From Voki Product Manager to just one of many passionate Voki users... leaving Oddcast and looking for challenges, opportunities, and conversations
Softball is often a metaphor for life.
Seriously, hear me out.
I play on and manage two teams. When it comes to writing up the lineups, I always pencil everyone else in at their positions first, and then play wherever we’re missing anyone. Sometimes it means the outfield, sometimes first. Last night, I found myself at shortstop for an inning. I can pretty much hold my own almost anywhere in the field.
I’ve always been like that—playing where the team needed me. I enjoy new challenges and try to take a very systematic and thoughtful approach. I may not play the most graceful first base, for example, but I grew up watching my best friend playing it quite well and I’m always learning, taking notes… studying the game.
So when I started at Oddcast about a year ago as Director of Consumer Products—Voki employee #1 (before it even had a name, and yes, the name is my doing, or my fault, depending on what you think of it)—I played the role of utility player for quite some time. Sometimes it meant working on product specifications, other times consulting on design and UI, and then I also found myself in marketing and business meetings. It was an exciting opportunity not only to cut my teeth on product work, but also participate in all of the various aspects of the operational side.
In time, we filled out the Voki team around me… Business Development, Product, Marketing. As we got closer to launch, internal folks started converging and helping to push things forward. That was great for the product, but not as great for the larger opportunity that I wanted for my career. Essentially, if we're keeping with my metaphor, I started to DH, since all of our positions in the field were being filled. That may have been the most logical move for the team, but I knew deep down that I had the ability to make a bigger impact.
Was it a desired outcome? To be honest, not really, but it’s also no one’s fault and there are no hard feelings. I initiated the conversation about transition about a month and a half ago. I thanked Adi, our founder, for believing in me enough to bring me here in the first place and providing a fantastic experience. I talked about my desire to make the biggest impact possible in this social media/startup world we’re in and we came to the mutual conclusion that Voki was in good hands with the team we had put in place. At that point, we set a timetable that would allow me to explore some other opportunities that came up without leaving the team shorthanded. In fact, I will continue to work with Oddcast in a part time role over the next month or so and specifically focus on a couple of product and business development projects that I really want to see through to conclusion.
In an organization moving from a service business to more of a product business, there are bound to be disagreements, changing roles, and tough decisions, but I have to say that, down to a person, I enjoyed working with and respect every single employee here at Oddcast.
So, what’s next for me? Well, I’m not completely done with the sports analogy. Consider this my declaration of free agency. There have been some very compelling opportunities that have come through the grapevine (it was hard to completely keep it a secret that I was leaving) and I’m going to explore those. Frankly, I’m looking forward to having the time and the focus to give every opportunity I have its deserved attention. Trying to think about the next job while still working is hard. In the past, I took a weekend off before I started as an analyst at Union Square Ventures, and with Oddcast, I started working here on weekends even before I left USV. I’m definitely not going to do that again!
As you probably know from this blog, I have an exciting cross country trip planned for the first two and a half weeks of July and will take that time to think about what’s next and where I can make the most out of what I have to offer.
So what do I have to offer?
I’ve been exposed to quite a lot in a very short amount of time… getting more involved in venture capital from the LP side in 2004—the beginning of what people consider to be Web 2.0, jumping to a top tier venture firm in 2005 and seeing just about everything in the space for a year and a half, and then rolling up my sleeves and launching a social web application at a portfolio company that has thousands of users after just a few weeks of its Alpha launch. I’m extremely interested in product work, but also how the social media world has left a very thin line between product, marketing, and business development (see Facebook apps). I’ve been a technically savvy non-developer since 1987, when my dad first game home with our PS/2, and while I understand and believe in the power of “Web 2.0”. But, that goes for a lot of folks my age. What I think separates me is that I also have my feet firmly grounded in a Finance major and Economics/Accounting minors and can help companies take a very rational and effective approach to social media, versus just playing “follow the buzz”.
What could I do with all that? Well, I’m willing to have a conversation with just about anyone in the space and I’m considering everything from being employee #2, employee #8, working at ad agencies, venture firms, incubators, big media companies and maybe even just teaching fulltime. So, if you know of anyone interesting that I should be talking to, please, by all means feel free to make an introduction. My e-mail is charlie (dot) odonnell (at) gmail.com.
