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The Art of Keeping Yourself Uncomfortable and Hungry

Working from a coffee shop... or watching the dogs play while it's still light out and blogging from an iPhone... These are some of the things I wanted to try while I found myself some some free time. As some of my close friends know, last week I was discharged from my day job on the claim that I had violated the company's confidential information agreement. While I can confidently say that I didn't break the rules while I was employed, I can see why my day job would assume I did, and why it was necessary to pre-release me given the limited facts and the eventual outcome. In the business world, employees are replaceable, large clients; not so much.

While I'm an advocate of full disclosure, evident by the existence of this blog; I'm not sure how much I can talk about this particular incident just yet. If in time, this turns out to be what I hope it is, then things should smooth itself out. However, if it turns out to be something more serious; then I'm sure there will be a lot of learnings to be dished out here once it's all over. Either way, I'm sure you guys will benefit from from my choices so at least the information is helping someone.

So moving on... what's the art of keeping yourself uncomfortable and hungry and why would anyone want to do that?

Keeping yourself uncomfortable is basically the serial entrepreneurs' motto for life because it drives us to achieve greater things. This is the reason why seasoned CEO's leave cushy jobs to join startups and why new and innovative companies succeed where stagnant companies fail. The same can be observed in people. Back in college, it seemed like the individuals who never wanted to learn or do anything hard were the ones who had everything they need including money, security, trust funds, etc. These people simply were too comfortable in their lives to have cause and it's a shame... cause some of them were smart.

I would imagine this "uncomfortable" startup advice would be on the same level as the "raise money from the 3F's" in that it's easy to comprehend, but it takes guts to execute; and quite honestly it doesn't guarantee fortune or success. In fact, the only sure things are that you will be uncomfortable and hungry.

So here it is: Whether you're already successful or not, you should always force yourself to take the less traveled route so you don't lose that hunger of wanting more. Without that desire, you'll eventually lose your edge and you'll stop wanting - which is bad if you're trying to be cutting edge.

For example, if you're goal isn't to be a startup and you actually like your job; performance based bonuses are going to be your main driver. Most sales aggressive companies have already figured this out and they use that technique to challenge and reward their star performers. (Give them what they need to live survive on, but make them earn the rest.)

So how does this work for an individual?

It's always hard to convince someone to leave a position that they've grown accustomed to take on something new. I'm sure this is why so many recruiters in the Atlanta area are having a terrible time trying to get people to jump ships even for the exact same position. After all, after months or years of training, you should be great at what you do and you are likely to be able to run your routine w/o too much effort even if the position is a hard one. However, on the flip side, the fear of something new can also be paralyzing and in turn, push away greater, better opportunities. This is where making yourself uncomfortable can help.

The best analogy I can come up with is a tooth ache (or any kind of body ache). If the pain is mild, you do what you can to patch it. What lies out there is a solution to completely stop the pain, but honestly, you're just not that uncomfortable enough to take action because it won't kill ya. On the other hand, if the pain is severe and you're faced with the possibly losing a tooth or a limb, suddenly you take charge, find solutions and in your spare time look for backup plans. While this probably isn't the way to approach life on a day-to-day basis, it's important to note that putting yourself in that position often gets you results, whether you like the process or not.

How does being uncomfortable work for startups?

By definition, startups and established brands are two completely different beings. One tries to bring new order while the other tries to maintain their established order. The reason they can even compete is because most startups have what established brands lack, and that's desire. Now, I know you're going to say that giant brands have desire too. Yes, they certainly do... but where startups succeed and where established brands fail are usually in the level of desire in which they have to compete.

It's like saying rich people and poor people both love great deals; and they do! However, the intensity that poor people (or companies) will go to get these deals are way, Way, WAY more extreme than what most rich people (or companies) are willing to do. Let's say both Paris Hilton and Joe Hobo are offered a chance to win a brand new Range Rover, (or for your sake, a brand new rack of web hosting servers.) To win it, the contestant would have to keep their hands on the vehicle for the longest time. Ummm - who do you think will win? Who do you envision got more uncomfortable (and was willing to) in the process?

Yes, this is why disadvantaged companies CAN compete and this is also why being uncomfortable and hungry can help you stay sharp and competitive even if you lack most of the other ingredients.

Intuit Business Competition Update

Awhile ago, I posted about an Intuit Social Network/Business Competition that wants entrepreneurs to fork over their idea in exchange for a chance to win some cash. Well today, I got an email from their team stating that the judges will soon be checking out the entries and that we should start promoting our entry so it will make an impression with them.

I was originally going to write a simple post saying: "Hey! Check out our entry..." but after checking out the site myself, I'm really not sure how effective this site is for promoting and awarding good ideas.

First of all, the site is flash based and the overall usability stinks. You land on the site and it's not exactly clear what your next step is and what is/isn't clickable. Secondly, whatever server(s) this site is on, is not keeping up with demand. Images are broken, things take awhile to load... and so on and so on. Basically, they've broken 2 of the very basic rules of web business 101 and whether it's Intuit that's backing this up or someone's basement server, the experience is not friendly for their intended audience.

With regards to the link they sent me for referrals, not only do you not go directly to our entry when you click on the link above... you actually have to either do something or wait a tad bit before our entry shows up. I can only imagine who the big shot corporate guy behind this is that thought that'd be a good idea to force people to sign up to vote. As a side note, even if you sign up, I'm not sure if it's all that obvious how you'd vote.

So yeah... we have an entry, potentially our idea may be seen but at this point, I think we're better off alone. However, if you'd LIKE to submit your own idea, you should check it out and do so within the next few days.

Edgeio... Not Good Enough to Edge Out the Competition

So according to TechCrunch, Edgeio will be shutting down by the end of 2007. Considering the growing number of classified aggregators on the web (e.g. Oodle.com, Vast.com, etc.) I am honestly surprised this one would fall before the others.

I don't remember if I've done business with Edgeio but I do remember working with Oodle.com in my day job. If I had to base this on nothing else besides execution, I would say that Oodle did a better job squeezing money out of advertisers than Edgeio did. Why? Because I don't think I've ever seen a rep from Edgeio nor do I understand their business model; assuming they had one.

I guess the bottom line is - when all else is equal, everything comes down to execution. I've seen great ideas executed poorly as well as the difference it could make if a more experienced team were in charge. I'm not sure who all handled Edgeio's day to day but with $5 million in funding as well as a full staff, I would love to learn where it went down hill.

Is there a blog of venue that interviews dead pool CEOs? If not, there really should be one. It seems like everyone only focus on the winners.

Blog Widgets - Which Ones Should You Install?

Here are some info on the blog widgets we use on this blog. Some of the info may be useful, others (like the widgets them-self), not so much.

Skribit finally launched into private beta (part 2). The website has been updated and a few bloggers outside of the founding team have been invited to test the widget out. I can see on some of the blogs testing the widget that the suggestions have been pretty useful. We definitely need some more suggestions on here -- feel free to ask us to write about anything on the right. No logins required! If you currently have a blog and gets about 6000 or less RSS subscribers, let me know and maybe we can sign you up with a test account.

Another widget we've installed on here is the MyBlogLog widget. There seems to be a few variations of this widget out there with different presentations on the blog side but I've found the system to be a bit buggy such that images and profile info I've submitted have mysteriously disappeared time after time. I'm not sure if this is a common bug in the system but you'd figured with Yahoo! backing this thing, that the widget would be less buggy than Skribit, but I guess not.

With MyBlogLog, I have found that if you have a blog and like to surf others, this platform is great for cross linking your blog and getting other users to view yours. You would think that people who visit your blog would have similar interest therefore clicking on those users may show similar blogs. For the most part, you'd be right! Though I have found that some people can game the system based on what profile picture they provide. (Things that make you go hrmm....)

