Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com ]

30/09/08 Main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing.

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Tonight, Damien reminded me the closing date for the €5,000 innovation vouchers from Enterprise Ireland is at midnight.

I went through a range of emotions…Damn, I thought. I am so bad not applying for money, funding, and grants. Kick yourself together, just do it. Fill it in - you can use it to seed your concept that if we were to create an API for disaster relief we could focus coder’s attention on building apps to save lives rather than building gimmicky iPhone Apps and social aggregation mashups. We could rank our apps not by download but by lives saves. Imagine!

I spent 40 minutes completing the form and trying to mould my idea into one of the e-commerce, communications or digital media categories. In the background, my continuous partial attention caught a Twitter message from @tferriss (author of ‘the 4 hour work week’). Tim linked to “Tyler Durden’s Rules Of Innovation” - a mock-up of Fight Club script.

Tyler’s First Rule of Innovation really cut it with me:

“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”

I then read Tyler’s Second Rule of Innovation:

“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”

And with that I looked back to our Seedcamp mantra “The main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing.” Focus, Focus, Focus. My API for rescue is for tomorrow, not for today. I need to focus. Getting that €5,000 could be disastrous. With that - I hit [Discard].

And wrote this on the whiteboard above my head instead…

This is the date by which I want my first revenue.

-Robin.

Tags: Enterprise Ireland, Fight Club, Tim Ferriss, Timothy Ferriss

2 Comments

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30/09/08 keith bohanna

excellent - keep that focus strong and close to you oh Knight of the Hero’s :-)

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23/10/08 Ben Haines

Definitely made the right decision… those great new ideas tend to interfere with those of yesterday.

Hope you hit your 31st October deadline. Good luck!

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