Technical Co-founders Bond by Doing

There is a saying that women bond through talking, and men bond through doing. While not all hackers are men, in the world of technical development, there really is no substitute to learn about a person’s skills than to work with them. I mean, even if they’re amazing, you may find that you hate working with them – so why risk it?

Personally, I had began building up my startup karma a few years back when Startup Weekend first came to Atlanta. It was through the weekend hackathons that I managed to meet, stay in touch, and collaborate with some of the best developers in Atlanta. For the most part, we worked on small, fun, (possibly meaningless) projects; but at the end of these weekends, you learned who could code and iterate vs. those that couldn’t do anything or even commit to 54 hours of working/suffering together. For those of you who haven’t been, I highly recommend you check out the ones near you. Also, give it your all – you never know who is watching.

With regards to identifying great technical co-founders, I do have some tips. Here’s what you should look for if you have some choices available:

• Find someone local, someone that is recommended by your circle of trusted peers.
• Ideally, the developer hacks for fun. This means they contribute to open source projects, help answer programming questions somewhere on the web, keeps up with the latest news in technology and programming, and genuinely likes learn, and solve problems using code.
• Another very important trait to have is a good business sense. You don’t want someone who buries themselves in code and work on what’s fun without regard to shifting business priorities. A good founder should always do what the most important task is first, even if it’s mundane and boring.
• Finally, you want a true entrepreneur who takes ownership of the project. This means s/he will work on problems and preemptively solve potential bugs that may arise. You don’t want someone who will only do the very minimum that you tell them to do, then have to go back and micro manage the 1,000 bugs you’ve found while testing your site.

Don’t Discount the Business Person

Hacking is fun, but in the overall scheme of things, it’s just the initial sprint towards building a successful business. You yourself may get there faster than others, but if your relay team is not ready for part 2, you still lose. The real challenge is the marathon that comes after the sprint – and for this, you need a good business person.

Even though sales may not come until later, it is important to find a good business person up front and include them on your team. Even at the ideas stage, this person would help challenge any bias you may have, and maybe even help you develop a more fully thought out product than what you can do yourself. Ideally you find someone that complements your skills and more importantly, your weaknesses. If you love to code but hate talking to people, find someone who is great at talking to people. If social media feels like a waste of time to you, find someone who has made it work for them.

So how does one spot a good business / social person?

• Find someone local, someone that is recommended by your circle of trusted peers. Yes, there are internet celebrities and real celebrities that participate in startups. However, unless you know them personally or have tons of cash, the chances of them coming on board with sincere motivation to push your product will be very small.
• Get the extrovert. You want someone who loves to chat about great ideas/products but not in that pushy, salesy kind of way. More often than not, I can easily tell when my friends on Facebook and Twitter are gloating over a product they genuinely like, vs. a product they’re pushing for their clients. Their tone changes, the posts are riddled with too much marketing speak (FAKE!), and overall it’s just sad. If you can find someone that pushes their clients in the same, sincere tone they use to describe their favorite ice cream on a hot sunny day, grab them!
• The person should believe in your vision; if s/he did not come up with the idea themselves. A great sales person can sell anything, but honestly it’s hard to sell something you don’t believe in. It’s also much easier to genuinely talk about something and learn from customers if one has a sincere interest in it.
• Find a social NETWORKER. I don’t mean someone who loves social networks, but someone that actually likes networking and making real world connections. In the same way that a good hacker will contribute to open source projects, a good business person will make connections whenever they can years before they need them.
• Is s/he a jack of all trades and master of none? This is an important trait to have in any startup since we know we are required to wear many hats up front. Ideally, your business person has worked in a startup before and understands this. You don’t want to bring in someone who will only do the tasks listed on the job description. You need someone who will try to do everything you’re not.
• Finally, get someone who will take ownership of the project. Again, if this person believes in the vision, will talk about it on their own, and would potentially work without pay, then they will help push the team forward even if everything else seems dire.

A good mix of the above will carry your vision far so try and build the best team you can before starting.

Did I miss anything?

Related posts:

1. Startup is a Team Business
2. To Grow, Learn to Delegate Tasks
3. Why You Need to Separate Business Development and Developer

Every once in awhile, I come up with tweaks that I can’t do cause I have no clout in those fields, but still, I think things could be better if they are tweaked. Below are just some random thoughts I’ve had over the years that I feel like jotting down. If you have the power to change things and like the ideas below, feel free to make it happen.

Basketball

College basketball is exciting, but for whatever reason, the NBA is just completely boring to me. While I’m sure the love of the game is still there, the love of money seems to take some of the pure competitive spirit away. Something about it just feels missing… and I can’t quite pinpoint it. A lot of players just dunk cause it’s easy but unless it’s the slam dunk contest, it gets old after awhile. So how can it be better? I propose the following change in rules:

• Dunks should be worth 1 point. You’re shoving your entire hand in the basket and you’re tall. Where’s the challenge?
• Lay ups and short shots – still 2 points. This part of the game doesn’t change.
• 3-pointers are still 3 points. This part of the game also doesn’t change.
• Half-court and beyond shots should be worth 4 points. While most of it is luck, I think changing the rule on this will make for some very exciting buzzer beater attempts. When one team is down by 3 points, these miracle shots will help them win the game. How cool would that be?!

