Contracts: Never Settle for the Standard Agreement

Just because a standard agreement is standard, doesn't mean it's a good agreement, except for the side that drafted it. Never settle for the standard agreement (SA from here on in). An SA is designed to optimize the rights of the party that drafted it, not to protect your rights. With that in mind, read the contract and look for ways that you can get screwed over. Look for words like exclusive, recoupable, net, penalty, termination, integration. These words usually cluster in areas that promote the interests of the drafting party over yours.

I can tell your eyes are glazing over already. Legal stuff, that's what lawyers are for, you're thinking. Correct. Get a lawyer, a good lawyer, nay, a great lawyer, one that you can trust. However, no one is as interested or understand your business as well as you. If you're negotiating industry specific contracts, you should be able to identify problems areas as well or better than your lawyer. It's your world, you should be able the think through the ramifications of royalty clauses (or whatever) in a direct and visceral way.

Having said that, don't rely solely on your own judgment with legal stuff, you should just be a second pair of eyes to supplement your lawyer's.

I just spend the last hour breaking down a DVD distribution agreement for a friend of mine. He runs a small production company and he's looking for a distributor for his latest film, Ex-mas Eve. A few distribution companies have indicated interest in the film, and he's begun to receive their standard distribution agreements. Man, those things suck. As a small independent producer, my friend doesn't have much leverage for negotiation, so he's mostly stuck with what they give him. I still advised him to negotiate, because if you read my previous post, you never know what you'll get until you ask for it.

So remember, when someone hands you their standard agreement, that's when the the fun part begins.

Note: If you interested in this legal stuff, there's an excellent piece on Gamasutra that has three games industry pros analyzing a development contract for Call of Duty: Finest Hour. Very interesting, even if you're not a game geek.

Virtual Team Applications for Cheap

Read/WriteWeb has a good roundup of different online virtual team apps. You know, those programs that help people communicate, schedule, manage projects, etc.

Personally, I'm not a fan of virtual teams. I prefer to lock my teammates in one room for a few days and see what happens. Usually, deep bonding, or...cannibalism. I hate it when the second one happens, the OSHA paperwork for cannibalization is monumental.

The bonding, however, builds the core of any successful team. Once people have an emotional attachment to each other and share a vision, they will perform amazing feats to make sure the group succeeds. I think deep bonding is much harder to achieve with someone you only speak with over Skype.

Having said that, I think the apps in the Read/WriteWeb roundup can be useful even if your team shares an office. Especially, Basecamp, which an excellent lightweight project management app. Unless, you really love Microsoft Project.

The bottom line: When you're putting together a small company, Subscription-based web apps are your best friends. Not necessarily because they're cheap, but because you don't have to commit large amounts of capital upfront. No capital upfront allows you to both more efficiently allocate your resources, and greater flexibility. For the same reason, you should lease your servers, rather than buy them. But that's an aside. Take it from a former IT manager, if you can avoid pouring money into enterprise apps that run internally, then do it.

Oops! Gotta run, my team has been locked in the conference room for three days, and things just got really quiet, that's usually when the problems start.

Porn on the Wii

I just came across an article on Kotaku (via Slashdot) about a Christian group organizing a smear campaign against the Wii. Except, I read the press release from a group called The Porn Talk (available in the Kotaku article) and I would not call it a smear campaign. In fact, I really think the group is just trying to be informative. I bet most parents, let alone people in general, don't know that you can access the internet (and its wealth of porn) via the Wii or the DS.

Yep, that's right, you CAN access the Internet via the Wii. See, you didn't know either.

CEO Playbook: If You Want Something, Ask for It

Sometimes, I think the greatest advice I ever heard was, "Never get involved in a land war in Asia", but then I realize no, it's actually this advice: "It never hurts to ask." Sure, it may hurt your pride, but if you have that kinda of pride that then you have deeper issues you better get worked out.

