Ever felt you had something in the bag only to find out you didn't? It's happened to me. A lot. Over the years I've tried out many ways to deal with it. Some have worked better than others.

So what have I learned? To be chronically pessimistic about all things I cannot control. That deal I'm excited about? Hey, it might not happen. That A in the exam? It could happen. But it might not. That job interview I nailed? Who knows...I can't read the interviewer's mind.

There is a downside to the pessimism. If all you are is pessimistic about stuff, it is easy to give up. It's easy to give in to the "I won't win anyway" mentality which can completely kill your passions in life. Pessimism is good to control expectation. It totally sucks in keeping you motivated.

Be as optimistic as you are pessimistic. Yeah, spoken like a true monk. Funnily, since I developed the pessimistic vo ice in me, I have also almost linearly had to increase the sound level of the optimist in me. The optimist is what makes me give 100% into something I care about. The pessimist is what keeps me moving onto the next idea when the current one fails.

If you've worked with me, you have almost definitely experienced the optimist. I have people all the time that like to point out flaws in my idea. In their eyes, they are balancing the optimist in me. That's before they realize that I am just as pessimistic as I am optimistic=) I have more flaws and outrageous ideas about why my project can fail than anyone. But if that is all I listened to, I would be paralyzed.

Pessimism that prevents action is bad. Pessimism that encourages further action is royally helpful...and I'm all about that!

I have a policy when I am negotiating a % split with a new cofounder or another partnership. Until we can agree on the deal terms, we will stop all work. Completely. I learned this the hard way. Often when you have a disagreement between two new founders, you want to just shove it for later. It's the easy thing to do. And can even save all the awkwardness.

Screw that.

Embrace the awkwardness. In fact, turn it into a full out blunt conversation. If you think your cofounder should not get the same equity as you, say it right now. If you have concerns about your cofounder's ability to deliver, say it. If you think your cofounder rocks in one area but is unproven in another, say it. Chances are, this will get your cofounder to express a similar doubt about you. By the end of the meeting, you both will come out with a better understanding about each other.

If you are worried that this will result in bad blood, think of it this way: if your relationship with your cofounder can't last one tough conversation like this, perhaps y'all shouldn't be cofounders to begin with? I have had this conversation multiple times recently with multiple people. More often than not we could not agree on deal terms. But we are still friends in almost all cases. It requires maturity--never bad thing to demand from cofounders!

Take care of the dirty laundry now. Chances are, you have years of work ahead together. Equity split is a huge thing. Putting it for later is a mistake in itself. But putting it for later knowing you have significant disagreements is outrightly stupid.

Lessons from Mike Arrington and CrunchPad. I'm going through the TechCrunch lawsuit against their partner in making the CrunchPad device. Apparently the whole thing fell apart because TC's partners wanted 40%, instead of 35%, of CrunchPad. The problem here starts way before the equity debate. It starts the moment CrunchPad and Fusion Garage agree to work together without any sort of signed agreement. Now, I understand how startups work. You don't let paperwork hold you back. And there is a lot of leeway. I can understand if CrunchPad and Fusion Garage worked a few weeks or even months without any formal agreement and just an understanding of sorts. But to go a whole freakin year without an agreement, don't ever do that! All you will end up with is a deep mess.

CrunchPad and JooJoo are tainted goods. They were produced in a time period by two parties who had a royally unclear relationship. That would have been okay if a year from now they had zero problems between them. But that is not true in even the best of relationships. The thing is, when you go a year without an agreement, even the tiniest of problems can turn into deal breakers. Why? Because both parties get the illusion(or delusion) that hey, may be we don't need the other party. That should not be an option in an officially signed partnership. I believe the perceived availability of this option alone gives rise to greed and action that tanks many projects.

At this point, the question of who owns what between TC and Fusion Garage is so murky, I wouldn't want to touch it with a 100 foot pole.

A good uni friend called me yesterday to discuss an idea that he had. But he was super wary of sharing the idea. He felt the idea is very good and with my technical background, I could easily ditch him after he shares the idea. A totally fair concern. With very few answers, here's why.

Option 1: I agree to a noncompete / nondisclosure
This would be the best case scenario for my friend. And an absolute suicide for me to commit to a non-compete without having much of an idea. Throughout the day, I have dozens of ideas race through my mind. There are few ideas/industry that I haven't given at least a moment of thought to. That doesn't mean he might not add more value to an idea I already had.

But I do not want to know that additional value(assuming it exists) if it means I have to do a noncompete. I'd rather just pass the offer.

Option 2: If my friend's idea is so good, he should just use RentACoder.com
I believe this is the best advice I can give someone who thinks they have everything planned out and just need a guy to code it. If you are afraid of pitching your idea to a potential technical cofounder because he might do it on his own, you can just hire someone offshore. Of course, making outsourcing work for you is another art of its own.

Option 3: Share the idea without any commitment

I prefer this as the default when I have a great idea. Problem is, if at the idea stage you talking about your idea can easily cause someone to copy it, something is wrong with your idea. If you think Zuck copied the idea of social networks from his buds, perhaps. But...the value of the idea("lets do a social network") is super super close to zero relative to all the others things Zuck has done to build Facebook into a multibillion company.

What should my friend do?

