The Yin Yang of Techie Start Ups
In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang is used to describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn... Yin yang are complementary opposites within a greater whole. Everything has both yin and yang aspects,.. constantly interacting, never existing in absolute stasis.
-- Yin and yang - Wikipedia
Background
We've reached our techie milestone. We have quality code running in the Google AppEngine clouds. We've validated our concept with as many people that will listen to us. We're at the point now where we have to validate with the market. We need users. More specifically, we need Consumers and we need Retailers. We need marketing & we need public relations (PR).
Challenge
So while the real techie - Dom Derrien, can breath a little easier, the other - me, with my techie background, has to go out and market the crap out of Twetailer. But, I'm not really a marketing kind of guy. While I absolutely love demoing and presenting and evangelizing, I'm not particularly strong at finding the right people to get in front of. So, I need to find myself a marketing guru. But being an ultra-light start up (read "living of my wife and kids"), I need to find a marketing guru - preferably one shooting for the social networking sphere, who's willing to drink the Kool-Aid. Fortunately, Marc Bienstock likes Kool-Aid.
Lesson Learned
Twetailer was conceived and originally targeted for techies like ourselves - cube dwellers. Which is fine, since we never planned on using the line "If only 1% of China...". So demoing to techies was never a real problem, despite some minor usability issues. But in order to get to the next level, we had to demo to prospective partners, prospective CEOs, prospective Consumers and prospective Retailers. And the further away we got from the cube dwellers, the greater the usability issue became for those higher up in the org chart - tower dwellers. Thankfully, everyone got the true value of Twetailer's service: "Brokering Consumer Demand with local Retailers' available Supply - via simple messages, for f(r)ee, or, Reverse Retailing". But even our own accountant and lawyer turned on us with comments like "Can't I just have one button to press? I'm not very comfortable with all this texting stuff. Hey, I have a great idea! How about an app for my Blackberry?". Not bad for tower-dwellers, eh? 
So now I think I understand. While I originally intended to service techie consumers, I needed non-techies to help me get that service to them. In other words, my techie solution had a non-techie dependency.
Time to Pivot
It pays to get out of the basement. Last April, I attended the Montreal venue for the Startup Lessons Learned Conference where among other gems, I was introduced to what Steve Blank calls Customer Development process and Eric Ries calls the The Pivot:
“Pivoting” is when you change a fundamental part of the business model. It can be as simple as recognizing that your product was priced incorrectly. It can be more complex if you find your target customer or users need to change or the feature set is wrong or you need to “repackage” a monolithic product into a family of products or you chose the wrong sales channel or your customer acquisition programs were ineffective.
Modified Business Model
Originally, the fee plan was to charge both Consumer & Retailer a transaction fee similar to that of Amazon Flexible Payments Service fees (about 3%). But after speaking to several people, it became clear we couldn't build a sustainable business like that. The common thought was the best idea is to solve a real business problem and charge money for it. So we're going to charge a monthly subscription fee for registered Retailers. And because Marc felt Twetailer was too generalized and people needed a sense of urgency to use it, we've also introduced a Reseller distribution channel with our first one being targeted towards golfers & golf courses. (Congrats to Marc for being our first Reseller!) And to address usability issues, we're offering a Managed Service for those non-techie Retailers out there.
Modified Development Roadmap
As much as I didn't want to go down this route until there was actual income to pay for it, I seem to be in a Catch 22: If we don't build it, they won't come. If they don't come, then I can't afford to build it. So we re-prioritized some things & built it - an Android app targeted for the Golfer (Consumer) wanting to find a local Golf Course (Retailer). And since Twetailer is vertical agnostic, we're making the app open source so other's out there may be encouraged to built their own vertical, or, reseller market using our open application programming interface (API). Oh and by the way, for those of you like my good buddy Rick Boretsky who think only techies have Android mobile devices, I encourage you to take a look a the First quarter 2010 information from The NPD Group's Mobile Phone Track which reveals a shift in the smartphone market, as Android OS edged out Apple's OS for the number-two position behind RIM.
Golf Pivot Videos
Please take a look at our pivot trilogy (less than 10 minutes) and let me know your thoughts. The first is intended to address our target audience with the second identifying their pain and the third illustrating our solution (for non-techies and techies alike).
