Back Seat Marketers

Dilbert is spot on today about writing up a business plan:

A bit of optimism goes a long way in getting a new project off the ground. I guess folks that start businesses and new projects run at a 10 out of 10 on the optimism scale (which is hard in times like these).

The other part of writing up a plan is the need to see the world differently. While jargon doesn’t help anyone, complex problems need to be dialed down to short words/phrases to act as stand ins for larger concepts (e.g. freemium). BTW, that’s how we felt all along the development cycle with Invequity and PatentMonkey (now Patents.com).

Try following Umair’s presentation on consumers of digital media from a couple years back and you’ll see that the learning curve is steep, but once you’re up it you can see how he views the world. [Too bad Umair seems to want to write/consult more than do a start up or be a VC, cause he’d be great.]