Startups – Nehemiah Wyant's Web Home

Breaking Records

Getting some victories in life matters. There are so many ways to be victorious. We can win across so many areas of our lives. Something great that can happen in addition to winning, is that we can break records. We can break records in just about anything we can measure. I am grateful there are so many ways to break records and push myself.

The cool thing about trying to break records is that it pushes me to another level. I go harder, I’m more focused, and I become more persistent. Trying to win and break records really elevates my performance. This mindset is something I try and use across all sorts of stuff. I am happy there are records to break in so many areas of life.

I try and break word count records with my writings.

When it comes to things like reading the Bible, I try and put together strings of consecutive days reading.

When it comes to workouts, well it’s all about that weight on the bar.

Records can be about streaks, about hitting bigger numbers, or about speed. There are so many metrics to play with. I find it awesome there are so many ways to break records, that I have opportunity to do it almost daily. I think there is great value in trying to break records daily. I believe it builds a mindset I want to have about life in general. I’m just so happy there are like millions of records I can break instead of like 10.

The Hidden Power of Startup Weekend

It’s Monday morning, another Greater Lafayette Startup Weekend is in the books. It was a weekend of creativity and just a bit of chaos. These events are a bit odd, a bit silly, really cool, and I wonder if they don’t just happen to teach us how to live a little bit better in our everyday lives.

If you had to describe what a Startup Weekend is, you could be brief and simply say “Energy and Optimism.” In fact these events are filled with people that are 100% optimistic and seeking a touch of magic. They find that magic by simply suspending disbelief for just a weekend. Negativity and doubts are disregarded in favor of action, exploration, and wonder. Taking nothing more than idea, everyone is trying to breath life into this idea of theirs. Once there are some teams formed around some of these ideas, then some really cool things start to happen.

These groups of mostly strangers start with business ideas, and they try and figure out if these ideas have any legs to them. These strangers then spend every waking moment for the whole weekend helping this team of theirs move forward. Then at some point something else cool always seems to happen, all the other teams of strangers, start helping out all the other teams full of strangers. Then at some point a bunch of coaches and mentors show up to bring even more help and expertise to the table. A lot of these people are professionals that bill out their time at over $100 an hour, and they just help all weekend for free. This creates some sort of vortex of creative energy that is hard to find in the world. This energy unlocks things, it can unlock people.

Before long these teams will realize how flawed they are. Most teams are lacking something pretty big they need to pull off their vision. Web apps are hard to build without a developer. A team may not have anyone that is good at public speaking to present their vision. A team of engineers may not have much experience validating a market or talking to customers. These teams are flawed, they know they shouldn’t succeed. That story they tell themselves is bullshit. Most of the time they cut through this bullshit and move forward. It’s not uncommon to see people that meekly pitch an idea on Friday, stand up on stage Sunday for final presentations and own the room. People quit thinking about what they “can” do, and just start doing, and in the process learn just a little about themselves.

As the weekend progresses people become more aggressive. Passiveness and indecision melt away. There is just no time for that nonsense. People enter an attack mode, and a lot of stuff starts to get done. A lot of first-time attendees of the weekend leave a bit surprised how much they accomplished in the weekend. A lot can happen in the course of a weekend or even a day. You could ask yourself why couldn’t this happen all the time?

The answers are simple. Focus, the only thing that matters for the weekend is the team, the business, the mission, its almost like a state of mediation. Passion, the passion people bring in is contagious. Playfulness, people feel free to try things and experiment. Inclusiveness, everyone finds a way to contribute to things, and everyone that enters the building is a part of the game in some way, no spectators are allowed. We start to act a little different, and we start to get something different as a result.

Why don’t we all help each other more? Why do we put up with our own bullshit stories in our heads? If we all acted like this a bit more every day, where would we end up? There is nothing stopping us from doing this all the time. There is only the hinderance of choice. What is stopping people from choosing passion, focus, energy, openness? Maybe that’s what Startup Weekend is good for, learning how to unlock ourselves and get out of our own way.

How Building Software Improved My Deadlift

This June I walked into the gym at 34 years old, after 20 years of lifting weights, and lifted my heaviest deadlift ever. This was a most glorious day. It was a day, just a couple years before I never would have thought would come. Over those two years I started working on a fitness startup app. The app was focused on providing feedback to lifters and doing all sorts of normal workout journal things. The process of product managing and building this app was fun, challenging, and ended up making me stronger in the gym.