In the meantime, I do have a little bit of time on my hands, so if there are any interesting consulting projects or speaking engagements, I think it’s a great opportunity to get to know people I might want to work with and for others to get to know my capabilities. I’ve had a unique opportunity to connect to so many great people… 3 great employers, 2,000 blog readers, 900+ nextNYers, 500+ LinkedIn connections… and I’ve learned such a great deal from them that I always enjoy sharing it, especially with relative newcomers to the social media space, which is why I teach at Fordham’s grad and undergrad programs as well.
In closing, I want to thank everyone at Oddcast for making my time here incredibly educational and helping to lay the groundwork to make Voki successful, particularly Oddcast’s founders Adi & Gil Sideman, Adam G., who Voki could not have come to fruition without and I learned a ton about the technical side of product management from, our tech “hat trick” in Sergey, Dave, and Jon, our VP of Biz Dev Shaival, Hannah the Instigator, Annette, Craig, Yuni, Daphne, James, Cory, Tony, Erez, Gally, Isak, Oren, and Riv.
Is there any reason I'm not getting a Helio Ocean?
Avi told me last night about the Helio Ocean and I checked it out:
So 500 daytime minutes, which is all I need, will cost me $65 a month.
Other features:
- Slideout keyboard (Two thumbs up!)
- Unlimited texts
- Integrated AIM instant messaging
- Integrated Gmail and (coming soon) Outlook Exchange sync (we'll see how coming soon this is, that's important for me)
Does anyone have this phone yet?? This all seems too good to be true.
Tailspin
I just don't know what to say about the Mets. Finally, David Wright starts hitting and the rest of the team completely stops.
And I guess Joe Smith realized he was Joe Smith, too.
But back to back to back home runs. Dude... Baseball 101. If two guys hit home runs on you on two pitches, the next guy gets one right in the mouth. Frankly, after you give up one, you should always throw behind the next guy.
Somehow, we're still two up on the Braves, with the Phillies just three behind.
This team better start turning things around, especially now that the Yanks are winning. If, at any point, the Yanks have a better record than the Mets this season, I think I'm going to blow chunks.
And Pedro isn't the answer either... its not the pitching... they're not hitting. They need to get Alou back and figure out how to hit in the clutch.
PS... I played softball last Friday night and the guy on the other team looked exactly like Pedro Cerrano. I yelled out "Hats for Bats" from the outfield, but I don't think anyone got it.
The Future of Twitter: Five Applications to Think About
If there was ever a poster app for Web 2.0 tools you need to use to really understand, Twitter would be it. On the surface, it's quite easy for someone to look at it and go, "It's a bunch of people incessantly blabbering on about meaningless crap." Fred made a great point at lunch today that you could just as well say that about instant messengers, but obviously IM clients represent some of the most valuable and sticky applications users have on their desktops.
Past the incessant microupdates, though, which I, of course, take part in, there's much more potential here. If anything, Twitter's biggest challenge to success may be in defining exactly what it wants to be when it grows up and what customers it wants to serve. And, of course, its fun and interesting for us bloggers to ponder such theoretical exercises.
Right now, very much like del.icio.us at the time of its funding. It has a lot of passionate users, people are building mashups and lightweight apps on top of it, and it has the potential to be a lot of different things. These outcomes don't have to be mutually exclusive, but it will certainly be interesting to see how Twitter brands itself over time, builds features, and what segments of the population it actively goes after. In fact, who the service targets will likely influence what it becomes, and vice versa, so in some sense, defining its audience is largely an exercise in self-definition.
