The other side of Paul Graham's Coin: Ideas on the kind of VC we'd like to get funded by
Paul Graham just posted some ideas on what kind of startups he'd like to fund on the YCombinator blog. I suppose if you're already working in these areas, that's great news for you, but to be honest, if you're not passionate about one of these things already, I never believed in the idea of just methodically picking picking a sector to start something in. Fabrice seems to be doing a bangup job at it, though, so I could be totally wrong (although his passion seems to be the methodology and the process itself, though).
Anyway,this isn't the first time one of these lists has popped up before--and I'm sure it sends a lot of entrepreneurs scrambling. In order to provide balance in The Force, I thought it might be better to tell all the VCs some ideas about what kind of partner I'd like to fund Path 101. Let the VC's scramble around!
So here goes:
1) We're looking for a partner who is really passionate about helping people find their callings--someone who is looked at by others as a great mentor and actively contributes their career wisdom to others. If we're talking about our career advice tool and you have to ask, "Why would anyone answer someone else's career questions?" that means you don't actually provide that advice yourself when you get random e-mails from your school's alumni or people from your blog, etc. We want someone who knows what it was like to not know what you wanted to do and feels like we can really make a big impact by helping people with their career.
2) We want someone who really believes in backing people. Our product will take many public iterations before it ever feels "complete" and there are still many unanswered questions left that we will only be able to address over time. That means, at the end of the day, you've got a team and a market. We're sure the market of "people who aren't sure what to do with their careers" is pretty huge, so that leaves you with team as the real bet--and so we need to feel like our team has the confidence and support of our investors.
3) Someone with access to domain knowledge in our market. It will be some time before we build the recruiting inroads to our userbase, but it would be extraordinarily useful to be able to regularly pick the brain of someone who knows the space or can open up the right doors here. That's true for any startup--having a resource to go to in order to help grease the biz dev or acquisition wheels is seriously value add.
4) We want a user--someone who participates in the social web to the point where we say, "and this is how it plugs into people's blogs" they'll get it because they blog or know how they work, not just because "blog" is a buzzword.
5) Someone fun! I need to be able to pick on you via Twitter. If we can't laugh about something, hit up a ballgame, or just kick back and genuinely enjoy each other's company, it's going to make things a heck of a lot harder. We have a fun team (in a geeky sort of way) and we get along with each other really well. Our backers are going to be joining that team and need to be able to get along with us.
6) A partner who can get their whole firm on board. Obviously some level of this has to be attained to get a deal done, but sometimes partners change and other times, different partners or junior folks have something to contribute. I'd like to be able to walk into my VC's office and have just about anyone there be interested in talking to me--and not have to feel like I'm waiting for just one person.
7) Someone principled and ethical. We're in this because we want to make an impact on people's lives--because the difference in your life between hating what you do and really finding where you fit is huge. We also think it can be successful, but that's not going to be from taking advantage of others or squeezing every last dime. I want to feel like we're in good hands with a trustworthy partner and that's what I think I can offer in return.
In return, a VC will get a team that is extremely dedicated and passionate about solving a big mainstream problem with creative, appropriate solutions, that works really hard, and that they can trust in return.
Anything else I should be looking for?
Love and Startups
I want to find someone who not only loves me, but lets themselves experience love and doesn't worry about the chances of things actually working out.
Relationships are like startups. If you join one because you think it will be successful, versus just joining one because its interesting, worthwhile, and its something you're passionate about--regardless of its ultimate chance of success--then you shouldn't be in one. Most relationships, like most startups, don't last forever. They're also completely unpredictable, so you just find good people, communicate well, and do your best.
New goal: Meet everyone on the SA 100 List
The other day I was thinking about the NYC tech community and how most of the events I've been to lately are about up and comers, which is great, but I feel like I still have a lot to learn from those who are a lot more experienced.
So, I'm going to try to make a concerted effort to meet up with more folks that have had prior successes and try to learn from them. Hopefully, they'll get something out of meeting me as well.
Seems I've met about a third of the list already... I don't know if I'll get to all of these folks (how likely is it that Barry Diller will grab a Jamba Juice with me, right?), but given the aggregate wisdom of these folks, I think it's a worthwhile pursuit.
Here's where I'm starting from:
Bonus: The Newcomers list
Ariane de Bonvoisin, First 30 Days - Met her at Laurel's breakfasts, but she's lovely. I'd meet her again in a heartbeat.