I thought I knew a lot about training and lifting weights. I have been doing this seriously since 14 years old or somewhere around there. The plan was to take everything I knew and distill it into an app. I did do this, but I had to do so much more to get to where I felt the product was of actual quality. I had to move from lifting to understanding lifting. The journey resulted in a pretty cool app, me understanding lifting better, and being the strongest I had ever been.

To build a product that was useful to other lifters, I had to move from being just a lifter, to being someone that understood lifting at a higher level. I spent so much time on YouTube and reading to learn more about the programming side of lifting and look for commonalities. These commonalities would become features in the product I was building. A side benefit to this was that I was absorbing large amounts of information about all sorts of lifting things. I also spent countless hours in deep thought about working out and lifting. This was a level of thinking about lifting that I had never engaged in before. I thought I was reading a lot and thinking about lifting a lot until this process started. One of the easiest ways to lift heavier weights is to become a smarter lifter. Before I was long into this process I was starting to get stronger and my body was feeling better than it had in years.

This process was all a search for features to put into the app I was building. All the features were to track variables in a lifter’s training that lead to increased performance. I was looking for common variables that lots of lifters would want to track. I settled on a handful of variables that I knew were important to most lifters. I started tracking these few variables in my training and I got stronger. It was only a few variables. I focused on getting enough repetitions of key exercises in during a week, and I focused on breaking records on a regular basis. Those were the main two things I worried about. I manipulated my workouts around those principles and I kept getting stronger. Before I had started in on this I would have told you that countless variables make a difference, and they do. I also learned for me at that time if all I thought about was those key variables, then the results got better. I think that is probably true about all sorts of things in life.

While researching to build this product, I was starting to look at all sorts of training theories and methodologies I had ignored in the past. For most of my lifting life I have done the exercises, methods, and routines that I liked. I got results from this approach and did not worry much about things outside my interests. This is ok, but new results usually mean doing things we have not done before. My research was exposing me to all sorts of new ideas and I started to implement some of them. These new methods helped me do some cool things. I was able to rehab a pec tear while only missing a couple workouts, in the past that would have sidelined me for a long time. I would not have been able to pull that off before my research. This is just one of the ways this process was serving as a catalyst for strength.

Any good app or software requires testing, and I became the tester for everything I built. Having to put my workouts into an app and see how hard I was or not working was a great nudge in the right direction. It was my job to be better and stronger, so I was better and better. I think this nudge is all most of us need to be better at something we are passionate about. Building this app poured gas on my already existing passion.

I am through the whole process of building this lifting app. I built it to learn technology, to make some money, to build up my resume, I didn’t think it would result in lifetime best lifts. In retrospect I think building software or products around a hobby is a great way to get better at your hobby and get a deeper appreciation for it. I am deeper into lifting weights now more than ever. If you want to get better at something, I can now recommend building products around it. It will force you to learn, it will force you to understand more, and it will force you to grow. These products could be software, physical, informational, podcasts…. I don’t think it matters, it only matters that you are forced to grow and think.

Guilty Of Startup Misadventure Part 1.

Many are guilty of startup misadventures, I am no different, this is one of those tales…

The day is Friday, 9/14/18 and I feel a bulge in my abs. I know the feeling, I had that same bulge on the other side two years earlier. That bulge was an inguinal hernia that required surgery. This time would be no different, sooner or later there will be a surgery to fix this. There is no training around this thing, there are no alternative treatments, the surgeon has to cut me.

The next couple days were filled with a feeling of impending and complete doom. I felt assaulted, and broken on many fronts. Firstly there is the whole surgery thing, some doctor is going to shove some mesh inside me and sew me back together. This is going to hurt, the rehab hurts, but I have done that before, and I can do the pain. Barring a surgeon butchering his job, I know I can come back fine from this thing. The real doom was felt around the fact that I am currently building almost all my life and career around fitness and lifting.

My only hobby is lifting weights. I am studying to become a personal trainer and get a job doing that. I am also building a startup focused on fitness. Everything in my life revolves around the fact that I have been under the bar lifting weights for 20 years, and the fact that in all that time I have learned a trick or two. My body is currently broken though, I cannot be under a bar. I am early into the development of the injury from what I can tell. I’m by no means crippled, but doing a deadlift would be really stupid right now. I have spent a lot of time thinking that all is lost. I cannot do the central activity around which my career and startup are focused.

All the product testing done on Incelerate(my super cool fitness startup) has revolved around my own training, and working with the actual data and processes I use to train myself. All of this is done now. I can’t work new systems, or build new features to experiment with, I am stuck sitting in a chair indefinitely. This entire product I have built is the product and tools I have wanted and would have liked to have in the past. I have put everything on myself, the product development, the testing, the marketing, everything.