Finally, in another attempt to get more users for this blog, we've signed up with BlogRush as a recommendation from Bryan. So far, I can't say I've been impressed. I've noticed no noticeable increase to our traffic nor have I seen any extremely related recommendations shown in there. The widget presentation is also a bit commercial-like which may make itself an automatic blind spot for users. I'll leave it on for a full month to see if it changes its behavior but so far, even with manual approvals to get in the network, the service seems to be lacking.

I would equate this to be the same as the old MSN bCentral banner network. You get a credit for each impression you show and in turn your RSS title gets shown elsewhere. Except with this system, you're really just helping the rich get richer and not really helping the blog newbies at all.

Excellent Point...

Wei brings up a great point that I've been doing a lot of research on the last few days, having been sick and able to spend some extra YouTube time.

I've been watching a lot of Newt Gingrich speeches lately and he gives some of the greatest methods by which our country can achieve goals like high mileage cars: prizes. Giving money away to people for the sake of it only makes people want more money and stifles progress. People are greedy and will exploit such subsidies. However, look at the Ansari X-Prize, a prize to be the first private venture to get a craft in low earth orbit and back to Earth in a reusable shell. It took almost 10 years and $100 million of private money. The prize was only $10 million, however, the technologies developed along the way by Scaled Composites and the other teams will surely outstrip the cost of construction. (Side Note: How much does it take NASA to get a shuttle into space? :) There are now a number of X Prizes (including the Automotive X PRIZE) which shows that people want progress and they understand the government will not be the ones to help them. Govrenment representatives are being bought off by special intrest groups and the American machine suffers. As in the early 1900s, the political bosses controlled Washington and local governments with bribes and kickbacks, donations and slush funds create political machines that dictate the direction of Washington these days. Let me be clear though, Big Business is good for America. They contribute hugely to society and our country as a whole. The current political laws and people's willingness to let their representatives be corrupted by these groups are the problem. But I digress....

I hope they eventually wake up and offer incentives like the X Prize to advance our technologies and inspire budding entrepreneurs in years to come. How many different advances could we offer in the way of energy alone with ideas like nuclear fusion reactors (Polywells, for example) or microwave solar collectors in Earth orbit for unlimited supplies of energy.

Bootstrap Entrepreneurs Should Run the Country...

Our Congressional leaders have spent some time, probably a few million (in the process) and have come to the agreement that cars and trucks are required to have a MINIMUM miles per gallon rating of 35 MPG; but by the year 2020!

If this was the conclusion from a meeting that happened in 1978, I may not have been so repulsed when I heard about it. But this happened today, when most foreign automakers have already met and exceeded this requirement. I mean, do they not remember the Toyota commercials where kids were screaming 35! 48! 60! Those are MPG ratings people! They certainly were not additional sides added to the AD&D dice. (Do people still play that?)

With such pathetic requirements handed down by the government, it's no wonder we're falling behind. Innovation comes from need, annoyance and unexpected surprises. Apparently our annoyances have not hit a peak where change is mandated. At this point, I'm not really sure if this is the fault of us needing to rely on foreign oil or if the Big 3 have been using money to bribe the government instead of spending it on some serious R&D.

Had bootstrap entrepreneurs been running the country, we would have been far FAR ahead in solving these problems now.

What we really need is to throw down some serious, meaningful and immediate deadlines; right now. When we decided to go to the moon in a few years, we did it. When we realized we needed to fix ALL the computers in the world for Y2K, we did it in two or three years. Why should this be any different?

If no one is pushing the top three automakers that actually have the funds for research and innovation, then what hope do we have for change and mass adoption? If nothing else, Big 3 should at least look towards buying up small companies that have developed the technologies that are available today instead of spending more money trying to reinvent the wheel. Take a lesson from Google or Microsoft. It's still (very) possible to buy up smaller companies, take their great qualities, merge it with your own, and be profitable and green. Show us you care and are not sitting on your butts and sales may just pick up...

Business is Cold Hearted... You Should Be Too.

A recurring theme has been popping into my conversations lately... Whether it's starting a business, trying to shut down a business, dealing with how to raise babies or approaching someone new who you'd like to meet; emotions cloud judgment.

Have you ever wondered why your friends or that random person on the plane can provide the voice of reason when you just can't figure something (simple) out? It's because they lack the emotional or financial investment you have into your problem; therefore they have the clarity that you lack.

I've found in the past I can chat it up with random, pretty girls with zero problems unless I happen to have feelings for them. Once I realize I like them, everything pretty much clamps up and I start to act-a-fool. Funny how these things work against you when you want to care.

The same can be said with business matters. Many entrepreneurs have tunnel vision when starting their new venture. Though most are envisioning success, their execution veers off based on the founders' ulterior motives. A simple question I ask most entrepreneurs in midst of a startup is: Are you really doing it for the reward (the payoff) or are you doing it for other things? (e.g. learning programming, coding for fun, coding to solve a problem, killing time, etc.) From an outsider's perspective, I see a lot of startup decisions being made to satisfy the ulterior motives while very few are kept on track for the quickest, biggest pay off. (...and I honestly can't explain why the founders aren't seeing it too.)

Whether it's business or personal, the same general rule seems to apply. If you want to make the most logical decision with regards to a problem, you should throw your emotions out the window and focus on the facts/numbers. If you ignore the facts, everything you do will either slow you down or steer you off track.

I must admit, I've been struggling with this myself on a business I've been trying to shut down. With a demanding day job and working on two new start-ups, I really don't have the time, energy or the financial support to continue working on my old website.

However, I hate to lose and as much as I should just shut it all down like Chef Gordon Ramsey does when his kitchen staff begin to fall out of sync, something inside me just refuses to kill off the dying, unprofitable website that's been slowly bleeding my energy and cash flow. Maybe now that this is written down on paper, I will do what's right correct instead of hoping some miracle will revive it.

After all, this is business... it's nothing personal, right?

Office Space - Not Quite There Yet...

In my day job, we've been working on redecorating our office space for the last few months. It started with new *matching* desks replacing the old ones. I swear, I don't know the original reasoning behind it but everyone literally had a different modeled desk. It was so bad that I thought our office manager had a secret blog that reviewed different models of office desks.

However, now that all desk problems are solved, we're running into issues on how to divide up the space. Again, we now have various models of dividers and partitions none of which are standard cubicle stuff.

Anyway, I found this Office Snapshots link today which I thought was cool. Maybe one day when our startup upgrades to an office, we'll have something to look forward to. In the meantime, maybe we can get some ideas to save my day job space.

The Freedom of Self Employment...

I miss the freedom of self employment. Where else can you hold two separate iChat work meetings (development and marketing), blast iTunes, watch TV, surf Facebook and be logged into 3 computers all at the same time?

Did I mention I wasn't wearing pants? Alright, I was wearing pants... but still

I certainly don't have that kind of freedom during the day.

On a separate and completely unrelated note, can someone help me figure this out?

iPod earphones work on the Macbook
iPhone earphones work on the Macbook
iPod earphones does not work on the iPhone...

what gives?

Web Design 101 - Wireframe in Practice

A couple of months ago, I talked about the importance of designing a website in wire frames. Now that we finally secured the design and the xhtml code, I can finally go into some details into the thought process behind the whole thing. By-the-Wei, if you haven't checked out our old post, you should check it out and the link that's associated with it. It will give you a much better idea of the information below.

Because our site isn't officially launched yet, I will only cover part one of the design process for now. We feel comfortable disclosing this part because it actually looks like nothing like the final product, but maybe this will give you some ideas for your site while we wrap up our stuff.

