My Short Paddle in Yesterday's Stormy Seas
Yesterday, Betsy the kayaker and I had planned to take a trip. We were either going to paddle over to Hoboken to take part in another kayaker's Halloween paddle, or down around the Battery to Red Hook.
This is Betsy and her little red boat:
We got out into the channel and it was fairly obvious no such trip was occurring. It was just too windy and too choppy to get anywhere. Actually, it was a hell of a lot of fun, but not really the kind of surf condusive to trips.
So we decided to paddle across to the Newport marina just to hangout in their protected enclave.
Here are some more pics....
These fake dogs are meant to scare off birds...
Protection from the sea:
Lower Manhattan skyline:
Inside the boathouse:
My boat... Well, my borrowed DTBH boat anyway:
I guess they leave those snowflakes on all year:
Empire State Building in the background:
Blogged with Flock
Tags: kayakingpier40 dtbh
I guess if you're being anti-stealth, you can't win 'em all
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
I would agree that blogging during the start-up phase is an excellent idea. It let's a new company establish credibility before the product is ready, bounce ideas of potential customers and let's other stakeholders participate in the growth of the organization. Nicely done!" - Voices.com CEO "it sounds pretty cool what they are doing" - Aruni
Comments on our post
"Congratulations. Brilliant! Simply brilliant! Always expected big things of you, Charlie. Looks like sooner rather than later. Also, terrific (and generous) idea to blog start up. Should be a great help to budding entrepreneurs of all stripes. Best of luck to you and your partner." - Marta Mooney (Professor at Fordham's Graduate School of Business for 30+ years)
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.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: linkedinpath101
Hueniverse: What’s the Plan, Stan? (More Uber Anti-Stealth
The Uber Anti-Stealth Meme is spreading....
"Inspired by Path 101 anti-stealth startup philosophy, I decided to make public some of the business documents I wrote for Nouncer. Reading the Path 101 blog, I really enjoyed following their progress. My first reaction was they are making a mistake by revealing too much, but when I actually considered what they might be losing, I could not come up with a single point. At the end of the day, it takes a lot of storytelling to get a startup off the ground and you end up telling people everything anyway, with or without an NDA."from Hueniverse: What’s the Plan, Stan?
Blogged with Flock
Subway Thumbings
One of my least favorite things in this whole world is a shower on a cold morning. It doesn't warm me up at all... it just makes me wish I stayed under the covers where I was protected, warm, and most importantly, dry.
Getting on the train this morning, I saw a kid with a Student Metrocard. Kids have it easy these days. If you went to high school in Manhattan, you'll remember trying to get the attention of the token booth clerk to buzz that special gate. She saw the long line of students, but it didn't matter. You still had to wait in line after all those people bought their metrocards.
I think I played my best game of dodgeball last night with the nextNY team.
Shoulda been Mets-Red Sox.
Angel financing is clearly an exercise in herding cats.
While I'll grant that I don't like showers in the morning, I will grant that a post workout morning shower makes me feel fantastic. I wish you all could feel like I do now, Frampton style.
These two girls next to me are whispering about my phone. The amount of hardware and accessories the average teenage girl from Brooklyn carries around is getting out of hand. Somewhere in late 2006, we hit a turning point where phones became so slim, while the size of big hoop earring stayed constant, allowing phones to actually pass through the earrings of their owners.
Its weird how text messages somehow pass through subway walls. I just learned that Brian Oberkirch read a book. Brian's going to hook me up at the Future of Web Apps conference in February, right Brian?
I'm wearing dark jeans and my black hoodie. When I put the hood up, where do you think the polls would wind up on the "Is this guy more likely to mug you or launch a startup?"
I think Facebook may be a bubble unto itself. Is that possible? Can you have a localized bubble? I'll write more on that later.
Mangoes are good eats, but picking mango strands out of your front teeth is a chore. We have seedless watermelons...can someone invent mangoes crumb up instead of shred?
There don't seem to be any movies out there that I want to see, nor have their been for a while.
I'm going applepicking tomorrow.
links for 2007-10-25
-
This place is 5 blocks from my apartment, and no, I have never taken any performance enhancing drugs... that I am aware of.
Poking the bear: It's not as hard to build a startup in New York City as you've heard....