I am early on with everything with this startup but have started to think about and start moving with my content marketing. Again most of this content revolves around my own weight lifting and things inspired from that. Everything has been on the table to do, from hardcore exercise science articles, to fitness and lifting stunts on YouTube. Now that feels limited, I can’t even take a picture of myself in the gym for Instagram, because well, I’m no longer in the gym. A lot of marketing doors have closed with that. Really it feels like a lot of doors have closed for me in the several days.

Really I have come realize pretty fast here, that these feelings and perceptions of my reality are nothing but a lie I am telling myself. Building a fitness startup, or even personal training, they are not about me actually working out. This startup is not about me at all. These ventures are about my experience and passion, not about what I can do today. I lost that somewhere along the way. I am a coach, I am a cheerleader, but I’m not the one playing the game. It matters that a basketball coach used to play, it doesn’t matter if he can still play. I kept falling into a mental trap, thinking that heavier lifts would make my startup better in some way.

Nothing I could do in the next year in the gym would have really made a difference that the last 20 years wouldn’t have already done. More experience and domain knowledge is always good. 20 years experience means I have those boxes checked. In fact if you look at some of the other lifting apps out there, I have more time under the bar than their entire founding teams. I have the experience and knowledge to build a quality product that can help a lot of people.

I think experience and wanting more knowledge is a mental trap for startups. Most startups are about helping the common person and intermediate people. Elite and advanced people are going to need something a little different, and I must ask myself if I am the guy to help those people. I am not elite, I am a hobbyist at this stuff. If I was going to be elite, my body would have responded by now and become elite. I have the skill and experience to build some cool stuff for normal people wanting to be strong. I will NEVER have the experience to build tools for elite athletes without a lot of outside help.

All in all I lost sight of what mattered and why I can build a pretty cool app and startup. There are really two things that I have going for me. I have passion and I have experience. Those are the two things that matter. How much I lift today doesn’t matter. How fit or healthy I am at the moment doesn’t matter. A focus on myself put me in this position, but to build a business, focus on others is far more important. A lot of good startups start from a founder’s hobbies or interests. This is a good thing. But if you’re not careful you’ll end up like me thinking if you build up your bench press you’ll build up your business, and that’s really not how this all works.

Daily Nehemiah 3: Am I Bi-Winning?

I gave him all the answers, how to get strong, how to hit the weights. I offered all sorts of help, all he had to do was show up. Anything I could do I offered. He won’t do any of it. I gave him all the answers and he will choose to fail. I hope I am wrong. He doesn’t want it, he wants to look like he wants it.

How many times have I been offered and given the same degree of help by others? Do I have all the answers? Do I know how to do the things I am trying to do? Have people helped me and given me all the answers? Do I have everything I need for massive success served to me on a silver platter? Do I choose not to do anything about it? Do I not want it? Do I want to lose?

Recognizing help when it is presented is a skill. Giving up things like pride and just taking help is a skill too. Loving things like pride more than winning, well that is just stupid.

Do I want to win? Or do I want to look like I want to win?

Coworking Has Failed Us

Membership is up, the coffee is flowing, the television and paper covers the press releases, but something is missing. There has been a lot of spin, a lot of hope, a lot of dreaming, but the delivery has been less than stellar. Before we had coworking in the form of MatchBox here in town, we heard a lot of words like “tech, art, innovation, collaboration, entrepreneurialism, revitalization, vision.” Before there was a building, we were buying into an idea, a bit of vision, and what we hoped to be fun. We knew there would be two things being built, one was a building, the second and the much more important part was the community. Over a year later, I get the feeling I am still waiting for the community. I will be the first to admit I am a delusional maniac, so maybe I was hoping for things that were just not going to happen.

We knew there was a lot of community building to do. There also was a lot of ambiguity about what this community would be. Everyone thought and hoped it would be something cool. I feel like we are still waiting on the cool. Yes there are some cool things happening around here. We are having Verge events, Startup Weekends, tech meetups, writer’s nights, and there are some really cool people coming through this place. There still feels like there needs to be more. The conversations, the energy, the ambition in this community are just mediocre. In fact at this point coworking is a failure.

I see very little happening in this place that was not happening before. My approach and viewpoint is definitely from the tech side of things. From that perspective there is nothing happening here in this building that we were not making happen elsewhere. In fact our attendance was similar if not more for events we were holding elsewhere. We have a multi-million dollar facility and have turned it into zero momentum. In fact the spark in these circles is fading fast, and the community weakening. This is a failure on my part, and a failure on the part of Lafayettech leadership, we should have done better. The opportunity really exists for a great tech community, a great coworking community, but someone has to do the work, someone has to create the community we wanted.