While we’re at it, maybe we should make the baskets 12 feet tall. Make it more of a challenge for these gentle giants.

Government

It’s no secret the US government is completely weird and useless right now. The people in power are either drunk with power or they are complete idiots that have no right to govern. What’s frustrating is that most of them are so keen on keeping their jobs and being politically correct and not to offend that nothing ends up being done. Well, I say it’s time a for a change to the system.

While I’m sure there are tons of things that can be tweaked, let’s just talk about the top – the seat of the president. Four years is way too short. When you buy anything and expect to throw it away in 4 years, most of the time you will not care if you have top of the line anything or the generic crap. I think this is why many people randomly choose to support people that are in “their” party without digging deeper to see what the actual candidate is really about. Also, four years shifts may have been enough to govern the 13 colonies, but we are now a country of 300 million diverse people with very different problems. Many people say it takes just one term to learn the ropes which leaves… not much time for anything if you want to be reelected for a second term. So, how can we make this better? Well, there are a few options.

1. Instead of two 4-year terms, we can try unlimited 4-year terms. If the president knows he will be reelected again and again for performing, then he will go out and perform. There’s no motivation to actually DO stuff if you’re worried about being elected for your 2nd and final term. Plus knowing whatever rules you put in place will/could be reversed, it sort of sucks at your soul a bit.
2. Option 2 – Make it one 8-year term. If the citizens of the country know that we are stuck with a president for at least 8 years, then maybe, JUST MAYBE, people will actually do research into the candidate and look at their voting history. When you have to keep a car for 8 to 10 years, you start to actually care about what you’re stuck with. When you’re just leasing a car for 3-4 years, you probably wouldn’t care what features it comes with or what color it’s in – the same is true here.
3. Option 3 – Have two 10-year terms. Again, same principal as above in instating someone knowledgeable that can stick around long enough to make change happen, be responsible for whatever happens as a result of the change, and make more changes if the original plan doesn’t work out as planned. Being POTUS is a big job and it takes some time to learn – so why not give the person in charge that needed time before throwing them out just as they get into the groove?

As for the other positions – let’s just make them pass a standard 5th grader US history test. I’m pretty sure more immigrants will score better than many who are running for office (or are currently in office).

Television Shows

This is a big one for me as I spend way more than my fair share of time in front of the idiot box. Like many progressive internet users, I have now found ways to download and stream shows I like without having to subscribe to cable or satellite TV. One of the most frustrating things as a TV viewer (whether you subscribe to a service or not) is having great shows cancelled just as you started investing yourself in the story. In recent memory, shows like Firefly, Veronica Mars, Surface, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, Stargate Universe, Chicago Code, and many others simply died when the station chooses to axe them. No time was given to really complete the story, no closure, etc. This sucks cause I know good writers who do get to finish their stories, actually do so beautifully. (e.g. Prison Break, Battlestar Galactica) So how can we make things better?

First off, I think there could and should be a model where we can donate to the artists and the producing company of the show directly. I don’t actually know how much it costs to produce a show or a season of a show, but if a show like SGU has a collective audience of 800,000 and it would cost $8 million dollars to create season 3, I think many of us would be willing to give $10 or more to raise that amount to keep the stories going. The current way of things is simply not working. Why would we choose to buy DVD’s of a dead show knowing that we’ll never see how it’s supposed to end? Many of us would totally buy into a franchise if we know our support would keep it going or bring it back; but 99% of the time the audience voices are silenced and no amount of creative protests bring those shows back. The actors end up getting other jobs, and hope is lost.

The catch to the above is that there needs to be a very simple way to transfer that funds directly to the company making the shows – and that’s where the current problem is. So what would I do if I had the power to change things?

1. Launch new shows/pilots like startups. Maybe the studios will continue to fund these projects or maybe the producers can go on Kickstarter or similar platforms to raise money to film the first episode or the first season.
2. Using a platform like Plex, XBMC, Boxee, blip.tv or AppleTV, allow potential viewers to download or stream digital copies of the show.
3. Use social media to build an audience and build awareness for the new show. Sell syndication rights to TV stations and Netflix immediately. This means if FOX is no longer interested in showing this show, other stations can pick up the syndication at any time even in mid-season to continue showing it on the air. Diehard fans will continue to download the show via the web or something.
4. In addition to selling swag, start a fan fund raising campaign near the end of season 1 or whenever appropriate to keep the show going. Let the fans know if they love the plot, that the collective base will need to raise $X amount for the show to develop a season 2. Fund raising could be anything like selling swag, host a party with the cast and crew, to donating enough (in the Kickstarter model) to appear as a guest star in one of the episodes. Think of how crazy this could be in today’s interactive world where everyone has a soapbox? Not only would you be able to help support shows you like directly and keep them afloat, you can guest star in them as well!
5. Finally, make the transactions easy to do. Just like buying pay-per view, maybe setup “Give $10″ or “Give $50″ buttons next to the show so that people who love it can impulse buy/donate to the show. I think if the audience knows they can exert this kind of power to keep something good going, the film industry may have a chance in keeping us as faithful fans.