There are a few groups, applications, instantiations, versions, etc. of Twitter that I think could gain a lot of traction that make for interesting thought experiments:
- LiveJournal & other Social Networks: I picked out LiveJournal because it's a perfect fit. Each blogs is read by only a small handful of readers--friends of the LJer. Providing a tool by which they could continue to communicate off the site could help increase loyalty and social interaction to a site that already excels in those areas, but would probably like to extend its reach. Plus, LJ already has a "status" that is a widely used part of the site. It would be only natural to want to allow LJers to publish this status or blog updates across the web, IMs, and mobile. Facebook should be powering its status through Twitter as well. One thing that both of these sites do quite well is promote communication, and I think the keys to their future are implementing features that help maintain the communicative aspects of social networking. Sites like MySpace aren't going to survive if its just about friend adding and profile browsing. Key Feature: Privacy. Social networks need robust privacy features and so do the apps that build on them. Most LJ blogs are closed and making sure they've simplified and completely nailed the privacy features would be key to adoption. Key Business Point: Will SNS realize that enabling more user communication is key to user engagement and loyalty or will they look for immediate paths to monetization? Plus
- Conference Attendees: SXSW really nailed it for me. With various possible tracks and a constantly ebbing and flowing swirl of closely proximated people, Twitter proved to be the perfect conference app. People freely gave out their Twitter screenames knowing that they could always leave or block those people later on, lowering the bar for mobile communication. If you're running a big conference, you should be using Twitter to be the digital hallway, and as we all know, hallways are often the best parts of conferences. Key Feature: Stats, Directories, and Co-Registration. Conference producers would definitely look for ways to get more of their audience on this, and to provide them with enough information to message each other. Streamlining the registration process so that you can sign up for Twitter or publicize your account when registering for the conference would be key. This way, they could publish your screename in attendee directories and make it easier for key networking contacts to find you. In addition, they would probably die for a management view of this app where they could see who the "talkers" were, who they were talking to, connections over time, conference feedback, etc. Key Business Point: What does the management tool look like and could you sell it?
- Corporate Twitter: We have an intra-office e-mail address that blasts messages to everyone that routinely gets abused by reply-alls that I wish I could unsubscribe to. On top of that, there's often the need to message people through phones in short form when you don't know exactly where you are. Putting a smart phone seems like overkill for this and not everyone necessarily wants to give their cell number out to the whole office. Twitter could be a great cross-platform IRC channel for small to midsize offices, and even part of an office's emergency management plans, with its capacity to blast messages out to a large group of mobile users. Key Feature: Privacy and monitoring. Corporate IM applications have needed to not only provide extra levels of security and privacy, but also monitoring of what gets discussed. Twitter would likely have to do the same, lest anyone Twitter corporate secrets. Key Business Point: How corporate would it be? Perhaps just a lightweight app more geared towards small businesses would be a better start, rather than building a heavy locked down version behind the firewall.
- Content subscription portal: There have been lots of fake celebs popping up on Twitter... Steven Wright, Christopher Walken, John Edwards... (oh, wait.. Edwards is real, right?). Adding a celeb or a business to get a stream of content from them makes so much more sense than just being their friend via a profile. It's only a matter of time before bands, movies, comedians, etc. make Twitter a standard part of their communication with fans. Plus, I wouldn't mind a Weather Channel Twitter update on Brooklyn weather conditions, score changes for the Mets, and Hudson River water temps. Key Feature: Spam prevention. Twitter will have to build in some limitations on how often 3rd party content providers can blast out updates, what types of messages are allowed, etc., just in case marketers get overzealous. Key Business Point: There was a land grab on Twitter names when they opened up their API and they may need to boot some squatters, but this is likely to come to pass and I'm sure it will be a revenue opportunity for them. The question is what is a Twitter subscriber worth?
- Gaming: I'm surprised that people haven't built large scale games out of Twitter. (Sounds like a Jane project...) Twitter could blur the line between participants and lurkers, since your public twits related to the game could enable others to follow along and perhaps jump in with answers, route advice for location based games, etc. Imagine adding a game "friend" one day and just knowing that, sometime over the next week, you're going to get instructions for a game. Key Feature: Spam prevention. Twitter will have to build in some limitations on how often 3rd party content providers can blast out updates, what types of messages are allowed, etc., just in case marketers get overzealous. Key Business Point: There's big advergaming potential here, and the great thing about Twitter is that it acts like a portal. You don't have to remember some special shortcode for a mobile game... everything is based on 40404. Gaming and mobile contests can be built in a very social way with Twitter and enable lower barriers to entry and discovery.
What else could Twitter be? Where is it's greatest potential?
Open Source Cross Country Trip: Places to Stay, to See, and Tunes to Listen to
So, the route is pretty much planned out and so is the calendar, but that still leaves a lot of things that need to be done, like what we do at certain places, things to bring, etc.
We could use some help, so if anyone could help us out with the following, we'd really appreciate it.
- Tunes - We'll need quite a lot of tunes on our trip, since we're spending three full days in the car, so if anyone would like to send over some mixed CDs, we'll check 'em out and give you a shoutout, plus a little review. You can either e-mail me playlists or mail me CDs to 7423 Ridge Blvd., Apt. 1B, Brooklyn, NY 11209.
