Mar 12, 2006 04:35 PM
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Dogster founder Ted Rheingold hosts the "DIY now more than ever" panel, with a stellar bunch of folks including Automattic (Wordpress) founder Matt Mullenweg and Lifehacker ed-in-charge Gina Trapani. A little live-blogging from the panel, which basically addresses all idea-makers directly as "you":
Ted Rheingold: "Things are going to get harder than you think. So when you start, lie to yourself a little."
Matt Mullenweg: Check out Founder Frustrations, which tells stories of startups and equity-sharing deals gone right and wrong. (And if SXSW's wifi was running smooth, I'd be mining for stories already.)
Matt: Make sure your team can meet face-to-face.
Lynda Keeler, founder of the Delight Network: "The biggest challenge with overseas work is they start raising their rates and getting too busy for you." Ted grunts. "It's kind of like here," says Lynda.
Ted: Make some legal friends, and with their help, check the trademarks related to your company name. If someone already took your name, you're screwed.
Limor, an audience member: Law books and legal forms from Nolo give you DIY legal advice, so you can do stuff like register your own trademarks. "It can be really easy. If you can code PHP, you can do this."
How do you separate your personal identity from the identity of your company? Ted: "I was at this party, and I had a t-shirt with movable wiki letters. And my shirt eventually read, 'I heart your'...um, 'buttocks.' And it was tagged Dogster cause I'm Dogster, so on Flickr a search for Dogster showed that shirt. I'm gonna be more careful in the future."
Getting the corporate culture out there. A panelist: "You've got to make the t-shirt first." Someone points out that Wordpress finally has t-shirts after three years — they made them after users started making their own.
All done, leave any other favorite panel notes in the comments.
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