Reflection
What do you think? Am I setting a bad precedence? Am I clouding my inability to market/sell my start up by throwing more code, time & energy at the problem, as opposed to, finding/solving the root-cause? Or, do you think this is a step in the right direction?
Kool-Aid Being Served Here
#1You do not get credit before you do the work
-- Jason Calacanis, TWiST #47 with Niel Robertson (0:11:17)
If you've never heard of Jason Calacanis, then you owe it to yourself to check him out on one of his many ThisWeekIn episodes. I had the privaledge to demo to him once & he's a character & a half! This past week he went after Generation Y - well 80% of them. And to be quite honest, I agree with him. Check out my own experience - My First Demo Pitch. Are All Retail Sales Associates Like This?
Living the Ultra Light Startup Life
Having lived and died the start up life during the dot com days and after reading everything on the right sidebar under Pivotal Reading, I'm now a proud ultra light startup entrepreneur. (See What are the characteristics of an Ultra Light Startup?.) With Guy Kawasaki's autographed copies of Reality Check & The Art of the Start tucked under my pillow at night, I have no trouble admitting to living off my faithful wife, dipping into my two beautiful children's savings accounts the odd time and yes, there is a line of credit. So, if this was your reality, how would you go about soliciting help starting your startup?
Drinking the Kool-Aid
Work-For-Attribution. That's what I called it back in my post The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2 and that's what's in my Copyright Assignment Agreement. At least that's the politically correct way of putting it. But lately, I just refer to it as Drinking the Kool-Aid.
The Pitch
Here's my scoop
- I have no money.
- I'm living off the kindness of my wife & kids.
- I've done the startup thing & I've done it all wrong. Just Read Guy Kawasaki's books for more examples.
- I understand the value of lawyers & accountants, so they get paid first and that comes out of my line of credit.
- If I understand my accountant - Sheldon Miller, correctly; banks just want the interest on your line of credit. VCs' have a different kind of interest.
- If I understand my lawyer - François Senécal, correctly; pay for what's in the critical path to getting your product to market. Don't pay for things like; "but what if one day Google buys this thing for a gazillion dollars?".
- If I understand Guy Kawasaki correctly, paying for things that may never happen simply reduces the likelyhood they will.
Here's what I believe
- I believe there's a certain group of people in the world that love what they do but not necessarily where they're doing.
- I believe there's a certain group of people in the world that desperately want and can do more than what they're do now.
- I believe these people just need an opportunity.
If you're one of these people, then here's what I'm offering you
- I'm offering you a chance to build your own micro startup doing things exactly the way you want them done.
- I'm offering you a chance to go beyond resumés and looking backwards when all you want to do is look to the future.
- I'm offering you a canvas, silly putty, a stage for to show the world what makes you so hot.
Here's the Risk
- You have to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
- You have to sign a Copyright Assignment Agreement. Typically, when you sign one of these with your employer, you agree to give them total ownership of your work & they agree to financially compensate you for it. In my case, you agree to give me (Milstein & Associates Inc.) total ownership of your work & I agree to fully attribute your contribution. You get no money, no shares, no promises of anything beyond public attribution. Oddly enough, it's exactly as Jason said in above episode.
Here's the Reward
- If one day Google wants to offer a gazillion dollars, one of the first questions they may ask is; "Is the Intellectual Property locked down my Milstein & Associates Inc.". The answer is "Yes".
- If one day Google wants to offer a gazillion dollars, one of the following questions they may ask is; "Is the team that contributed that coveted Intellectual Property locked down my Milstein & Associates Inc.". The answer is "No". At that point, my guess is that Google will then determine the value of locking down these contributors.
Bottom Line
In order for my startup to succeed, I can't afford to chance that maybe you'll contribute enough for Google to offer that gazillion dollars. In order for you to truly succeed, you can't afford to give up an opportunity like this. Besides, who would you rather assess your true value? Me - a guy living off his wife, kids & a line of credit, or, Google? Basically, all I'm offering you is a chance to sit at the table. But first, you have to set it & fill the glasses with Kool-Aid. Do you have a better offer from someone else?
Reflection
So far three people have drank the Kool-Aid & I'm hoping one, or, two more will belly up to the table in the coming weeks. Take a look at Dom Derrien's blog and let me know if you still think, in the worst case scenario, that he's not seeing some form of immediate returns on his investment.
