Nouncer Post-mortem: Eran explains why he pulled the plug and what he learned
Eran Hammer-Lahav has been a really active member of nextNY. He recently pulled the plug on his startup midway through his friends and family funding for a host of reasons that touch on a lot of the issues talked about in that group: hiring, competition, product development/management, etc. He's moving on to become an Open Standards Evangelist at Yahoo!, but he's learned a lot of lessons and has agreed to talk about them at a small group event this Thursday night (5/1) at 6:30PM here at Path 101/Return Path.
There are a lot of people looking for partners, trying to figure out competition, or just thinking about starting companies here on this list. Eran's advice could be invaluable. There are 13 people signed up and we could squeeze up to 30 people in the room. This is a must-show for anyone in the very early stages of their business as far as I'm concerned and want to encourage as many people as possible in that position to take advantage.
Here's the link to the event:
People over entertainment
I'm often at a loss to figure out plans for hanging out. It's not like I don't have interests--I have a ton. It's that finding the right people to hangout with make up 99% of what makes an activity fun for me. The right people, to me, make or break an event.
Therefore, I don't tend to have thoughts like, "I really want to pick up and travel somewhere" or "I reallt want to go dancing." That being said, I'll show up to just about anything, given the right crowd--dodgeball, semi-pro pillow fights, the Philharmonic, a jazz club or a philosophy talk. I'm kind of like that with Church. The community has always been more important to me than the building, so when I was on campus at Fordham, I went weekly, but now I don't really go because I'm not as connected to my local Brooklyn parish. I simply don't hangout there much and most of my friends live in the city.
So, should you ever hangout with me, while I'll always be up for doing something interesting, it doesn't much matter as long as the company is good. One of my favorite nights ever was when I hungout with a friend at the fountains of Columbus Circle. We met there, and didn't move...talked for hours, and that was it--highly entertaining for me.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Personality
"In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the momentum of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the momentum of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain."
Basically, what this says is that you only know where something is or in what direction that it's traveling, but you can't know both. This intuitively makes some sense. If I throw a baseball, you can snap a picture of it, but the clearer the picture is, to the point where it appears frozen in mid-air, the less you can tell where it was going. A blurred picture of a ball, however, clearly has some direction, but you often can't actually tell where the ball was at the moment the picture was snapped.
I've had a number of conversations with people lately about how people change over time. This is an especially important consideration when it comes to getting into a long term relationship. You may like someone now, but how do you know they won't change on you over time? Or, how do you know if people can change the things you seem to clash on?
A lot of it has to do with the how much of a person's personality is innate, static.. an unchangeable core drive particular to them that will permeate everything they do and all their interactions with others. This is what I think of, relative to Heisenberg, as someone's "position". You may think I am an easygoing guy, but that's only at this given moment in time. The more detailed you get in your perception of exactly how I am easygoing, in what situations, what my limitations are, etc., the less you can bet on whether or not it will continue in the future. Not only does the future bring with it lots of unpredictable situations--situations that might test the limits of my easygoingness, but the future also has a cumulative effect. The harsh realities of life my harden me and I may become more difficult over time. I think it is likely I will resist this better than most people, but when you start talking about the momentum of the 57 or so years remaining in my life, it's difficult to nearly impossible to determine what my position will be.
You can, however, describe that momentum. I'm a big believer in one's ability to guide future decisions about your own life with a strong hand. I can decide, and I have, that I will always attempt to avoid stressing the small stuff. Whether I will be successful, what I will learn by doing that, what kind of a personality that will result in, etc. is unclear. However, my future actions are a series of individual choices--choices I do have some control over and can construct a framework for decision making that I can use consistently going forward.
So, for example, a couple can agree to strive to communicate well. They can, with some accuracy, describe a momentum of communication. Communicating is a verb. You cannot be communicative unless you are actually in the mode of openly communicating. That's not an innate trait... it's an action. It's something that people decide to do. Where that communication will lead, whether those people will communicate the same positions going forward is impossible to determine, but at least you can, with much better accuracy, tell how you plan to act.
I'm largely unconcerned with people's position when I meet them. I don't really care much about who you are, because, with every passing second, who you are is a thing of the past. You are what you are doing now, and what you are doing now is already over. I want to know what you will choose to do--how you will choose to live.
