Nine months ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article called “Only the Employed Need Apply“.  The premise of the article was that many employers were only interested in talking to people who were already employed – even if the candidate who had applied had lost their job even after performing at a high level.

Bobby Fitzgerald, a partner in five restaurants in three states, says these days he gets two dozen or more unsolicited résumés each day at one of his Phoenix restaurants, the White Chocolate Grill. But Mr. Fitzgerald says his top candidates, for jobs ranging from servers to management, usually are people who are employed elsewhere. He currently has 50 openings across his five restaurants and has told recruiters to bring in only people who are working.

When you consider that in March 2010 our unemployment rate is still on the precipice of 10% and the average time that someone is unemployed is still over 1/2 of a year, it would appear that Business Leaders like Bobby Fitzgerald aren’t alone.

At Hire Better, we’ve seen a significant up-tick in the number of clients who want us to assist them in hiring salespeople.  For those salespeople who we see as applicants, the statistics are NOT in their favor if they’re applying for a role in which Hire Better is involved.  Here’s what we’ve found:

In a typical hiring cycle, assuming that we have 100 people to consider for a role:

• 82-85 will be Direct Applicants
• 12-15 will be People who are “headhunted” or from our Network
• 1-3 will be Referrals from internal employees at the client company

When we get down to the Top Three Finalists, they’ll look like this:

• 1 Direct Applicant
• 1 “headhunted” Candidate
• 1 Referral

And when the finalist is hired: The chance of the Direct Applicant goes DOWN exponentially as the salary and responsibility goes UP.

For a Sales role, the prospects of a Direct Applicant are even WORSE.  The same statistics will apply to the Candidate pool as before but I have to expand the pool to 5 people when you look for Finalists:

• 1 is a Direct Applicant
• 3 are “headhunted”
• 1 is a Referral

And when this is the case, the Referral has more than a 50% chance of getting hired and the Direct Applicant has less than a 10% chance.  In the case of sales candidates – I believe these stats are just about right.  And they’re justifiable!  If you’re considering hiring an unemployed salesperson or sales manager, you should be asking yourself “Why would a good salesperson be unemployed?”

Dave Kurlan, who I haven’t mentioned in quite awhile, recently shared his findings on how long it takes to get an ROI on a salesperson.  His bold mathematical formula looks like this:

If you have a 12 month sales cycle and an 8 month learning curve, it will take nearly 2 years to get your new salesperson producing consistently.  In that 2 years, maybe you’ll pay out close to $150,000 in subsidies.

Using your average margin, how much revenue must be gemerated to offset that subsidy?

How much revenue must be generated to produce a satisfactory ROI?

How long must the salesperson stick around in order to produce that ROI?

To bring it all back together, if a prospective sales candidate (who, for the sake of this blog post is unemployed) has found him/herself in a new sales role every 2-3 years, what are the odds that anyone who is hiring them is going to experience a positive ROI?

When we look at candidates through this lens we find it’s a lot easier to not find ourselves getting “sold” during an interview by someone who has all kinds of great excuses for why “things just didn’t work out” at that last job they were in…

Another company mentioned, ATX Innovation, participated in Seed Stage Forum. Seed Stage Forum is an event designed by ATI to match promising seed stage wireless start-ups with experienced investors seeking funding opportunities in the space. ATX Innovation closed funding about one month later.

The original article: http://gigaom.com/2010/03/09/10-austin-startups-you-should-meet-while-youre-at-sxsw/

10 Austin Startups You Should Meet While You’re at SXSW

Since more than 30,000 people are coming here to Austin for South by Southwest, I figured I’d offer up a list of local companies that members of the digerati should take the time to meet while they’re in town. Austin has a ton of startups, but I tried to highlight the ones doing things that Austinites do well (such as enterprise social media efforts and hardware) as well as those I think are about to break out and become bigger.

A note to those folks following the manufactured Foursquare-Gowalla smackdown: Gowalla is not listed because most people have already met with Josh Williams, Gowalla’s founder, and I wanted to save room for some unknown Austinites.