I hear there is a vision, I hear things are moving forward, I don’t really know. Hell if it is in a coherent format, I don’t know what it is, send me a paper copy if there is one. I don’t know that I much care at this point. This community is not visionary stuff, anyone that says it is, is probably a charlatan or a dumbass. We really need to stop waiting for something to happen and create the community we want. I have been apathetic, so I am to blame as much as anyone. We really just have a great opportunity here to build a really cool community. I see this MatchBox and coworking thing going one of two ways, we can build something cool, or let this community be a droll amalgamation of freelancing drones, sales training, “synergy”, “teamwork”, and all those other buzzwords that don’t mean a thing and exude lameness. So I guess we all need to up our efforts a little bit, and make this place into what we want to see. So here is what Nehemiah is going to make happen in here, or he will get ran out, one or the other.

Startup Weekends are coming back, bigger and better than ever. We are just waiting for the right time to ramp these back up.
There will be more technology specific meetings on the way. We want to go deep into iOS, PHP, C#, more announcements are on the way.
Reigniting the hacker culture around here. Coders are wizards, masters of the universe, and Jedi masters, it is time for us to act accordingly and build for the love of building.
More tech talks and workshops, on everything from social media to legal issues.

Hey if you’re into tech, come hunt me down, and help out, there is tons of work to do, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. If you are not into coding, entrepreneurship, tech, or anything that I am, that’s fantastic too. To make this community really awesome, we need artists, filmmakers, singers, writers, dog enthusiasts, food truck drivers, gluten-free vegans, the NRA…. There are all sorts of nerds, not just tech nerds, and really fun things happen when you get them together. So all sorts of people need to make MatchBox their playground, because that is what this place is. Or we can all just not do anything and within a year MatchBox will be a meeting room for GLC and a cheap office for a bunch of service professionals exchanging business cards. So do whatever the fuck you want around here, that’s what I am going to do.

The Trivialization of Epiphany

The acts of creating and innovating will often be arduous and exceedingly time consuming. To launch a seemingly simple website or app it may take hundreds of hours of programming. Books, poems, songs can take just as long. Months of effort can be consumed in mere moments by consumers. As consumers we tend not to think about this fact. We experience things, say “That’s nice” and move on. It’s not a big deal when we are hearing a song on the radio or just downloading a random app on our phone. We are surrounded by art and product nonstop, so it is impossible to really think about and celebrate all of it. We must however do more to celebrate these accomplishments when they come from our friends, families, and neighbors.

For the creators of both art and product, the moment of unveiling or launch is a mix of fear, excitement, anticipation, and relief. If this effort is the reflection of months of even years of work, this effort is not only a thing, but it is a reflection of large part of identity. As a community, as friends, there is not always a lot we can do to help our friends through their work. Creation is by design, going to have a lot of loneliness involved. After the process is complete there is much we can for our friends.

As a community and individuals we must do more to encourage these creators and innovators. As launch day approaches and arrives we need to share their enthusiasm and interest. Grown adults are spending whole weekends celebrating their birthdays with parties, trips and all other manner of jubilation. Yet when a friend launches their app, their book, their album, often there is little fanfare or excitement, and at times little interest at all. When viewed from this paradigm, society will put more excitement and celebration into simply living another year, than it puts on working and laboring to create. The acts of creating and innovating are hard enough, we should make sure not to pile on a side of apathy to these efforts.

Most acts of innovation and creation fail. Research discovers nothing, the song is bad, the app just doesn’t deliver on its purposes. Even when this happens, and it will to everyone, we need to celebrate the efforts. These people are pouring themselves into things trying to create, trying to make the world better. We need these people to keep going. Without them, nothing will change, nothing will get better, life will be bland. So next time a friend shares their life’s work with you, act like you give a damn, because if you don’t, maybe you’re not really a friend at all.

Fight Club Style Rules for Tech Communities

1^st Rule: To be included in the community you must build stuff.

2^nd Rule: To be included in the community YOU MUST BUILD STUFF.

3rd Rule: If someone tells you stop… you just keep going. You don’t quit startups and projects until YOU decide.

4th Rule: You need a co-founder or partner. Going lone-wolf is going to make you a crazy person.

5th Rule: Only one project at a time that isn’t making you any damn money. You are not Elon Musk. One fight at a time is enough.

6th Rule: You must figure shit out. That is what we do, we figure shit out when other people would give up.

7th Rule: You keep trying and take swings until you win or are broken. There are no other alternatives.

