Tony Wright dot com» Tony Wright’s Startup Front-End

Considering Y Combinator (or any seed funding)?

Tony Wright — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:20:49 +0000

[Timely note! We're hosting a Y Combinator Meetup in Seattle on Thursday Feb 25... details here!]

March 3 is the deadline for YC’s Summer 2010 session. I figured that I ought to throw my thoughts out there on the decisions that lead up to the application, the app itself, and the interview process that follows (if your app makes the cut!).

Making the Decision to Apply

First off, I think the most important thing to emphasize as an entrepreneur is that you should optimize for your chance of ~~success~~ a meaningful exit, NOT the magnitude of it, should it happen. It may seem like selling for millions to Google is a foregone conclusion given how brilliant you are, but it’s not. Startup success is a tough slog with lots of randomness outside of your control. If you can trade a little bit of equity to nudge up your shot at success by a few percentage points, you should do so. Thankfully, YC from this perspective is a no-brainer. No one can argue that it doesn’t improve your shot (with the amazing mentoring they provide, the investor introductions/credibility, and PR bump), and if you calculate YC’s take is if you sell for $100m (divided by the number of founders), it isn’t too painful.
Think about what you’re building, what market you’re playing in, and whether it’s appropriate for venture financing. I think I recall reading about someone applying who was proposing to build an app to manage Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. While there’s probably a business there, it’s pretty unlikely that the pen-and-paper RPG market is going to be the next big thing to change the world. Pick a big market– or better yet, pick a small market that can eventually morph into a huge market (like classifieds for San Francisco, selling books online, or an online garage sale).
Read everything here and make sure you agree with some of it, but don’t be afraid to disagree with some of it either!
Do something bold. You aren’t going to be thinking to yourself on your deathbed that you really should’ve taken less risks. YC is a blast. You get to meet amazing mentors, other great startup founders, and a few fairly impressive robots.
Consider how committed you are to your idea/market, your company, and your co-founders. YC has plenty of flips, but the majority of ‘em seem to be going concerns for years. Can you get excited about what you’re doing (and who you’re doing it with) for 7 years?
Do a gut-check on your team. Do they have the rough ingredients necessary to kick ass? If the better mousetrap you propose to build is going to be better because of an amazing UI, make sure you have a great UI guy. If you’re doing a vertical search/UGC play, make sure someone is at least a little interested in SEO. If you’re going to sell software to businesses, make sure someone is willing to sell stuff. And, of course, if you’re tackling something with big technical challenges (like most of us are) make sure you have some great hackers.

The Application Process

Read Paul’s essays. It provides good insight into what’s important to him (and YC). Reading Founders at Work is a good idea, too. It’s a great book and shows you some patterns for startup success.
Remember that the app is a sales pitch and focus your answers on the things that are important to YC. The biggest risks to YC are:
- That you don’t have the chops to build something good. The best way to deal with this concern is to show them something good that you’ve built. Preferably several things, and preferably things that you’ve built with your co-founders.
- That you’ll get bored/discouraged and quit. So try to work in examples of times when you’ve persevered despite significant obstacles.
- That you’ll fail to make something that people want. So do what you can to show that you’re in tune with the market you’re proposing to serve. You can be a badass hacker with unflagging dedication, but if you don’t/can’t understand your users, you’re probably not going to be a big win for YC.
Don’t be too shy or too arrogant to sell. I remember reading a comment on Hacker News that said, “My code speaks for itself.” No, it doesn’t. At least, not to investors, customers, employees, reporters, and the zillions of other people out there you’re going to have to sell to.
Get working on your software ASAP. If you apply with a functional product (or even a launched product that people love), you remove a lot of the risks listed above.
Get working on the YC app ASAP. If you’re unsure, apply! The app takes a few hours and it’ll help focus your thinking if nothing else.
If possible, make sure that your whole team is ready to dive in whole hog. Starting something up is a commitment to your founders and to your new investors. Having a team member who has other commitments can be a source of contention.
Hack the system! Every session I get emails from people asking me to review their apps. I usually do. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t do this… YC founders are people who wrote successful applications and spent at least 3 months getting repeatedly kicked in the junk by Paul Graham and friends. I’m sure we must know something about how YC thinks that might not be obvious. If you can’t bring yourself to ask a stranger for some time, how are you going to raise money after YC? How are you going to hire your first employee?