I don’t know if this is what Steve Jobs had in mind when he cracked the iTV – but browsing shows instead of channels and helping the actual producers and actors make money instead of the studios would be an awesome thing to have in the near future. Amazon recently opened a publishing platform that allowed authors to publish w/o going through a publisher. I know some music artists are also trying to do things this way via Kickstarter. I think this model could work for TV and movies as well. I mean, they’re in it to make money so why not let the good story writers make what they need to make and let us buy and keep great shows at a bargain? I would much rather the collective spend $200 million to get a movie that cost $200 million to make then to spend $800 million in tickets to watch a $200 million movie. Granted, I do think my idea would work better with TV shows and not movies, but there’s always room for improvement in these changes.

Are there other things that need to be made better by tweaking them? Leave your comments below and let’s think of a good solution.

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1. Random Ramblings…
2. Thoughts on Atlanta Webmasters’ Lunch & Learn
3. How “Free” Changes Things

I won’t disclose what the idea is just yet – However, I will say that the new venture is not car related, but it was inspired by my activities while running EasyAutoSales.com.

I am excited because I have been sitting on this idea for about 2 years and it wasn’t until recently that I finally figured out how to tackle the problem. More importantly, this project solves a personal problem that I face as an entrepreneur so it will be exciting to finally take a crack at being my own customer.

More to come…

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1. So Back to the Startup at Hand…
2. Top 5 Startup Lessons Learned in 2009
3. The Amazon Startup Challenge

If you ask anyone that knows me, computer have definitely shaped my life. I knew from a very young age that I like gadgets and that I could easily dissect and reassemble electronics – much to the dismay of my mother who would rather me be a doctor and cut open people instead.

I hung out with nerds, associated myself with geeks, and ran a 2-node BBS out of my parents home. (I still don’t think my parents understood why as a teenage boy, I ended up hogging two phone lines. Luckily with immigrant parents who loathed speaking English and hated telemarketers, me hogging the lines was usually a non-issue.)

Surprisingly, I was against the Internet at first as its popularity stole away my BBS users. I never got into CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL – they looked cheesy.

In college, I was introduced to the LAN. While moving into the dorm, I saw my entire hall playing a networked game of Need for Speed, together but separated. I was in heaven! Still, no one in my dorm had a Mac – maybe we were all hackers or gamers at heart.

I bought an iPod Mini with the click wheel. Looking back, it feels weird but at the time, I thought it was the greatest thing ever for scrolling through hundreds of songs. (STILL have no idea how it works.) 6 months after the iPhone came out, I replaced my Treo with it. I was a bit weirded out by the lack of keyboard but I loved the big screen.

While working alongside designers at my day job, I started noticing the various cool widgets that Macintosh’s have that Windows lacked. The designers seem to draw with ease on their Apple computers while I struggled with my POS work assigned PC that was probably just a couple of years old, but felt slower than grandma. While I never liked Macs before, the glow of the iPod and iPhone experiences changed me. I became enlightened.

All MBP's except one.

I finally bought myself a MacbookPro after starting my own company. It was recommended to me by a few entrepreneurs whom I respected. Okay, I may have done it to be cool. Even though it took me an entire month to unlearn my PC ways of doing things, I ended up falling in love with the experience. Something about it, just works… I no longer have to convince the PC to work for me, with the Mac, we were working together side-by-side.

Over the last few years, we replaced every single laptop in the house with a Mac. We replaced our phones, point and shoot cameras, and mp3 players with iPhones. We never got a GPS cause we ended up not needing one; thanks iPhone. We replaced our cable box with the Mac mini; our wireless network with the Time Capsule. Gadgets communicated and things worked in harmony. Best of all, the software never slowed down even years after the purchase. This was how I imagined the future would be, except it was happening now.

Productivity is up. A fanbi was born.

Up until these past few weeks when news of Steve Jobs stepping down as Apple’s CEO, and then passing on, I never paid too much attention to the man behind my new lifestyle – I really should have. There is definitely something to be learned from his eccentric ways.

I am now reading Steve’s biography on his inventions – the iPad, iPhone, and iBook. When there’s a word I don’t understand, I tap and hold the word to bring up the dictionary definition. When the book mentions early Pixar shorts that were before my time, I bring up Youtube and watch it instantly on the device. When I get tired of holding the iPad, I switch over to the iPhone and it picks up exactly where I left off on the other device. What amazing times we live in.

It really is a shame that all the brightest stars burn the fastest. I was really going to vote for him to be president in 2012 simply cause I knew he could get stuff done.