1. Gendai Games — This is the company behind GameSalad, a platform that anyone can use to build iPhone games. Its software could become to App Store game development what Microsoft’s Frontpage software was for creating web sites without having to know HTML. One local tech watcher says he thinks that Gendai’s platform could be Apple’s answer to Flash.
2. Smooth-Stone — I write about this company all the time because I’m intrigued by its plan to use ARM-based chips in servers as a way to conserve energy and match the processing power to the workload required by web-scale companies.
3. Plerts — A stealthy startup doing some form of personal alerts on the iPhone. I’m hoping the company will launch at SXSW.
4. Whurleyvision — William Hurley, better known as Whurley, is an Austin tech celebrity, but visit his R&D firm to discuss the future of augmented reality and his rather passionate call for better AR hardware.
5. ATX Innovation — These are the developers behind the TabbedOut app, which connects with a bar’s payment system and allows you to track and then settle your bar tab with one click. Having waited around for more than 20 minutes for my tab on many occasions, I’m loving this. The app is free and users pay a 99-cent fee on each transaction. It’s available for iPhones, and is being tested right now in several Austin bars and restaurants.
6. Infochimps — I love this startup because I love anything that makes access to data easier. Infochimps aggregates and then licenses data sets in formats that folks can then use to create new apps, demographic models or whatever; public data sets are free and private ones (or ones that Infochimps has scrubbed) cost money. Anyone can submit a data set.
7. AreYouWatchingThis.com — If you’ve ever blown off a football game after the first quarter and later found out that your team rebounded in the fourth to win in an upset, you need RUWT. This 3-year-old startup has built a bot that factors in items such as games going into overtime, when talented teams are unexpectedly losing and other indications of an exciting match-up, and then sends out an alert via text or email so that true sports fans never miss out.
8. LugIron — This company founded by ex-Cisco guys wants to be the middleware between social media and enterprise customer relationship management or business intelligence software. The goal is to provide software that can correlate information from Twitter or Facebook to how it affects your business.
9. Appozite — This two-man (actually one man and one woman) startup is behind @cheaptweet, which has 22,000 followers and scours Twitter for savings. If you don’t meet with them, at least follow them so you can score some savings.
10. OtherInbox — Email isn’t going away, but it is becoming increasingly cumbersome. OtherInbox allows users to organize their email, automatically routing messages that come via Facebook or iTunes receipts into folders that you can ignore until you have space time. The endgame is to grab relevant information from your inbox and surface it easily, but we’re not there yet.

I was also interviewed on the Fox News morning show on Channel 26 in Houston. Here is the video:

Have A Great Day.

thom

Pre-register here for $7.50 and you’ll get two drink tickets and some snacks. Or pay $10 cash at the door.

We’ve also posted the details on Do512, Plancast, and Facebook.

We’d like to thank our generous sponsor for this event, Microsoft Bizspark. If you’re an early stage technology startup, the Bizspark program provides entrepreneurs fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools and productions licenses of server products, with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. Each BizSpark Startup will have the opportunity to profile their organization in the BizSparkDB, an online Startup directory, and will get exposure to potential investors, partners and customers around the world.

AustinStartup is a Bizspark Network Partner. Send an email to editor@austinstartup.com and we can get you enrolled in the program.

Published From Austinstartup.com

Wow, we are less than a week away from SXSW Interactive and Music Festivals. And I’m very excited.

The Interactive Festival runs from March 12 – 16 and this year is looking solid!

One of the new additions to the Interactive Festival is the Future15 series on Convergence, Greater Good, Emerging, and Business. These are 15 minutes talks by experts on the aforementioned topics.

