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!