Jonathan Butler, Brownstoner - NEVER MET
Court Cunningham, Yodle - NEVER MET
Rich Greenfield, Pali Capital NEVER MET
Darren Herman, The Media Kitchen - Played dodgeball with and against him, and he's a Path 101 angel
Mike Hudack, Blip.tv - Met lots of times - cool guy
Alex Iskold, AdaptiveBlue - Met several times, part of the USV fam
Michael Jackson, IAC - Never met
David Karp, Tumblr - Met... Meeting David at the W should be on everyone's NYC tech scene todo list.
Alexis Maybank, Gilt Groupe - NEVER MET
Caroline McCarthy, CNET - She needs to play dodgeball with us... obviously met.
Douglas McIntyre, 24/7 Wall St. - NEVER MET
Scott Meyer, About.com - NEVER MET
Betsy Morgan, Huffington Post - Just met at Laurel's breakfast
Chris O’Brien, Motionbox - Met several times
Anand Subramanian, ContextWeb - NEVER MET
Andrew Weinreich, MeetMoi - Met at USV
Nate Westheimer, RoseTech - Duh
Bryan Wiener, 360i - NEVER MET
Benjamin Wolin, Waterfront Media - NEVER MET
Jeffrey Zeldman, Happy Cog Studios - NEVER MET
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Sign us up, VC Mike: The Burn/Risk Ratio
Mike Hirshland nails how I feel about the timing of Path 101 (except for the market part--there are more people trying to figure out what to do with their careers than you can shake a stick at):
"For the immediate future, what makes sense is to iterate and experiment. During this phase, product, market and adoption risk remains high. The idea is to learn as much as possible about all three of these, and remove a big chunk of these risks, but to burn as little capital as possible during this phase. In the experimentation phase, we want to learn a ton but spend a little.
Once we think we have learned what product will get adoption in the market, and how we will make money from this product/market match (which nearly always takes a few more iteration cycles than originally thought), we then should kick into execution mode, in order to get real live proof points that the model actually works in practice. This is the time to staff up with the team necessary to go to market.
But until then, no need for the bus dev and sales guys that had been in the plan."
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Is it Obama's Racial Divide Issue, or McCain's?
Poll Finds Obama Candidacy Isn’t Closing Divide on Race
Now, let's actually look at the numbers...
According to their polls, 31% of white people have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama.
...but only 35% of white people have a favorable opinion of John McCain.
Overall, 62% of whites either have a favorable impression of Barack Obama or don't know enough.
...and only 70% of white people feel that way about McCain.
I don't know about you, but these numbers don't really show me a big divide on race. So, basically, 37% of white people don't like Obama, while 28% of white people don't like McCain. Hmm... I wouldn't exactly call that a huge racial bias against Obama--9% Really? Big whoop.
There is a big racial divide in this election, though... but its not what you think.
57% of blacks don't have a favorable impression of John McCain. In fact, only 5% do, and the rest are undecided. So, blacks dislike John McCain by almost a 2:1 margin over whites not liking McCain. Over six times as many, by percentage, whites like Obama as blacks like McCain.
So who's really the racially divisive one? Seems to me it's John McCain.
Smart thinking about alumni social networks
"Telling alumni what tools to use, and how to use them is old school, and they won't care one way or the other that we have certain information on our web sites...We must let alumni build their own online activities, using a framework we provide for the purpose of enabling that process."
What do the right investors do for you? Summize vs. Tweetscan
There's often a bit of anti-VC sentiment among the entrepreneurial community. You hear how VCs just want to smash you down, force you out, control your company.
So when the news was officially confirmed that Twitter bought Summize, I got to thinking about Tweetscan.
Tweetscan came out with their Twitter search earlier than Summize--who changed their product model. However, it was Summize that went out and took some funding ($750k) from Betaworks.
Tweetscan seems to have remained a one man show--built by David Sterry, who remarked recently that "Running a search engine is a very hardware intensive task and it's a challenge to keep it fast while providing the results people want." Tweetscan seemed more like a really interesting side project than an attempt at company building. Maybe David wasn't looking for anything more. That's fine. It was a great project, but clearly now that Summize IS Twitter Search, it will likely become the default. By the looks of the traffic, it already had:
Not only was Summize able to build a team, but they got some really thoughtful, well connected investors on board. Their investors and advisors helped them with the decision to focus on Twitter search--which was a reapplication of their technology away from generalized web sentiment. Of course, not to mention the fact that John Borthwick says specifically:
"The deal started with a conversation with Fred Wilson about how conversational search can evolve into navigation, about how important navigation becomes for UGC as you go mainstream — it concluded with the deal that was announced this morning. Betaworks is now a twitter shareholder, and excited to be one."
