One of my favorite things about actually having a live site up at Path 101 is having user data to play with.

Since we started broadcasting the availability of our personality test, we now have some neat data and feedback on it--like the fact that some people think it's too long.  That begs the question of wanting better data or more completed users... and whether or not there are some people who just won't do anything longer than a minute anyway.   I'm sure we could shave a few questions here and there, and provide some better motivation to strike a balance, but here's what we've got so far:

So basically, if we can get someone to the midpoint of the test, they're going to finish.  I don't now if that's normal for these kinds of tests, but that's about what I would expect.  At the end, about 52% percent of the people who started on Page 1 actually finish it.  That's pretty good for a 90 question, 25 minute test.

One thought might be to move some of the "filling buckets" to the front of the test.  People seem to really like those and mixing up the questions better might break up the monotony of the test.

Perhaps some teasers, too... like telling them we've found some industry matches for them, but they have to finish to see them or something. 

Any other ideas?

What about letting people save it midway?  Will you lose people who would have otherwise finished it?  Will people really come back?   Certainly that might drive registrations.  Time for testing!!

There are certainly a lot of places out on the web where you can take a personality test, but for the more serious ones (not the Superhero test), comparing results to others isn't always easy.

That's going to be our next update to the test... the ability to compare your results with other people.

For now, though, people have been sending me screenshots of their Path 101 personality test results and asking me what I got on mine, so I figured I'd share:

Interesting that I'm empathetic, but kind of emotionless.  "I understand your problems, but I just don't care about them."  :)

What did you get on your test?

Haven't taken it yet?  What are you waiting for?  A Beta?  :)

A lot of people ask me about how Path 101 is doing.  Before today, I've basically said, "Yeah, we're building and making a lot of progress, but we have a ton of work left to do."

Today, I can proudly say, "Yeah, we're building and making a lot of progress, but we have a ton of work left to do, but if you really want to go break something, check out our site.  You can now take our personality test and explore a small subset of our public resume data."

I'm very excited that a part of what we're offering stands enough where it makes sense to send people to it.  We can also use your help with it, too!

The quiz works based off of other people's data.  When you take it, we'll match your personality to others in the system and tell you what kinds of careers they're in.  The more people we have, the better and more specific the recommendations.

So, if all 2600 of you could go over to Path 101 and take a quiz, and save it to an account, I'd really appreciate it.  Feel free to pass to a handful of people in a diverse set of careers.  Explain to them that they're part of a test group, and that the data will be much better with a critical mass of people.  We'll be pinging everyone who took the test when we've hit that mark and recommendations make more sense.

I want to give a HUGE shout out to our great team.  Alex, Jen, and Hilary have been pushing a ton of code--especially since it's really only been a couple of months since the whole team has been on board.  We'll continue to make more progress each day, releasing more features and making the ones we put out there better.  If you haven't already, you should subscribe to the Path 101 blog to track our progress.

Back in October, Alex and I were two guys and a Powerpoint. 

We raised $350k partially based on that Powerpoint, but *I think* it was more based on the strength of our relationships and the fact that we were working in a big, lucrative space begging for disruption.  The investment was meant to recruit additional developers, carry us to a product, and give us some running room after to iterate.

We're on the verge of accomplishing the first half of that goal.  We hired two great developers and we're literally a couple of days from rolling out some of our product in an early Alpha version.  (No, no, it's not a "launch".  It will probably suck and break on day one, but you've got to start somewhere, right?)

Some entrepreneur friends were surprised and maybe even thought it was unfair that we were able to raise before having at least a demo or something up.  Certainly this is the kind of thing that VCs look for, but angels can be a different story. 

Thinking about risk and value creation in relation to fundraising is interesting to me, because its on the forefront of my mind right now. Since we're about to roll some product out, we have a very clear idea of what the product will look like and where it's going.  Of course, it needs to iterate based on user response/uptake, but that goes without saying.  What's very clear to me, though, is that the iteration and eventual inflection point for the service really depends on additional resources--a kick-ass user experience person and an operational/biz dev person.  These would clearly be our first hires after any kind of a financing, because the product not only depends on seamlessly integrating several complimentary career applications, but also on syndicating our services out to other communities and groups.

So the big question is, why wait?  (Especially if we've identified prospects for these roles, which we have.)

Right now, there's two scenarios:   

1) Launch, iterate with existing team, catch lots of falling knives and try and power our way forward to some arbitrary milestone that brings the term sheets pouring in, not that we or the VC's are even 100% sure what that is.  Then, spend time trying to fill out team.