Under Emerging is the Wireless Future15, which I helped curate and will be hosting on March 13 (Saturday) on the Hilton Room K. The agenda is as follows (starts at 11 AM):

• 11:00 AM | Mobile, the Great Channel Equalizer | David Gill
• 11:20 AM | The Real Mobile Scoop | Agency, Manufacturer, and Carrier | David Hewitt
• 11:40 AM | Web Evolution: The Rise of Mobile, APIs and Runtimes | Daniel Appelquist
• [BREAK]
• 12:30 PM | iPhone Application Development: Myths and Facts | PJ Tanzillo
• 12:50 PM | Augmenting Your Brain With Android | Steve Brown
• 01:10 PM | Mobile Technology: What’s New, What’s Out, What’s Next? | Anup Murarka

For more information about the Wireless Future15 speakers and topics see the Future15 Emerging schedule.

So I hope to see you at SXSW Interactive and the Wireless Future15!

Oh, and don’t forget the BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW — with my good friend Dean McCall as Emcee.

ceo

Tool #1: SXSW N00bies, start here.

Take time to dig the SXSW website — I often start here with clients. There’s a ton of valuable prepackaged content on the SXSW website. First-timers have a tendency to get overwhelmed at first glance and avoid spending the necessary time exploring the website fully.

To be honest, the SXSW website runs very deep, and requires some quality time to find all the gems that you might not even know you’re looking for. But SXSW is all about serendipity, so allow yourself room to be surprised, even in your initial planning.

Here’s the SXSW first-timers guide and general 101 – start here and take an hour or so for a deeper dive. http://www.sxsw.com/first_time

http://www.sxsw.com/home/news/sxsw_101_posts

True expectation: there’s entirely way too much for any one person to do at SXSW — exploring the website helps you see a better lay of the land and make better decisions.

Solid solution: plan to attend everything that sounds interesting and make the game-time decision when it comes down to it – you can’t choose wrong; it’s all good.

Tip #2: Use apps that are optimized for SXSW

It’s all about location this year.

It seems that every year at SXSW, the biggest problems are trying to figure out where to go next, and what the hell everyone else is doing and why. When I’m glued to phone at SXSW this year, these are the apps I’m going to be using to solve these problems:

SXSW (official app) – The official SXSW app called, my.SXSW, is a valuable tool for those who live the structured life. My.SXSW has some nice sorting and filtering functions that literally can show any and all of official SXSW activities.

If you have the time (and desire), log-in to my.SXSW.com, create an account, and add interesting films, shows, and panels to your schedule. This process forces you to explore the ungodly amount of content that SXSW has prepared over the past year.

The app also has a great map function. For those who have never walked the fine city of Austin, Texas, SXSW is practically a city-wide event – sometimes it’s helpful to actually gauge what’s actually “walking distance.”

Foursquare – Foursquare is a veteran of SXSW from last year. This service/app incentives you to “check-in” and awards you “badges” for personal exploration. Each check-in alerts all of your friends on Foursquare of your location (by venue). The virtual currency talk is an interesting one for another day, but the real value at SXSW is knowing where all your friends are without having to text, email, or call. Plus, they have some cool promotions running this year, like this one in conjunction with Spin.

Superglued – Superglued is real-time coordination/information app developed specifically for the live music experience. It delivers gig-specific tweets, meaning by location and band, to your phone and streams everything being talked about at the show you’re attending without the hassle of hash-tags.

This app also has a complete list of the showlistings (both official and unofficial) and can alert you when hot shows are trending. These features are especially helpful when you’re standing still and not really sure what you’re supposed to be doing. Superglued is also integrated with Foursquare’s API.

Sit.by.us – Sit.by.us takes the idea of a “check-in” to the next level. When you check-in to Sity.by.us, your friends are alerted of your exact seat or area within specific panels at SXSW. This seems like the thing that Scoble is definitely going to pick up on.

Gowalla – Much like Fourquare above, Gowalla is a fun, location-based game that alerts friends of your presence when you check-in. Gowalla is throwing a fun SXSW party and is distributing virtual VIP badges around the city that can be discovered via the app. They are also extending their virtual items to redeemable, real-world counterparts.

Bump – Networking mavens: perk your ears up! This app is a new comer this year and is actually a finalist in the SXSW Accelerator, SXSW’s start-up innovation competition. The Bump app trades contact info and/or attachments from iphone to iphone simply by lightly bumping the two phones together.