Before we officially began the project, I did a quick research to see what web 2.0 design was about. Whether you think "web 2.0" is a fad term or not, there is definitely something about the look of the new breed of websites that gave you a cleaner, more Zen like feel. Web 2.0 design is about balancing text with white space; it's not about cramming as much text and information as you can above the fold to get the most out of your real estate. If you get a chance to check out many of today's new start-ups, you'd get that feeling.

Some of the examples I've found... Oodle.com vs. Craigslist.org, Apple.com vs. MSN.com. When you go there, you see a distinct clear vs. busy.

Some other things I've noticed while doing research... web 2.0 sites are mostly about 960 pixels wide and most of them have a bold statement, text explaining the site. While our site will still be catering to people with 800x600 resolutions, future web logs will tell me if width expansion will be necessary.

The first mock-up our designer came back with was the above image. Like most of you are probably thinking, I too was wondering why certain elements are positioned the way they are. There just appeared to be so much wasted space around the logo; even if the goal was branding. Also, the bold line of text was new for me... new being uneasy.

I went back to the designer and insisted that we needed to do something about the prime real estate that was wasted up top. Even though I'm all for embracing web 2.0, some things as a biz dev guy, I just can't let go of. Unfortunately, real estate is one of them.

The second comp the designer came back with was the above. This one was heavily influenced by me jamming my ideas and requirements into the mix. Since I didn't understand the research section, we condensed the top to focus on just buyers and sellers. After all, we're thinking that someone who comes to our site has a need... and we're here to fill that need for speed (to buy and sell).

However, the second comp above presented a problem. Even though it crams more data together, we have two ad units placed right next to each other. Although this may be okay for some of our competitors... we felt that it would be unfair to our potential advertisers to be grouped that close to a potential competitor. So with that, we made a minor tweak to separate the two a tad bit.

This iteration of the design came out pretty well and it was something we stuck with for some time as we moved towards designing the internal pages. The next time we cover this topic, I will finish up with what we did for the home page and internal pages.

Amazon AWS Follow-up: Start-Nots.

Amazon announced their final 7 more than a week ago, but we finally got the email over Thanksgiving break. No, our idea was not cool enough to make the list; but then again, there were only a couple of cool ones on the list that caught my attention.

---

Thank you for participating in the AWS Start-Up Challenge! We were amazed by the innovation -- and sheer volume -- of the applications we received, which made choosing a handful of finalists a challenge in itself.

We're sorry to say that your application was not amongst the few finalists. We wish you success in your start-up and we hope that AWS’ infrastructure services (Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and Amazon SQS) will help you build a strong foundation for your business.

You can read about the seven finalists at http://aws.amazon.com/startupchallenge.


Best wishes,


Tracy Laxdal

Amazon Web Services



Simply sign-up and start building at aws.amazon.com

Check out our tech resources at aws.amazon.com/resources

---

Are we bummed? Yes and no. It'd be great to get some free money to use to test the S3 solution (which we did), at the same time, getting tied up with a bunch of investors at this early of a stage can also be distracting. As they aay... too many chefs in the kitchen... blah blah.

A Good Night

You know you've had a good night programming when the screens are glowing in a dark room, to the left I've got a half finished can of Red Bull and 3 empty Mountain Dew cans. To the right, I've got a mostly eaten Chipotle Burrito bowl. Two or three Python references manuals are on the desk and all sense of time has been lost.



I'm a huge fan office ergonomics. I have a hard time focusing unless my surroundings feel purposeful and suit all my spacial needs and I thusly spend a large amount of time setting up my work area before I start a project. Having a purpose built office in my new house has really lent me to designing a good space. On this particular Thanksgiving weekend though, I'm at my future in-laws and have found the kitchen table to be the optimal place to work. Huge kitchen table workspace with a center leaf added holds the laptop and my secondary screen. A spiffy Ethan Allen chair (though it desperately needs proper lumbar support) supports me bum. A refrigerator within reach helps productivity as well.

In the end, it comes down to this. Without a proper work space, the work suffers. Spend some time getting your place together and figuring out what you need. It really can make quite a difference.

To respond to Wei's post, I didn't state all my reasons for this project. As you can see, feeding two dogs (one that eats as much as the entire population of Somolia) motivates me as well:



And seeing Wei's picture only solidifies my impressions of him over the last few months. Dog people rock. Wei and his pups are living proof of that. It's really great to work with such motivated and solid people.

Marketing Research

After contacting over 20 car dealerships, I (Bryan) was able to speak with 6 general sales managers. The rest were not available, out of the office, or being screened by receptionists. For those I did not speak with, I either left a message or will call back in the near future. I called dealers from every end of the spectrum: small local used car dealers, large car dealers, and high-end dealers. The list is below...

- Jackson Acura
- Toyota of Roswell
- Rick Case Hyundai and Mitsubishi
- Saturn of Roswell
- Roswell Infiniti
- Landrover
- Roswell Auto Sports
- Jordan Motors
- Town and Country Motors
- Nalley Lexus
- Nalley Jaguar
- Classic Cadillac and Subaru
- Nalley Audi
- United BMW
- Honda Carland
- Palmer Dodge
- Aston Martin of Atlanta
- Porsche
- Roswell Chrysler Jeep
- Regal Nissan
- Mazda of Roswell
- Classic Suzuki
- Lotus of Atlanta

The six dealers I actually spoke with were Rick Case Hyundai and Mitsubishi, Saturn of Roswell, Roswell Auto Sports, Nalley Audi, Aston Martin of Atlanta, and Landrover. Of these six, only one acted as if they would not be interested in utilizing our website and that was Landrover. Apart from being almost cocky, they did mention that 99% of their business already comes from internet sales. I told him "hey, why not add another 1% by taking advantage of Easyautosales.com." Overall, most dealers said that with a site like ours, they are looking for simplicity, ease of use, and for immediate inventory updates. Apparently, when most of them update their cars, the changes are not made until midnight. Some dealers said that they would not be interested unless we are getting a large numbers of hits. My overall impression is that most dealers will be willing to try our site and if they sell cars, they will keep using us, if not, they will stop. Makes sense to me. The other interesting thing I found was that the moment I used the word "free" the mom and pop dealerships were all over it...

Let There Be Marketing...

The founders met again on Saturday... We were due on the status of the project plus we scheduled a meeting with Bryan who we have been considering for business development / marketing position for the last month.

Overall, we are still on track with programming and now with the additional help, I think we are now better equipped to hit our target beta release date and properly market it (or try to). Granted, I would love to get some additional help/backup on both programming and marketing but we're going to tackle it one step at a time.

With regards to "why we're doing this..." my reasons are slightly different than Randall's. As you can see, my dogs love food and I feel the need to provide them with such. They really are spoiled... but I can't help it; they're just too cute.

Why Are We Doing This?

Often times I get distracted from new projects, exciting projects, like EasyAutoSales and while plugging along, trying to get to my next milestone I read a quote or hear an inspirational line that really helps me push to the next level. Today it was a quote by Theodore Roosevelt. It goes a little something like this:

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

Wei had a great idea. It's something I've belived in myself as a car buff and he put into words and pictures that which I couldn't. I believe that together, we can turn this idea into something greater than just a bunch of car pictures online of cars for sale. It's about being passionate about an idea and not afraid to fail. By taking the risk and putting yourself out on a limb, spending time and money on something that might or might not work, you're already winning. Success means winning the game. Failure means learning and trying again. Sounds like a win-win situation to me. As they say, nothing worth doing was ever easy...

Testing the Skribit Widget

Just in case the content on here is SOOOOO good that you don't even think about looking at the right column... The Skribit Widget is available for testing on this blog and it's posted on the right.

If there are any topics you'd like to see covered here whether it'd be about Startup Weekend, Skribit or even the status / lesson learned from my own EasyAutoSales startup, feel free to drop us a comment and let us know.

