, I sure thought that.  Athletes are told to envision the goal, the free throw, the tackle.  This is valuable but by no means will help when it’s raining on the day of the game.

My 1 year old loves this show called The Wiggles. It was started by a couple of ex-rockers from Australia.  They each wear a different color shirt and sing silly songs about their dog, sleeping and buying apples.   They have earned ten multi-platinum awards for sales of over 17 million DVDs and four million CDs!   What a great story… Their pub rock band disbanded after little success then changing careers to become educators they hit upon a children’s rock band that’s now a worldwide phenomenon.

As I see it the key to success is perseverance.  Failing… getting back on the horse and trying again.  Only those that stop playing the game truly fail.

eBay is a racket. If you’ve used the service lately you’ve probably been outbid by a person with 0 reputation or been screwed over by a auction winner with no recourse.  How the hell is ebay the only real game in town?

The times put up a great article about how bad it really is at ebay.

Die ebay die.

The internet is a deceiving place. A 17 year old with an idea and some hard work can become a millionaire overnight… right?

I used to think so, but the older I get and the more I see this is extremely rare. Especially now that everyone and their mother has a blog or a site.

To really succeed in this internet business you need the following:

1. Connections - You need to network well or know someone with influence… (VC’s often provide this)

2. An Idea - A great idea is awesome but a well executed mediocre idea works too

3. Persistence - Success rarely happens overnight (boy do I know this…)

4. Marketing Strategy - You can have the greatest site but if you don’t stand out to people and have a clear powerful message you are going to have trouble. More than this you need to go attract the right audience, as much as it appears to happen to everyone else, users will not just come to you.

#1 and #4 are what we need help on.

I can write code and Rich can make it look great but beyond that I feel like we are in need of some help.

I bought some books. will be looking some consulting firms.

Any other ideas?

Starting a web company is hard work. You need to have an idea, a blog, then code it, test it, make it look pretty, incorporate, host the app, get a lawyer, launch, market it, support it, and maybe even hire some people.

Before the days of the internet this took many people, now a days sites can be launched by one or two people with very little capital. This is the boat third rail is in. Currently, we are in the middle of our latest and most promising project. This is what we do best but just around the corner comes the “hard part” for people like us. Business crap *yuck*.

I just joined the Web 2.0 (Entrepreneurs) group on facebook and noticed people were talking about this process from a business perspective. “I’m a business guy with no tech skills, what do i do?”

I guess our position isn’t so bad after all since we can get pretty far or even all the way without help. If we didn’t know howto code we’d be screwed. I’m tempted to try and find someone to help out with the business side of things but it would have to be the right person…

anyway back to work…

Great post today by the 37signal folk, drawing a paralell between the popular chefs and open software companies, like Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray.

The more they give, the better off they are. The more they open up, the better off they are. The more they let you inside their kitchen the better off they are. These chefs have built empires by making their knowledge available to the public. They are astute business people.

Thats exactly what sites like facebook and 37signals are doing, buy releasing their core software components.

We at third rail are in complete agreement and are releasing our building blocks as we build them.

Keep an eye out for our next recipe soon!