tane.li

I am writing an unusual (what's unusual anyways?) "briefs" blog entry here on no one topic in particular. And it's currently around midnight.

1) The blog now has search (yay!). It's right there on the right-hand-side toolbar. Use it, please.

2) On the day of the Gallows God (Odin's day; Wednesday) this week I will be in Tallinn. Participating to the ArcticEvening as one of the panelists. Link to the event here:

http://www.arcticstartup.com/2009/01/14/arcticevening-event-in-tallinn-e...

Come say hi if you are around. Come extract some "evangelion" from the Chief Evangelist of Skype, Sten Tamkivi.

3) I hear there's over 200 people already signed up for the Entrepreneur Tuesday talk tomorrow. The talk will be in english. There's still room for (barely) a few more, so come around if you are at Otaniemi/Tapiola tomorrow. The link:

http://www.hmea.fi/taneli-tikka.html

4) While doing my presentation materials for tomorrow I started thinking about a way to measure the success of a serial entrepreneur; measuring the amount of financing she has received against the exit value her companies have created. Seems brutal and uncheatable enough, don't you think? I was also considering my own grand total, which is on positive side, if I did my math right...

Will have to blog more on that some day, interesting topic. They do follow Hollywood movie stars and their success in leading roles, creating lists who is "the most bankable star".. Why not entrepreneurs? Is the point of entrepreneur to make money?

I keep hearing the words of Morten Lund in my head: "You can't do this if you plan to make money, you do it because you have to do it" (not an exact quote).. and agreeing with it a lot.

5) I have a big "notes and ideas" list on what to write about. Some topics might include:

- Taxation for entrepreneurs (all aspects of it)
- The biggest problems in the surrounding structures and obstacles to succeed
- The incentives (or lack of them) in being a serial entrepreneur
- "insider" stuff on how to make money (precisely) in social networks + media.
- Future of online advertising, my views and takes on that.
- What matters the most in the behavior of your customers in social media
- The role of the COO and how it's often blown
- Sausages, the couch and adult entertainment on the telly
- War stories learned: coping with responsibility
- Faith and moments of "startup despair"
- Story on Dopplr's launch
- Some (sometimes nasty) scoop on investor behavior
- War Story: how did I survive a bankruptcy?
- Startup PR: press releases
- Financing: specific VC terms and deal structures
- How telco-companies failed in their networks building
- VCs and IPR; strange bedfellows
- Bootstrapping guide
- Outsourcing in startups
- Societal critique (politics) on things that hinder innovation and "free society"
- War stories on nasty situations that we survived
- Startup board of directors work in detail, recommendations
- Startup strategy; what to focus on?
- Guide to writing business plans that get you funded

... that's quite a load of stuff (and there's more). What sounds like the most exciting stuff for you? Anything specific you would like me to address there? Please leave a comment.

Just letting you know that this blog has had about 10 thousand unique visitors according to Google Analytics during the first month of its life.

Biggest incoming traffic has been the result of two spikes: 1) the finnish digimedia writing about www.IRC-Galleria.net stuff and about 10 to 15 other blogs publishing either that same content or announcing that this blog has opened up (thank you for that bloggers!), 2) TechCrunch and ArcticStartup writing about Fruugo gossip.

Interesting details from statistics:

- There has been more overall incoming traffic from www.ArcticStartup.com (and from Vierityspalkki) than from TechCrunch ;-)

- Facebook is the biggest referrer overall (I publish entries on status messages and as an incoming RSS feed to my FB Notes). Seems to actually work better than anticipated. Nice. That stuff is visible only to my FB friends, which leads me to think that they must really read my writings (thanks) or they are just being nice..

- Google.com direct search traffic is huge; 3rd largest referrer.

- Jaiku is way above Twitter as referrer.

- I have had 12 visitors to my blog coming in with a search keyword "world of warcraft addiction" W00t? LOL =)

- Fruugo story is by far the most read.

- Half the traffic is returning visitors

I can say that I'm satisfied with the level of readers here during the first month. However I would wish for more comments and more discussions to appear on the blog. Many have commented my tweets or status messages, and I would rather see those comments here instead - and hopefully get some conversation going.

Thank you for reading! Keep at it! (and comment when you fell like it)

BTW: is there any kind of well-established and easy way to measure your RSS feed subscriptions? Drupal default stats don't quite do the trick as well as they should.

Welcome to tane.li! Glad to see you here.

This is meant to be as my place to preach what I practice and have experienced during my years of entrepreneurship and occasional big corporate adventures. The ideas is to share and participate in a meaningful dialogue about topics dear and important to me (and to us all I hope).

I plan to follow the kind of guideline I have often followed: speak my mind on a wide range of issues and topics, as opinionated as it may occasionally be. Sounds like a quick way to get into trouble, doesn't it?

The blog will touch on topics of: startup war stories, tabus, success cases, failure cases, venture capital and financing, public finance systems, bootstrapping guidelines and startup techniques, management and leadership, agile methodology, board of directors work, learning experiences, insights and comments into the startup scene and occasionally important recent events, startup strategy and world of thought, and controversial topics as well as my own shortcomings, doings and occasional victories.

Please do keep sending me ideas and commentary on what you would like me to write about through the details there in the contact tab.

I have also decided to go with a policy of openness and in this spirit have included the companies I have ownership-interests in the portfolio tab. While all ownership information is technically public in Finland (corporate law, chapter 3, section 17), it is still somewhat unusual for anyone to disclose ownership like this, which is a good enough reason to go about it. This country needs more openness and it might just as well start here.

Once upon a time I wrote a blog for about 1.5 years or so. It ended up being an extended rant&rave about high tech stuff and energy policy. Not going there this time mate, no worries ;)

I'm not really a writer, I'm a doer, and this is where I preach what I practice.

I invite you to join in and comment on everything, as well as sending me feedback on what ever is on your mind. Subscribe to the feed, the mailing list - I hope to see you here many times still!