8th Rule: If you don’t have a success under your belt. YOU MUST START BUILDING YOUR BEST IDEA TODAY!

How To Win At Startup Weekend

Excited about an upcoming Startup Weekend? Think you want to try and win? Well after attending all 4 Startup Weekends here in Greater Lafayette I have a few tips for you that might just help you win.

Start Hustling Early. Get to the event early and start networking. This helps you do several things. It lets you start finding people you would like to work with. The unofficial team forming process begins as soon as you walk in the door. It also gets you comfortable talking about your ideas.
Pitch Enthusiastically. If you are pitching make sure you pitch like you actually believe in your idea and are excited about the weekend. This sounds simple but it will go a long way in attracting talent to your team. The better your talent you can collect the better you chances will be of winning.
Look Good. Friday night at Startup Weekend is a lot about first impressions. Teams form for a lot of the same reasons any group of people form. So make sure you present yourself favorably.
Form a Complete Team. Startup Weekend judging is based on three areas: business, MVP, and user experience. Make sure your team can cover all three areas. Be aggressive about filling your skill set out, otherwise your presentation will suffer Sunday.
Talk to Potential Customers. This is something a lot of groups neglect to do. The more you can gather information from potential users the better your product will be.
Sunday Is For Presentations. Spend all day Sunday getting your presentation ready and practicing. If you have a larger team you may be able to break into teams, but most of your product should be done by the end of Saturday.
Sleep. IF you try and be hardcore and skip sleeping, your team will suffer, this never works out well. Many Startup Weekend participants have made themselves physically ill during the weekend, don’t be that guy.
Present a Unified Front. During presentations have a strategy for answering questions. If you disagree with your teammates during Q&A everyone ends up looking stupid standing up there. Never disagree with your teammates, the judges don’t know any better.
Bullshit! Confidence is key, so when you are presenting, just act like you got it all figured out. No one excepts you to have it all figured out just quite yet.
Set Time Limits. There are lots of decisions to make during a Startup Weekend. Don’t be afraid to use a stopwatch to limit time on small and medium decisions. Spending hours deciding on the company name for example, is a great way piss away your time. Often the quick decision is the right decision.
No “Intellectual” Debates. Get enough tech folks together and debates are bound to happen. Debating programming languages, frameworks, and other tech is a waste of time. Pick something that works for the weekend and live with it. Debates on the product, features, etc are acceptable, but at the end of the day, no one cares if the application is built on PHP or Python.
Be Flexible. The more your team escapes their comfort zone the better the chances of winning. Be ready to try new things, Startup Weekend is the perfect environment to try new things in a relatively consequence free environment.
Judging Sheet. You should get a sheet the first night of Startup Weekend of what the judges will be looking for. Go point for point and make sure you have addressed every single thing there in your presentation, and have good answers prepared for follow up questions. Most groups don’t do this, they end up completely disregarding some aspect and set themselves very far back. You can only go so far without a revenue model or with no UX work whatsoever.
Pursue Outside Help. Look to mentors, organizers, and people on other teams for help when you need it. There is a lot of talent in the building during a Startup Weekend and only a small part of it is on your team. Look around and ask for help and advice from others, people are usually very willing to help.

So that is pretty much how I would go about winning the judging side of Startup Weekend. You can also “win” at Startup Weekend, by taking a different approach and not worrying too much about the judging. At the end of the weekend it doesn’t matter how good your MVP is ultimately, the relationships and experience is far more valuable than the end product. So here are a few tips for winning by having fun.

Network. Make sure you meet judges, mentors, sponsors and people on other teams. There are a lot of cool folks at Startup Weekends, meet as many of them as you can. If you stay too heads down on your team, you might miss out on meeting people that could be really good contacts in the future.
Just Hang Out. Spend some time not working and actually getting to know your team. This is good for both during and after the weekend, knowing who you are working with is important on so many levels.
Focus on Fun. If you want to build something fun, do it. The prizes for winning Startup Weekend are usually cool, but not so cool to give up having fun. If you hate doing something, don’t do it just to win. If your team really likes marketing, then build promo materials and forget the prototype. This won’t score points with the judges, but it might make the weekend more fun.
Go To The After Party. Plan to stay and hangout after the event, usually there is a good crowd hanging out for a while afterwards. Sometimes there is even a formal after party. In either event spend some time unwinding with your new friends, you just accomplished something pretty awesome.

Both approaches can make for a good Startup Weekend experience. Or if you have a bit of maniac inside you, and most people that attend Startup Weekend do, DO BOTH!