Most assuredly, if you do SXSW right, your pockets will be overflowing with business cards by the end of the conference. Bump simplifies the input process by auto-magically dumping a cohort’s info directly into your virtual Rolodex, and it’s pretty fun to do, too.

Siri – Also a SXSW newcomer and finalist in the SXSW Accelerator, Siri is a virtual personal assistant. Much like a real assistant, you can literally ask Siri to do things like, “Siri, get me a cab. I’m way too drunk” or “Siri, remind me to call my mother tomorrow and let her know how fun SXSW is.”

Siri’s smarts can help you locate a restaurant; find movies for downtime, and can try to answer knowledge-based questions. Siri goes beyond voice search and actually takes action on your behalf; meaning, actually booking a cab vs. finding you the number – pretty cool stuff.

There’s a plethora of tools/apps that are applicable for SXSW; these are the ones that I’ll be playing with the most this year. For more SXSW suggested tools, look here.

Tip #3: Trust in your friends when your phone dies

Conference goers, testify – you might as well count on your phone dying once (I know I keep my charger on me and have an battery-powered emergency charger just in case).
With crap-tactular AT&T going down every 10 minutes, your beloved iPhone constantly searches for signal which eats tons of battery. If/when your phone dies, or even before then, look to social media for information when you can’t talk.

Facebook – “friends” tend to share real(er) details about their actual SXSW plans via FB. There are also some fantastic groups and fan pages that track and regularly update SXSW-related info targeted for attendees that intend to experience SXSW badgeless.

Here are the best SXSW pages I’ve found, thus far:

SXSW – This is the official SXSW Facebook page. This fan page hosts the official updates of SXSW and also doubles as a forum for folks looking to meet up and/or discover new aspects festival.

Unofficial SXSW 2010 Events & Parties – This guide updates regularly, features performers, and is geared towards the music audience. For those who look to get the most of the day parties, subscribe to the email list to receive a spreadsheet with all RSVPs. Proceed at your own risk – I’m building my own.

SXSW Badgeless – a Facebook fan page dedicated to the badgeless activities to participate in during the Film, Interactive, and Music festivals.

SXSW Baby! – Activity-based fan page that highlights SXSW’s activities as well as focusing on the logistical side of the festivals — i.e, food, lodging, navigating, etc.

Other Great Websites:

Do512 provides a complete guide to SXSW’s official/unofficial parties in addition to all the other fun stuff happening in Austin at the same time. Pretty much a daily unique in my book.

Plancast is another great tool. Plancast allows users to plan out their SXSW experience and share that plan with friends who are interested in checking out the itinerary. They recently announced one of the more complete SXSW guides I’ve seen recently and I’d highly recommend checking it out here:

Mashable’s Austin Realtime is an online directory that recently launched. It’s a place to connect with other social media fans. You can tag your interests, connect it with Foursquare, Twiiter, Gowalla, Youtube, etc. to share your social networking sites.

Twitter – a great way to digest a quick overview of SXSW chatter.

Tweeples (un)intentionally “leak” A LOT of sensitive information via twitter during the course of SXSW. Following the right people, i.e., the party organizers, the event organizers, influentials, bands, bloggers, etc., can help you beat everyone to the secret shows and hot parties before they close their doors due to capacity.

Don’t just use hashtags, discover them. Everyone is going to use #SXSW, #SXSWi, etc. but you never know what new conversations you can find with some quick searching.

[See my list of favorite ATX twitter peps below.]

Tip #4: SXSW Parties? RSVP! RSVP! RSVP!

What to expect? Nothing. What to get out of it (other than the free beer)? Everything.
There are film parties, music parties, interactive parties, happy hours, day shows, night shows, secret shows, unofficial shows, official shows, afterparties, etc. – point being, there’s plenty to do. The true challenge of SXSW is making sure you have an idea of what’s going on, and are prepared enough to get into the shows you want to attend.