Again, the goal of this blog is to let you know where we suceeded and where we failed so that you can learn from our experience (and maybe put us in your e-book.)

=)

So Back to the Startup at Hand...

Time seems to be a luxury we don't have these days. In between the day job, the Startup Weekend and my house falling apart due to a slow leak in a pipe that was finally found and resolved, I feel like we've lost a couple of weeks in between where I couldn't focus on the project at hand.

So, where are we now?

Design - the design has finally been completed, which means I can now blog about the design process and tell you guys what we learned. Overall, this has been a lot less painful than hiring programmers so it was a great experience.

Web Hosting - for whatever reason, we're still stuck here. We're at a stand still between what we need vs. what we want. Also, because we feel like we need to scale up pretty fast in terms of storage, regardless of actual usage, this has been an ongoing issue of finding the affordable, scalable solution. Of course, our limited technology know-how of how to manage the cheaper solutions may be what's killing us here. I think we'll need to make the executive decision this weekend and just get something otherwise nothing will ever happen.

Business / Marketing - We have not had time to properly search and interview for our VP of Marketing yet. However, I did meet a ton of great people at Startup Weekend whom I can learn from. Will keep the search going for now...

What I Learned in My 54 Hour Skribit Blitz...

For the people who have been following this blog, we posted a video of Truemors a couple of months ago where Guy Kawasaki talked about how he started a web based business with $12k and a few weeks of time. Well, after this past weekend, Guy posted a truemor about the Atlanta Startup Project, Skribit and how we were able to start a web business with $0 financing.

Well $0 is of course a stretch, there were SOME costs... but what does $0 really mean? Well, here's the dirty dirty truth based on my observations.

$50 in domain names - I don't have the hard numbers but in registering our name and in registering a few more variations to protect the brand, we're looking at least $50 in expenses.

$1,000 in legal, misc fees. I admit, I completely ignored this part of the project, on purpose. I can't wrap my head around it.

$2,400 in food - we were fed; a lot... I can't say they were all great or healthy food, but we were well fed. There was also a ton of beers and drinks and so forth. If we didn't have this, people wouldn't stay.

$5,000 in office space - I'm not sure of the actual costs but I'll throw in $5,000 as an estimate for renting the entire floor of where we needed to be. In addition to the main room, the various groups worked out of several different, smaller conference rooms which was necessary or we'd probably end up with nothing.

$96,000 in laptops/equipment - If the 64 people who showed up came with just pen and paper, we probably wouldn't have accomplished too much in the 54 hour period. If you estimated the avg. laptop cost to be $1,500, then there would be close to $100,000 in equipment alone.

$185,000 in free labor - We worked about 36 actual hours... So if our average comes out to be $80 in consulting fees x 64 people, then that's how much work we've put in in that time.

Priceless - Things we got for free due to networking. Things we will get for free as a result of this weekend's networking. We got a few freebies from this weekend. A few months of web hosting... a few connections into the blogger world, connections to VC's in the event this project takes off. All great and amazing things if you're a struggling startup.

Even MORE Priceless, internal networking - You know how hard it is to find people who don't make excuses, have a variety of talents, hop over any and all obstacles and apply that determination to businesses? Close to impossible. I'm really glad I was able to experience it cause... without seeing it for myself, it would have been hard to believe.

So is free really free? No, not really. Even though I worked about a week's worth of hours in 2.5 days, I guess the difference is that we all think this project may turnout to be greater than the $290,000 of Monopoly money (and effort) we invested.

All I've gotta say is... if it's possible to get $300,000 to start a company, find a group of smart business "snipers" who come in, do what's needed and hop out, I would be all over it. After all, in the web world speed and execution is way more valuable than the alternative.

Skribitastic!

It's been a long, hard, smelly but rewarding weekend. I seriously had planned on going home at about 3PM today to get some much needed sleep. However, working with a dynamic team of talented people that churned out stuff every few minutes; it was hard to pull away.

It was seriously like listening to the morning radio talk show on the way to work. Every time you think you are ready to pull away, they tease you with the next iteration, the next release or the next meal to make you stay just that much longer. In the end, I stayed for pretty much the whole event, but I really had to pull away at the 11th hour since I still have a day job tomorrow that I can't sleep through.

While the event was tiring... the hard work paid off! Before the weekend even ended, we'd already got some press for our efforts.

"Duuuude! Pull up TechCrunch right now... we were just featured." Seriously? No, you're lying. We made TechCrunch?!

While I'm not sure what will ultimately become of this venture other than producing a cool and useful widget, it was at least great to have worked in an incubator environment that simulated a successful startup. I am definitely going keep in touch with a number of my peers from this weekend. It was a blast!

Startup Weekend: Day 2

I must admit, it was hard getting up this morning after feeling a little bit defeated in the whole "ideas" thing. The clear business opportunity was out voted and instead, our group is working on a blog widget.

However, if there's one thing I love, it's a challenge. I've always prided myself in monetizing ideas and after a night of minor tossing and turning, I think I finally came up with something late last night.

It's a shame that these pictures aren't sexy and don't offer much else besides a bunch of guys pointing at a bunch of words. However, after spending a whole day locked inside the atdc, my one word to describe day 2 would be: surreal.

What impressed me the most is how everyone, and I mean EVERYONE took what they did best and bulldozed the sh*t through it. (This includes Lance taking out the trash on multiple occasions!) While there were definitely varying ideas about the product and of course arguments; in the end, what we designed came out pretty awesome.

Let's face it, when you group a bunch of type A people who want to be heard cause they care, there will be arguments. In the end, it's just business and we're doing what's best for the company. I was impressed by the speed in which we took a brand and then claimed everything we could claim off the name. Within a 15 minute period, everything Skribit was setup. Twitter, Facebook products, Wikipedia, various blogs, MySpace, etc. Also, I saw some pretty amazing prototypes done in just 12 hours of code. Hrmm, I also think I did a power point this morning; I vaguely remember someone calling me the "powerpoint ninja." Wow, 12 hours seemed like a lifetime ago. If I had a whole team of these people that GOT IT for all my ideas, imagine the possibilities...

Anyway, tomorrow will be the final day. As much as I love the product and the group, I'm really hoping everything can be done by 3pm. At this point, I really could use some sleep.

Startup Weekend: First Impressions

After an extremely long day at work, I fought through Peachtree traffic and arrived at the atdc to kick off the Startup weekend. First impressions? Definitely a LOT of hackers. In fact, when I arrived, I had a really "Legally Blonde" moment cause everyone brought their laptops to the event while all I had was a measly iPhone as my "computer".

Overall, there are a lot of smart people at this thing but I honestly do not think the hackers here think beyond their immediate needs. It mirrors most of my encounters and frustrations with developers which is above all else, they want to develop something with X number of features; creating a monetizable business is secondary... (sadly)

Once we hammer out the idea tomorrow I'll write about it in my next post. On a side note, I did have the pleasure of going back to my ransacked jeep which was broken into while I was at the event. Of the things they took that I actually cared about: my community gate opener and my iPhone protective case and earphones. They also took a pair of cheap sunglasses which was partially broken anyway; have fun with that one. *sigh* That's what I get for parking near Cheetah and leaving the area late instead of paying the ridiculous fee to park in the garage.

Money Talks (Part II)

Welp... it seems like I was able to buy my way into the Atlanta Startup Weekend for a mere $20.

$$$ > waitlist

Even though I am in desperate need of some sleep, this should be a lot of fun. Besides, Thanksgiving will be here in a couple of weeks which means I'll have a few days to hibernate if I want to.

I'll try to get some pics and do a couple of posts about the event if time allows.

Random Ramblings...