2) Try and raise a couple million sooner rather than later, since we can very definitely say "This is the product and the near future of the product you are investing in."  We make our hires and hit the ground running, and make a much bigger impact in shorter order.

Option #1 plus a nice hockey stick might bring a higher valuation... but is that really what we should be optimizing for?  Outside of raising ridiculous amounts of money at ridiculous valuations, have you ever heard an entrepreneur attribute their ultimate success to a million or so here and there on interim valuations?  On the VC side, have you ever heard a VC say, "The success of our fund has really depended on waiting another month or so to see more traction on deals and teams we liked"? 

The worst thing that could happen is that we come out, inspire potential partners and employees, and we're unable to take advantage of them because we don't have the resources.  Raising money takes time, focus...   Raising at the moment your product gets really good and people finally get it is probably the worst thing you can do, because then you won't have your ducks in a row for when opportunities knock.  The trick is finding support from folks who see where you are going with something and believe that you have the passion and ability to get it there, even before its a sure thing. 

Posted over on the Path 101 blog...

I'm headed out to the ERE Expo in San Diego--I got a very exciting invitation to be a part of their startup panel along with Benjamin Yoskovitz (Standout Jobs), Clint Heiden (VisualCV), and Dan Arkind (JobScore).  What's so cool about our panel is that we all represent different aspects of the job process...

You will be able to discover a career on Path 101, present yourself well with a Visual CV, engage with a company and apply through Standout Jobs and then hopefully make your way through the company's recruiting process, which might be managed by JobScore.  Nice!

Since I was out there anyway, it was startup cashflow-friendly to swing by the Bay Area and stay with friends.  Given the success of our first "Entrepreneurship Listening Tour" we decided to get in touch with a bunch of experienced people to get some feedback and to get on the Bay Area VC radar for later this year.

We're pretty booked during our days, but we'd love to catch up with and meet a lot of people.  On Thursday afternoon, we'll be co-working out of Citizen Space, and then heading out later to 21st Amendment.  Come work with us (or eat/drink with us)!   Tell us you're coming out that night here!

If there's anyone you really think we should meet--smart VC's, entrepreneurs, developers, please let us know.  E-mail us at us@path101.com or follow us on Twitter (@ceonyc and @alexlines). 

Who invested?  Who joined the board?  Find out here.

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Because if you are, you saw the first drafts of the look and feel of our real front end design.

And some ideas around our logo.

And, if that doesn't entertain you enough, the world's most boring web TV:  Our live webcam.

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"Our architecture is also based on a reliable template - lightweight caching reverse proxys in front, proxying to the heavier app servers, which in turn are driven by the databases. We will aim for a shared-nothing architecture - decouple everything, push the state out to the client, compress, minify, and cache the static content, eventually pushing it out to a CDN."

I'm sitting in the MIT VC Conference right now, listening to Diane Greene of VMWare, thinking about the conference, presenting last night, and the Boston scene.

First off, the showcase was really great.  I should have blogged it here, but if you were following my Twitter messages, you heard that I livecasted the booth using UStream.tv.   I have to say, I was really amazed at UStream.  I plugged my camera in (first without drivers, which was my bad) and then the Flash linked up with my camera.   One click and I was broadcasting live to the web.  The coolest part was that I could embed the video player and the chat box anywhere I wanted. 

I'd never really checked out any of the Justin.tv stuff or Chris Pirillo's chats, but I got excited about this.  We may employ some of this at Path 101 to further open up our anti-stealth. 

Anyway... getting back to the conference itself.  People had told me that there really aren't that many "community" events in Boston, and that, which Boston has the VC money, the big institutions like MIT, that the community stuff is a bit lacking.  While I met a lot of great people here last night, I was really surprised there wasn't even more people.  I think of it as the equivalent to the ITP show and that gets packed every year.  In fact, there seems to be more people at the actual conference today, which you had to pay to get in.  How come?  Certainly it wasn't the fault of the organizers.  They picked a great spot and people knew about the conference.  Why weren't more entrepreneurs and VCs at the Showcase?  Students?  Or just people from the community?  I feel like it's the kind of thing more people should have been at...  like some swarm from a usergroup or something.  There were a lot of great companies there.  If anyone is involved with any great Boston-area tech community groups, let me know!  I'll repost them!