It sounds overly simplistic, but I think the best relationships, be them romantic, platonic, professional, otherwise, are the result of a decision--a decision to act in a way that promotes a great relationship. It's not about whether you are inherently respectful, engaging, or interested, it's whether you choose to respect, engage, and take interest. I really believe that, so long as they're attracted to each other, just about any two people should be able to get together and half an absolutely fantastic, exhilarating life together--and that falling short on that is largely a product of lack of commitment on one more both sides to do the actions necessary to promote a good relationship. Sound too easy? It's easier than you think, if you make it.
From 37 Signals... Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco?
I couldn't agree with this more!
"Techies, VCs, and the press are always swooning over the glory of the Bay area. This is where all the excitement, the money, and the people are, they say. And that’s true to the extent that your great big idea fits the current cultural mold of that environment. If you’re looking to build the next web 2.0 social media eyeball-collecting application, don’t want to worry about boring details like revenues, and hope to either flip to Google for an early $20 million or get that Facebook billion-dollar valuation, the Bay area is exactly where you want to be. No where else do you have the connections, the people, and the atmosphere available to make that dream happen. But this strain of startups is a highly inbred line that holds more risks than most people realize. It’s not that they never work financially, enough people are sipping Margaritas on sunny beaches from towering buyouts to prove the contrary. And it’s not that they don’t work socially — I personally enjoy YouTube as much as the next guy. It’s that the Bay area pipeline for building web businesses isn’t optimized to carry much else than these stereotypes."
On Commitment
I heard the term "100% commitment" yesterday.
What does that mean, especially for an entrepreneur?
I think anyone would agree that starting a company means "100% commitment", but I often think it's sort of a loaded term, and often used as an excuse to fall down on your personal responsibilities to others.
First of all, the number itself is quite silly. 100% Why not 110%? And what would 95% even be? Pursuing a biz dev contract but just not signing it? Or signing it late?
What about last Friday night? I had two softball games, one of which was for Return Path's team. Should I have stayed late at work that night? Return Path gave us free space. To me, playing nice with people in an office I'm not paying to be at is just being neighborly, and when you're a startup, you're often going to have to depend on as much free help as you can get.
Does that make me less committed to Path 101 because I wasn't at my desk? And if you can't measure committment by hours at the desk, then what exactly do we measure it in? Personal sacrifice? I love what I do. It's not "hard", not matter what time I leave the office, because I'm passionate about the idea. Sacrifice, to me, would be trying to max out my potential salary by being an investment banker. (No offense to bankers.)
Plus, we raised angel money... and so while there's some serious opportunity cost in terms of current cash comp, it's not like I put my house at risk... yet, anyway. Does that make me less committed because I didn't have to do that? One thing we told our angel investors is that we were raising so we could focus on this full-time... that having other tech jobs would really make the product suffer. If we were bootstrapping, and had to get other jobs, we'd be less focused, but with all of our own capital at risk, would be be more committed? Can you be less focused and more committed? That makes no sense.
Unfortunately, I feel like way that many people use it is as an excuse to fall short on personal commitments. We commit ourselves to a job and we think that releases us from our obligations as real people--to family, friends, significant others, etc. Maybe this makes me less committed, but I am a real person first, entrepreneur second. I don't see my family as often as I did before, but I still make it a point to see them.
Same with friends. I've severely pared down my social life, but I still need to get out of the office and play some ball when I can. And I will defintely be kayaking at the boathouse, even if its just a weekend afternoon. I'll stay home Saturday nights to make sure I'm out on the water during the day.
I'm not shutting myself in a hole to launch this business--if nothing else because its these people and these activities that gave me the support, insight, and inspiration to start this business in the first place. If nothing else, particularly for a user-centric web service, if you start severing your human connections, you're going to quickly lose the ability to create user value. You'll lose your initial audience--the people you've been there for and maintained connections to--the ones who will go to bat for you inviting their friends to the service because you showed up at their birthday party--even if you had to show up way late because you were wireframing new features... and you have to leave early because you didn't finish.