Next Up
Thanks to TWiST #46 with David Heinemeier Hansson, I just ordered Rework
What To Do When Your Kids Are More Connected Than You Are and Your First Social Safety Net
How to turn an unknown social network of yours into your kids safety net and maybe even help you start connecting too.
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
-- Bill Gates
Geniuses at Work: Gates watches his friend and future Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen typing on a teletype terminal at the Lakeside School in Seattle in 1968. Gates was 13 when he entered the exclusive prep school, which was around the time this photo was taken.
Background
I have two start-up projects underway. The first, Twetailer was inspired by one of those "OMG! Wouldn't it be great if you could just yada yada yada?" moments. The second, http://edu.cyn.in, was not. No edu, was created out of my 11-year old daughter Sara's frustration with her school's computer curriculum. Complaints like: "Why do I care if something is bold?", or, "Insert a column? When am I ever going to need that when I grow up?". Yikes! Wouldn't it be great if Sara could actually use technology for something she cared about?
You can't always get what you want
- Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones
But Sara also shared the frustration she felt when some of her friends - who are on Facebook, kept urging others to join up, even though they know the minimun age is 14. Similarly for those with MSN, or, gmail accounts. And while I love seeing kids adopt technology, there are valid reasons why these services have age requirements. So, as a parent, what do you do? Do you stick to the rules & tell them to wait until they're old enough? Do you let them waste their effortless ability to embrace these social technologies and stick to making things bold & inserting colums?
But if you try sometimes, you get what you need
- Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones
So again, as a parent, how do we monitor our kids' activities on the Net? Google it. Here's Dr. Phil.com - Advice - Monitor Your Child's Cell Phone and Internet Activity. There are lots of sites offering all kinds of advice. But mostly all of them assume one thing - that you are as tech savy as your kids. And let's face it, kids have a lot more time & friends to show them how than most parents do.
But what if you were able to trust another parent to monitor your kid's activities for you? Like when you let your little one go on a playdate to a friend's house, or, they're invited to the movies. If you trust the friend's parents then you let them go.
Perhaps your first digital social safety net
edu started out to be a way for Sara & her Grade 6 classmates to socialize in a secured and monitored Internet playground. A place where they could experience the power of blogs, wikis, discussions, audio, video, image sharing, etc. while learning the new minimun skills sets required in today's digital and globally distributed workplace. Pretty soon, edu will be made available for the rest of her school and any other school interested under the following conditions:
- The student has to be attending an educational institution registered with edu
- There must be at least one parent/guardian, teacher/faculty member monitoring that student's grade.
In Sara's case, I monitored her grade. Did that mean all the other parents trusted me (and edu with their children's related activities? Not necesarly. It turns out, most didn't have a choice. Over the course of the project, I spoke with a few parents and they simply felt they didn't have the skill sets to monitor. Even after informing them its just a matter of reading their email, they still felt uncomfortable with this "type of stuff", but looked forward to watching how their kids used it.
Do the math
So in essence, condition #2 above, became those parents' new social safety net. All they needed was one adult out of twenty students, to feel comfortable enough to watch over their child in their new digital playground. Is this any different than letting your child go to the movies, or, a school field trip with a parent like that?
My parents always told me: "All we want is for you to have more opportunities than we did growing up." And they certainly succeeded. As a parent in today's digital world, it would be a shame not to continue the tradition. edu gives those who aren't as connected as their kids the opportunity to do just that.
Reflection
What are your thoughts abouts giving your kids access to things like Facebook, MSN, Friendfeed, MySpace, Twitter, Google Talk, AIM, Bebo, Blogger, buzzup, Delicious, digg, faves, Gmail, Mister Wong, Reddit, Stumbleupon, twine, WordPress and Yahoo? Do you have the skills to monitor their activities across all these sites? What percent of parents do you think can? Where do you fit in this Study: Ages of social network users | Royal Pingdom?
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My First Pitch to More Than Person Over the Age of 12. What a rush!
In fine company last night among QuantumWhisper, SoleiraSun, SolidWild at Montreal NEWTECH's Demo Night.
Just demo!
-- Jason Calacanis, TechCrunch50 2009 Twetailer semi-finalist demo.
In 140 characters, or, less
Twetailer: Brokering Consumer Demand with local Retailers' available Supply - via tweets, for f(r)ee, or, Reverse Retailing.
