Cameesa - The Blog

I came across this post at 200 Nipples, and it really struck a chord with me:

http://blog.200nipples.com/2008/12/why-is-effort-uncool/

I see this in myself and in others.  It’s definitely a defense mechanism: if I don’t succeed, then I can say that I wasn’t really trying anyways.  That way I don’t look like a less intelligent/capable/successful person.

But it is BS.  We are trying very hard with Cameesa, and I am most proud of how far we’ve come.

I am going to carry this attitude over into other things in my life.  If I am not trying hard at something, then I shouldn’t be doing it at all.

Choice quote:

“Now is a particularly good time to try most anything, in fact. The sheep are terrified, and resources are cheap.”

Thanks for the inspiration 200 Nips!

These “commandments” are in no particular order, and I can’t guarantee that this will even be a recurring post theme. That being said, I *plan* to share some of the things I have learned every few weeks…

Today I was reminded once again of one of my favorite business proverbs:

Opportunities multiply as they are seized

Building a business from the ground up can often seem a daunting, if not impossible, task. How do you go from 1 guy in a spare bedroom to 50 people in a warehouse?

First, I think it is important to have a detailed vision of what you and the company will look like in the near future. Always keep that vision in mind, know exactly what you want to become in 6 months. It is much harder to hit a bullseye if you are just throwing darts at the wall. Stare that thing down and go for it. (Same applies for lawn darts/jarts)

So, now you’ve got your vision, but how the heck do you get there? As Kamil hinted at earlier, YOU’VE JUST GOT TO START. Start doing something. Seriously, almost anything. If you are planning to start a new business, start talking to people about it. Start blogging. Start twittering. In the case of a web business, start writing code.

Because the sooner you start, the sooner you can being iterating on your initial work. And you must accept this sad fact: the first version of your product will probably suck, big time. Once you can accept that, and it is a tough pill to swallow, you will be on your way.

But back to the quote: “Opportunities multiply as they are seized”.  I have been constantly reminded of this quote during my personal journey from corporate cog to business owner.   When I first came up with the idea for Cameesa, I began talking with Justin about the potential of the business.  We began running numbers and doing a competitive analysis, but we weren’t really moving forward.  At the time I had near zero knowledge of web programming, since I was an embedded software engineer working in the C programming language.  But that didn’t stop me from going out and making one of the worst prototypes in the history of the internet.  I had no business developing a website, but I JUST STARTED.

With this terrible prototype website, I was able to succesfully pitch Kamil to come on board to give Cameesa some amazing technical chops.  Kamil proceeded to teach me almost everything I know about web develoment; he’s a great teacher.

A couple of months later, when we had a respectable development site up, I was contacted by Jay Rogers of Local Motors.  He was introduced to us from a friend (Qasar), who showed him our development site.  I went on the help launch Local Motors and gain PRICELESS experience working with a great entrepreneur like Jay.  I took that experience have been applying it to Cameesa non-stop.

So, to recap: I developed a terrible prototype website, which lead to Kamil coming on board, which lead to a great development website, which lead to meeting Jay, which lead to launching Local Motors and invaluable experience, which lead to the Cameesa you see today.  More and more opportunities presented themselves, all because I JUST STARTED.

I came across a t shirt search engine on Tech Crunch today called PleaseDressMe. The site lets you filter shirts according to keywords, tags, colors and price. Very useful. Some of the feedback I’ve received for Cameesa involved developing ways to search t shirts by color and type. I think it’s a great idea and will definitely more become relevant once our shirt selection grows.

Some of the positives of PleaseDressMe are the clear and simple focus of the site. A drawback is the small pool of t shirts that are indexed by their system. There have been some complaints that some keywords yield no results. I don’t see this as a major issue and I think this will slowly change as additional t shirt sites are added and selections on the indexed sites grow.