Here's my "poke the bear" post for the week.... This is mostly reprinted from a fantastic thread going on over on the nextNY listserv. 16 authors, 33 replies so far....(Join up to see it)
"The space issue is BS.
The lack of technical people issue as a NYC specific issue is BS.
The good lawyer issue is BS.
The lack of funding issue is BS.
:)
Here's my theory:
If you are aiming to build a successful startup, anywhere, I feel like you need to know your niche through and through. If you are building an events database for uber-trendy clubs, not only should you be a club kid (or have one on your team) but every single last club owner and club promoter in NYC should not only know who you are, but think you are the shizzle.
If you're just someone with an idea for someone else's community, don't expect anyone to help you out. But if you're an athlete with an idea for a sports related service, someone who deals with wealthy museum patrons who wants to build enterprise software for galleries, or a hedge fund analyst that wants to build a Lamborghini aggregator, you'll have no trouble finding these resources.
On Space: When I left Oddcast, I hung out at the extra desk at Union Square Ventures because I had a good relationship with them. Surely there is some company on the face of the earth that you have built enough goodwill with that they'd let you hangout at a desk or two for a short while to get on your feet. If you don't even have that kind of a network, I question whether or not you're ever going to gather enough resources to succeed or whether you have the network needed to really catapult your business. When you have 5 people, you're at a different stage and not many people are building something with a team of 5 without at least a little angel money. If you have angel money, you should be able to afford Techspace or Sunshine Suites.
On Finding Tech Talent: No, there aren't people hanging around with "Free agent" slapped across their forehead dying to work on your company... you need to find the perfect guy and convince them that they have to work on your idea. If you can't convince a tech person to work with you, then maybe your idea isn't as good as you think it is. There are plenty of freelancers around and people who work at big boring companies who would commit to a project if it excited them. If you cannot find them with your pick axe and shovel, good luck finding the right people in your client's organizations to sell your product to or finding your first biz dev person, sales person, marketing person... good people don't fall from the sky. Go build out your network. If you're an entrepreneur with less than 50 LinkedIn connections, don't expect to find anyone to do anything.
And yes, anti-stealth works for this. Talk to everyone you can about this. It turns out that one of my college roommates (this random guy who filled in someone else's spot last minute) was one of the first employees at a successful NYC area startup... he just wrote me yesterday asking if there's a spot at Path 101... I asked him about his availability back in the summer and he turned me down, but then I think he's been lingering on the blog and our last post seems to have seeped in... we're having lunch next week to talk about it.
The lack of lawyers... also bs. You can go two ways on this...One, you can go ultra cheap to get your company incorporated, but that's not even a must, unless you try for funding. del.icio.us was not a company until AFTER it had 10,000 users. Are cheap lawyers good? Probably not.. but can they do a simple incorporation and basic angel agreements... sure... and if you get enough traction to do a real round, a good lawyer will fix all those mistakes, but it doesn't matter because you'll have money and traction at that point. Or, if you have the afformentioned network, you can find one of the 4 or 5 good startup lawyers in NYC and get them to work with you. And they're available, too... Wilson Sonsini does their free startup classes, Jay Rand has volunteered his time at a nextNY event...people within this group have worked with this caliber of legal professional before... they're not that hard to find.
Lack of funding? Are you serious? In NYC? Has anyone seen the sheer number of luxury apartment buildings going up around us? There's no shortage of money going around this city. Is it tech angel money? Nope. BUT, go back to the network point. If you don't have anyone in your network that could chip in to help based on your reputation with them or that could make an introduction, I fall back on the idea that you're going to have an absolutely terrible time getting just about every other kind of resource you need.
Entrepreneurs are not lone rangers!
They're more like that stupid Verizon commerical where the cell user walks around with the whole Verizon team behind them. I know a guy who used to work at an ibank who went back to his former bosses to get funding... the guy worked his but off for them for a few years and not only did they come through, but one of the guys got so interested in his business that he joined it.
Frankly, I think too many wanna-be entrepreneurs are just lazy... and that's a lot of what I saw in the crowd at StartupCamp... lazy entrepreneurs who didn't want to do the legwork of getting others behind their idea to support it. They just complain that there are no tech people, no VCs who want to take risk, no space. Excuse excuse excuse. (PS... If your response to this is, "Hey, I'm working hard on getting people to support my idea and talking the talk and walking the walk... I'm not lazy!" then that part didn't apply to you... you're right, you're not lazy.)