So, when your investor is having this kind of smart conversation with an investor in one of your likely acquirers, you're at a HUGE advantage. This isn't someone pitching your company to get flipped--this was some pretty high level thinking (and outside the valley thinking, I might add).
So while you're protecting all your equity from those big bad investors, ask yourself the question of who's having these types of conversations with key decision makers and thinkers about your company. "Who's a lot more experienced than I am that thinks intelligently about my company's strategy--and cares about it?"
THAT's the kind of investor that makes the rest of your equity worth multiples of what it is the moment they take their 20-30%.
Ignite NYC: Not your usual conference topics
On July 29th, Ignite comes to NYC. What's Ignite? It's 16 5-minute presentations that geeks will love, plus a soldering competition.
RSVP on Facebook or Upcoming.
I'll be speaking there, but I'm even more psyched about the other speakers. Check these out:
* Tom Igoe - Physical Computing's Greatest Hits (or Misses)
* Tony Bacigalupo - NYC's Startup Scene: Where are the geeks?
* Jessica Bruder - How to be an Undercover Hooker (reprising her talk on taking an NYPD course)
* Karen McGrane - From Typing to Swiping: Interaction Design has come a long way!
* Rose White - Weird and wonderful knitting -- graffiti and science and art combined!
* Audacia Ray - Porn as a front runner in technology innovations
* Charlie O'Donnell - Shaving your head: When to start, how to maintain, and to BIC or not to BIC?
* Charles Forman - How to date celebrichauns with founder fetish
* Natalie Jeremijenko - A bomb shelter for the climate crisis
* Pat Allan - So you're a kick-arse coder...
* Joel Johnson - Indie Games: At Least They're Free!
Details:
The first Ignite NYC is going to happen 7/29 at M1-5. We are going to feature 16 speakers. Each speaker will get 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of five-minutes. Ignite is free and open to the public -- you're on your own for drinks. We're also going to be joined by Ignite co-creator, Bre Pettis. Bre is going to lead us in a creative soldering contest. RSVP at Upcoming or Facebook to let us know you are coming. The night will begin with:
7:00PM - Doors Open
7:30PM - NYC Soldering Championship:
With solder irons blazing, and the power of molten metal at their finger tips, New York City's electricity enthusiasts and hardware hackers will connect components to complete circuits for the glory of being the fastest soldering gun in NYC.
On stage and under hot lights, contestants will complete an electronics kit in the shortest time possible while still maintaining the integrity of the circuit. Who will be New York City's soldering champion? You'll need to be there to find out!
To solder you'll have to pre-register, but anyone can come enjoy the opening contest. After the contest, there will be:
8:00PM - Ignite Talks
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Is there anybody out there? The results of last week's engagement and influence experiment.
A week ago, I asked readers to comment on how they found a post that I had put up on Twitter, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon etc., and to repost where they may. I wanted to see how many people I could nudge into action and what types of actions they chose.
One of the most interesting results was the fact that most of the people who did anything to participate were people that already knew me. And, that, above all, should be the most useful piece of information here. If you want someone to do something for you--spread content, interact, etc., relationships count.
That's why I'm so surprised how many entrepreneurs hole themselves up in a dark room when creating a company. Sure, putting in the blood, sweat and tears in the wee hours of the morning is important to get things done, but disengaging from your life is completely counterproductive. How are you ever going to get a core set of initial users if most of the people in your life haven't heard from you in nine months?
In terms of how people found out about the post, it was pretty split between Twitter and their RSS reader--and that also accounted for the vast majority of inbound. Reblogs or retweets counted for only a handful of inbound, which also isn't surprising, because if my closest contacts are reblogging my stuff, there's a good chance their audiences are following me as well, and there's very high overlap.
Still, not that many people came or participated. Allen Stern wrote, "you should use your good content instead". Funny enough, two other posts that day proved Allen right. While this post was sort an experiment that answered a question for me, two other posts combined to get 10x its traffic in a three day time period.
Between July 7th and 9th, over 3,100 people visited my post about why Paul Graham is wrong about NYC. The post was over a month old, but somehow it made the front page of Hacker News.
In addition, my note about Twitter buying Summize, one of the first public stories about it, generated about 3x the traffic that my experiment did.
So, the moral of the story according to this very unscientific experiment?
- Build great relationships with people.
- Good content even trumps breaking news.
- "Insider", high quality sites like Hacker News can generate boatloads of traffic for a relevant post--maybe even more so than generalist sites can.
- Make sure you're RSS enabled, Twitter enabled, but don't expect traffic just because you are--these are just mediums.
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Fun with data: Personality Test Dropout Rate
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!!
My Path 101 Personality Test Results
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? :)
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