Going back to my original point above, plan to attend everything that sounds interesting and make the game-time decision when it comes down to it – you can’t choose wrong; it’s all good. Here’s how you plan:

Do512’s SXSW-related Calendar

Austin Showlist

SXSW 2010: Austinist’s List of Day Shows, Afterparties, and more

How to find parties in the SXSW website – click on the conference that you want to attend (either Music, Film, or Interactive), select the “Parties and Lounges” sub-tab on the right of the tool bar, scroll to the bottom of page and select the day you are looking to party. From there, each party should have the respective click-through links to RSVP.

Once you identify everything you want to see, you can either add it to your my.SXSW calendar or create calendar invites for yourself and your friends – share the wealth, everyone needs help – it’s SXSW.

Great people follow for SXSW Rumors:

Music Twitter Handles:

@covertcuriosity

@happn_in_austin

@do512

@C3Austin

@Andylanger

@paramountAustin

@socialTNT

@mohawkaustin

@waterloorecords

@rare_caitlin

@pushermania

@superglued

@endofanear

@coolinaustin

@austinsound

@AustinChronicle

@atxhipsters

http://twitter.com/abusedgrymatter/sxsw

Film/Interactive Twitter Handles:

@sxsw

@joshdilworth

@BryanPerson

@austinist

@Rebfef

@Scottland

@PN_ATX

@dtotheryver

@johnrobertreed

@whurley

@rwwmike

@austinstartup

@joshuabaer

@omarg

@bjheinley

@laniar

@prhacker

@bryanmenell

@chelseabot

Some good blogs to look to for SXSW-related info:

http://republicofaustin.com/sxsw-party-rsvps/

http://do512.com/

http://ultra8201.blogspot.com/

http://austinist.com/

http://www.sonicitchmusic.com/

http://sideonetrackone.com/

http://ticktickbang.tumblr.com/

http://covertcuriosity.blogspot.com/

Parting thoughts:

Drink water. Don’t forget to eat. Wear comfortable shoes. Bring earplugs. Don’t drink and drive.

Have fun at South By Southwest this year! I’ll be running around like a mad man but would be happy to chat at any of the parties above!

[Disclaimer: The SXSW Accelerator, Superglued and Siri are all current or former clients of John Robert's]

Far from being just another “girl social hour”, this group of ATX Tech Women has more than a few goals geared toward their gender. Introducing women to some of the more testosterone-heavy activities in the tech industry is a major focus. These include anything from venture capital procurement to coding.

Being a woman in technology myself, I am excited to see this kind of action and let’s-do-this attitude from my tech female compatriots, who at times run from the technical aspects of the field.

If you’re like me and want to see more women carrying the tech torch, contact group organizer Carla Thompson, a fellow Austin Startup contributor and semantic web phenom, for more information on location/time and getting involved. She’s reachable at carla@guidewiregroup.com.

Don’t miss our yearly MobileMonday Austin/SXSW special event. We are having a great set of speakers.. Our Next MobileMonday event is on March 15, 2010; the registration form is at http://www.mobilemondayaustin.com. Seating is limited so please register.

Thanks to our sponsors Mobile Behavior and Forum Nokia.

And thanks to the International Center of Austin (ICA) for offering their space for the event. And thanks to the Austin Wireless Alliance/ATI Wireless and Maria OCampo (Collider Media) and Allison Mooney (Mobile Behavior) for the help with logistics.

Seating is limited! (really to about 50 people)

Cost? Free. Light food and drinks will be served, thanks to our sponsors.

Time? 5:00-6:30 or so pm so we can end early and continue the SXSWi Festivities! Arrive by 5:00 pm.

Where? The International Center of Austin (ICA). The IAC is literally 5 minutes walk distance from the Austin Convention center, so it is very convenient. Address: 201 East 2nd Street Austin, TX 78701-4009. See map: http://bit.ly/cpfrBa

Agenda | Topic Mobile App Design:

• Barbara Ballard — presentation on Mobile Design and User Experience (UX);
• Panel with Foursquare, SimpleGeo, CloudFour, Frog Design and others TBD. Moderated by Carlo Longino of MobHappy.

Please register at http://www.mobilemondayaustin.com!

