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.