Rehearsed version
Live version
Last night I presented the slides & recordings as above but did the audio part live. Technically, I had 10 minutes - 5 for demo & 5 for Q&A. I actually consumed 7 minutes, leaving on 3 for Q&A.
Here's the Q&A (paraphrased):
Q. Do you have any retailers signed up?
A. That's the stage we're at right now. We actually have one, my Volkswagen dealer Volkswagen Des Sources. GregVW thinks its great for used cars!
Q. Is it fully functional?
A. Yes! The recorded demo part was just to make sure we didn't run into any timing issues. We also weren't sure about Internet access here - which as it turns out, there's none. But Yes, it's fully functional. You can even do you own demo by sending "d twetailer what-are-you-buying #demo" and a robot will play the Sales Associate role. If you want, try sending "d twetailer used vw 2010 #demo" and Greg may even play along too.
Big Thanks!
Many thanks to Montreal NewTech, Felipe Coimbra for all his time, twitter apps & organization savy and the sponsors Bolidea and 63 Squares - Web Technologies and Marketing Collective.
See you at the NewTech Series: Pitch, Thu 2010-04-15 6pm.
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Update on pitching social software to Sara’s elementary school
Sara's teacher - Mr. N. was kind enough to schedule 90 minutes last Friday afternoon for me to pitch social software to her Grade 6 class.
No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
-- Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke
My original intent was to play a couple of music videos I mashed-up to see how familiar the students already were with services like Facebook & MSN. Unfortunately, as I plugged the external speakers into my 6 year-old Dell laptop, something went pop & then all we heard was nothing but snap & crackle.
I should have known better than try to resolve the situation. Mr. N. jumped right in with a little discussion on the pros & cons of things like Facebook & MSN. But as Sara gave me her "Daddy...?" look, I figured it was time to move on and demo the mini-site I set up the night before.
I started off logged into the site with Sara's credentials & displayed the day's Calendar Event. I toured the bullet items and the Video Gallery - like YouTube, I wanted to show. I clicked on Sara's Profile page to draw the analogy to Facebook. I showed them the Image Gallery with a few pictures Sara took at their last 3-day field trip & mentioned Flickr. I showed them Status messages & Discussions - sort of like MSN, GTalk, Twitter, Facebook, myspace, gmail, hotmail, etc. Then there was the shared Bookmarks like delicious and digg.
In the end, I never needed the videos. For the most part, the kids were very much tuned into the virtues of social software. If anything, they just didn't know that that's what it was called.
For myself, I learned that more than half the kids were already on Facebook & avid MSN users. In fact, the Facebook users were also well aware of the fact they are "ineligible" to register but lied about their birthdays as a work around. MSN doesn't challenge anyone on registration but it's buried somewhere in the Terms & Conditions that a "Child" must have the permission of a parent, or, guardian - which seemed to bother some of the kids on MSN.
For those, not registered with Facebook, many were very quick to say they didn't want to lie about their age - Sara included. In addition, I also found out that some felt the peer pressure to be on Facebook.
So that's what we offered the Grade 6 class. All the social software capabilities they want in the privacy and safety of their own school. I pointed out that at recess time, the school doesn't send them out to the public parks to play. They go out to their gated schoolyard where there's school staff to monitor them. And on some occasions, they get together with other schools to play soccer, or, football. So this was going to be exactly along the same thinking - just virtual.
While I wasn't able to play any videos for the kids, I did cover the material the old fashioned way. I explained to them the deal in the making - described in my previous post The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 4, under "Who's in for a little extra-curricular activity?".
In the end, both Mr. N. & I concluded that there is certainly a desire and need for us to bring social software into the school. In the fact the interest level seemed so high, that Mr. N. offered to integrate the social software activity into his curriculum and even dedicate Friday afternoons for me to mentor the kids - given enough parents grant their permission.
Permission Slip and all the parents/guardians have been directed here to permit, or, not permit their child to participate in the social software activity.
Homage to TechCrunch50 2009, its Organizers and Participants
As a TechCrunch50 2009 Semi-finalist who chose legal services over Demo-Pit costs, I empathized every moment with the presenters and salute all of you.
LBS is just gonna get, sorry Location Based Services, is just going to become more and more important.
-- Dick Costolo, Panelist & Judge http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2169088
with only the bare bones of running code, I submitted our TechCrunch50 2009 application. My contributors (The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2), while suggesting I was being too aggressive, agreed that it's always nice to have Milestones, and agreed to try.