It's the same with love. Am I an ideal candidate to date right now? Well, if you need to go out five nights a week at 7PM and spend a ton of money on entertainment, well, no, probably not. But am I closed off to emotionally connecting to someone? Far from it. In fact, in a time like this is when I probably most need that kind of connection--one single person who will care about and support me... that I can go to and share my day with, or escape from it if need be.
And, in the same way, I want to be with someone who is as equally involved in their own passions as well. If you walk out at work at 6PM and then have nothing else in your life or don't commit any other effort to it, I won't have much of an interest in that. Would commiting to someone emotionally make me less focused on my business and less committed to it? Does entrepreneurship require that you unplug from the rest of the world--sever your connections and cease being open and vulnerable to connections?
I think every entrepreneur needs to go about this doing it in a way that reflects who they are. If anything, it's my connection to the world around me that makes me a better entrepreneur. The back and forth flow of ideas, feedback, support, opportunities--cut those off and then this just becomes a horserace--who can just outrun the next guy.
Maybe if you're selling some kind of almost commoditized enterprise security software product with a 6 month technical advantage, then maybe you need to run yourself and your horse into the ground, but in a world of disrupted markets, appropriate execution, and social networks, I believe the lines of personal commitment and commitment to your business should get blurred and are not mutual exclusive. Did David Karp succeed in creating a great product because he stayed up later than the next guy with the next best blogging platform? I highly doubt success will be a function of hours worked in his case.
If anything, I see a lot of products and services suffering because people aren't getting out from behind the desks. They're not living and loving and they're losing touch with the very audience that they're building a product for.
In a way, I've been committed to Path 101 for ten years, because it's been that long since I started counseling my friends on their careers, running internship and mentoring programs, and a little later starting to teach. I live out my startup everyday. If you have me in your life, you get Path 101--they're one and the same... and in the same way, because I have Path 101, I get my audience... and need it... the day I stop interacting with and caring for the people around me is the day this company goes down the tubes.
You're either committed to your life or you're not--you can't slice it up so easily and your career should not prevent you from being a person--it should enhance who you are as a person.
$13 backstage passes to the revolution: Why I bought 3 copies of Gary Vee's book
Right now, Gary Vee's book is #57 on the Amazon top sellers list. Ironically, he's ahead of the Black Swan, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, and Getting Things Done. You want to talk about improbable, but effective... look no further.
So why did I buy the book? Like I said before, I don't even drink.
It's not about the book and it's not about Gary Vee. It's about the idea that, by connecting directly with your audience, being authentic and customer focused, and using social media tools, even a brick and mortor biz like a wine store in New Jersey can create an experience bigger than themselves AND make real dollars all the the same time.
I've talked to Gary, shook his hand, and he bought me food. There's a real live person behind this who really wants to see his customers have a fantastic experience--not just with his brand, but with their lives.
To me, buying the book is a vote. It's a statement to every other company I'm forced to deal with on a day-to-day basis that I want the Gary Vee treatment. I want to be spoken to honestly. I want to be treated not only like a human, but treated like a great person. And, I want to have fun.
If Gary Vee's book shoots up to #1 on the Amazon bestseller list even before it gets released, it will be a real eye opener for other businesses.
So, please, do us all a favor... Go to your computers, open up your browser and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore... and spend 13 bucks (plus shipping) to support the phenomenon." You don't have to buy 3... just one will do.
If you don't know who Gary is... just watch this interview he did with Tara Hunt.
A $13 backstage pass to the revolution: Why I bought 3 copies of Gary Vee's book
Right now, Gary Vee's book is #57 on the Amazon top sellers list. Ironically, he's ahead of the Black Swan, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, and Getting Things Done. You want to talk about improbable, but effective... look no further.
So why did I buy the book? Like I said before, I don't even drink.
It's not about the book and it's not about Gary Vee. It's about the idea that, by connecting directly with your audience, being authentic and customer focused, and using social media tools, even a brick and mortor biz like a wine store in New Jersey can create an experience bigger than themselves AND make real dollars all the the same time.
I've talked to Gary, shook his hand, and he bought me food. There's a real live person behind this who really wants to see his customers have a fantastic experience--not just with his brand, but with their lives.