The Interview

I don’t recall the stats on how many applications make the cut, but if you get asked in for an interview, congratulations! Now get to work building something (hopefully you already have).

Get started on a demo. If you walk in and start monologuing, you’ll fairly quickly get interrupted and asked to start showing stuff.
The “demo” will be less like Steve Jobs and more like Guantanamo Bay. You’ll be derailed almost instantly and peppered with questions and objections.
Have a backup idea that you’re comfortable talking about. I know several founders who were essentially told, “we don’t like that idea. Do you have any others?” This may be a test of how much you love your idea as much as anything else. Founders who refuse to pivot often die from it. It also might be a test of your ability to have good ideas. If they don’t like your idea OR your backup, they might los faith in your ability to grok what people want.
Practice. Ask 10 smart people to name 10 things that will make your idea fail. Have good responses for those objections. Don’t practice a speech. Don’t practice a 10 minute demo, practice little 1-2 minute chunks of a demo that you can string together if they leave you alone. Practice individual talking points and responses.
Be willing to be wrong but also be willing to disagree. YC doesn’t want lapdog PG fanboys(and girls!), but they also want people who are coachable and willing to learn. Don’t be afraid to say, “That’s one of the things we’re going to have to figure out, but we have a few ideas.”
Be dynamic and energetic. You’re a storyteller here. Your job is to get YC excited about your business. Make them believe that it (and YOU) are an investment opportunity. Work on eye contact, not talking to too fast, and thinking on your feet. Have someone role-play an aggressive interviewer.

That’s about all the advice I have. I’d close with this point– very very very few YC founders wouldn’t do it again in a heartbeat. It’s a killer experience and it’s certainly a needle-mover during the most fragile part of your new company’s life. Applying is cheap in terms of time and rewarding even if you don’t get asked in for an interview. Do it!

The Information Overload Conference in NYC, July 15!

Tony Wright — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:44:04 +0000

I just got word that I’ll be speaking at the Information Overload Research Group 2008 Conference in New York City on July 15th (though I’m not on the page yet… ).

This is the grassroots organization mentioned with RescueTime in the New York Times article “Lost in Email, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Monster” (well, it’s probably fairer to say that this is the article where RescueTime was mentioned with them!).

The conference looks like it’s going to be real interesting (and not just because I’ll be speaking there– I’m positively riveting!). If you’re in the neighborhood (or if you need an excuse to visit NYC), you should sign up (the conference only costs $150 and includes lunch– it’s a helluva deal). Brian Fioca, one of my co-founders will also be in attendance.

If you don’t want to go to the conference but want to grab a beer on the 14th, drop me a line!

Communication and “Infoporn” Are Killers

Tony Wright — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:22:16 +0000

There are people in the world who make a living communicating and living “in the noise” of email, IM, Twitter, Digg, TechMeme and the like. For them, the parade of communication and and information is probably a boon.

Unfortunately, for the rest of us (who make a living producing stuff– whether it’s software, design, written words, business plans, law briefs, or whatever) communication and social software is a necessary evil that’s getting to be… more evil.

Think about what the knowledge worker looked like 15-20 years ago compared to today. What frightens me is how scientific social software developers are getting about separating people from their time. We’re well beyond cowboy coders building something neat that people latch onto and have some fun with. Instead, we have analytics teams measuring how software is being used in a way that’s really never been done before. Hovering over our LCD cages like BF Skinner, they are watching what we’re doing, tweaking things to make it more engaging and more addictive, and measuring some more.

I liken it to the evolution of casinos and cruise ships, who basically run human cattle through finely tuned funnels designed to fleece them of money at every step… But instead of money, what we’re being fleeced of on the Internet is time and attention.

Again, for some people– this is fine. For some people, it’s literally building a career. In a way, I’m envious of them– they get to spend their lives immersed in a life-long party. I’m kind of envious of people who work in Vegas, too.