I received an email informing stating:
Congratulations, your company has been selected for a phone and screensharing interview. We were truly overwhelmed to have over 1,000 applications from over 40 countries submit to launch at our event this year, so please feel great about making it to the next round of consideration.
We received an email instructing us to book a demo time and make whatever live demo arrangements necessary &
The duration of your interview will be 15 minutes. Please plan to demo your product for 8 minutes (show the product, we have the background information in your application) and use the remaining 7 minutes for Q&A.
As a reminder, DO NOT comment about your interview status publicly (including social media such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc.) Unfortunately, we’ve had to eliminate 2 companies to date from consideration who posted about their status with the conference. We don’t want to take these steps, but other applicants are certainly looking out for people who do not follow the rules. Please don’t let this be you.
Our twenty minutes of fame. Jason Calacanis logged into the demo a couple of minutes late. I reiterated our assumption that he's seen our background video uploaded with our Application to which he informed us that he only saw our names & that of our start-ups' as he found the demo log in information. Somewhat disappointed, I pushed back reminding him of the previous email. All Jason said was:
Just demo.
And demo we did. Not taking any chances, we had a prerecorded simulated demo of how the system will work end-to-end, followed by a live demo of its current development state. Jason made a few observations. Fortunately for us, we had collaborated for weeks on an entire internal wiki pages titled -"Pitch FAQ", which just happened to provide fuel for my answers. And that was it. twenty minutes does not last long. Jason thanked us for taking time out of our Sunday evening, told us we should hear something in about a week and immediately signed off.
The three of us stayed on the conference call for another hour going over and over those twenty minutes and wondering if we could have done any more and whether Jason got it, or, not. And the truth of the matter is, if we could have done it all over again with hindsight being 20/20, we wouldn't have changed a thing. So we were just going to sit tight and wait for an answer.
Via email:
Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to place your company as a TechCrunch50 finalist. This is certainly not a commentary of your business, technology or team. Many applicant companies have gone on to great success without launching on stage. For our 50 limited slots, we purposely showcase a diversity of technology innovation from different countries, mixing both funded and unfunded businesses. In many cases, our need to curate this content matrix eliminates many outstanding companies from a lead position on stage. We received more than 1,000 total applications— making for many tough decisions.
As one of our semi-finalist companies, we would like to offer you the opportunity to participate in our DemoPit. Over the last two years, the TC50 DemoPit has become one of the main assets of the TechCrunch50 Conference. It enables another 100 companies (50/day) the chance to showcase their technology to conference attendees. And the favorite "Audience Choice" from our DemoPit wins the last presentation slot on stage, along with the right to win the $50,000 best in show award provided by the TC50 organizers. The DemoPit wildcard is our way of acknowledging that our judging is subjective and that there are many more outstanding companies in our West Hall than we can fit on stage.
This year, we will be selecting two DemoPit companies to present on stage, one from each Monday and Tuesday. So your odds have doubled for a shot to still get on stage.
For a while I considered dipping further into my line of credit and "invest" in the DemoPit and associated travel expenses. But after conferring with my Contributors, it seemed the responsible thing to do was move the project to the next level by investing further in legal services. And that's what I did.
I replied to Peter of TechCrunch my thanks for the opportunity but simply couldn't afford it. But at the same time, in the interest of outside-in software development, I asked if we could possibly get any feedback to help us.
Email to Peter at TechCrunch
Hi Peter,
Here's a thought...
TechCrunch should publish an index of the semi-finalists with their 140 character description & video (link to youtube if you prefer) in exchange for them not going public until after the site is published at TechCrunch50.
Ideally, you would let your community rate & comment on their favorites. That would be a win-win for everyone:
You're still the mecca for launching start-ups
You're still The Sensitive One when it comes to non-funded (some call it ultra-light) start-ups - you're almost angelic
We get exposure & hopefully feedback that can be used in subsequent outside-in development
My one-liner is: [Still a secret] & you could use the 5-minute video that's uploaded from my Application, or, I can repost it somewhere for you.Just a thought
Regards,
Steven
Peter's reply:
Steven, I’ll pass this along as something to consider for future years. Thank you.
My reply:
Peter, in the meantime, is there any feedback you can possibly share with us to add even more tremendous value to our TechCrunch50 experience?