To me, buying the book is a vote. It's a statement to every other company I'm forced to deal with on a day-to-day basis that I want the Gary Vee treatment. I want to be spoken to honestly. I want to be treated not only like a human, but treated like a great person. And, I want to have fun.
If Gary Vee's book shoots up to #1 on the Amazon bestseller list even before it gets released, it will be a real eye opener for other businesses.
So, please, do us all a favor... Go to your computers, open up your browser and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore... and spend 13 bucks (plus shipping) to support the phenomenon." You don't have to buy 3... just one will do.
If you don't know who Gary is... just watch this interview he did with Tara Hunt.
links for 2008-04-16
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I knew we shouldn't have let this guy go.
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Posted by Ben Worthen People are too trusting, especially when there’s chocolate on the line. Don't believe her lies A survey out today by the organizers of the tech-security conference Infosecurity Europe found that 21% of 576 London office workers
Taking vs. Making
Do you react to your world or does your world react to you?
Not only in the startup world, but in life, we are faced with uncertainties...about strategy decisions, rightness of fit regarding new hires, and about the future. There are natural limits to our ability to information gather, and so often times, we are faced with a gap--how much I know about this decision versus how much I would like to or even feel I need to know to commit to a choice. How you approach that gap is a major factor in how you wind up living your life.
Some people just do the best they can. They recognize the inherent imperfection in the system, work hard to research all the angles and then when they feel like they've exhausted all the angles, make a choice. They probably take longer than the average person but at least they feel comfortable with their choices. This type of decisionmaking probably works best in an established, stable environment--whether its a company or even whether its a relationship. In a big, established company, there are probably proven methods for gathering more data and there's little chance that waiting a little longer to make a decision is going to be the end of the world. Similarly, the distracting routines of an established relationship can often buy you some time to figure out the right next steps. And why wouldn't you dwell on decisions longer...you've got so much structure in place and potentially at risk...houses, kids, cars, just...stuff.
But in new relationships--ones with people, companies, markets, etc.--you often can't get more data and its possible that you can't even really afford to spend lots of time dwelling on decisions. That's because your relationship is really all you have. Routines are too new or maybe nonexistent, so you can't hide behind them. In a company, there may only be one relevent next step to think about, and all eyes are on you to make a call. This highlights the effect of how you make a decision can impact relationships, especially given the emotional investment that new relations and new companies carry with them. If you're too quick to make a call, and you appear to ignore th gravity of the decision, you could give the appearance of not caring or not being as invested as other stakeholders. Take too long and you'll cause doubt--especially among the people who have clarity of vision. If you're the last one to see what everyone else sees, how long will you continue to be seen as a leader?
This is where approach and determination play huge roles. It's difficult to me "more right" before you can see more about the direction of an outcome, no matter how much time you spend on it. That's why I've always spent a lot more time and energy trying to achieve success AFTER decisions have already been made. Whether you're choosing a certain visualization for your user interface or deciding to get into a long distance relationship, the one thing you can definitely commit yourself to is to make something work, regardless of what it takes. It's the freshman roommate approach. In college, you get stuffed into a room with a stranger. You have no idea if it will work out or not, what the person is like, what their habits are. That's the thing. I think if you take the perspective that their habits are unalterably x or y and that the outcome even depends on any of this information, you will ultimately fail. The reason is that if there's anything you can count on in life, its change and uncertainty.
The only thing you can do in the face of that is to decide, ahead of time, that you are determined to be successful. You will not move out mid-semester. You will not leave a broken UI up on your site. You will not let distance, emotional or physical, get in the way of building a good relationship.
That is not to say that you should bash your head against a brick wall over something that just isn't working, but I think a lot of times the reason why things don't work is because we're not open to them working. We want things to work a certain way, so we can't accept alternative outcomes. We can't relate to different kinds of people in new ways because of stereotypes. We aren't open to being moved and changed by others.
Its interesting that the more you think of life as static, of facts set in stone, of things inherently good or bad, workable or not, the more static you become...only finding success when you're able to put your square peg in a square hole. The more you think of life and your future as to be impacted you, the more you'll also be impacted and changed by life as well.