I guess the only thing to do is to thank Steve for his contributions to the world. In addition to the six industries he revolutionized, (i.e. personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing), he also help created new jobs in these industries that would not have existed otherwise. As an entrepreneur who works alongside these industries, thank you.

If you haven’t picked up Steve’s biography or have checked out his eulogy from his sister Mona, I highly suggest you take the time to read both. The book and the eulogy are beautifully written and who knows, it might just inspire you to think a bit differently about what you can accomplish in your own life.

Related posts:

1. Did Apple Do Developers a Favor by Omitting the iPad Camera?
2. Apple’s iPhone 4
3. First Impressions of Apple’s Time Capsule

iCal is a very useful calendar feature that works with your OSX and iOS devices. Apple makes it very easy to setup appointments in iCal when it detects certain keywords in your Mail or iChat messages that pertain to scheduling. Also, with the new Siri assistant on iOS 5, you will soon be able to setup calendar appointments with your voice! However, I have always found iCal lacking in that Apple viewed the app as a personal reminder service, and not something to be shared with the family or a group. I am all for being an organized person but calenders are way more useful when shared! Whether you are planning a wedding with your bridesmaids, scheduling play dates with a group, or figuring out who gets to pick up the kids after school; giving others access to your schedule so they can find you or plan non-conflicting events around you is the primary reason why any of us really update our calendars.

Note: While it is possible to setup multiple calendars in iCal separated by colors, that setup only works well if the family (or group) has one central iMac that everybody checks on a regular basis. Like most modern families, each member of our family have our own unique Apple ID that are synced to our personal mobile devices. For a family on the go, we needed a better way to update multiple calendars that can be shared without compromising our log-ins, and synced across multiple devices automagically. Below is how we solved the problem.

Google Calendar

The best way I’ve found to share and sync multiple calendars securely on OSX is by setting up Google Calendars in iCal. The difference between Google’s calendar service and Apple’s is that Google treats each calendar as a unique entity and allows individual calendars to be shared with different (groups of) people with different permission settings. If you only want your group (e.g. soccer team) to know what’s going on and not have admin access, you can give them read only privileges. If multiple people need to manage a certain calendar, (e.g. family vacation, reunions, wedding planning), you can allow certain people with shared access to have read and write privileges so that they can help you make changes to it.

The good news is that most of us have an Gmail.com address and/or a Google ID. Even if you have a paid MobileMe account like I do, I’m willing to bet most of us still use Gmail as our primary email. (Good thing too cause MobileMe is going away!) Another benefit to using Google Calendar over Apple’s iCloud is that you will be able to sync your calendars on multiple platforms including Android devices and Exchange. Since this is an area where Google is fighting the good fight against Apple and Microsoft, you can be sure it won’t be going away any time soon. To setup multiple calendars, first make sure you get a Google account and setup the Calendar feature for your account.

Once you’re in Google Calendar, setup the calendars you want to manage and share. Select the privileges for the people you want to share with, then invite them to check out your calendar.

When it comes to colors, Google has many options for you to choose from to make your view truly unique.

However, if you want to match Google Calendar’s colors choices with ones recognized in iOS 5, I recommend you pick from one of these basic shades of colors. On our devices, all my updates show up in blue and all of my wife’s events show up in purple.

Setting up Google calendar in iCal is very easy. Simply open iCal, add an account using the + sign and input your Google login credentials. The calendars you manage should automatically pop up. The ones managed by others that you have access to will show up under Delegation. Just check the boxes of the ones you want to show up in iCal.

The next step in making calendars more useful is to set them up on your iOS devices. After all if you have a busy schedule, your reminders are more likely to pop up on your mobile device than your desktop. To setup access to your Google calendar, you need to setup your Gmail account in the iOS Mail app and enable the Calendars option in the settings.

Note: If you want all your calendars to be shared, make sure you turn off Calendar services from all Apple services such as MobileMe and iCloud. Also, if you have a Google calendar that is shared with a few of your Google accounts, you only need to enable one Google account’s calendar feature to see it on your device. Enabling the same calendar for multiple Google accounts may lead to duplicate listings in the iCal app.

By default you will only be able to see the default calendar that you manage, not all of the calendars you have access to. To access your other calendars, register your device with Google by going to this address using your mobile Safari: http://m.google.com/sync Just ping the URL and log-in to your Google account. Once you do that, go to this URL to select the calendars you want to show up on the mobile iCal. https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect

To see the changes on your mobile device, close out mobile iCal in the multitasking menu and relaunch it. Here are the steps if you don’t know how:

• unlock the device
• double click the home button
• press and hold the iCal icon until it wiggles
• tap on the X to close out the app
• press the home button to return to the regular spring board
• tap on iCal again to launch the app

Once you get this far and repeat the steps for all of your devices, your calendars should be appear everywhere you need it to be with on-demand updates across all of your devices as you make changes to it.