==> Also, don’t miss on Saturday March 13 the Wireless Future15 at SXSWi! See http://bit.ly/9K7BE2

ceo

The mission of symBIOsis is to provide an Austin-area forum for the life sciences community to network, support each other, and
learn about the challenges of starting and growing life sciences technology companies.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

5:30 – 7:30PM

AT&T Executive Education & Conference Center

$5 Students, $15 General (before March 9)

Register Here

More information here

By Jason Cohen. (P.S. Are you going to SxSW?  If so, drop me a line and we’ll coordinate.)

Most people start their first company while they still have a day job.

It makes sense: You don’t need loans, and you don’t need funding. If you “fail” all you’ve lost is time, but considering the fun, the stories, and everything you’ll have learned, that’s hardly a failure.

You just need to give up all your free time which, if you’ve caught the “founders” bug, is A-OK with you.

But you’ve also placed yourself in a hazardous, potentially legally ambiguous situation. If managed improperly, you’re unnecessarily risking lawsuits and worse.

I’ve been on both sides of the table: I’ve done a startup while working and I’ve employed people who either were or are very capable of having their own startup on the side. And I’ve known people who were sued because of it, and not all of them won.

Here are my tips for how to pull this off.

IANAL

Ho hum, hedging is so tedious. But I have to say it: I Am Not A Lawyer. None of this is legal advice. If you do or don’t do anything listed here and anything bad happens, it’s not my fault.

If anything good happens, I’m thrilled and honored to accept your munificent cash donation.

Pick a business that can thrive within your constraints

Your side venture has constraints a “normal” business doesn’t have:

1. You can’t answer the phone during normal business hours.
2. You can’t answer emails during normal business hours.
3. You can’t afford to hire three developers to add features and bugs.
4. You have to work in fits and spurts.

Your natural tendency is to fight these constraints, but that the wrong approach. For example, you know that to avoid social media shitstorms you’re supposed to have stupendous customer service, so you claim as much on your website. But then you don’t have a phone number and emails sent to you at 10:00am don’t get answered until that night (which means they’re not viewed until the following day).

That’s called a “missed expectation.” It’s also called pissing in the wind — it’s just going to come right back at you.

The right attitude is not only to work inside your constraints, but to turn them into competitive advantages!

For example, your regular income affords you the luxury of underpricing your service. So if anyone complains that there’s no phone number, you can just point out that for $5/mo you can’t afford a phone staff.

As another example, pick a product in which simplicity and having very few features is an advantage. “We do only one thing and we do it better than anyone” is a great marketing slogan. You don’t have the time to make a Microsoft Excel knock-off, so don’t!

Embrace slow growth

We all have dreams of stratospheric growth, whether it’s hoping the next blog post will get 267 votes on Hacker News and double your RSS subscribers, or hoping that the advent of release v1.1 will set the blogosphere ablaze.

Good work if you can get it, but it’s not a “plan,” especially not for a business you’re running in your spare time. In fact, any bootstrapped company should be aiming for slow, consistent growth rather than explosive growth.

This is not a bad thing! Slow growth maximizes your chance for success. Slow means your success is not dependent on some unlikely, massive event that’s totally outside your control. Slow means you can change drastically during the early days without sinking the company. You have a job, so you don’t require explosive growth to be successful anyway.

Remember, your immediate goal isn’t to make millions of dollars, it’s to build a business just solid enough to quit your day job. That might mean enough profits that you can already live (frugally) off the company. Or it might mean you have enough customers to have “proved” you have a viable business model, so now you can raise money with sensible terms.

Don’t lie at work

The best way to avoid a lawsuit is to prove that your employer knows you have a side project.

I know, you really really want to ignore me and operate in secret. You’re afraid to tell them because they’re might do something — fire you, distrust you, or look at you funny at lunch.

Yes, that might happen. But what’s worse — one of those things or a lawsuit? If you don’t think they’ll sue you, then you shouldn’t be afraid of telling them! They are going to find out anyway. You need to tell them on your own terms.