When I first got there, I have to admit, I was a bit intimidated.  I'm afraid my arts and crafts skills aren't what they used to be when I was in kindergarten, and I miscaculated the size of the boards compared to the size of my printouts.  I printed out twice as many slides about what we did and who we were and they didn't make the board.

Plus, other people had much more impressive displays.... clearly, they spent a lot more money at Kinko's than I did.  I was sort of afraid that I wasn't quite ready for primetime, but once things got going, it was really great.  People were really excited about what we were doing, and I got to meet some people in person that I'd only known virtually, like Alexa DuPont and Hilary Mason.

There were some visitors from companies in the employment space who we might be able to work with in the future, too. 

Most importantly, though...  were the conversations with students.  I had some great conversations with MBA students from interesting backgrounds trying to figure out what they wanted to do who really took the concept.

So what did we show anyway?  Well, we're in development right now and right in the middle of working on design.  I didn't really want to have our contract UX person spend resources on demoware that wouldn't move us forward, so I spent some late nights recently pushing my poor graphic design skills to the limit to come up with screenshots.  So, if you promise not to poke too much fun, and pay more attention to what's going on in these pages than the fonts, colors, placement, clutter, you can see the screenshots here on the Path 101 blog here.

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I've been trying to come up with an over presentation that I could just leave on the Path 101 site and forget about--so people who randomly stumbled in could get a better sense of what we were up to.   I tried Google Docs, but I really wasn't happy that I couldn't do some kind of animation and walkthrough.  Then again, I really don't like adding my voice to these things, even though people seem to like it.  So I created an animated presentation on Powerpoint, and used Jing (along with its 5 min limit), to capture it.  It exports a Flash SWF, which is now sitting on screencast. I have a few issues with the result, but I don't think it's that bad.

1. It might be a little too fast.  I'm not sure, because I've seen the presentation a million times.  I prob should have combined the team slides into one and I'm sure there's one other slide I can can.
2. I really, really wanted to embed it smaller somewhere on the site.  I can't for the life of me figure out how to make the Flash smaller.  I can make the embed smaller, that's easy, but to squeeze the actual Flash into a smaller embed... no idea.  Here's what I wound up with... any suggestions?  Converting to video would have solved that, but I couldn't find a good conversion tool that converted at a good resolution.   UPDATE:  I used Slideshare at the suggestion of others and it came out MUCH BETTER!!  
3. If I convert it to video, perhaps I'll give in and add a voice track... but it takes a long time to speak through..  and I want to keep it at 5. 

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Tags: path101, presentations, flash, ppt

Perhaps I'm being too defensive here, but I can't help but feel the need to respond to a recent post I sawon InsideChatter.   I first came upon InsideChatter when Donna ripped on Nick O'Neill's post on LinkedIn vs. Facebook.

Aren't most blogs indistinguishable and unreliable?  I mean, I guess mine's pretty special because I like kayaking (j/k) but other than that, it's no better or worse than anything else out there.   There aren't very many great blogs out there, except maybe danah, Scott Adams, or Marc Andreessen.  Eric's and Fred's blogs are pretty good, too...  but I'd be careful saying that other people's blogs are indistinguishable.  I think we're all lucky to have any readers at all, but I digress.

What she failed to see was that amid all the Facebook ra-ra! from Nick, which I actually disagreed with, because I do think there's a point to a network for each of my different selves, was a really good point...   If Facebook can present several faces of you to different people, then it's a real challenge to any social network out there, not just LinkedIn.  Dismissing that point out of hand may prove to be the death knell for many networks. 

Today, she wrote about Path 101, which is to be expected of course.  I mean, come on, did we honestly expect we wouldn't get negative feedback to putting ourselves out there so early?  I would have written a response in the comments to her post about us, but she doesn't allow comments.

First, Donna did a nice job of catching my slip up in saying that it was "top 10" within the post.  Nice job.. I started out with ten, but didn't really feel like all ten were strong, so I shed a few, and forgot to re-edit.  I fixed that.  Thanks!

I think if you check the overview, you'll see that there isn't much of our business that has anything to do with LinkedIn.  All we were trying to do is not add in features that already exist elsewhere and cause users to sign up for yet another social network.    Connecting professionals isn't our business.  That's theirs.  We just figured it makes sense to be discovering careers and connecting to professionals in an integrated way, that's all...a nice feature.  If we just have to create links to say, "Go here and create a LinkedIn account while you're discovering careers on our site, you'll thank us for it", we'll do that, but it seems silly. 

