Frank Gruber - Startup mixology: Tech Cocktails guide to building, growing, and celebrating startup success

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Copyright 2014 by Tech Cocktail, LLC. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN: 978-1-118-84438-0 (cloth); ISBN: 978-1-118-89873-4 (ebk); ISBN: 978-1-118-89877-2 (ebk)

To everyone out there living with an idea and a dream, big or small. I'm hopeful you'll find the courage to start, and thankful if this book can contribute to your journey and success in some way.

I'm a big believer in the 10,000 hours of practice theory.

If you want to become an amazing guitar player, you need 10,000 hours of practice. If you want to become a great golfer, you need 10,000 hours of practice. And if you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you need 10,000 hours of practice.

However, the other thing you need is to make sure that you're practicing the right things. If you spend your 10,000 hours doing nothing, except playing the basic chords, you will not magically turn into the amazing guitar player you imagined at the end of that journey.

Generally, my advice to entrepreneurs boils down to a few simple things:

1. Make sure that whatever you're doing, you're doing it for the passion, and money isn't your primary motivator. Chase the vision, not the money. If you do so, the chances of making more money are much more likely to happen.
2. Be unapologetically true to yourself, both in business and in life. This principle will help you build a unique brand as well as a strong company culture.
3. Trust your gut. Sometimes your gut will be wrong, but that's part of what the 10,000 hours of practice of being an entrepreneur is all about. It's about training your gut.

In my entrepreneurial experience with LinkExchange, Zappos, Delivering Happiness, and now Downtown Project, I've found that there's a lot you can learn from books as well as other entrepreneurs. I wish that the book that you are now holding in your hands had existed when I was just starting out. It contains a lot of great lessons and stories that would have saved me a lot of trial and error throughout my own entrepreneurial journey.

If you're in the midst of starting your own startup, this book can serve as a great guide and roadmap for things you should be thinking about, and ultimately things that you should be practicing as you form and grow your startup.

I've known Frank and Jen from Tech Cocktail for several years now. Not only have they been on their own entrepreneurial journey, they are also in the business of being exposed to and learning from literally hundreds and hundreds of startups. You'll find tons of great advice in this book from lots of different entrepreneurs.

My advice to you is to take it all in, and then chart your own path. There will be a lot of ups and downs, but just remember that it's all part of the journey.

Tony Hsieh
CEO, Zappos.com;
Author of Delivering Happiness;
Appreciator of llamas

PS: The time you spend reading this book will count towards your 10,000 hours of practice.

In 2005, just weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I found myself attending the WebmasterWorld's Search Conference in the Big Easy. At a loss for which sessions to attend, I randomly sat in on a session called Blogging for Fun and Profit. I had never really understood blogging. It was an unusual word, it seemed nerdy, and I didn't get its appeal, but I reluctantly stayedvowing that I would listen but never blog.

What I didn't know was that this session and what I learned that hour from Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny and PhD Amanda Watlington would be pivotal in my life's trajectory. An interesting convergence of my skills, interests, and new opportunities arose: my computer technology background from Purdue and Northwestern, my inner passion to be the captain of my own ship, my love of writing, and the knowledge that I could launch something online and grow an audience without the help of a large company. Little did I know at the time that attending this blogging session would be the aha moment I needed to launch Tech Cocktail, a tech startup-focused news and events organization, the following spring.

The next few years included jobs for large Fortune 500 companies, as well as numerous projects I started up during nights and weekends. From building a spam-blog-fighting tool to building a college-targeted social network that never quite got off the ground to even building a gratitude journal community app before finally creating a media company focused on startups and entrepreneurs, I can't say I've taken the path of least resistance. It's been long, hard, and frustrating but also exciting, gratifying, and fun. I have new gray hairs (or they could be summer blondes) popping up daily that I now attribute to this journey. And along the way, I've taken lots of notes.

I've observed that there are thousands of people with ideas who want to create something but don't know where to start. At the same time, I've observed massive shifts in technology and business that have reduced the costs and other barriers to starting a new venture. I've noticed that the media has a love affair with successful startup founders and has glamorized tech startups. I've also noticed that many of those who are jumping into the startup game have very high expectations and are ill equipped to handle the realities of the journey, which can have devastating consequences.