What about Syncing with iCloud?

iCloud replaces MobileMe and is a great service for backing up your contacts, documents, music, and pictures. However, iCloud doesn’t solve the the inherit design flaw of iCal not being shareable without giving away your Apple ID log-in to the devices you want your calendar to appear on. Until iCal is redesigned (and I don’t mean the new suede skin in Lion), I would still recommend using Google Calendar as your go to solution. It is possible to sync and share calendars with iCloud, however, sharing permissions can only be set on iCloud.com and not directly in iCal. To setup sharing permissions, log into iCloud.com and select the calendar you want to share then click on the Share icon next to the calendar name.

While both Google Calendar and iCloud can both be shared, the Google solution has the added benefit being able to be seen and managed inside Gmail or Google+. At the end of the day, having more places to access the calendars is more convenient for me, especially since I’m primarily a Gmail user. Also, at this time I’m unsure if iCloud calendars can be shared on other platforms. If you are managing a calendar for a soccer team and some of the parents are on Windows or Android, they may not be able to get access if they lack an Apple ID and/or an iOS/OSX device – something to think about when you’re choosing your platform.

Side note: CalendarBar – A Great App!

If staying organized is important to you, I highly recommend you check out the OSX app CalendarBar from the Mac App store. I’ve been running this app for a few months now and it’s a great way to see upcoming events on your Mac without having to keep iCal open. Also, support from the developer has been top notch.

If you guys have any comments, questions, or know of a better way to do this, please sound off below.

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2. Fail Fast. Share Often and Learn!
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The anticipated and most obvious results of the infrastructure upgrade have been speedier load times, reduced down time and faster indexing of our daily updates. However, with just the hardware changes, a number of unexpected (but good) side effects began to happen. Ad revenue increased, more affiliate leads were being submitted and more partnership opportunities started flowing into our inbox. I say unexpected because redesigning the under-performing pages was next on the docket after the hardware upgrades but as it turns out, some things have improved on its own before I even got to tackle them.

So what’s the lesson here? If you are optimizing your website for better or higher conversion numbers, make sure you look at optimizing the hardware in addition to tweaking the UI. Even if you experience almost zero down time with your current host provider, see if you can speed up the delivery of your content for your users.

On a side note, we are still planning on tackling those under performing sections on the website but it’s good to know that the changes, whatever they may be, will have its benefits multiplied due to the improved hardware. That’s what I call #winning!

Related posts:

1. Why You Fail at Promoting Your Website
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My only question is: why?

Although Ping was just introduced about a month ago, the service has completely tanked. The first hint that Ping and I was going to bump heads was when I uploaded my standard avatar (that I use for every social network) and had it shoved into the mystery box that is Apple approval. SRSLY? Apple doesn’t trust me to upload a non-nude image of myself but it trust that the credit card I’m providing iTunes is valid and not stolen? I mean, I’m not submitting an app here, just an image of myself – the very essence of self expression on social networks. (It’s been over 30 days as of this writing and it’s still not approved.)

The second hint why Ping sucks is the lack of sincere engagement shown on the network. Many of the “featured artists” on Ping already use Twitter to engage with their fans and show pictures from their day-to-day lives. On Ping, everyone is just pushing their new tracks or album releases… not exactly something I’d ditch Twitter for unless I want to see how a large company can learn to fail fast on a large budget.

Unfortunately, social media is just not something Apple understands. Apple is perfectly happy (and fine) hanging out inside its walled garden and living the life. For a company that has no official presence on Twitter or Facebook, I really don’t understand why they think they understand social networking. Heck, even Zuckerburg does some research on competing networks before launching new features on Facebook that mimic the competition. (e.g. Twitter, Quora, etc.)

Some suggestions for Apple:

1. While there are certainly many ways to tackle the same problem, pushing products is not a valid reason to create/start a brand new social network. Continue your efforts to involve Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.
2. While we’re on the topic of Myspace, have you not seen how this product pushing social network is dying? Heck, even if Myspace understands that uploading avatars should be approval-free won’t save it from its doom.
3. For a company that states mobile devices should have multiple functionalities and not just be one thing (e.g. Kindle e-reader); why are you not applying that same thought-process to your social networks? I won’t use Ping strictly for music discovery and I don’t want Game Center to track my scores compared to my 2 friends that uses it. Neither of these services are social and both are adding bloat to the software and draining my batteries.
4. If you are serious about jumping into the social space, demonstrate that you actually know how first. Participate in conversations about Apple that are already happening on Facebook, Twitter and tech blogs. Don’t limit your interactions to just the support forums on Apple.com – cause that is FRUSTRATING.

Will things change when Apple has a new leader at the helm? Perhaps… for now, please stop sending me emails about Ping. It reeks of desperation that I haven’t seen since Friendster and Classmates tried to get me back on their useless services… and that’s just sad.

Related posts:

1. A Great “What is Social Media” Presentation
2. First Impressions of Apple’s Time Capsule
3. Apple TV 2 – Why It’s Still Not Perfect

I came across an interesting article today on Seattle 2.0 by @evilbeet about the obsession that many of my entrepreneurial friends have about being successful and rich. In it, it states that we have been shaped by media, our peers and other forces to build our own solutions and be uber successful if we can.