Path 101 on its “status,” as of October 11: “NO assets, NO revenues, a two day old empty checking account…and now, back to actually building this service.”"

Just to update, we'll have money in our checking account by the end of the week, from Fred Wilson (who leaked his own involvement before we were even ready!) and others.  As for what else we can do today, that's not what this post was about, mostly because the LinkedIn API isn't ready today either.  If we're building the service TODAY, does it make sense to speak up when we're done, or when we actually have time to integrate with their proposed API based on our proposed vision?  This is something that happens in the startup world all the time.  Someone plans on building something and they talk to others in the same space to get a sense of how they could work together in the future.  It's pretty commonplace.

This post also seems to imply that if you're friends or family with someone, they don't belong in your LinkedIn network.

Yo, did you say my family is not professional??  Oh, snap!  :)   Actually, I got my first job in the Waterhouse Securities mailroom through my older (by 17 years) brother, who was their Regional Vice President of the whole 30+ office Midwest branch at the time... and his network would probably be highly accretive to LinkedIn.  Perhaps if there was an easier way for his techie little brother to show him the ropes on it, they'd benefit. 

But you're the expert on LinkedIn, right?  You and your.. um...wait... 14 connections???   Are you serious?  I was assuming I'd get ripped apart by someone who is even a more passionate user of the service than I am.  (See my "Getting Started with LinkedIn" post.)  Don't get me wrong, I love a good back and forth about what that service needs or doesn't need, but I was assuming it would come from someone who uses it a little more.

Ok, so maybe it was better off that there are no comments on InsideChatter, because I had more to say and it wouldn't have fit. 

We did get some good positive comments, too.  Its nice to know that others seem to be behind what we're doing:

Comments from Fred's post

Comments on our post

Thanks to all who've been really supportive and even those who haven't!  I'll definitely be adding Donna's blog to my blogroll to get her feedback in the future...  because just listening to praise is never a good idea.

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Tags: linkedinpath101

More uber anti-stealth...

....by myself.  Check out our fun legal signing pics on the Path 101 Blog.

Two bits of anti-stealth today... now that we're out of our apartments for the first full week and living within the friendly confines of Return Path, we're feeling pretty psyched about our ideas.  We'd love to share them with you, and so we're holding an open product feedback and brainstorming session this Thursday night at CRESA's offices in midtown.   It will take place at 6:30 and probably run until 8:30.  Details and link to RSVP here.

Also, we diced to open up our Monday morning meeting notes to the public, so you can further track our profess.    You can see how we're diving up the work, our progress, etc.

A lot of people think starting your own company is a risky proposition.  Sounds like it, right?  Oooh...  could "blow up".  Sounds dangerous.  Images of shrapnel.

Maybe I'm naive and oblivious... but I'm really not that worried, like, at all.

I'm working on Path 101 fulltime and the only income I get now is from my adjunct teaching at Fordham, which is sort of like my checking account's equivalent of flapping its arms as it falls off a cliff.  Yet, somehow, I know it's all going to work out.  I'm confident we'll get our angel round raised... people are lining up now...  but on the chance we don't get all of it, we'll make do with what we have.  We'll take on some consulting if we have to.  It's not ideal, but there's a fallback plan, and frankly, the fallback plans aren't so bad.

Maybe I'll need to start liquidating to fund this.  I already know...  first it's the 401k, than the apartment, and then the car.  Yes, the car is the last to go.  Not ideal, but at least I've faced the reality of the situation.  I can deal with it.

And if this whole thing doesn't work out... if we can't get something compelling built or can't grow the user base or can't monetize, and we have to close up shop.  Then what?  I'll be upset, no doubt, and disappointed, but...   I'll survive to die another day.  I'll just get a job somewhere.  I believe I'm employable and have no fear that I'll wind up homeless on the street.

So what's really the big risk?  I mean, even in the worst case scenario, I'll learn something...  I'll learn a lot, actually.  It will build character and I'll meet a lot of great people along the way...  and build a great relationship with Alex, too (or kill each other... either way). 

Frankly, if you think about what I could gain or lose by taking this on vs. not taking it on, I think I've got a hell of a lot more to lose by not doing it.

I got two comments on my previous post about some creative ways to get some elements of my startup done (some quick and dirty ways to get a logo) that I'd like to address.

First, Nate's comments...

"Don't settle on a logo early and don't let someone outside the company do it. Yes, you need a better one -- and fairly soon ;-) but don't lock yourself in and don't lock your eventual full-time designer out of the process."