It's been a busy few days trying to port over all the existing data from my HP laptop to my network drive and getting important programs for the new Macbook so I can carry on business as usual. An odd but great thing I'm now getting used to is the lack of crappy programs I have to install to make everyday things work. iChat replaced two chat programs that I would have had to download on the PC. Various iLife programs have replaced all the random and off beat programs I would have needed to install to watch and burn CDs and DVDs on my PC. The Mac version of the Office have pretty much eliminated my need to use Office 2007, even though the two are somewhat different. (I do remember hearing that the Mac version will be upgrading in a couple of months or so.) The last and somewhat annoying piece of the migration is the Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver that I'd like to have, but currently lack.

Now, MS has a student version of Office that they sell for $150 on the Mac platform; which is great. Adobe however, has ridiculous pricing on all their products which results in tons of people pirating and cracking their software for distribution. Since so many freelancers depend on these software, why doesn't Adobe come out with a student or startup friendly version of their software? Wouldn't they in theory be able to get more legit customers and possibly make a lot more money if they price themselves a little bit lower and became startup friendly? I mean, no one spends time hacking a $15 program... the pro's just doesn't outweigh the con's. On the other hand, I don't think Adobe should charge $15... but somewhere closer to $100 instead of $600+ would be greatly appreciated by everyone in the industry I'm sure.

So the Atlanta Startup Weekend is this weekend here and unfortunately I found out about it too late and could not get in the program. It does seem like they're doing something cool even though I have no idea what it is. I will have to get some reports from the other people I know who are going... mabbe next time I guess. On a side note - they do hold these things all over the country so if you're interested in meeting like-minded people, I would check to see if they have any events in your area.

Oh yeah, I stumbled across a Facebook ad the other day, (I swear being in marketing makes me hyper sensitive to ads no one else will ever click on). The ad was trying to appeal to entrepreneurs to do something. I'm not sure if this would be of interest to anyone but apparently Intuit, the makers of Quickbooks and Quicken is launching another startup contest where they will award $50k for the best idea submitted. The website is IWillJustStart.com and if you're interested, check it out and submit your idea.

You will find on the backside, it's a slick way to get you to participate in yet another social network dedicated to entrepreneurs. I'm not sure if that site's navigation is easy enough to make the site sticky for me. I personally find the whole thing a bit hard to use and a bit hard to see the other entries. Then again, who ever said accountants were great UI designers?

Other things to note... Ad:Tech in NY this week. I originally was going to go through my (day job) company but unfortunately they ended up picking someone else to go instead. Talk about a major bummer; considering I did all the leg work to get the trip approved in the first place. If there's one major pet peeve I have, it's the lack of educational investment a company make or doesn't make in their employees. Yes, for some, the drive is money. For others, the drive is job security and/OR education. Here's me, someone who is obviously motivated to learn, especially knowing that both MySpace and Facebook are making some pretty big announcements this week on the future of interactive marketing. There's the company saying: "Thanks for doing the work" but we're going to send someone else who won this spot (in a stupid raffle) and had absolutely no interest in going prior to hearing about a random raffle. Am I bitter? Yeah, just a tad bit. What can I say? I get bored easily and if I'm not learning, I'm out there looking for other opportunities to learn... *sigh* Sometimes I wish employers would pay a bit more attention to their overworked staff and make the necessary investments instead of worrying about an extra $10-$20k on their bottom line. Heck, if we are more educated, we can probably make the company significantly more! Instead now you just have a bitter employee... (Good job!)

Note: Make sure when the dot com makes it big, we put employee satisfaction above the bottom line.

Wei is Mac'n It!

After years of swearing by PC's and receiving recommendations from friends that swear by Windows, .net and other MS technologies, I've finally decided to analyze my personal computing needs and ended up switching to the Mac. More specifically, I just bought a 15" MacBook Pro.

I must admit, my PC needs have changed over the years. What used to be games, programming, movies and music have now changed to music, emails and web. My needs have become simpler (more common) over the years and ironically, the one thing that would have kept me on a PC (gaming) has now been replaced by the Xbox 360; which leaves me free to do texting, web, email and PHOTOS on my iPhone and Mac. That's not to say the Mac can't do anything like programming or games, but that I think overall, OS X can do more of the things I need better than Windows.

Though, a lot of different things came together at the right time to make my switch happen. It all started with a simple announcement over 10 months ago about a certain iPhone. I watched then waited and finally got one after the price drop. My first impression? I was extremely impressed with the usability and intuitiveness of the phone; much more than my old Treo 650. From there, I became a bigger and bigger OS X fan and then met Randall who's all about Mac's. We even checked OS X server as a hosting option; something I hadn't considered since deciding on the Apache platform for our next website. However, it can make sense... since Linux distributions isn't something we understand and OS X in theory is more stable than various Linux distributions...

I'm sure we all know the common praises of the Macbooks so I won't get into the details here. I will say comparing the new laptop vs. my HP laptop, the MacBook has it beat on many levels. However, portability (thin and light body) is what sold it for me. I really can't stand to lug around a 8lb laptop any longer.

It was kind of a pain in the ass to pay the Apple tax buying the hardware and software combined. But maybe there's something to this... just look how well the Xbox 360 and its blades dashboard did! I really hope that some day Microsoft will also choose to stop supporting ancient hardware and make a non-bloated version of Windows. Let's face it, you can't please everyone; by choosing to try, you are costing yourself millions in tech support and are forced to write bloated software with thousands of drivers that results in an overall, poorer quality product. In the end, while you have volume, you are hurting your brand and your core product. That will result in... well, people jumping ships.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how the market shifts in the next couple of years. I still like Windows but it may be a different story once I figure out how to do everything I need to do on the Mac without the virtual Windows environment.

Google OpenSocial Now Live

Per Mashable's blog post, Google's OpenSocial API is now live. This comes only a few days after the announcement, which is somewhat bittersweet for me.

On one hand, if Facebook joins this program at a later date, it means we can potentially code widgets for all these networks with one fell swoop. In fact, it may also be interesting to be able to code something that taps into all social networks at the same time.

On the flip side, as much as I like Google, it's just another way for them to force themselves to be the authority on something they weren't number one at. Being that we work in the web industry, that's a 'lil dangerous and a bit too close to home.

OpenSocial Launch Partners

amiando Appirio Bebo Bleacher Report BonstioNet Brad Anderson Bunchball, Inc BuyFast Cardinal Blue Software Chakpak Chronus Corporation come2play CurrentTV E-junkie Engage.com eTwine Holdings, Inc. Fendoo Ltd Flixster FotoFlexer Friendster Grimmthething HedgeStop.com Hi5 Hungry Machine Hyves iFamily, Inc iLike Imeem Indeed.com KlickSports, Inc. LabPixies Ltd. LimitNone LinkedIn LjmSite LoveMyGadgets

LuvGoogleGadgets Mesa Dynamics, LLC Mixi MuseStorm Inc MySpace Netvibes NewsGator Ning NY Times Oberon Media Oracle Orkut Outside.In PayPal Plaxo PROTRADE Puxa Qloud RockYou Salesforce.com Shelfari SideStep, Inc. Six Apart Slide Theikos Tianji TooStep Viadeo VirtualTourist Votigo Whizz Widgetbox Xing Zytu Inc.

Feed Meh!

We just added some RSS feed buttons to this blog. I've actually been looking to do it for awhile but surprisingly, Blogger doesn't have a native function to post em up.

Anyway, if you haven't figured out where to pull the XML file for this blog, we've now made it easier to feed you our tales.

Some Food for Thought: Business vs. Self Employment

Many of us, whether we work for ourselves or someone else, want to make what we're worth because well... we deserve it. After all, what's the point of spending a 1/4 to a 1/3 of our lives learning if we can't take what we learn and pay back all the debt we accrued while learning?