Something in the Air
Your coat and hat are gone
I really can't look at your little empty shelf
A ragged teddy bear
It feels like we never had a chance
Don't look me in the eye
We lay in each others arms
But the room is just an empty space
I guess we lived it out
Something in the air
We smiled too fast
then can't think of a thing to say
Lived with the best times
Left with the worst
I've danced with you too long
Nothing left to say
Let's take what we can
I know you hold your head up high
We've raced for the last time
A place of no return
And there's something in the air
Something in my eye
I've danced with you too long
Something in the air
Something in my eye
Abracadoo - I lose you
We can't avoid the clash
The big mistake
Now we're gonna pay and pay
The sentence of our lives
Can't believe I'm asking you to go
We used what we could
To get the things we want
But we lost each other on the way
I guess you know I never wanted
anyone more than you
Lived all our best times
Left with the worst
I've danced with you to long
Say what you will
But there's something in the air
Raced for the last time
Well I know you hold your head up high
There's nothing we have to say
There's nothing in my eyes
But there's something in the air
Something in my eye
I've danced with you too long
There's something I have to say
There's something in the air
Something in my eye
I've danced with you too long
The Reign of Free Cable in My House Comes to an End... Should I just stop watching TV?
Back in 2001, I made a discovery. The little cable wire in my apartment was actually spitting out scrambled channels--all of them, for free. I don't know where it was coming from or who was paying for it, but it was obvious that all it needed was a descrambler. Two hundred bucks later, I had all the channels I wanted for free. Nice.
After about a year or so of DSL, I gave up on Verizon's crappy DSL service and thought about moving to cable internet. The only issue was whether I was going to lose my cable stations if I had someone come and setup my internet. I decided to chance it. I got my cable setup, and after the guy left, in goes the splitter and the box, and voila... free cable secured.
When I moved to Brooklyn, I needed internet turned on from scratch... and lo and behold, getting the cable company to give you internet without sending scrambled channels down the line is like trying to give someone hot water without giving them cold. So, I pay my $44 a month for internet and continued to get free cable with my trusty box, whose cost amortized out to about $2.38. Given the quality of the TV I was watching, I figured that to be a pretty fair price.
Well, Time Warner seems to have closed that loophole finally, because now I'm not getting anything besides single digit boring old regular TV. No scrambled, no nothing.
Was it unfair that I was getting the free cable? Illegal, perhaps, but to be honest, I hardly watch any TV at all. I'm never home. I don't care about half the stations. If I could just get ESPN, SportsNet New York, Comedy Central and SpikeTV, I think I'd be all set, but you can't buy that way. The cable company forces these bundles of crap on me. Even if I just wanted basic, it would cost me $57 a month. TV should not cost more than the internet. I get way more value out of the internet than I do out of TV. If I watch 10 hours of television a month, that's a lot for me.
So what should I do now? I need to get my Met games... and ESPN, maybe a bit of Comedy Central. I can't even go all internet, because MLB.tv doesn't allow me to watch local games... Only my cable provider can get me access to local games... web video from local teams is blacked out.
I'm thinking of putting a Slingbox at my parents house.... seems like the only viable option without breaking the bank. Thoughts?
Attack popular VC...check. Dismiss YCombinator...check. Rudely walk away from local entrepreneur tapped into the community ...check. Donna Bogatin's plan to help your Alley startup.
A while back, Donna Bogatin wrote a snarky blog post... oh.. .sorry... let me be more specific as to which one. I'm talking about the one she wrote about Path 101 when we wanted to reach out to LinkedIn.
Now, I'm all for a good snarkfest now and then, but reckless bashing of people who've worked their whole 20+ year careers helping to build up the startup community--incredibly well-liked and well-meaning people like Fred Wilson? Seriously? Fred doesn't even need to defend himself and knowing him, he'll probably ignore it. I've got a little more Brooklyn in me than to not poke the bear on this one.
Ah... Isn't this your medicine? Let me give you a dose...
I had the pleasure of meeting Donna last night at David Rose's awesome nextNY Angel Financing 101. I don't read her blog, but someone pointed it out to me during the session and so I read her anti-Fred post on my phone while I was there.
