I think the major value that agencies offer brands is the ability to think outside the box and focus on strategy and creative vision to drive their product towards a specific message.  A great example of this is the ‘Old Spice’ campaign that did very well.  Wieden + Kennedy crafted a pinpoint message and delivered it in a very clever way that utilized social media perfectly with digital technology.  Part of the art in delivering that message was the storytelling, wordsmith and crafting that was so apparent in the tv ads, youtube responses, and tweets.

However, the bulk of agency work isn’t so technically simple as uploading videos to youtube and sending out tweets.  Most of the work that i’ve seen has required complicated CMS builds, API integration, and complex database schemas.  Something as “simple” as a Facebook app becomes an unwieldy problem for agencies when the app actually gain traction and starts to see hundreds of thousands of hits, if not millions.  While story telling is still the craft that agencies should focus on, what if the paper you’re printing it on falls apart when someone tries to hold it a story in their hands?

While agencies may not need to understand every technical complexity, they do need to gain basic understanding of what is necessary to get technical projects out the door.  Part of that is understanding the Agile development process (iterations) and the system development life cycle, at the least.  Another part is understanding what options are available on client servers and infrastructure.  Finally, agencies should staff some technical leads to help scope and manage vendors (if not an internal development team).

So, do agencies need to think like software companies?  Probably not, but they do need to understand what it takes to get a digital product out the door, maintained and supported.  I think the leading agencies of the future will be able to deliver both exceptional creative and technical service to their clients.

ps.  these reflections are my own and not associated to any place that I am currently (or not currently) working!

Here are some of the issues that i’ve come across so far:

- Timeframe: We were just on different time frames. I didn’t want to wait weeks for things to happen, I wanted them to happen in days. This may have been because I only work a part-time job, which allows me to spend time on my entrepreneurial ventures.

- Time: This is much different than timeframe, but they are tied together. I believe that each founder of the team needs to be willing to put in the same amount of time into the project.

- Skills: find people with complimentary skill sets. as a techie, alot of the times I think I can do it myself. While it may be the case, in reality doing it myself would take longer. having team members who have skills you don’t (marketing, customer service, UI/UX, sale)

- Hustle: this is probably related to time, but everyone on the team MUST have the same hustle. What is hustle? it’s doing whatever is necessary to get the job done. If I have to make 100 calls in a day, you just do it. I’ve found that when I have a different level of hustle with a co-founder, animosity forms because it feels like i’m doing more work than the other person.

Hopefully, this helps some other people out there trying to find the right team to work with and some of the things to look out for. Feel free to email me with your thoughts and comments!

Hopefully all the other billionaires out there will follow suit.  Ideally all of them would sue every business for every patent infringement out there.  Hopefully this will help the industry and congress come to the collective agreement that system is broken and that we finally need to DO something about it, instead of sitting around complaining about it!

So please, please, all the billionaires out there, continue to buy up patents, continue to troll, and continue to prove how silly this system really is.

Similarly with BJJ, the most important thing is that you spar – or practice what you’re learning.  At the end of every class there’s always a sparring session.  You can learn all the moves you want to learn, but if you don’t try to actually use it, you don’t learn the finer points in what you’re doing.  By sparring, you learn what actually works for you and where you can really apply it.  By learning ‘moves’ you just see the 10,000 foot view, instead of seeing the subtle points that help you really nail the position.  Just like being an entrepreneur – I can learn about ‘SEO’, but to really nail SEO I have to work at the detail specific to my site.

Just like Fred Wilson recently quoted:  “if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited”.  I definitely feel like there’s an abundance of awesome resources out there.  Some of my favorite entrepreneurial sources are -

A VC – http://www.avc.com – This is Fred Wilson’s blog.  He posts pretty frequently about an array of topics.  But the way he approaches his comments is the most interesting.  Most of the time, he’ll take a moment and write back a response to almost every comment.  Most bloggers stop writing backing after the comment stream reaches a large count, but no matter how many there are on Fred’s blog, i’ll see him responding.  I think it’s a great example of how to build an great audience for your blog.

Mixergy – http://www.mixergy.com – Mixergy is a daily interview with Entrepreneurs who have crushed it or are in the process of crushing it.  Andrew Warner is a great interviewer.  It’s awesome, because he doesn’t give them softball questions.  He asks the important questions, like ‘What did they learn from their failures to make this current product a success’, ‘Why didn’t that work’, or  ‘Why did it work’.

TWiSt – http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/ – i’ll warn you now, Jason is a personality.  He’s in your face, loud, obnoxious and doesn’t understand what the word ‘modesty’ means, but he’s probably one of the smartest guys when it comes to seeing opportunities, new ideas and the overall startup game.  All of this combined makes the show very entertaining and worth a watch.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders – iTunes – this is a class every semester at Stanford that presents the most powerful and influential entrepreneurs in the world.  Everyone from Zuckerberg to John Doerr have spoken in the class.  It’s definitely worth the listen to get perspective from these people.

People see this as a problem with the education system and argue to change the education system to fit this.  I see it as an opportunity that startups can capitalize on.  10% of the world has succeed, yay for them.  They’re most likely not on facebook not on social media.  That’s a pretty small percentage.  There’s 90% of the world WANTING to achieve something.  As entrepreneurs (and as me, a product developer) our primary goal is to give them that sense of achievement.  We need to give them that success.   With the internet and our products, we can make them the most AWESOME people at whatever they want to be awesome at.