I like this angle.  It makes sense to me that a designer, especially one that we'd like to hire full time, might not want to get handed a logo that may or may not square with their vision for the look and feel.  That's an excellent point.

Now, Rachel's comments.  I don't know who Rachel is, but she seems to be (or believe herself to be, given her tone) an expert in something...

"Corporate identity (logo design/graphic look and feel) is brand expression, which is the derivative of brand essence, which you haven't done any strategic work on..."

Personally, I don't believe that seed stage startups should do "strategic work" on corporate identity.  They should build a useful product, period.  So many times, web services do fancy redesigns to make things look good when they flat out fail on improving the usability of the product.  "Brand essence" = good product.  You think people use Apple because they like the logo?  No, it's because their products are functional and easy to use.  All the brand positioning in the world won't save a product if it doesn't just flat out provide utility.  Do you think Craigslist does strategic work on its brand essence?  Having met Craig, I'd say I highly doubt it.  I mean, hell, they don't even have a logo.

Actually, they do.  Here it is:

Craigslist

Snarky?  Yeah, because I'm just snarking back to her comment about my presentation:

"It's a mess from a sheer presentation standpoint. Clean it up, format it, get those headlines right, just get some look of discipline in there and the VCs might overlook your age and inexperience"

It may be a graphical mess... I don't pertain to be any kind of expert, but it is also on Google Docs, so things got bumped around a little.  In fact, that's the very "essence" of the company... open, out there, direct...   but figuring as we're having little trouble attracting interested folks, perhaps other VC/angel pitches aren't messy enough.

But the real kicker is this:  "get some look of discipline in there and the VCs might overlook your age and inexperience".   

Rachel, how old do you think the average internet entrepreneur is that gets funded by VCs these days?  Certainly not a lot older than 28. 

And my inexperience?

So tell me, how many people are out there who have been a product manager during the launch of a new product, evaluated early stage startups for a top tier VC firm, taught both undergraduates and graduates in classes that they developed from scratch, ran a mentoring program for both a professional society and a school's alumni organization and also created a professional organization that currently has over 1,000 members?

Perhaps I haven't run an enterprise software product and taken revenues from zero to fifty million, or led three startups in completely unrelated spaces, but I dunno, from my vantage point, I couldn't imagine being any more fortunate that I have been to get the exact kind of insight and experience  needed to make Path 101 a success--plus not to mention the absolutely fantastic network of people I've built up to help me.

So, instead of trying to "grab the conversation by the emotional cojones" which is, trust me, what a lot of entrepreneurs try to do ("We're going to change the world, you'll see!") I'm more interested in solving a real problem with a useful product.  A lot of marketing "experts" think that it's all about "sexing up" the pitch.  I've been on the other side of the table (have you?) and trust me... sex doesn't sell in a good VC firm, nor does it sell a sophisticated angel investor.  A good idea backed by the appropriate passionate entrepreneur in a market ripe for disruption is what we're selling here and I'm quite confident we'll do just fine.

Alex and I threw an idea out there that might be ridiculous, or it might be pretty good.

As we're starting up this business, we'll be accumulating all sorts of little expenses here and there out of our own pockets until we raise this angel round.

For example, we need a logo.  I'm sure it will cost us a few hundred bucks at the end of the day.  I also want to make a trip up to Toronto because I have a connection to a big group of schools up there.  Same with Providence, RI.  Trips, obviously, cost money, but they're really valuable to drum up school support, get feedback, and get market knowledge about who else is out there.

Well, what if we could get someone to sponsor these expenses?  Would it be worth a law firm, professional services firm, IT consultant, or some collaborative software's money to slap their logo on some aspect of our process?  Maybe we'll decorate our company blogs with logos of other companies and say "Logo provided by generous sponsorship by Scion"  or something like that?

Is that ridiculous, or just a smart way to monetize the high profile we're fortunate enough to have with this startup?

Anyone want to sponsor our logo design, or contribute a logo design?

I think if someone wanted to do a logo for us, I'd do a video interview with them to put on our blog about the process of doing a logo for us and link to their portfolio.

Maybe we can get a lawyer cheap that way, too.  Interview all these professional services folks about how they want to work with us and advertise their services for payment in kind.  Hmm...

Path 101 is looking for a designer...  Alex and I need someone to help with evil laughs and cackles as we take our ideas and create mockups, clickware, and eventually, the site itself, as we yell, "It's alive!"

Alex and I are looking to grab some empty desks in NYC... got any?  Details here.