Here are some highlights:
"Wilson also now puts the fate of delicious traction solely at Yahoo’s doorstop, apparently market unaware of the flood of social media services flooding the Web “market” competing against the not so proprietary delicious asset."
"After years of doing his darndest to sell such non-proprietary Web services to deep-pocketed firms, Wilson has suddenly seen the error of his financial ways: “big companies buy little companies and the innovation stops,“ he announced in February."
"Wilson... oblivious to hundreds of thousands of bootstrapped entrepreneurs for whom a successful “end game” has been, and always will be, the building out of long-term, stand alone, self-sustaining businesses, for their own full accounts."
Characterizing Fred as "unaware" and "oblivious"... Pot. Kettle. Black.
When she introduced herself to me, I shook her hand and smiled and said, "Wow... angry post today, huh?" It was a good natured jibe meant to start a conversation. She said, "Oh, no... YOU'RE the one with the angry posts..." turned her back, and walked away.
Yeah, literally turned her back and walked away....Wow.
Mature.
And kind of hilarious.
The people I was standing next to were kind of stunned, too. Last time I checked, that's not the way mature adults act in professional settings.
But that wasn't all. I didn't realize it was her that asked the question, but during the event, she asked David Rose how he feels about YCombinator trying to build companies in order to quick flip them instead of building long-term sustainable businesses. Shoulder chips anyone? David obviously responded that wasn't the case.
What she failed to disclose in her question was that she had started up her own community advisory effort to help startups called StartupAlpha, which is part group blog, part offline community. She lists herself as the CEO, so clearly, she's looking to somehow profit.
The offline community part sounds like a neat idea:
"[It] broadens the tech entrepreneurship conversation by inviting all players in the startup ecosystem to network together offline, in the heart of the business capital of the world: Manhattan!"
Sounds like last night's meeting was the first nextNY event she's been to. I guess she's missed the NY Tech Meetups, the Founder's Clubs, the Web2NY's ,the Web 2.0 Meetups, the BarCampNYCs, etc., etc. as well.
The best part was the irony of trying to start a community of her own and walking away from me at an event that ran under the banner of nextNY--the 1500+ member community that I helped to found, accidental as it's success may be. She seems to have the same kind of approach to conversation on her blog, as many of her controversial posts have few or comments on them--because she, um... "moderates" them.
Well, the one thing I suppose she has going for her is that, since October, she has grown her LinkedIn network by 29% She now has 18 contacts!!
So here's my question... How does Donna intend to help promote the startup community in NYC if she rips on SA 100's #3 most influential person in NYC tech who works for the the city's most prominent early stage VC firm, walks away from conversations with people much more tapped into the entrepreneurial community than she is, and poo-poo's Paul Graham's YCombinator?
I have one capitalized word for that and it begins with F and rhymes with pail.
ePals is looking at Doostang... How do I know? Twitter... Using Twitter for business intelligence
I subscribe to a number of different keywords using the Twitter "track" feature. Lately, I've been moving those over to Tweetscan (Isn't it only a matter of time before Twitter integrates this themselves? They should just buy Tweetscan.)
One of the words I subscribe to is "Doostang", because I'm curious about the company. Alex and I had the pleasure of meeting up with Drew Carpenter last week about how our products could work together--great meeting, Drew's an awesome guy.
Apparently, I'm not the only person interested in the company. I just saw the following Tweet:
"Doing product research on Doostang. Anybody out there have an account that can invite me? Thx!"
Who said it?
With a little googling, you get to John Rabasa, who is 4 months into his job as VP of Product Development at ePals, which is a "global community of connected classrooms". Totally makes sense for him to be poking around in Doostang... so, thumbs up John for getting to know the ecology of your space.
Clearly, Twitter is becoming more and more valuable as a business information tool. Has Monitor110 and InfoNgen started mining twitter for market info yet? For anyone who doesn't think Twitter has a business model, don't think that the financial services world won't pay for a robust, SLA wrapped realtime data feed related to different companies and products.
True measure of Twitter's success
...when people start forcing themselves to stop using your service because it sucks up too much of their time and energy.
Where else does this happen?
sex, alcohol, gambling, drugs, video games, tobacco, fantasy sports
All huge, highly profitable businesses!