So for many of us... after years of school and years of working for someone else, we come up with the bright idea to start our own business. But what is a business exactly and how does that differ than just working for yourself? Both jobs have clients (hopefully) and both jobs have long hours, so why the change?

The difference for me is the light at the end of the tunnel. One has the promise of one, while the other is... not so promising.

A business is like a child. You conceive it, you nurture it and after watching it make a few mistakes and stumble, you hope that one day it will be able to self sustain and reward you for your efforts. A good business will stay afloat and make you money while you're on vacation and a bad one will cause you worries while you're gone. Will lil Timmy meet up with the wrong crowd and destroy your home? Quite possibly. However, if you're lucky and have the right leadership, you may even see your business married off to some other successful businesses and throw a giant party to celebrate. Ahh... such is the life of parenting gone right.

Self employment on the other hand is a bit different. For me, self employment is the dream of technicians when they are tired of the sh*t from their former boss. While you may be successful performing a particular task or trade to warrant self employment, there rarely is an exit strategy that will allow you to throw that giant party at the end. Unless you have good business acumen, self employment may generally lead to long hours, anxiety, nausea, vomiting, stress, and irregular bowel movements. Sounds like one of those drug commercials don't it? It feels like it too.

So to sum up. Have a good business idea? Great! Have a goal to be self employed? Think twice. Remember:

Self employment - A job or business that wouldn't exist or make money without you. (Think of the missed vacations!)

A Business - A job that could exist and be profitable without you (but wayyyy down the road). Though, an exit strategy that doesn't equal your death exists!

Enterprise - A space ship in the future.

An Empire - Something that requires a lot of technology and possibly even the force to be on your side.

Outsourcing HTML Programming

I'm a control freak at times. I like my HTML a certain way. It's got to be pretty (readable) as well as functional and if it's not, I don't feel as though I'm doing it right. This leads to me never really trust people when programming up web pages. However, I've got to say I'm pleasantly surprised for some very readable and usable code. I've finished up programming the car details page and the car search page. With the code I wrote in Python-Django, I just plugged the HTML into my templates, made sure some loops were formatted properly with the pre-generated code and within 30 minutes I had the pages up. The majority of the time was to determine where to put the CSS files, image files and how to link them up in Django's framework.

Now, granted, my XML feed formats are messed up and need a reworking of the model as to allow for some null fields I'm now finding, but that shouldn't be more than a days worth of work.

"I can't afford it."

That's not true.

At least it's not true almost all the time. Very few of your prospects literally can't afford it. What they are really trying to say is, "it's not worth it." As in, it's not worth reprioritizing my life, not worth the risk, not worth what I'll have to give up to get this, not worth being in debt for.

The blog title and the quote above were pulled from Seth Godin's blog. Although he was talking about selling a product or service, I've actually received a similar response recently while talking with my friend about starting a company.

For me, it's always been "you can't afford not to..." after all, life's too short not to try. However, my friend's response to my question on why he hasn't started a venture when that's all he reads and writes about, really baffled me; until I read the quote above.

Even though many entrepreneurs have the courage to just go-for-it and take it for granted, there are many others out there who just can't seem to do the same. If you guys have any good advice on how to release the fear, I would love to hear about it so I can pass on the encouragement.

Edit: Releasing the fear is just the first roadblock of many to pass through when jumping into the world of entrepreneurship. However, everything else including money, technical skill, resources, etc. can all be resolved once a person set their mind to it. So the question is, what would make an entrepreneur climb over that first wall so s/he would learn that they can in fact think creatively and scale any wall?

As Expected, Money Talks...

As a desperate measure to gain some control in the matter of no communication, we decided to do a couple of things to resolve the issue of the missing designer.

1. We started shopping around for alternative shops that also provided image to code services and got a few recommendations from some friends and fellow entrepreneurs. Yes, we probably could have taken the time to do the work ourselves but given the time constraints, I felt it would have been money well spent to hire some professionals that could knock the project out of the park in a very short time. After all, the goal of this venture is to launch a business, it isn't to make sure our team members can conquer certain technical skills just to say we can.

If you are designing a new site and desire xhtml code, below are some options for you we have found over the last couple of days. We did not end up using the companies but from the examples some showed us, they are great.

www.psdxhtml.com - very impressive portfolio, $89 per page, quick turnaround.
PSD2Html.com $153+ per page
xhtmlized.com $249+ per page

One important thing to note is that you (and these shops) can probably churn these things out pretty quickly if all you're doing is one page. The value-add here is more for projects that have multiple pages with various differences in their layouts or maybe even complex layouts. Note: We did not get into details with these shops to know if they would charge more for complex layouts.

2. The second thing we did to resolve the issue was contacting Guru to see about getting what's left of our escrow money back. The idea was to take the unspent budget and apply it to one of the shops above to finish the project or to get as close to it as possible.

Guru offered to mediate the issue and also contacted the designer to let him know of the refund request. If the professional did not respond with 5 business days, we would get the money back. Guess what? Within hours, the designer came back, responded to our inquiries and provided some sample pages for us to review.

Fancy that...

As it turns out, nothing bad had happened to the designer but he has been avoiding us due to lack of progress. Again, lack of progress was not what I was concerned about; lack of communication was. I had to explain that concept to the designer again but hopefully he'll get it this time.

Partnership, Ownership and the Whole Pie Thing...

We're still scouring the web and networking events looking for awesome entrepreneurs to join our startup. As we're checking out various areas on the web and seeing what other people are writing and asking about, there seems to be a common theme among the newbies which is: how much equity or options should I give away to attract raw talent?

Well, I'm sure the answer differs for everyone, every industry and especially for people who think their ideas MAKE the business and everything else is secondary. However, my experience has taught me that it's much better to share. Think about it... would you rather have a 40% stake in a King Monster sized Twix or would you rather have a complete piece of a fun size Twix? If you opted for 100% of the smaller piece, you are definitely not seeing the BIGGER picture.

So what is a fair split in equity? 33% across the board would be fair on paper for a three person company, but that seems a bit too simple and well... not fair in practice. I'm not sure if there is a magic formula for this question but I can tell you what we're doing.

My original plan and the one we're using for now is 40% (me) ideas / 30% developer / 30% marketing. This split is of course, pre-funding and pre-slicing the pie for other roles in the company. My thinking is, the business would not exist without the idea, at the same time, without programming and without marketing, the business would also not exist. So because I'm in need of all three key positions to sustain the project, I'm happy to give away large pieces of the pie (or Twix) for those that would work towards the shared vision.

However, ownership percentage aside, the above split is also how I envision the work to be split. Many, MANY startups focus on 98% programming and nothing else. I've been there, it doesn't work. You can't sit in a bubble and code all day and expect your product to meet some demand and suddenly gain interest if you never get any feedback or market it. We all should know by now: If you build it, they won't come unless they have a reason to. Therefore, just as I believe my CTO should get 30% of the company for months of hard work, my VP of business development/marketing should also do about 30% of the overall work and get 30% of the equity.

In the end, hopefully all the hours will add up and something nice, possibly a monster Twix will await us on the flip side.

Speaking of marketing and networking... while Randall has been busy hammering away at the technical stuff, I've been out in the field talking to people and avoiding sitting in front of a computer. Though I must admit, after just a couple of weeks of these events, I'm a bit networked out...

Wednesday night was an AiMA meeting where I met some marketers and learned about Business Lead Gen. (Great stuff!)

Tonight was the Atlanta Deck Party which was also a pretty cool networking event. Surprisingly, the crowd was a lot older than I thought since I expected half to be GaTech students.

I did make Randall come out for this one cause I figured it's probably more his crowd than mine. Also, I see a common theme between all my programmer friends which is: they don't network enough. In any case, it's great to see such a huge turnout for the Atlanta area... Maybe I don't have to move to Silicon Valley for awhile after all!