I admit, making money or creating something REALLY useful from nothing is a really compelling reason to set out on your own. After all, like Russell says,

Being an employee without a stake is like playing poker for monopoly money. After a while, there is no thrill. I’m just going through the zombie motions, counting the days and the dollars in my account until I can drop out, start a company and feel alive again.

But why do so many of us chase this dream giving up almost everything else just to achieve it? Are programs still in place to make sure smart people have a good shot at winning? Despite how civilized the start-up environment is, sometimes I can’t help but feel like we are all storming the <insert beach massacre of your choice> beach during WWII. You see so many people rushing to reach the goal and failing, yet if you play it smart and learn from others’ mistakes, you may just get a shot. One heck of a way to reach the end right?

For me, the entrepreneurial way is the one great equalizer in America. It doesn’t matter if you’re 8th generation immigrant or 1st (unless you’re in Arizona), if you can make something compelling that has demand, you can shoot to the top in a matter of years instead of generations. Of course, you still need good networking and a bunch of other resources… but they’re out there if you know where to look.

But is it okay to want to set out on your own and not be rich? On one hand, we can’t all expect to be at the top but on the other hand, what’s the point? The alternative isn’t so bad… work in an office and take home steady pay. The alternative certainly allows more time with your loved ones and perhaps, less gray hairs.

Why do you choose to fight the fight? What’s your motivation?

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Honestly I can’t believe it took four years for the technology to catch up to our imaginations but thanks to at&t and it’s massive buckets of FAIL, we’re still not where we COULD be with this phone. As a side note, I guess I just don’t understand why if we’re supposed to be the world’s leader in technology that we are so behind on little things like cellphone technology. But I digress…

Apple Store with black curtains up!

With regards to the new iPhone, one thing Steve Jobs finally got me to do that I haven’t done since Halo 2 was to fight the mob and wait in line on release day to get this in my hands. Maybe it was the crazy marketing hype. Maybe it was the sexy form factor. Maybe it was the fact that this was the phone I imagined I’d have from the first time I could start imagining a cellphone without a keyboard. Whatever it may be… Apple managed to get me out of bed at 3 in the morning. Go visit a mall at 4:30. Break the law by sneaking inside the mall, hiding in the bathroom for a good 20 minutes to avoid the security guards. (Seriously WTF is wrong with me?) Get into an argument with the said security guard about where the line was forming after starting the line in front of the Apple store. Threatened to be arrested by the APD for trespassing; twice! Then being escorted outside where I ended up behind 50+ people who were waiting in one line – and then being told our line wasn’t the official line so I got bumped again to 450+ in the “official” merged line. All this just for a phone that I basically already have in the form of 3GS?

Now that I’ve typed this – it DOES sound crazy.

The line at Lenox mall

An Apple employee's crowd control shoes

So 3+ hours of waiting later, I finally got my phone from Apple and finished the process luckily before the west coast stores opened. I did not want any type of delays from more at&t FAILS and I think I dodged a few bullets last night. So was the prize worth it? HELL YES!

Click to see the full size pic.

The marketing hyped “retina display” (a.k.a. print quality dpi) really does look great and is noticeable between the two iPhones. On the right, you’ll notice the “slide to unlock” text shows up much more like e-ink than the version on the left. The pictures are also a lot more vivid on the iPhone 4. More pixels = more colors per inch, and less ambient light protruding through. While I wouldn’t say the old phone is less clear, it just looks a bit more washed out in comparison.

The improved camera with flash is also a welcome bonus. While it will never replace my Canon DSLR, having that LED flash now opens up so many more opportunities for me to leave the Canon at home during social gatherings. Also, now that I can push out HD video, maybe I’ll get into more of that in addition to photography. (I still can’t get used to the idea of filming a video w/ a DSLR.)

As for the other 100+ modifications that were added in the hardware and the new iOS4, it will take me awhile to figure it all out to see if I even recognize them all. As fanboi as it sounds, I do love carrying this Apple branded tri-corder around. Assuming the phone companies will stop fighting for the laziest network ever award once the exclusivity with at&t is over, I’m excited to see how fast things will improve in the years to come as networks push for more features instead of less. For now, I’m just happy to have one of modern day’s gold brick in my possession.

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1. Top 4 Things Missing from the new iPhone 3G
2. Apple, Steve Jobs, and Me
3. Did Apple Do Developers a Favor by Omitting the iPad Camera?

“Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.” -Frank Tyger

“Study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing” -Ward

Imagine what you can do. Do what you can imagine.

“If you work hard in your job, you’ll earn a living. If you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune.” – Jim Rohn

“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” -Anonymous

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there!” – Will Rogers

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. – Robert Frost

German Chancellor Willy Brandt once said, “If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying from you, dann müssen Sie in meiner Sprache sprechen.”

“I am nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect.”

“Whether you think you can, or you can’t; you’re right.”

“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.” ~H. Jackson Browne

“Stay informed, not arrogant.”