I've made it a habit over the last couple years, that whenever someone, usually salespeople, tell me they don't have any more tickets, Wiis, or monkey brains; I will then ask them if there is any other way I can see the show, find a Wii, or gnaw on delicious monkey brain. Turns out, there usual is.

People like to help other people. By asking someone for help, that person become involved in your problem. They want to find a solution for you. And since they are often the gatekeeper between you and the thing you want, their help is necessary. Sometimes, in fact, they bend the rules, just to help you get what you want. Why? Just because you asked. Crazy, eh?

Anyway, here's the context of this post. John and I wanted to get into the Game Developer's Conference 2007 because Tenuki is, on one level, a games company. The cost of a pass to the meatiest parts of the conference is $1675, if you bought ahead of time. We didn't. So we were looking at paying $1850 each to attend the conference. That's a lot of money for an early-stage startup.

So naturally, I started asking people how I could get into the conference for free. Okay, the truth is that I went around begging for passes, but someone on a mailing list advised me to check out the GDC Conference Associates (volunteer) program. The program stopped taking applications in January, but I figured I'd email the manager of the program and see if they had any last minute dropouts that needed to be replaced. They did, but I guess you figured that or I wouldn't be telling this story.

Now, I'm going to the GDC for free, well actually in exchange for 20 hours of volunteer labor, but the point is, had I not asked, I would be not be attending the biggest games industry conference of the year. And now, I am.

So there you have it folks, the power of asking for what you want.

Now, I'm going to ask all of you a favor, tell anyone you know who might be interested in startups, games, techie garbage, or humorous stories about my night with Britney Spears (a razor was involved) to check out my blog. Then force them to subscribe by offering food, coffee, or monkey brains. That's what usually works for me.

Take-away Notes from the CommunityNext Founder's Panel

Since I didn't actually attend CommunityNext, I'm beholden to Guy Kawasaki for posting a clip of the hour-long panel on his blog. And yes, I realize that CommunityNext happened about three weeks ago, so this isn't news by any shot, but rather a service for someone who doesn't want to sit through the hour-long video.

Anyway, here's the upshot. The panel featured Akash Garg of hi5, Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls, James Hong of HotorNot, Markus Frind of PlentyofFish, Drew Curtis of Fark, and Max Levchin of Slide. Basically, they gave some general info and advice about starting a social-based website.

The key takeaway: no one started their sites with the intention of making money (except Max). PlentyofFish was an attempt to learn .Net. Fark started with a picture of a squirrel with giant balls, simply because Drew Curtis thought it was funny. SuicideGirls was started as a proof-of-concept for a social sports network. HotOrNot, to amuse friends in cubes. Hi5, to meet chicks.

The second takeaway: only PlentyofFish does any marketing. However, Max Levchin had a very astute insight about the changing nature of viral marketing, which I will paraphrase here.
Viral marketing started with people sending links via email to their friends. Then, that was replaced by telling people about things via IM. Now, people use the Myspace to embed widgets from other cool sites into their pages. Max asks, what's next? He thinks that's where the next huge company will emerge from and I think he's correct. If anyone has any thoughts, please leave them in the comments section.

Takeaway 3 (courtesy of Guy Kawasaki): Five of the six companies believe marketing is a waste of money, and yet their revenue model is based on advertising. Beautiful.

You can find other highlights from the conference on Alan Graham's blog.

Sunday Morning Reading: Geeking out on Computer Games

If you read this blog, then you know I'm a game geek, especially RPGs (or role-playing games, for all you non-geeks out there). Especially PC games from the late 80s/early 90s.

Anyway, Matt Barton has a good article on the golden age of RPGs, including Wizardy, Ultima, Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Pools of Radiance, and Wasteland. The article is like a survey class from college, a lot of things are mentioned, but nothing is explored in depth. But it doesn't matter, because if you're like me, merely the memory of the green and black maze that is Wizardry is more than enough pleasure. (And yet, I could only find a black and white gif. I just realized, I used to play Wizardry on a monochrome monitor.)