I’ve always told my employer, and it always worked out for the best.
Here are those stories.

How do you tell them? Write a simple document explaining what you’re doing. Here’s my template:

To Whom it may Concern:

I have a hobby which does not in any way conflict with work. I’m writing this letter to make sure you’re aware of it so there’s no misunderstanding.

My hobby is ….

I work on my hobby only at home and on my own time; it is not in conflict with my employee agreement. I own it; [Company] has no ownership or rights to it. Like any hobby, it could generate a small amount of income.

Although I don’t anticipate it, I understand that if my hobby ever became in conflict with my job that it’s my responsibility to notify you immediately.

Thank you.

Then you get this letter signed by someone with authority. “Authority” means someone who can legally represent the company. This will of course depend on the company, but typically C*Os or the company’s legal council is a good bet.

Getting a supportive boss to sign it isn’t good enough. He can’t speak for the company.

Check your employment agreement

There’s a phrase in the template letter about your side business not conflicting with your employment agreement. Is that true? It’d better be.

Employment agreements are typically biased in favor of the employer, sometimes with outrageous clauses saying that anything you do, even at home and on your own time and unrelated to anything at work, is automatically owned by the company, and that furthermore you’re responsible for identifying and reporting on those things, and if you don’t do all of the above there’s no limit to the damage you could have caused.

Courts have thrown out some of these egregious contracts, but that’s unusual, and you can’t depend on that. You don’t want to go to court at all. Besides, you signed it.

Read over your agreement and make sure it’s legal to have the side business. If it isn’t, you must write a letter like the one above specifically stating that this is a valid exception to your employment agreement.

Don’t use company property or Internet, for reals

Another clause in most employment agreements is that anything you do physically at work, or on software and equipment owned by the company (e.g. laptop, customer lists, Photoshop) is automatically the property of the company.

This clause is fair. If your project is really on the side, you have no business doing business at work. If your project is really yours alone, it cannot be assisted by a company laptop, company software, or company Internet connection.

When it comes to company property, be paranoid. Assume Big Brother is watching. Assume every laptop has a secret program that records all keystrokes, mouse clicks, screen shots, web sites, and emails you read or write. Assume everything you do on the Internet is recorded, cataloged, tagged, and monitored continuously by a methamphetamine-powered slave-army.

Now I realize you’re super clever. You want to sneak in some tech support emails during the day, so you use a cocktail of  Anonymizer plus GMail-over-SSL to confound the network admin. Because of course covering up your activity is a sure sign you’re doing something legal…

Even that is not enough. If they decide to sue, they get to look through your email records (it’s called “discovery”). Then they have 100 emails you sent during work hours. You lose.

Get the picture? Just don’t do it.

Time management is critical

I’m naturally awful at personal time management. I procrastinate, I’m disorganized, and if I’m not careful I’ll burn two hours ROTFL at FailBlog with nothing to show for it but tears of laughter puddled under my keyboard.

A startup already generates an infinite amount of work. It takes all your time, which for you is 40 hours/week less than it ought to be. You can’t afford to waste time, whether that means bad habits or working on the wrong tasks.

There’s no silver bullet — workflow is a personal matter — but here are some techniques to get you started:

• Check email infrequently.
• Inbox Zero — Processing email until nothing remains has both psychological and practical advantages.
• GTD (Getting Things Done) — This technique literally changed my life. Few people implement 100% of this system, but everyone can take away a trick or two that makes them more productive.
• Work in sprints — Short, focussed bursts of activity eliminate the surprisingly large waste that comes from context-switching and interrupt-driven behavior.
• If you don’t sleep enough, your productivity plummets. Trading an hour of sleep for an hour of coding is never efficient.
• Use a tool like RescueTime (free!) to empirically discover where you’re spending time; the waste becomes clear. P.S. Tony Wright, founder of RescueTime, started that company while employed and wrote about what he learned.
• Optimize slowest tasks first — Identifying and optimizing the slowest tasks increases your overall productivity more than you think.

What are your tips? Leave a comment and join the conversation.