“Don’t sweat the petty things, don’t pet the sweaty things.”

“Sell to the classes, live with the masses.
Sell to the masses, live with the classes.”

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Churchill

“Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

“Opportunity is all around us and always will be. Where there is freedom, there is opportunity. Where there is difficulty, there is opportunity.”

“If you don’t drive your business, you’ll be driven out of business.” – Malcolm Forbes

“One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.” – La Rouchfoucauld

“If you fail to plan, you should plan to fail.”

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” – Jim Rohn

“the reason people talk behind your back is because you’re ahead of them…”

What are some of your favorite quotes?

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3. Acute Speech by Coke Enterprises CEO Bryan Dyson

With Twitter’s new @anywhere platform, this is no longer the case! The bonus?! @anywhere only takes a couple of minutes to setup on your website or blog and it’s easy!

Step 1:

Go to Twitter’s developer center – more specifically, the @anywhere page: http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere

Step 2:

Fill out information about your website or blog that you would like to setup @anywhere for.

Step 3:

Copy and paste some JavaScript into the header of the blog page. (Place it in between the head tags.

Viola! That’s it, you’re done! You can check out the results by hovering over my Twitter name @wei_yang.

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After obsessively playing with both FourSquare and Gowalla’s updated apps this past week at the SXSWi conference, it is pretty clear FourSquare wins at being the best geo-based, social app of the two and here’s why:

The Social Aspect

Gowalla is great at helping me find venues and using beautiful stamps to help me keep track of places I have been. Unfortunately even in its latest revision, it lacks a usable search for (possibly) missing venues and it doesn’t make it easy to find your friends. As of this writing, the friends list is buried beneath new friend requests and the list is not sorted or limited by distance – this means if you have a long list of friends who were not at SXSW but in other parts of the world, it would be hard to isolate the focus to just those that are near you.

On the flip side, FourSquare did an AMAZING job of helping me discover hot (trending) spots and where my local friends were this past week. Coming from Atlanta where it’s hard to get a swarm badge or even a “player please” badge if you are a guy, I found myself loving the FourSquare experience at SXSWi. For the first time I was actually using FourSquare like it was meant to be used, seeing where my friends are, when a party actually picks up and more importantly, when and where the party moves in real-time if the group is bar (or hotel) hopping. With FourSquare, it’s now unnecessary to make calls in loud clubs or text multiple friends to try and coordinate a disjointed group.

Geo-Location and Businesses

With regards to promoting local businesses and encouraging patronage, both FourSquare and Gowalla are testing great ideas for promoting specials, coupons, hidden items and trips. While finding hidden items and redeeming them on Gowalla can be great for one-off promotions or if you are a virtual pack rat, seeing nearby specials even if you’re not checked in at the promotional venue on FourSquare just feels more inviting.

For example, prior to the conference, Gowalla announced their party list was overflowing and to be guaranteed entry, one must find the Tiki Room Wristband virtual item. I was not one of the lucky Gowalla users who found it thus I did not even try to go to their party.

The Fun Factor!

One of the first thing I noticed was that while Gowalla and FourSquare both have SXSW specific badges, FourSquare’s badges had a bigger set of night-life related achievements. Even the pages themselves differ in highlighting personal achievements vs. the mob’s achievements. I guess I should start off by thanking @dens and @mari18 for not creating an “if your friend jump off the bridge” badge cause as a FourSquare groupie, I probably would have done stupid things during questionable hours on the Congress Rd. bridge just to try and earn the badge. Sounds dumb right?

At SXSWi I found myself pushing the limit and getting out of my comfort zone on several occasions just to earn new badges on FourSquare. Do I like BBQ and tacos? Yes. Would I normally eat it 3 plus times in one week? Probably not if FourSquare hadn’t made it a game. On the fun side, in the pursuit of unlocking the achievements, I did discover amazing breakfast and Korean BBQ tacos and the awesomeness of the Karaoke RV in town – and I’m not even a karaoke fan!

While Gowalla certainly does not have a shortage of trips and activities in the Austin area, the lack of social convergence within the app just didn’t do it for me. The trips within Gowalla are mostly self-rewarding and unfortunately resemble a bucket-list of things to see while in Austin vs. a set of activities to be performed. As beautiful as Gowalla is, their pins just don’t communicate the fun as well as the colorful badges of FourSquare. If I was visiting Austin for other reasons, it may have been cool to check out the moonlight towers or the stairs of doom but during SXSW, those achievements just take me away from the partying crowd.

Why FourSquare Wins

As much as I like both services, I found myself leaning towards the more useful service as the conference and parties progressed. By the latter half of the interactive conference, I found myself relying exclusively on FourSquare to plan my social calendar and using Gowalla only if I stepped in a new venue that I wanted to check off on my digital passport. While I’m sure both apps will iterate with more changes in the weeks to come, I definitely made a better use of my time in Austin with the help of the FourSquare app.