Its not hard to build yourself into one of the most widely known people in your market... Take Scott Karp, for example. He's jumped into the startup scene after years of working and building his name up on the publishing industry as the Director of Digital Strategy for Atlantic Monthly and through the Publishing 2.0 blog. I'm sure he didn't struggle for funding, space, lawyers or tech people because he became a leader in his field first, THEN went out and harvested his network and goodwill to help him with his startup.
In the Valley, I think you can just code something and someone will bet on your idea... here, most of the time, you actually need the additional qualification of being someone to somebody (even just one supportive angel) in order to get them to help you out. I don't actually think that's such bad hurdle to have in front of scarce resources, because ideas (like lightweight Web 2.0 apps) are a dime a dozen.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: web2.0, startups, entrepreneurship, nyc
And what did we learn?
One of the most interesting encounters I have with people is when they figure out that I was the front line of business plan defense at Union Square Ventures in 2005-06--roughly the time period they submitted their business plan. "Ah...I know your name....You turned my business plan down."
:)
What's a guy to say there, "Um...yeah...sorry."
Once in a while, you get someone who bashes all VCs...at least all the ones who turned them down. My favorite thing is to ask them what they learned about their interactions with VCs, like this exchange I had the other night.
"So what did you learn?"
"I learned that VCs only like to invest when all the risk is off the table."
"Ok, and what did you learn about your idea?"
"I learned that we're going to be bigger than Facebook and we don't need those guys to be successful."
Ummm...ok. Not exactly the learning experience I was hoping for.
I've said this before but if you can't take anything away from a conversation with someone who turns you down...no lessons learned, you're not backable. Period. Its fine if you believe strongly in your idea, but you have to respect the fact that the guy on the other side of the table is no slouch either, and has seen way more startup ideas than just yours. So, perhaps that person is terribly wrong about your business, but even then, it points to an issue in your presentation. How could you have made a more convincing argument?
Try and take something more away from every "no" than just frustration and spite.
links for 2007-10-21
-
Craplets indeed.
-
Following up on the advertising toolbox, you also need to let the media (oh if only there was a site ...
Flock: Not sucking. Pretty sah-weet, actually.
I saw Fred's post on Flock so I decided to try it out again.
It's actually very cool...
First off, I've got all my various friend feeds automatically updating along the sidebar.
Twitter? Check.
Facebook? Check.
Flickr? Check.
Then, I've finally got a web plugin for blogging that works, because Sribefire/Performancing never would for me.
I can automatically upload pictures to Flickr, from the web for from anywhere on my computer.
There's a favorites button that can be configured to post to del.icio.us.
Even a feed reader, but I don't use that because I need Newsgator to sync to my phone... otherwise I would.
Best part about it is most of the Firefox plugins work with it, like my Forecastfox.
I think I'm a convert... this is a very cool browsing experience and it combines a lot of things I needed to use separate sites and clients to do.
Go get the 1.0 beta and check it out.
Blogged with Flock
Gmail issues with Windows Mobile 6 - Argh!
Here's something from the "This should just friggin' work" file.
I've been using Gmail on WM6 Outlook through its POP3 connection and it barely works. Downloading mail usually works, but sending is terrible. On Friday, I accidentally left someone hanging at lunch because he never got the e-mail I sent from my phone.
So, instead, I tried downloading the Gmail Java client. It downloads fine, but when I try to run it, it says I have the wrong certificate. After some Google searches, I thought I found the right one straight from Verisign, installed it, but I still get the same message. Ridiculous! The client downloads but it just won't connect with the server.
I've looked at a few mobile web apps for e-mail, like OneMail, but I feel pretty stupid shelling out $30 for a mail client when the one I have should already just work!
Blogged with Flock
Two Perspectives on the NYC Digital Community
Seth Goldstein told CNN/Money that he, ""figured out a way to get companies started in New York." It was never easy, though. "People there are always dragging you down," he says. "They don't want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.""
He added, "Because New York is so mercenary, I always overindexed toward the missionary," he explains. "Out here, I'm way more comfortable being mercenary. Hyperbole and philosophy don't go very far in the Valley."