TechJournal Deck Party

http://www.techjournalsouth.com/deckparty/atlanta.php

Well, it was my first face to face tonight with our adoring public. Wei and I met at the TechJournal Deck Party at the ATDC (atdc.org) at Georgia Tech this evening to network with some like minded entrepreneurial individuals. There were a few note worthy people like Lance Weatherby who works at the ATDC and Alan Pinstein, another web entrepreneur. I even got to chat with some Peak 10 girls who have some nice solutions up in Norcross if Wei and I decide to go with the CoLo. There were deffinatly some VC people there, a lot of developers, some marketing people sprinkled in and some students who showed up as well (perhaps for the Bass and Stella Artois). All in all, it was a great learning experience and I look forward to speaking with some of my contacts again.

Wei, Mike Schinkel and I were discussing though, that it's hard at a meeting like this that has so many people who might not actually be anything we need. And when you spend a lot of time chit-chatting and find out 10 minutes later that, though they are an interesting person, they offer nothing to Wei and My venture. If nothing else, it's nice to hone the people skills and it's a good way to teach yourself to go up to complete stranger and talk to them.

Top 4 Ways to DESTROY a Business Relationship

Okay... so it seems like we've hit our first official hiccup in this project. In the past, I can at least attribute the screw up or misunderstanding to one thing or another; this time I am completely baffled. Our designer, the one who delivered great layouts (that I will post about soon), the one who turned those layouts into compliant HTML, the one who has AMAZED us with his creativity... has now gone MIA for the last 5 days. The weird thing is, the only thing left to deliver from our short and sweet project is the CSS code and the only thing we're asking for are status updates. In theory, this should be the easiest portion of the project since there is quick way to determine from the code what's right and wrong.

I really don't get it. I thought he would finish on time, we would pay him, life would be great and down the road I would refer him other business. The designer has been very impressive thus far with his creativity but more recently became a pain to manage as the project heads towards the end. Where did the communication break down? I'm not really sure... My guess is maybe he's hit a bump in the development and are now avoiding us. Either way, if we don't get what we need soon, we will have to look elsewhere, which will suck for everyone involved.

For those of you running your own freelance gigs or running your company, the following are the top 4 ways to DESTROY a working relationship (from the perspective of your customers.)

1. Over promise, under deliver. (Timeliness) I've actually had a few projects I outsourced in the past that have come back perfect to spec and gave me exactly (or more than) what I wanted. What separated those would-be perfect feedback from the average ones I gave were the false expectations set by the bidder when the project was posted. Now, I understand in order to bid for the project, you may need to make your bid more attractive; however, over promising and under delivering will leave a sour taste in your client's mouth no matter how creative or technical you are. As it stands, I've already set myself up and padded the delivery date by 2 or 3 times the desired date to meet my own expectation. However, if you tell me you can meet a certain date and then miss it; that's just really poor business. If the technologists can be more honest about these due dates and/or services that are provided, the world would be a better place.

2. Communication, or lack there of... This is probably by far my biggest pet peeve when it comes to working remotely with a virtual team. If nothing else, communication is the KEY thing companies NEED to keep wide open and free flowing; especially when working remotely. (See in the picture above how Guru.com has ratings available for Communication on both sides of the gig? It is THAT important!) Why do you think there are so many tools out there that focuses on improving communication? Phones, email, cell phones, SMS, AIM, Skype, twitter, iChat, G-talk, video conferencing, so on and so on. Your customers want demand information; in the absence of information, they'll want enforce control. No one likes to work with someone watching over their shoulder. However, if you give your customers the cold shoulder and are unresponsive to their inquiries, then that is the environment you are creating for yourself.

3. Professionalism. Now I'll admit, I've worked with some amazing college students and even more amazing high school kids. The talent out there that gets computer programming and the whole "dot com" businesses are plenty. What makes you better than them or vice versa? Simple, professionalism. One would assume a freelancer would have more professionalism than a kid or that someone who runs a business would have more professionalism over a part-time freelancer. Are they right? No, not always, but the impression of professionalism helps when you want to win clients.

I remember sending some RFP's (request for proposals) awhile back and getting a few well written responses back. No, not all of them were good, but that's beside the point. During the same RFP process, I also remember this one guy who didn't really read the requirements but wrote back anyway giving me his standard copy-and-paste pitch. I told him "No thanks. You simply don't meet the level of service we're used to dealing with." Once he got my email and email address, he then proceeded to contact me via G-talk to try to close the deal. As if that wasn't annoying enough, he didn't even pay attention during the chat!!! Seriously? You're going to contact me after getting rejected, start a conversation then make ME wait for a chat response while you get up to get an apple or whatever the @#$@! you're doing? I'd honestly be surprised if that guy ever got any business from those methods.

P.S. - No matter how cool you think you are, don't IM me until we've established a working relationship; that is just not cool.

4. Technical Expertise For small projects that doesn't have the luxury of a large budget and/or development research time, please don't BID on it if you don't know how to do it. Bidding for the sake of bidding is stupid and it will lead to more bad than good especially if you're a small business starting up. If you don't have the technical expertise on staff, let the opportunity go to someone else who does. Ultimately, you want clients who require technology you're comfortable with and in turn, will refer you to other people knowing you are a pro at what you do. If you are new to something and don't have a great grasp of it yet, don't waste both of our time. What will end up happening is you will mess it up, then probably violate a few of the other points mentioned above due to the lack of technical expertise which will lead you to shame, anxiety (for both parties), and a bad rep for your business.

On the flip side, if you work on things you already know intimately, you'll be able to enjoy referrals from your other customers who also love your work. Isn't that what you ultimately want? ...To be able to work on your business and your core skills instead of spending day and night attracting new customers? Finding new clients is hard work and it's costly!!!

Think about it and don't make the above mistakes.

edit: Are any of your xhtml gurus or can you refer us to those who can convert design to compliant code for cheap in case our design is really MIA?

Introduce Us!

Do you like this blog? Does it inspire you?

As we start this venture to start a dot com business, we are also looking to network with other like-minded people. If you feel that we are worthy of being introduced to other entrepreneurs, please tell someone about us; or better yet, write about us on your blog!

No, we're not looking for a free link-back or looking to make money off of this blog. (no ads!) However, we would love to meet other people who are on the same journey as us and maybe help each other out as things progress.

Thanks!

GoDaddy Promo Codes

This is just a reminder that if you are buying domain names from GoDaddy (like me), that there are promo codes out there to help save you from the slow but increasing prices that GoDaddy has been charging year over year.

Remember $6.95 .com domain names? Yeah, I wish I still do too. However, if you're buying one domain or a block of domains, check out the GoDaddy promo codes and save yourself some change. Your future lawyers are calling dibs on that money.

The Amazon Startup Challenge

There is only about a week left or so in the Amazon Startup Challenge. For our 3 readers who haven't heard of it, I figured I'd give you a heads up if you may be remotely interested in it.

Basically, if you are planning on building a service that can utilize a number of Amazon services including storage, cloud computing, payments, queuing, etc. You should submit your idea to see if you can get some free money out of the deal.

We will be entering our idea into the contest but since we are only planning on using S3 and none of the other stuff, I doubt we'll get selected. For some reason, I have a hunch that the overall goal is to allow Amazon to present a case study where they can showcase how the combination of Amazon Web Services helped some startup with a crazy setup launch online with low startup costs. Unfortunately for them, my goal isn't to design a business around Amazon, as sexy as that sounds.

Anyway, good luck if you're hopping on the train. Entries are due on October 28.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=377634011

What a Week...