But for the quiet army of knowledge workers who are actually creating stuff– the boots on the ground in our knowledge economy– I think the increasingly personalized infoporn delivered to us through a broadening array of channels (like RSS, alerts, Twitter, Digg, Email, IM, Social Networks and more) is a looming disaster.

I imagine some people are shaking their heads reading this stuff and saying, “But people can choose not to indulge in this crap. We’re all perfectly capable of behaving like adults and working when we need to.” Indeed, maybe people will wake up and we’ll see a renaissance of attention.

I’m not so sure.

As I look at industries ranging from the gambling to alcoholic beverages, and as I watch very smart people fall prey to the attention-vultures, I think I’m more and more convinced that a concerted and scientific attack on the pleasure centers of our monkey brains will win the day.

Reading the Lines, Not Between Them (PG & Coding Horror)

Tony Wright — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:06:46 +0000

There’s quite a flap over Paul Graham’s recent essay.

The attacking author quotes a comment on Reddit (always a good sign) as a good summary of the essay of why we should all be terribly offended.

“I work with young startup founders in their twenties. They’re geniuses, and play by their own rules. Oh… you haven’t founded a company? You suck.”

I kinda feel like there is a reading comprehension problem here. Paul added a “Cliff’s Notes” version of the article to clarify, but I’m going to boil down what I got.

The point I got from the essay is:

“I work with young startup founders in their twenties [note: he works with me and a mess of other founders who are also in their thirties... at least 1 or 2 are in their forties]. They seem stressed, but they seem happier and more alive. I think it might be a socio-biological thing– human beings are meant to be working in smaller groups, with clearer goals, and more ‘on the line’. Small businesses and startups seem like the best place to find this environment.”

Period.

Saying stuff like “happier and more alive” (which PG did not– I’m paraphrasing) does not mean that everyone else is miserable and dead inside.

Anyways, this isn’t a wild idea. There are piles of studies out there that have found a correlation between self-employment and satisfaction/happiness. Incidentally, there’s also a strong correlation between self-employment and making less money (but that’s good news, because there are ALSO studies that show that money doesn’t do much for happiness once you manage to have enough coming in to cover the necessities)

Widgets!

Tony Wright — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:40:14 +0000

RescueTime will never be a purveyor of widgets (as a primary business), but there’s no denying that widgets are a damn good way to spread the word about your product, assuming that anyone actually wants to install them.

A widget that displays exactly how you spend your computer time may be creepy to some. As an old skool fella who is a bit more privacy-focused, I never really thought that a widget belonged anywhere on our near-term product roadmap. However, when we did our “What features do you want?” survey, thousands of people filled it out… 26% of ‘em expressed interest in a widget.

Sooooo, we built widgets. You can see mine to the right hand side of this blog– it’s a real time report of exactly what categories of my computer time I’m spending the most time on.

As we started thinking about it, RescueTime widgets could be used for all sorts of fun stuff:

Lifestreaming. Just a fun little way to tell the world how you spend your time.
Life hacking. We all know that discipline is hard. As Paul Graham says, there is nothing more motivating than the fear of public failure and ridicule. If your productivity data is available for all to see, do you think you’ll be a touch more productive?
Workstreaming. Want to telecommute? Whip up a page for your boss with a few of your RescueTime graphs up there so he can feel “in touch”. For extra credit, you could throw a few static graphs ABOVE your real-time graphs, giving your boss graphs showing your pre-telecommute productivity.
Create your own Dashboard! RescueTime has a handy Dashboard, but maybe you care about other graphs that require a few clicks. You could whip up your own “dashboard” (on a private page or intranet, maybe) that shows exactly what you want to see. Right now we really only offer two graph types (top apps/sites and top tags– or labels), but very soon any graph will be embeddable.
Speaking of Intranets… You could drop a few graphs there to show what you’re up to. This will really start to sing when we introduce our groups functionality (allowing aggregation of multiple people into one graph).

Widgets are officially a beta product– we’ve got a few kinks to work out. For example, in Firefox there is a Flash bug that results in the status bar continuing to report “transferring data from RescueTime.com…” even though it’s not (you can switch to a different tab and back to make the message go away). Anyone know how to fix this?