Peter's reply:
Steven, I spoke with your reviewer, Jason, who told me “I thought they were off to a really great start and that [still a secret] is a real challenge and opportunity. However, their product was not as far along as the top 50 we are selecting this year. I have no doubt they will get to the promised land with a little more time and effort.”
My reply:
Peter, you just made me very
I haven't watched all of the presentations yet, but enough to honestly say that my heart and nerves went out to everyone presenting. While all of the panelists I saw offered practical and useful feedback, I did feel that some of them were hell bent on not giving any kudos. Yet despite the pressure, I thought the demos were great and the presenters ability and preparedness to answer the panel's questions were even greater.
I can only imagine the organizational nightmare it must been to pull off this event with such class - not to mention the temperaments required in dealing with start-up to guru egos. I thank you Peter and Jason for all your efforts, patience and inspiration. I look forward to one day meeting you in the Promised Land.
Once the legal work is complete we'll start expanding our start-up Community to prepare for a limited private release. In the meantime, I'm going to try to bring in some income by seeding the social software seeds at my Sara's elementary school.
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 3
Using social software to avoid building something that someone - other than me, thinks is awesome.
Once you have the community, let them tell you how to improve your product by exposing your engineers to the cheers and jeers. This type of feedback is one of the greatest values of a community.
idea - who
In the spirit of openness, I just want to state that this post is a plug for the wonderful folks at Cynapse and their awesome and even at times inspiring, social software platform - cyn.in.
The underlying theory behind outside-in software is that to create successful software, you must have a clear understanding of the goals and motivations of your stakeholders. Your ultimate goal is to produce software that is highly consumable and meets/exceeds the needs of your client.
- Wikipedia based on Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-based Products, Carl Kessler & John Sweitzer
Now Guy, Carl & John can't all be wrong - developing software solutions in an ivory tower is no longer an option. As any external & internal stakeholder will tell you, you need feedback - especially in the world of global development & delivery (GDD). So how do you connect all these people from all over, with different skill-sets, different perspectives and most importantly different roles and rights? For example;
As a Developer (Internal Stakeholder), I would like to see Customers' (External Stakeholders), comments on how they interact with the system, so I can better understand what value they're trying to achieve.
As a Founder (Internal Stakeholder), I would like to collaborate with other Founders on our financial planning by sharing discussions, files and bookmarks, so we can communicate in a more timely and efficient manner than email.
Both of these scenarios involve the sharing and disseminating of information. However, not necessarily across Developers, Customers and Founders.
Having software development & start-up in my blood, I was thrilled to see the state of cyn.in. What the solution lacks in features, as compared to some of the competition, it makes up for in design, ease-of-use, quality and support.
I think the business model is great - its got something for everyone. For the techies, the open source model is a great way to use & potentially contribute to the code. For the folks looking for a free open source solution to experiment with, the VMware image provides the cheapest simplest in-house solution. And for those who want to avoid any hardware/software/networking issues and assure themselves of timely & helpful support, then the Software as a Service (SaaS) offering is the route to go.
For now, the one weakness is lack of documentation and knowledge base contents.
Since I consider myself a cyn.in early adopter, I hope to contribute to the requirements process - with my own spin of course In addition, I'll be blogging / tweeting about how we compliment certain features in their infancy with other solutions to achieve our desired results. Why am I doing this? Well, in the interest of transparency, I get a preferred SaaS deal for helping out and I better position myself as a potential reseller & service provider. However, most importantly, I actually do enjoy this stuff. And I will especially enjoy myself if I can contribute in a meaningful way to what I trust will be a distributed software development effort in an outside-in agile environment.
In addition to Enterprise Support, another SaaS benefit is being seamlessly migrated to the latest release - which by the way is as gorgeous as the Adobe AIR desktop client. If you're currently a cyn.in Version 2 user, then moving to Version 3 should be one of your priorities. If you're not, then Version 3 offers every feature you'd expect from a social software platform - minus some functionality. For example, while there are calendar Events, they lack the ability to invite members. Until that's enabled, we supplement cyn.in Events and with Google Calendar. In my opinion, a minor price to pay.