I sold my soul to Power Point this week. No, I didn't come up with a short elevator pitch for the business or a cute 10 slide presentation about our 3 to 5 year projections. This week (and this past month), I've been working on a number of presentations for work (day job) and everything finally ended today with my last 2 presentations that lasted for 3.5 hours.

I feel completely drained.

So what went on this week besides power points? Well, now that Randall's handling the technical part, freeing me up to be a nerdy social butterfly, I've been trying to meet all the right people around Atlanta to get my idea off the ground.

The week started with lunch with my former boss who happens to be an Emory grad and a huge proponent of entrepreneurship for the Atlanta area. I invited him to lunch to get some insights into starting up and opinions on my idea. After all, as realistic I think I am, I'm sure I'm still in some kind of tunnel vision. A few tid bits came out of lunch which were great advice.

1. The cheapest way to get free legal advice from a lawyer is to take them out to lunch.

2. Getting some key people in the industry behind your product as advisers will greatly enhance your credibility especially if you're a first time entrepreneur.

Both seem so simple yet one of them I definitely did not think about.

He also raised another good question to me which actually required a bit of thought. How far do we actually want to take this venture? Despite all the videos we were taunting earlier last month, are we going to be happy starting this up and have it make $20k residual income on the side or do we want to get some venture money and take it mainstream? (Randall and I agreed, we're going mainstream. "Go BIG or go home!")

On Wednesday after work, I decided to go check out an entrepreneurial event sponsored by Emory. The great news is you don't have to be affiliated with Emory to go though I'm sure for networking purposes, that would've helped. While I was there, my old boss who helped with the event introduced me to a guy from Manheim, who spoke to me a little bit about our project. I must say, I was not pleased with my questions since 1. I didn't know what Manheim did and 2. I was not prepared to ask competitor questions. Either way, I'm sure I sounded pretty stupid asking the most basic questions that you could have answered from just searching the web. I did learn one interesting fact that I didn't know from previous research: AutoTrader also started off with a free to list version for consumers and eventually got to where they are today after finding out what was profitable vs. what wasn't.

The event at Emory was pretty cool. Amongst some cool (but awkward) entrepreneurs, I got to meet Sean Belnick and hear him speak about how he started his business. If nothing else, I wish I would have had some help starting up... I think that would have made a huge difference.

Thursday night was a bit of a different animal. I skipped a Google Oktoberfest party to go to another networking event. Instead of getting advice this time, I was dishing it. The Atlanta Entrepreneur Meetup group had another meeting and the topic this month was SEM (search engine marketing). Well, guess what? I do SEM as my day job and I'm somewhat qualified to give advice! Luckily I knew a bit more than the average bear and was honored with one of the panelist seats giving advice about what I do. The thing is, I actually learned a lot from the other panelists as well; overall, a great experience.

SEM is actually something I'll write about here in a few months; it's just so far away at this point for this project and there's definitely no need to put the cart before the horse. However, from meeting some of the other entrepreneurs last night who told me what they knew, I would say this is definitely an important part of a startup's success that you should learn with care. Hopefully the people I met last night will keep in touch; some of them are definitely further ahead than we are in terms of where they are in their business so it'd be great to bounce ideas.

Just Some Stats for You Crazy Kidz...

So... autos is a $380 billion dollar industry you say? (advertising makes up for $31 billion dollars with $2.8 billion for online) Well, advertising aside, these were the number of cars sold in the last three years which accounts for all sorts of other $$$.

2004 – 7,505,932 cars

2005 – 16,912,553 cars

2006 – 16,559,970 cars

edit: is it bad that I did my research on the web in the exact same way that teachers are teaching kids not to?

Start-up Chores: Getting a Reliable, Scalable Web Host

Our last chores post gained some unexpected assistance getting us into the Grand Central beta. Thanks Ginene for sending us the invites! We will think of you every time we get a call that forwards straight to the voice mail. =)

Okay... so we're now in month 2, starting month 3 of the project. One of the things that should be easy but for our somewhat unique situation isn't, is web hosting.

I've done a few ventures before where hosting was a cinch! We pick a random web host, ran with it for awhile and when the time and/or traffic came to a point where moving was necessary, we simply packed up our files and DB and moved. Having setup both on shared hosting and dedicated hosting, I really, REALLY can not recommend shared hosting. If you're looking to code a brochure site or having a blog on your own domain, that would probably work great for you. The price is great and using admin software makes setup a breeze. However, if you are starting a serious business, it's hard to justify all the risks that come with shared hosting.

- If someone writes inefficient code on your server, WHAM! Your service can slow to a crawl or worse, go down.

- If someone SPAMs from your server, your site/IP could potentially get blacklisted if sharing the same IP. On another note, if you don't have your own unique IP for your mail server, chances are you can't even send mass mail to a majority of your customers.

- If someone on your server gets the DIGG effect, you too may suffer as a result.

- If you need to install something that isn't already provisioned on the server, depending on who you're with you may get a yay or nay; which could severely affect your services.

Basically all of the above are things I don't want to worry about when I should be focusing on growing the business. I've actually hopped about 10 hosting providers in a span of 6 months before so I do have some experience in this field.

"If you are serious about running a marathon, get the right shoes."

So what's so special with what we're doing that this is now a topic for discussion? Well, being that we're an autos website, we do plan on having a huge inventory of cars on the site some day. (That some day being sooner than later.) If you think about it... storing multiple images for hundreds, thousands, millions of cars can take up quite a bit of space. While we were playing around with some preliminary numbers yesterday during our meeting, we worked it out to about 300 gigs worth of thumbnails and about a terabyte worth of full sized images. That's pretty funny because I think all the actual code for the site will probably be about two megs or less. (Maybe it's easier if we just ran a porn site.)

So when we're talking about these kinds of storage numbers... Uh... first off, no company I know offers a terabyte of storage on one drive on one dedicated server. The reason I'm even using that criteria is because anything beyond one drive will require special coding that I don't understand. Anything beyond one server will probably drain our wallets faster than Paris can shop in 3 minutes. So for our sake, I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible. (On another note, if you have the money, you can opt for NAS storage.)

So what to do? What to do?

Well, there's been a lot of talk about Amazon's amazing, web 2.0, startup friendly web services that can help businesses scale from zero to infinity and beyond in terms of storage, processing power and etc. The Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Solution) is of particular interest to me because of its capacity and the fact the data is saved redundantly. If we use it, we *may* save thousands a month by not buying three dedicated servers to start to anticipate traffic. Then again, if they are ever to change their pricing again, we may potentially be screwed.

In terms of raw processing power, Amazon also offers the EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud) service. Like asp.net, elastic computing is beyond my understanding... especially since neither EC2 or S3 solution provides a simple way to setup a domain, emails and databases. I guess if we ever need to pull extended queries, maybe we can make use of EC2 separately from our servers but right now it's in beta and it's still a bit scary for me to commit to using the service.

So what else is out there? Well, The Planet, Rackspace, ServerBeach all offer great dedicated hosting with great support, but if we want to do one or two machine and do it right, we would most likely need RAID's, backups, etc. all of which will eat into our bottom line. Hrmm, still no good.

During my research, a guy had also recommended hosting in a VPS like environment, except on a Grid. A grid? Grid computing - marketed to me as a elastic computing cloud but spread across different machines with true IP's and the ability to setup databases w/o it disappearing into thin air if the server crashes. It sounds great and all, but is this really just a souped up shared hosting? Upon further research, it doesn't appear that way, though, until (IF) we use it, I'm really not sure if it will provide all that much more benefits than just having a few dedicated servers.

That's where we are for now... if any one has any hosting hookups or recommendations, we would love to hear from you. The goal of course, is to launch the business and not get stuck in an infinite loop trying to figure out how to change our code to work with various hosting environments. It'd be nice if there's a hosting environment that'll change to work with our code.