Google Owns about 13% of my Life

Tony Wright — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:58:39 +0000

I just posted what I thought was a pretty darn interesting post about Google’s dominance in my life. By my count (and, with RescueTime, my count is pretty damn accurate), 13% of the time I spend in front of my computer is taken up by Google products.

Note that this is COMPUTER time– not just my online time.

Check out the post!

Stealing Photos, Fair Use, and Business Models

Tony Wright — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:01:08 +0000

I have a hard time getting high-and-mighty about the paparazzi crap that I see in grocery store lines, given that I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from the train-wreck controversies of online celebrities. I just…. can’t…. look…. away!

Over the past two weeks, one of the big memes in the echo chamber is related to stealing photos… It seems a small a capella band created a fun/goofy song about the Web 2.0 Bubble, set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. The video is a montage of photos of assorted Web 2.0 personalities, logos, etc. It’s cute. I’ll embed it below (note: this is the first time I’ve EVER embedded a YouTube video!).

IANAL, so I can’t really speak to whether this use falls under “fair use” and parody laws. I think the band in question truly believed that it does and did their best to make it right once they realized that they might be in a bit of a “gray area” (read their blog post here).

Regardless, what struck me was the strident and downright venomous response from some photographers and other “artists”. It sounds exactly like the venom spewed by real estate agents towards RedFin. It sounds a lot like some movie studios and musicians when they talk about what’s happening in their industry. These people aren’t angry at just this little a capella band. They are angry at the entire world for evolving past their business model. They’re angry about becoming obsolete. How obsolete they become depends on how well they adapt to the world– not how loudly they demand that the world adapt to THEM. Off the top of my head, here are a few things that are changing the business of professional photography:

Cheap startup costs. Used to be that a professional photographer had to invest thousands in cameras, lenses, and development equipment. It still isn’t cheap to have good equipment, but it’s cheaper.
Time and expenses of developing photos is greatly reduced (thanks to digital photography and Photoshop).
There is a growing pile of semi-pro photographers who are happy to give away their photos or sell them royalty-free for a few bucks.ne?
There are great marketplaces out there for cheap/good stock photography. iStockPhoto, anyone?
Print media is dying. Slowly, but it’s dying.
The global marketplace. For many photos, you just don’t need an onshore photographer. If I want a cool close-up shot of a keyboard and mouse, there are plenty of great photographers in Eastern Europe that have probably already have taken just such a photo and are delighted to sell it for a few bucks, royalty free.

Is the photography/stock photo business dead? Not by a long shot, and not for a long time… But clearly there’s a shakeup in the works.

Here’s that embedded video. If you haven’t already seen it, enjoy:

The Future of Cold Calling and Spam is Bleak (Yay!)

Tony Wright — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:37:44 +0000

I’m going out on a limb to say that the future of cold-calling (and unsolicited offers in general) is pretty bleak. Which gives me great joy.

On one hand, unsolicited sales is getting cheaper, easier and (for a while) more effective- volume is going up.

On the phone front… With powerful CRM systems, companies can easily measure the success of cold calling and optimize it. Want more sales? Add more telemarketers. Run out of people to sell to? Buy a database in a new market segment. Sell to the same people again with a different pitch. With banks of low cost people who can call dozens of people per hour, you can see great success.

On the mail front… Digital printing is getting ridiculously cheap and companies have nailed the art of cost effective bulk mailing. Mailing lists are plentiful, cheap, and well targeted.

On the email front… Well, we’re all familiar with spam. And, of course, it’s pretty easy to send lightly customized emails to potential clients in a more manual way, liberally copy-pasting blocks of text.

Heck, even in the world of recruiting you see it. 15 years ago, applying for a job was a fairly careful and laborious task. You bought fancy paper, carefully crafted your resume, and often hand-delivered it. Now people can apply to dozens of jobs in an hour. Not qualified for a job? Who cares– it costs you nothing to apply. Fire and forget!