As I told him, he should do a quick analysis of his options and assign a value to upside and downside of each option.

He can share the idea with me without any committment. Upside: I can quickly tell him if I'd like to work on it or not. If I do, we can meet and agree to terms. We can take a shot at the prize together! Downside: if we don't work out and I still like the idea, I might still do it without him. Of course, he can still do it too.

His other option is to pass on sharing the idea with me. Upside: I may not already have the idea or be able to copy the idea. Downside: My friend has very little chance of pulling this idea off without me in the timeframe described. 

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If you are in the Valley, you probably think all of this is very silly. You're spot on. But perhaps this post can help folks outside of the Valley reach a similar conclusion to what the Valley has already learned: it's usually ok to share your idea. 

Over next couple years, seed investors will increasingly put money into companies that are:

1. making some money already--not so much companies who have some users already

2. companies who need investment to scale revenue--not necessarily users

It's already happening. Each quarter, it'll just become more apparent. I'll hold back about what I think about it. Right now, I don't see this as a good or bad thing. It is what it is.

I have a hunch that a lot of entrepreneurs(especially, failed ones) are going back to the whiteboard and looking at markets that have money(not users) before coming up with their revenue-focused idea. 

What's your favorite Facebook App? Almost always the answer is "Farmville" or "MafiaWars". This is very problematic for Facebook in the long run. They are risking pigeonholing their entire Facebook Apps platform--and their brand--as a gaming platform.

What's the practical consequences of this? Imagine a bank holding a meeting about the social media strategy. Somewhere in the list of things to talk about, Facebook Apps pops up. As they go around the table talking about Facebook Apps, what's the first app people will recall? Farmville. Or MafiaWar. How far are gaming apps from a serious establishment such as a bank? And if I am the bank, how good do I feel about building something for a platform dominated by games? Take a guess.

The problem isn't just that of perception. If the problem was just a case of old establishments not getting a new technology, it would be business as usual. Except that is not the case: the perception is the reality in the case of Facebook Apps. It is not just a perception that the top apps and most used apps on the platform are games. It is also not just a perception that useful, practical apps are rare and hardly popular. It's a reality.

Facebook should learn from Apple App Store's marketing team. Facebook should identify the most useful apps in a diverse set of categories and start running external marketing campaigns, such as in print. Every time I see the back cover of a magazine, I see an Apple ad highlighting some super-useful iPhone apps. The gaming platforms have largely figured out how to self-sustain themselves. Facebook should shift its focus on non-gaming apps and lend them a hand by doing external marketing and branding campaigns. This should be done not as charity to app owners, but for a more selfish cause: to prevent the Facebook App platform from being synonymous with a gaming platform.

You may be my Facebook friend but you'll never see a huge portion of what I want to post on Facebook. In the past month, I have increasingly found myself posting something and deleting it...merely seconds later. Because of the ease of posting stuff on fb, there is an element of pleasure that comes with posting something. But more and more often, after I've posted, I run the post through my set of filters and delete it.

What changed? I am the same guy who launched ClassHunt in the douchiest way possible. Back then, I wasn't seriously pursuing a startup. Now I am.

Recently I've been meeting a lot more business-y folks for possible partnerships. These are people that run serious businesses. Many of these people are my facebook friends or have associates that are friends. That's that. The other side of the equation is my activity on facebook. As someone who has been on it since early days when it was just for college folks, it became synonymous with random musings and rants about college life. A big part of what I posted were often inside jokes with longtime friends that may be crass in nature. Problem is, people I meet for business have a different sort of relationship with me. They probably won't get most of my jokes. And even worse, you can reach some pretty outlandish(and inaccurate) conclusions about me from my posts without the context.

At the moment, I'm kinda torn. Facebook was a great place to empty your brain. It's not so much anymore. It's not worth losing a business deal or two because of my urge to post all the dumb thoughts in my brain onto my profile.

In case you find that your wall post from my profile has disappeared, you know why;)

Most of the world operates on a 24-hr clock. I don't. The 9-5 lifestyle makes a clear distinction between work and fun. You work all day, then have fun rest of the day. The 9-5 lifestyle fails for me because I cannot magically switch modes depending on the hour of the day without serious spillage of the mental tension from work into fun. 

I live my life an obsession at a time. When I'm working on my startup, it is what I dream all day and night. Does this mean I don't do anything other than my startup? Not exactly. I do work on things other than my company--such as going to class. But even then, I am rarely able to give more than 20-30% mental attention to anything other than my work. This is not something about startups and me. It's how I operate in general. And since I live my life around obsessions, I spend majority of the 24hrs of each day either working on or dreaming about what I'm obsessed about.

All this is so different from the lifestyle I see around me. There are moments I totally envy the 9-5ers. It seems nice to be able to focus on something totally different than an obsession at the tick of the clock. At the same time, this is how I work and I want to milk it for all its worth because tomorrow I might be obsessed about something not-so-productive. The only way I can survive the unproductive-obsession-phases in my life is by getting the most out of my productive obsessions.

I don't operate on a 24-hour clock. I can go a year--even four--working my ass off. And then three months or six months of doing nothing. That's more like my clock.

You're walking down the street. You see these boxes on the sidewalk. What's your perceived value of them? Very little.