- Western NY - We need to stop in Western NY on our way to Cleveland and we got a tip that Olean, NY has a decent place to say and that pretty close to St. Bonaventure and Allegheny State Park, so that looks like a go to me, but we've set out to spend a fair bit of time trekking through Western NY the next day and would like suggestions on places to stop along the 86/90 route west of Olean. I'm thinking food, farms, nature stuff... quaint little places that no one knows about, etc. It seems like it would be a pretty quaint country drive if we found some nice places to check out. Also, if there's a place in the Olean, NY area that you think is worth staying at, let us know.
- St. Louis - What to do in St. Louis on a Wednesday morning? Brunch? Shopping area? Something historic?
- Sioux Falls, SD - Where to eat lunch?
- Yellowstone - Best place to camp out and also where to go to buy a lightweight tent for two without breaking the bank, since its probably the only time we'll need one. We're going to spend a day in Yellowstone.
Self Deception
I've been reading the Moral Animal and it had a really fascinating observation about self-deception.
It turns out that self-deception is likely to be a natural evolutionary advantage, developed as our perception about our outside world improved. As you would expect, humans with better sensory perception had an advantage over rivals--they could sense danger, forage better for food, size up opponents, etc.
Our increased sensory perception also allowed us to read body language, facial expression--look past a bad poker face, essentially.
The self-deception comes in when it becomes and advantage not to give away a lie with your body language. And, as we all know from George Costanza, "It's not a lie if you believe it." To an extent, deceiving yourself first is an effective way to decieve others, and, for better or worse, the ability to deceive others is an evolutionary advantage. Perfect example: standing up to a bully twice your size. Perfectly translated observation to cognition to observation should tell you that you're going to get your ass handed to you. However, if you can delude yourself enough that you actually have what it takes to win, you might get the other guy to think twice, versus smelling blood.
Of course, in this case, the combination of speed and self delusion turns out to be the best advantage.
I wonder if self delusion isn't a natural advantage of entrepreneurs? You have to admit, attempting to knock off Google or Microsoft or whoever must come with some kind of evolutionary kool aid consumption.
How to get started as a Venture Capital (VC) analyst
A lot of people ask me about my VC experience and want to know the secret to getting into the VC world. Its a pertinent question, especially if you're in NYC. If you've been paying attention, my VC successor will probably reach the halfway point in his stint this year, and if you wait until that spot actually opens up to position yourself, well, you'll probably be too late.
As an analyst, you can be useful at pretty much only three things: communication, sourcing, and analysis. The great thing for VC wannabes is that these are all things that you can do now, before a job even comes up. There's nothing stopping you from putting forth your analysis of a new startup, or tipping VCs off to potential deals today, even when you're not at a firm.
Many students have the misconception that, as an analyst, you're going to be put in front of a big stack of business plans and your filtering skill is what's going to make you the next Mike Moritz. Guess again. VCs hustle hard to track down deals and they expect everyone in the shop to be bringing deals to the table, because you should be in the flow of interesting things going on.
But, all this can be a lot of handwaving unless you have specific,
applicable action items, and since the web loves top ten lists:
1) Make a digital home for yourself.
If I haven't beat this to death already, creating a digital presence, preferably through a blog, gives people you connect with a landing page. It is the center of operations for all your online networking and a place for people to assess what you're all about, what you're thinking, etc--the equivalent of hoisting a sail on a windy day. No presence, no sail.
2) Know your community calendar... attend.
As a VC, you want to meet innovators, but the innovators are already meeting... in Meetups and Co-working groups, speaking events, and usergroups. (nextNY, for example,if you're into tech in NYC) They'll be a lot more accepting to you if the first time you meet them isn't when you're trying to vulture around for something to shove money into. Plus, you need to get out there and in the flow to keep up with what's going on.
3) Be passionate for the product...no matter what it is.
Frankly, I don't know how anyone could be a VC analyst and not be passionate about the products they're looking to invest in. If you're doing web services, and you're not a user, you're just never going to get it. Why do people use Twitter? Why is Facebook better than MySpace? These are things you're just not going to understand if you're not a real user.
4) Be an innovation leader in your own world.
You don't have to be a former entrepreneur, but being generally entrepreneurial and an innovator helps. Did you lead the investment or entrepreneurship club at your college? No? Why not? There wasn't one? BUZZ Wrong answer. You should have started it.
5) Be selfless with your time for startups.