The problem with spam being so damn easy (whether it’s on the phone, in the mail, or on the intertubes) is that the volume gets high enough that sifting through these offers is no longer an effective way to spend your time. Essentially, it’s banner-blindness outside of your browser. Cold callers and marketeers are training us to flip our “ignore” switch as soon as we detect direct-marketing. So how do you know what to buy? Who to hire? Which non-profit to support? That brings us to…

Search is getting damn good, and social networking is actually getting useful

Years ago it was actually challenging to find vendors with a specific product/service. You could crack open the Yellow Pages and hunt around for the appropriate heading that you’re looking for (“Web Development – See Internet, Web Development”) and… at that point you have a list. No way to know if the vendors are good, bad, cheap, expensive, ethical or evil. You could try to network your way to a referral, but that was a bit of work, too. You could make a few calls to trusted colleagues/friends and see if they had any recommendations, but oftentimes they wouldn’t.

So, when the phone rang with a telemarketer, why the hell wouldn’t you buy from them? They’re just as good as your list of unknown vendors in the Yellow Pages. Add ‘em to the list, hear them out, get a bid/quote. Can’t hurt, right?

Nowadays, Google makes finding a vendor easy (or at least easier). Do a search, get a list. You’re done. No 40 pound book (I just dumped my Yellow Pages in my recycle bin the day after I received it- unopened). And it’s a bit more democratic– no longer is the vendor list sorted by who can buy the biggest ad, and no longer is the content controlled exclusively by the vendor. The TRUTH about the vendor (whether it’s good or bad) is becoming more readily available.

Enter social networking… With Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn answers (near as I can tell, the only useful piece of LinkedIn), I can ask ANYTHING and get trusted responses. A few months back (at my previous job) I asked on LinkedIn if people knew a good web development firm in Seattle and got about 20 responses… Many from people who I had actual relationships with. If you come up empty in your network, you can always drop in at Craigslist or Yelp and ask for recommended vendors from people who have first-hand experience working with them.

Mix it All Together and…

I just got a call from a very polite telemarketer selling technology outsourcing services. I told him I didn’t need any. He asked (as any good salesperson would) if it would be okay to follow up in a few months. I started to say, “Sure, can’t hurt”, but reconsidered. “Harry, I’ll be honest with you,” I said. “If I need your services in a month or a year, I’m going to give my business to someone that my friends and colleagues recommend. If I can’t get a recommendation, I’ll research it on the web and pick a vendor. If you want my business, my best advice would be to do great work for people in this town so that when I do start asking around, your name comes up.”

I think more and more people are thinking this way (even if they aren’t saying it). Between the deluge of marketing we’re getting bombarded with and the ease with which we can find a trusted vendor, I have high hopes that cold-calling (and Yellow Pages with it!) will meet a quiet death in the next decade or two as these tools and ideas find their way into the mainstream. If we can pull that off, then customer service (and product quality) will truly be the new marketing.

What to do if you get sued and you’re the little guy

Tony Wright — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:01:44 +0000

(Tony’s note: this post is a guest post from a friend who shall remain nameless)

Two years ago our corporation was sued by a larger company over trademark infringement. My business partner and I have chatted post-mortem about the experience many times since. I thought I’d try to document and share the lessons we learned in the hope that it will help other small startups who encounter the wrath of a bigger fish.

One morning we were milling around the house. My wife checked the mail – she’s the organized one – and saw a letter on a fancy envelope that looked like a law firm. She opened it and it was a cease and desist notice from a law firm telling us to stop using our company name and to hand it over to them.

Big Mistake #1:

At that point I called up a law firm who’s domain name was something like ‘domainnametrademarklawsuitlawyerattorneyguy.com’. I found him via Google (obviously). I had a chat over the phone with the guy and didn’t get much useful information but he was happy to take my money. He was very reasonably priced – he offered me a package that included a response letter and some basic negotiation for what most law firms bill per hour.

Big Mistake #2:

He sent me the first draft of the response letter and it was a letter that suggested we’d go belly up without a fight. I called him back. I still didn’t get much legal advice. But I told him to go out and buy himself a spine and rewrite the letter. So he did.

The letter came back fairly aggressive and my thought was that we’d let these guys know they can’t just push us around.