For whatever cyn.in lacks in documentation, they more than make up for it with their Enterprise Support. Despite being timezones away, I can always count on a timely, concise and helpful experience. There's seems to be no question too small, or, bug too big for them to answer in the same courtious manner. And in those special cases when I do come across a missing feature, it's nice to know that my input is used to help contribute to their development process.
A key feature for this start-up community is the ability to control user roles and their permissions. Currently, we use Personas to help us in our development effort. In the near future, we'll be ready to search for actual users to assume their own personnas and help us define and satisfy their needs. When that time arrives, I'll describe our community's site hierarchy and permissions for members to better understand how they fit in.
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2
My Idea's Unhidden Agenda, also known as, Work-For-Attribution, and how I hope it will attract community members and contributors - the Who.
Imagination: Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Leaders create things that didn't exist before. The do this by giving the tribe a vision of something that could happen, but hasn't (yet).
You can't manage without knowledge. You can't lead without imagination.
idea - who
As written in my Part 1, I needed to find a way build on my lessons learned and try my best to avoid repeating any errs of the past. But even more than needing a way to attract members to my new tribe, I needed to find a way to give them an environment where they could go beyond simple contributions. I needed to find a way for them to build their own opportunities, own quests and maybe even their own tribes.
So a little while back, I came up with the following for my collaborators:
How to make this viral
I was also wondering how to make this a community project where we could create the engine and enable/empower other communities to use/build/extend it for purposes we haven't yet considered, or, may simply not be in our domain of expertise. In other words, make it "viral".This is what I've come up with so far
The core engine - to be defined later, is the center of our community. If you've read Seth Godin's Tribes then you already know that every community needs a leader. That would be me - Steven Milstein. And while this is not a democracy, that certainly doesn't mean that I won't hear & listen to the members of this tribe. Now that may sound harsh but, please hear me out - I'm not finished yet.Since you're here reading this, then I'm going to guess that you like the idea, or, appeal of leading - maybe even a tribe of your own. It may not be today, but someday in the foreseeable future. If this is not the case, then I deeply encourage you to give this some thought. Because what I'd like to see is each of us exploiting this opportunity to seed own tribes with this core engine.
Unhidden agendas
What I'd like is for each of us to create an entry here with our Unhidden Agenda. Describe what it is you hope to gain by investing your time, energy, maybe money, in this venture? (Don't tell what you can, or, cannot invest.) You have to be honest & you have to be passionate. Once approved/agreed upon, this Agenda will then represent your social contract to this endeavor. Break your Agenda, break your contract - you're out.I'm not dead certain about this idea & am certainly open to your feedback. But until then, I think this Unhidden Agenda Model will scale & encourage others to not only participate but contribute. And if we truly believe in outside-in agile/scrum software development & we strive to maintain the integrity of the core engine then each of us should be able to fulfill our agenda.
For example
My (Steven's) Unhidden Agenda will elaborate on how I'd like to be the product manager/owner of some leading edge social software product. I'll go on to say how I want to use this endeavor to prove that I can not only be just that but, also have a touch of vision and more importantly, that I deliver. I'd also like to boast about the community/communities I seeded and onboarded to social software.I imagine [Retail IT Guy/Gal] 's entry will focus on their retail domain of expertise & how they would like to cultivate their own tribe.
For [Software Engineer Guy/Gal], I can see them seizing the opportunity to build the core engine in their own technical fashion and then sharing & expanding its APIs with the technical community of this growing social network.
Next steps
As I said earlier, this is not written in stone but I would like to find a way to make this more than three guys who live in Montreal. If we're all somewhat comfortable with this approach, then here's what I see happening next:
1. Work & finalize on our agendas
2. Get to work on building a simple proof-of-concept
3. Start blogging about what we're doing here & post your Unhidden Agenda
4. Find & contribute to your related communities
5. Seek feedback from others & maybe ask a select few join us in our Community
6. Invite some of those to publicly blog their own Unhidden Agenda in the hopes of gaining admittance to this exclusive community - exclusivity matters. (If you believe Seth Godin.)
While I originally sought a lawyer's opinion about the Idea's monetization possibilities, I was immediately told not to proceed without securing my copyright and ownership of "said" Idea. And that's when I had visions of Groundhog Day. To be very clear. I did not then, nor do I now, have any money. I did not then, nor do I now, have the time, nor the resources to expend on fantasies and illusions of gazillion dollar exit strategies. This is my Reality Check. (By the way, if you click on any of the links that lead to Amazon and actually buy the book, then I get something back - although I quite honestly don't even know that that is yet, through their Associates program.)