One of the most valuable thing you can do with your time as analyst is just talk to a lot of startups...get a sense of what you like and what you don't, best practices, good teams vs. weak teams, etc. And startups are often looking for feedback, beta testers, ideas... the more you make yourself available, the more you will learn and generally be seen as a useful person to talk to. Go help a startup with their marketing plan.
6) Ignore the hype.
It's not just about e-mailing the companies you find on TechCrunch. Just because it doesn't have AJAX doesn't mean it won't be worth billions one day. Remember that the whole world doesn't necessarily blog and some startups can't even be found online yet because they're still in stealth. You need to cut through the buzz and make your own decisions.
7) Teach.
You will never have a clearer understanding of how something works until you attempt to teach it to someone else, which requires you to make some semblance of sense of your subject. Offer to teach at your high school or the Learning Annex or anything... Convince grandma to join Facebook. It will be a sobering experience and will remind you that not everyone gets RSS and some people don't see the value of being social and out there. It's those people that startup success is built on. Win the middle.
8) Be social and have a personality.
If you're going to be an involved community member, people need to actually like hanging out with you. This is where those countless hours in college bars should have taught you something. I know plenty of people who succeed because of their great personalities more so than any other reason. It's not hard to be nice and have a little fun... try it.
9) Build relationships with VCs..not just for stock information interviews.
Right now, you can go do a report on a hot new space or a review of a product and send it to a VC (or tag it for them). If you really want in to this space, why wouldn't you? How about hanging around their blog or showing up at the same events? VC's don't live in a bubble. Their job dictates that they need to be "out there" and that's where you should be, too. It always blew my mind when I was at USV how many people sent biz plans to info@unionsquareventuers (dot) com, when we were so out there with our digital presence.
10) Know your place.
You are not a partner. You're an analyst.. or you want to be. There are a lot of people with a lot more experience than you who have seem this all before. Respect experience. Don't trash a startup, because, for all you know, the entrepreneur is the VC's best friend from Stanford or they're currently in talks for funding now. The best thing you can do sometimes is listen. Listen to what VCs and entrepreneurs are saying on blogs and at conferences and take it all in before you go position yourself as the greatest thing since sliced bread....especially since a large part of your job will be listening and asking smart questions.
So, the next time I hear from someone via LinkedIn or e-mail who wants to hear about my VC experience, I fully expect that they already go to Tech Meetups, have joined nextNY if they are in NYC, use all this stuff passionately, etc.... That's a good first step.
Meet Ambition
Meet Ethan.
Ethan has a blog. He does some graphic design work.
I found him because he's attending the Future of Online Advertising Conference and registered for their little social networking app.
Did I mention that he's a 17 year old high school student?
If you teach or work in the career services world, this is exactly what you need to be teaching... how students can create a professional digital presence for themselves and be ambitious enough to go to conferences, connect with people, network, etc.
Or are you too busy running job fairs?
Soon, the best jobs will be gotten through digital backchannel conversations by people who maintain their professional thoughts in a searchable and consumable manner.
If you're working in career services are you spending more time with students on their resumes or teaching them ways to get jobs without them?
nextMiami: Sun and Innovation in Florida
A few people have made attempts at mirroring the nextNY concept in other geographies and I think it's a fantastic idea.
Nathaniel McNamara and Jason Baptiste are down in Miami attempting to bring together people
interested in technology, new media, and entrepreneurship together in a social setting. If you're down in Florida, you should make a point of connecting with these two guys in their attempt to help strengthen the community of innovators down there. The "next" concept takes a lot of community interest, passion, and involvement and nextNY has been a fantastic way to connect with others in the space. Frankly, its brought a lot of people out of the woodwork that I didn't know were there.
Check out the event next Thursday night, June 14th via Facebook or Meetup.
Please forward to Florida startups and innovators...
Hey Austin for Edwards, please do not spam my del.icio.us for: account
I just got some politically oriented links supporting John Edwards in my "links for you" section in del.icio.us from "austinforedwards".
The "links for you" section of my del.icio.us account is like an e-mail box, which pretty much makes this spam. I don't support Edwards for President (he's a good guy, but I'm just waiting for Bloomberg to run... ) So, for one, I'm going to tag this post for:austinforedwards so they can see that I don't want to be spammed. Two, del.icio.us needs some sort of blocking or report as spam mechanism in that section, because, as of this moment, I have no way to prevent someone I don't know from just tagging a whole bunch of links for me.