Meanwhile, Steph, a graphic designer muses about the difference on her blog:
Going from coast to coast made me realize all the PRETEND culture here in Silicon Valley. We obsess over technology news. We build online profiles so we can network. We try to "manage" our RSS feeds so we can try to be on top of trends. Alas lets admit that this isn't actually culture, these are all solitary activities which don't require interacting directly with other human beings.
So I have to ask myself, is Silicon Valley the right place to practice user experience design? Shouldn't designers, move around and interact with real people to find out what real people need or want? How effective can enclaves of software developers actually be if everybody within the enclave can only focus on their (introverted) community, and not the long tail of the worlds cultural riches? "
Blogged with Flock
Free Business Plan: Give a desk, Take a Desk (or How to get space for startups in New York City)
Ever since we wound up at Return Path, I've been thinking a lot about the model of an incubator. We heard at the recent city council hearing that incubators were tough to keep up from an economic perspective and required all sorts of subsidies, either from government or academic institution.
But my situation isn't like that. Does having us use two empty desk cost Return Path real money? Sure... but how much? We use normal bandwidth for our regular office activities and hardly ever use the phone. We borrow a conference room about twice a week and we probably take two sodas/juices a day each from the free machine. I'd be surprised if our actual incremental cash cost was $150 a month. That's because there's already an existing, revenue generating organization in place there. When you try and create an incubator from scratch in an incubator-only space, you couldn't possibly get anywhere near that.
Think about the conference rooms alone. We would have never rented a place on our own with conference rooms, because we'd never use them enough. However, a mid-size company probably only use their own conference rooms, at most, half the time.
That's not to mention that RP could potentially get from us. We do like to think of ourselves as two cutting edge startup guys that are "in the know" about things like social media, data (Alex's specialty), etc., and we're pretty well connected into the community of entrepreneurs. I've already spoken some people here about doing some knowledge sharing sessions and we're happy to pitch in with some feedback where we can, because we're grateful for the space.
If we were social media consultants, what would that have cost the company? Certainly a lot more than the desks did. Seems to me that it could very well balance out if the exchange was a couple of desks for 5-10 hours of mindshare a month. Now, Return Path may not need that from us, because they're pretty savvy themselves, but what about a big print media company looking to expand their web presence? I'm sure Jeff Jarvis would agree that rather than move forward in an echo chamber, a media company like that might benefit from having a few startup folks around the office to help them out. Perhaps they could be instilled as VPs of Common Web Sense.
So here's the deal I propose that companies with 50 or more people think about:
Give:
- 1-3 desks per seed stage startup
- Internet connection for normal office usage
- Reasonable access to unused conference rooms (prob not more than 5-7 hours/wk, but could be more if they're usually pretty empty)
- Building security passes
Get:
- Goodwill in the startup community
- 5-10 hours of mindshare from people who are thinking out of the box (which is why it makes sense to find startups in your vertical, too)
Similar models have worked in the art world, where artists occupy unused commercial real estate spaces as studios and galleries.
It's also a very green model, too, if you think about it. It's about efficient use of existing space.
Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Diggs? Tags? Any companies want to sign up?
Takin' Care of the Business of Me
This week, I instituted a little more structure in my life to make sure all the odds and ends of my life are taken care if. A lot of times, administrative work for your own behalf takes a back seat to all the things you need to do for your startup, for school, for others. Making time becomes an exercise in fixing the squeaky wheel... the unpaid bill, the pile of mail on your table, the friend who complains they never see you.
So yesterday, I drew myself a chart for the week. On the list, I put Gym, Read, Fix, Clean, Build, Friend. Gym is what I want to do during my workout. Read is to manage between the book I'm reading for pleasure and various career related books I'm reading for Path 101. Fix is because things generally seem to need a lot of fixing in my life, from my bike to my bedroom door which has never had a handle on it, to the keyboard on my home computer which just crapped out yesterday. Clean is about clutter. It usually means clearing old mail from my living room table or putting away clean clothes. Build most often means food, actually...like making lunch to save money or just because I like to cook. Friend means catching up with a friend either by IM or email (and maybe the phone, but unlikely because I hate the phone) and really being somewhat purposeful and focused on it, vs just casually paying continuous partial attention to someone.
I wrote down targets for each of these things and hope to get one of each category accomplished each day.