So as of today's date, this is the best I can offer:
Whatever work you contribute will be considered "work made for hire" and for whatever reason that may not hold up, then the agreement will be considered a "copyright assignment" from you to my company - Milstein & Associates Inc.
Sounds harsh, eh? But, it is what it is. I'll post this digital back of the napkin version in the Idea's community site so folks can sign up - at least in the digital sense.
Now in lieu of any payment, what I hope to do - subject to lawyer approval, is offer an Attribution for your contributions. Something like movie credits, or, if you open Adobe Reader, click on the Help, About, Credits button - for starters. Ideally, as stated in the Unhidden Agenda, I would have to provide a mechanism and venue for folks to discover and explore your contributions, maybe even for you to start your own tribe.
My next post will be about the Idea's Community site and who would be its target audience.
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 1
Here are some lessons learned from past experiences and how I hope to do things a little different this time when choosing Who will be members of this tribe.
A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
...
Tribes need leadership. Sometimes one person leads, sometimes more. People want connection and growth and something new. They want change.
...
You can't have a tribe without a leader - and you can't be a leader without a tribe.
idea - who
The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H
Back in Connecting the dots - Part 2, I mentioned my previous dot com experience. Looking back, here's some of the lessons I learned;
- Having a great idea and the ability to code it is simply not enough. Like it or not, you need others. Others who understand things like marketing, sales, support, service, administration and more. However, you just may not need them all from Day One.
- Too many chiefs (partners): We had too many voices, too many opinions, too many circumstances requiring votes where majority rules and even Super Majority Rules. Oddly enough, most of these issues were valid & necessary - at some point in time. And that's exactly my point. At some point in time, we would have to discuss these issues at length. But that time never came.
- The "What If This Thing Is Worth A Gazillion Dollars One Day" Scenario: A pre-condition to this scenario is that you have to deliver something that could be worth a gazillion dollars one day. We exerted too much time and energy discussing, fantasizing, negotiating, bickering and haggling over this scenario. We really should have poured that energy and passion into the pre-condition.
- Lawyers and accountants: You need these people. You not only need them, but you need to talk to them pretty much from the start. But talk first. Do your best to net-it-out as much as possible. If you're lucky, you'll know someone who'll say something like:
Drafting an agreement like this and getting all the parties to finalize, could cost you around $10,000 - assuming everyone agrees in principle. But even with that in place, it could be always be argued that ... On the other hand, you could just write ... on the back of a napkin and get everyone to sign it. Of course that could always be contested too, but at least you've got a signed agreement in principle and $10,000 to pay me when you at least have money coming.
And that is the final point. If you don't have any money coming in then you would not be contesting a dirty old napkin.
So now I needed a way to invite others to help me with my quest. But on top of all my above issues, I had one more whopper. I had no money to pay anyone. Offering equity in nothing would only condemn me to repeating my errs of the past. It would be like Groundhog Day, all over again.
My next post will be about my Unhidden Agenda & how I hope it will attract community members and contributors.
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The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H
The time has come to put down the books, close the blogs and simply focus on doing and not learning. Here's my Idea's Five Ws and one H.
What's Your EQ (Entrepreneurial Quotient)? The intent is to test your knowledge of the subject of entrepreneurship, not to test how good an entrepreneur you are, because, there's no way to measure that. Therefore, scoring high doesn't mean you're the next Steve Jobs, and scoring low doesn't mean you're not. This makes the EQ test as reliable as the IQ test, but it can't hurt to have a good working knowledge of the reality of entrepreneurship.
...
What your score means:
17-22. Your score is high, so you can now focus on doing, not learning.
--Reality Check: Guy Kawasaki.
idea
Arising from my three-part Connecting the dots series, here's the first entry of my Start-up Chronicles where I'll journal about decisions made and ones coming up; actions I'm taking and those I'm deferring.
Take a look on the right sidebar under "Pivotal Reading". I've read all I could read - for now. (FYI, my "idea" image was inspired by Back Of The Napkin
In the interest of keeping things short and sweet, I'll briefly blog about my Idea's Five Ws (and one H). However, I'll save the What entry for when there's actually a piece of executable code for you to try for yourself.
My next post will discuss the Who decision-making part of my Idea.
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