Viewing entries tagged
Offyx

Failure Is an Option, Actually

Failure Is an Option, Actually

For every successful business I’ve started, or investment I’ve made, there have been multiple failures: businesses that never took off, investments that went to zero, and times when I was super gung-ho about something, only to have it end up in my Bad Idea Hall of Fame. Want to know more? Let’s take an honest trip down memory lane.

The Kickoff

The first one that comes to mind takes me back to my college years, when I was about 20. I was still in school at the time, and really into kickboxing, which was just becoming popular, with studios popping up everywhere. One day, I had a lightbulb moment for how I could monetize the kickboxing trend.  

I bought the domain name Kickboxing.net with the plan of building an online directory of kickboxing studios. To fill out the front end of the site, I put up a bunch of content around the sport, but that was the easy part. The more labor-intensive work was creating the software that would pull information from a database about different locations. During my limited free time, I programmed the whole thing, spending probably about four months on it. 

More …

Ready To Build An Offshore Tech Team?

Ready To Build An Offshore Tech Team?

My Tips For Finding the Right People to Build Your Next Great Idea

I have turned to every country and continent known for outsourcing talent. In Asia-China, Vietnam and India. In Latin America, Argentina and Colombia. Foreign outsourcing always seems like a great idea, right? Everyone says, “Oh, hire a bunch of smart people in another country for half the price!” But in reality, the challenges that working with offshore talent pose doesn’t make it quite that simple.

Throughout my career, several of my attempts to build an offshore development team ended up in failure. Despite having a similar level of education, when people come from different backgrounds there will inevitably be major cultural impediments. This may show up in terms of opposing work ethic or simply not understanding what conducting business in the #1 economy in the world entails. The language barrier is certainly one obstacle but the cultural challenges of working with foreigners is a completely different aspect that has to be considered.