When I eventually got a good law firm working for us (more on that in a moment) my new trademark attorney couldn’t believe we sent something that aggressive to them. It set a very bad tone for negotiating.

Big Mistake #3:

After having my $2 attorney send opposing council a f***k you note, I decided to call them up. The CEO wouldn’t take my call but referred me to his attorney who I learned from the receptionist was a litigator and was on permanent retainer. I also got the impression he was based on-site. I got the litigator on the line and laughingly asked him if he thought his case actually had any merit. He said he did. The conversation quickly ended.

Later I got several calls from the CEO himself. Instead of referring him to my attorney, I got chatty with him too.

I had succeeded in making the case personal.

Big Mistake #4:

After a few weeks I got rid of domainnametrademarklawsuitlawyerattorneyguy. I posted a message on a webmaster business discussion forum and made contact with a very competent and reasonably priced trademark attorney based in SF.

Even after retaining a great law firm to deal with this, the only knowledge I was gaining about the case and trademark law was through osmosis from my attorney. I never bothered to gain a deep understanding of what I was up against.

We went through weeks of negotiating via my new attorney trying to undo the damage my previous attorney and I had caused. She did a spectacular job but we were still drafting motions and steadily heading to court.

If I’d done my homework quickly and understood what we were really up against I would have done whatever I could to bring this thing to closure much sooner.

Closure

I wont bore you with the details of how this played out and confidentiality agreements prevent me from sharing the interesting details with you. But at the 11′th hour I repaired my relationship with the plaintiff’s CEO sufficiently to talk a deal.

OK children, what have we (I) learned?

When you receive a cease and desist notice, take it very seriously because it may be the beginning of a very long and expensive lawsuit.
2. Find a very good attorney who specializes in the relevant field. Don’t go for a big name law firm. Preferably find someone who was working for a big name law firm and recently started their own practice. You’ll get big name experience and someone who is lean and hungry – and reasonably priced. Many attorneys are happy to spend an hour with you on the phone for free chatting about your case. Use this hour wisely and you can get a ton of free legal advice. Set up conference calls with as many law firms as you can and get lots of free hours and a free education.
Go to school. Drive down to your local Barnes and Noble and start learning as much as you can about the problem you’re facing and the claims that have been made against you. If you’re an entrepreneur this won’t be a problem because you’re used to absorbing fantastic amounts of information in short periods of time.
Lawyers are notoriously shy about responding to direct questions like “Should we settle or should we go to court?”. It’s in their nature because they’re worried about getting sued. They’ll simply present you with the facts and leave the decision up to you. But if you have a good working relationship with your attorney, ask them this question and keep pressing and they’ll probably give you some advice off the record.
Take any advice you get from an attorney in context. If they’re a litigator, they’re just itching to battle it out in court. Even if they aren’t, if you choose to fight it means they’ll get to draft fun motions and make exciting filings and do what lawyers do. And of course they will generate many many billable hours and while many lawyers defy their field’s reputation and are in fact well meaning good people, it’s tough to turn away tens of thousands in billable hours. That’s why you need to learn as much as you can about what you’re up against and make your own decision.
NEVER EVER call up opposing council directly and NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER call up anyone who works for the company that’s suing you – especially the CEO. No matter how many times dad told you to deal with issues like this man-to-man, don’t do it. You’ll risk turning this from a cost-of-doing-business issue into a personal proving-a-point issue. The only reason I negotiated directly with the opposing CEO when settling was because I’d already made it personal and had to repair the damage.
Make sure you don’t take the fact that you’re getting sued personally. One of the things I learned is that companies who own trademarks are obliged to enforce their trademark rights or they risk losing them. The company you’re dealing with may have no choice but to ask you to change your name – or take whatever legal action they’re taking.

When making your final decision about whether or not to comply with the demands of the C&D, or whether or not to go to court, consider this:

After doing all your research you may still be unsure about whether or not you’re right and they’re wrong. Make the decision a financial one. Look at your company’s revenue and how much you would lose by complying (changing your name in my case). Then look at the cost of litigation if you went to court.

If you’re just starting out it’s very likely that you’ll make the decision to avoid the legal bills and get on with your business.

