Time Rich vs. Time Poor

There is a clear divide between time rich (I just spent 4 hours on MySpace working on my design!) and time poor (I just bought a Getting Things Done app to manage my other GTD app).

If there is a continuing downturn, the amount of people with time on their hands is going up.  Give them a great product, and even think about having ways for them to earn a few bucks.

If every other company is freaking out, you have an advantage.

User Generated Content Sucks

Admit it.  We suck at participation.  More people go to a restaurant every night than their are reviews for that restaurant every night. We don’t reward users for engaging.  We don’t teach users how to leave really quality content.  We don’t make it easy.  Fix it.

Don’t Sink The Ship

There is a lot of talk about being as light as possible in your startup.  There are a lot of styles on how to run your company, and one of the worst, especially in bad times, is to have people actively demoting you.  Be careful with your hires, and with your fires, and don’t do something stupid like fire a great engineer because a blogger said so.

Find Creative Ways To Earn

Not spending is earning.  Getting a 50% off a TV is still spending.  Get creative.  Create a trade relationship with your coffeeshop.  Sublet your empty desks.  Cook your own meals.  Rent a desk for afterhours.  Use twitter search to find new work opportunities.  Start a business and enjoy the tax breaks.

Listen to the Crowd

Jeff has a great post on this.  So does Lance. Brad says the time is now to step up.  Fred notes how this is different from 2001-03.

My Take?

Now is perfect.

(I’m a bootstrapper at heart.)

If you have not seen the 5k final in the 1972 Olympics, you have missed one of the most brilliant moments in sport (Steve Prefontaine at 21 almost beats the then doping Viren).  Before the race, he said “I am going to work so that it’s a pure guts race. In the end, if it is, I’m the only one that can win it.”  Having the chance for first or fourth, he picks a shot at first.

I’m a very competitive person.  I will work harder, smarter and faster than you, whether it be sport or business.  But sport or business demand a certain level of sportsmanship that leads to making the whole process fun.  I ran cross country in High School, which is a fascinating sport because of all the runners, 99% will never win a race.

99% failure rate if you look at winning as the only result of participating worth celebrating.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren once said

“I read the sports pages first because they record man’s accomplishments.  The front pages record his failures.”

Here is to the sports page.

Please save the date for Ignite Boulder.

October 29th 2008.  Time: 6-9pm.

More details to come at IgniteBoulder.com

What is Ignite:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.

Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis. Since then 100s of 5 minute talks have been given across the world. There are thriving Ignite communities in Seattle, Portland, Paris, and NYC.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.

For me the best way to capture just what barcamp is would be to think of a gathering of bright tech minds that are are engaged in passionate conversations in a small conference like setting.  BarCamp has the ‘rule of two feet’ that dictates ‘if you are not enjoying the conversation you are in, use your two feet to leave and start one of your own.’

BarCamp changed my professional life.

Joe Pezzillo first introduced me to the concept.  He was on the local radio station, KGNU, talking about how random the meeting can be.  Attending my first BarCamp (it was in Denver) I was blown away by the people that attended.  It was the first time I heard of people working passionately in small tech startups.  They loved what they did.  I wanted to find out how they did it, and spend the next three months meeting and expanding my Boulder network.

So what should you expect:

Date: October 17-18

Time: Friday 6-9ish Saturday 9-5ish.  Denver has their famous Zombie Crawl that all attendees are encouraged to attend.

Where: 1375 Walnut Street in Downtown Boulder.  Parking is free in the parking garages around for Saturday.

Friday is a meet and greet.  Saturday is presentations and conversations.  The whole schedule is up to the community.

What we need:

1. Spread the word!  Tell all your friends.
2. RSVP here.
3. If you would like to sponsor, you can at $100, $250 and $500 levels.  All the $ will go to food and costs associated with the event (I am throwing in $100).  Send me an email if you would like to buy the community a beer- andrew@endoze.com.
4. Make sure to attend!  Joe had to twist my arm to get me to come, and I am in turn twisting your arm.  Do not miss this event.

My favorite line from the BarCamp model: “Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one. This is called sharing and we like it.”

• Stage 1: The first stage of the concept is called “Uninformed Optimism”
• Stage 2: The second stage is called “Informed Pessimism”
• Stage 3 – The third stage is called “Crisis of Meaning”
• Stage 4 – Informed Optimism.

Check out the full post, worth a read. Tim talks about entrepreneurship manic depression, with the rise and falls of your product, attitude and company.  I found myself having more ups and downs working in politics personally, but find this to be spot on.  Generally, the more mentorship you have, the fewer free falls you have.

Yesterday there was a fantastic post from randomwalker: Lessons from the failure of Livejournal: when NOT to listen to your users:

In the last couple of months, there have been multiple developments that seem to indicate that the combination of a blogging platform/commenting system and social network is finally becoming widespread: Google added the “follow” feature to Blogger, Facebook switched to a feed-focused redesign, and WordPress acquired IntenseDebate, a commenting system.

…  What you might not know is that Livejournal had this winning combination of features 5 years ago.

Another great post illustrating the rollercoaster ride of risks and calculations.

It is all part of being in a startup: knowing you are wrong, knowing when your users are wrong, and knowing that you are on a rollercoaster, with unknown ups and downs.

See the sidebar of the blog ——>

Let’s do it!

Look at the Segway, elegant engineering but completely missed the point. You can’t give those things away because no one wants to look like an idiot crawling down the street on their Dr. Evil Mobile. Ask yourself, what’s the first thing that anyone says when they see someone on a Segway? Invariably, while pointing it’s always, “check out that idiot!”. Want a tip? If you’re going to design a vehicle make sure people look cool riding in/on it. And for good measure when they are standing around it make sure that looks cool too.

from design for humans

It is the right mix of great design, solid commentary and commons sense.

And I liked it because he wrote, well, blogs for humans.  His posts are meant for his friends to read.

Which creates such a great feel, don’t you think?

From the site:

The Boulder tech scene is growing like crazy. Twenty of our top tech startups (you can see a few in the sidebar) have banded together to fly in one hundred top software developers, programmers and engineers from across the country, all expenses paid.

So if you are a developer, and have thought to yourself “Boulder looks cool!” why don’t you come out, on our dime, and have 20 companies waiting to interview you.  Apply today to be one of a hundred.

Hiring companies include Aegis Analytical, EventVue, Filtrbox, Fuser, Gnip, HiveLive, Me.dium, Printfection, Rally Software, Return Path, and socialthing! (and that list will expand). 

So who is behind it?  Eric Marcoullier, Chris Wand, David Cohen, Josh Fraser, Ingrid Alongi and myself.

Check out Boulder, Colorado.

Between you and me, he was one of the first bloggers I read on TechCrunch that made me think this whole startup thing was really cool.

During TechCrunch50, Frank and I ended up with ‘pitch burnout’ after hearing 40+ pitches in one day, and found ourselves right by the Microsoft Surface demonstration talking about projects were were both working on.

Out pops a camera, and we are filming and episode of SomewhatFrankTV.

Andrew Hyde Startup Discussion from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

One of the themes of what we both saw at TC50 was the expansion from just web apps to web apps with products.  I wrote a bit about this here.

So, what should I do with the next few months now that TechStars is winding down (watch the full video for the options).

Thanks again Frank (who runs a blog you should read, everyday)!

Dave was planning on having a burrito in the Mission District of San Francisco, and via twitter I caught up with him.  Once fully stuffed on some amazing food, Dave pulled out his camera and did a short interview.

The link to the video of Andrew Hyde is here.

Thanks Dave, that was fun.