If all your research tells you that you’re in the right and the financial data says you should fight the good fight, then go for it. But know that it’s going to take a long time and it risks demoralizing the management team and staff if they’re not shielded from the process. View it as a simple cost of doing business, don’t discuss it with staff unless you have to and get on with building a successful business.

What we do now to avoid tradmark lawsuits:

I wrote this in the hope of providing some general advice on dealing with early stage lawsuits, but here are a few tips to help you avoid getting sued over trademark infringement specifically:

Do a search on USPTO.gov for your future name using their trademark search engine
Do a simple Google search for your name. The best names I’ve found have 2 or three results come up and usually it’s someone’s nickname on a discussion forum used years ago or something inconsequential like that.
NOLO provides many great books on trademark law, many of which we’ve bought and studied. Reading a few of these will give you a good basic understanding.
Do a full trademark search using a trademark attorney or search service including federal, state and local. We use trademarkexpress.com which we recommend.
If you plan to be around for a few years, file your trademark with the USPTO using a reputable trademark attorney.

I hope you’ve found this useful.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer (ed: neither am I!) and this article is my personal opinion. It should not be construed as legal advice, in part or in whole, in any way, shape or form.

(Tony’s note: Pretty sobering experience. I’ve never been involved in any lawsuits– knock on wood– but virtually every one that I’ve personally witnessed has been a result of someone taking something personally. It’s not a game. It’s not about egos. It should be about finding the fairest compromise that allows everyone to get back to the business of making money ASAP. Heck, you can expand that truism to just about ANY business negotiation.)

I just gave myself a $18,642.80 Raise

Tony Wright — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:45:07 +0000

People don’t always directly associate expenses and income, and very seldom calculate taxes when they do. Here’s how I gave myself a $18,642.80 raise with a few phone calls and a craigslist ad. Your mileage may vary.

I called Comcast and asked them to cancel my landline phone and cable TV (retaining Internet). They offered to cut my rate to let me retain all three services. I declined. They offered an even lower rate. I accepted.
Total Savings: $1080 per year.
Total amount I’d have to earn at a 33% tax rate to earn that money: $1436.40
I called the Seattle Sailing Club and canceled my membership. I love sailing, but at $200/month I wasn’t using the boats enough to justify it. There are hopefully places around town where I can rent boats from time to time, but I’ve also got a few friends with boats who invite me from time to time, so I’ll likely get my sailing fix there.
Total Savings: $2400 per year.
Total amount I’d have to earn at a 33% tax rate to earn that money: $3192.00
My wife and I made a commitment to eat out more at our cheap favorites and limit our extravagant favorites to once a month. Our favorite cheap-eats places have outstanding meals and we’re always delighted to go there. Also on the plus side, this make the extravagant favorites a slightly more special experience.
Total Savings: $2160 per year (replacing 3 $100 meals with 3 $40 meals per month)
Total amount I’d have to earn at a 33% tax rate to earn that money: $2872.00
I’m selling my sportscar. I’ve got a bit of cash in it and have been paying $600 a month (to pay down the principal faster). I don’t get a ton of joy from cars, and can’t find a way to justify owning an expensive one. I’ll be buying a cheap 4-door sedan with the cash that I get from selling the car. While most people don’t have a $600 car payment, most people DO pay monthly payments for a nicer car than they could afford with cash. There are plenty of reliable vehicles for sale– why pay a monthly premium just to have a shinier and newer vehicle? If you get a lot of joy from cars, of course, this might be worth it. But how many great family vacations could you buy with this money?
Total Savings: $8377.44 per year (payment plus estimated insurance for comprehensive coverage and a more expensive vehicle)
Total amount I’d have to earn at a 33% tax rate to earn that money: $11,142.00

As I said before, your mileage may vary. The point of the exercise (for me) was to look at all optional recurring expenses and do an honest analysis of just how much happiness and satisfaction they generate when compared to the cheaper alternatives. The changes above don’t substantively change the quality of my life and bring me that much closer to my goal of having my passive income (from real estate, investments, etc) cover my life-expenses. It also, as an entrepreneur, frees my money up to invest in more interesting (and potentially lucrative) things.