Although it is still unclear which service will ultimately come out on top in the overall category, FourSquare clearly was the sociable winner this past week. Not only did it help bring together my group of friends with ease at SXSWi, it did for many groups I’ve talked to as well. For those that prefer Gowalla’s virtual items and stamps, I’d be interested to know if personal trophies/checklists outweigh the social friend-finder aspect for you. Just because the check-ins equal in number doesn’t necessarily mean they are both good at bringing crowds together. Then again, we don’t all play these games for the same reasons but that’s why competition and uniqueness is good.

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Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the Air.

But the other four Balls – Family, Health, Friends and Spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it.

How?

Don’t undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others. It is because we are different that each of us is special.

Don’t set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you.

Don’t take for granted the things closest to your heart. Cling to them as you would your life, for without them, life is meaningless.

Don’t let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past or for the future. By living your life one day at a time, you live all the days of your life.

Don’t give up when you still have something to give. Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.

Don’t be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect. It is this fragile thread that binds us to each together.

Don’t be afraid to encounter risks. It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.

Don’t shut love out of your life by saying it’s impossible to find time. The quickest way to receive love is to give; the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly; and the best way to keep love is to give it wings!

Don’t run through life so fast that you forget not only where you’ve been, but also where you are going.

Don’t forget, a person’s greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.

Don’t be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.

Don’t use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved. Life is not a race, but a journey to be savored each step of the way…

By: Bryan Dyson

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As entrepreneurs, we are often caught up in our own tunnel of success. Having outsiders play devil’s advocate, passing knowledge or simply reminding you of common sense can often save you valuable time and pointless tangents. Also, if you are not a programmer/designer – chances are someone you know is and their higher standards will force you to do better than the half-assed attempt you hacked yourself at 3am.

If you’re currently working 60 to 160 hours a week on your NEXT BIG THING, take a moment to go find a group of people you trust and get their opinion on where you are. See if they understand your value proposition, your UI, your marketing materials, etc. If your startup doesn’t pass the most basic of smell tests – chances are you are letting your emotions drive this thing and it’s leading you down the path of the dark side.

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Our last major discovery was that ugly text-ads actually garner many more clicks and a much better CTR than the image/text ad combo – almost 100% better in fact. However, after our latest website redesign, it seems like what we had learned was reset. So back to square one again…

Two months ago, our agency introduced us to YieldBuild and said because we ADORE testing, it was something we should look into. I must admit, while the scientist in me was intrigued, the service looked shady. Unfortunately, scouring the webmaster forums did not reveal much information – at least not many positive ones. My main concern was I did not want our ad accounts banned as a result of using this service and I was reassured by the agency that no permanent damage would be done. So while we were reluctant… we moved forward.

So far so good.

We’ve been working with YieldBuild for the past two months and I am proud to say that our tests have yielded positive results. We are seeing about a 30-50% lift in daily revenue and the results have been pretty consistent. What I like about the service is that they mix new colors and ad sizes into existing placements with combinations I had not previously thought of. While some of the placements may not make visual sense, I can’t deny its results. Below are the colors they are currently testing for me on EasyAutoSales.com – it certainly contains a lot more variety than my two original palette choices.

In addition to Google AdSense, YieldBuild also works with ValueClick, Chitika, Yahoo! and Advertising.com. However, if these ancillary networks did not work for you before, it seems like no amount of magic algorithms will change that. Your mileage may vary – and if they do, PLEASE let us know below.

Overall, we are very happy with this service. At the time of our usage, it’s still free to use though I have no idea what their future plans are. If you run ads on your website, I would definitely recommend you give them a shot to see if they can boost your bottom line.

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Unfortunately, I found out S3 buckets cannot be deleted when there are files inside it. Also, if you have a few hundred thousand files in a bucket, trying to list those files will crash most if not all UI based S3 tools that have a limit of listing only 1,000 files at one time.

I tried accessing the buckets using Bucket Explorer, S3Hub, S3Fox, and even some command line tools but all of them crashed while trying to retrieve the files. That was certainly NOT good news. After doing some more digging, I found a script called S3Nuke – and this ladies and gentlemen, is the magic broom that can help sweep away the waste.

With the help from a friend, we setup S3Nuke and ran 50 concurrent threads to clear out the unused bucket. It took about 3-4 hours on a wifi connection to list and delete roughly 3 million files – yeah, that number was a surprise to us as well. Considering other methods would have probably taken days or weeks if they worked without crashing, S3Nuke did an AMAZING job.

Although S3 is really cheap and it’s one of the best options out there for cloud storage, every little bit does add up over time. Amazon makes its money from holding onto these files and they certainly have no plans to make it easy for you to delete them. Whether you use S3 for remote backup or for your e-commerce site, make sure you keep your usage in check so you don’t end up paying the stupid tax. (Like we did)

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1. The Amazon Startup Challenge
2. Amazon AWS Follow-up: Start-Nots.

5. Pay for Quality

Like most web based startups with no connections or money, we originally started out by outsourcing our idea to developers far far away. In 2009, we added a few features and we decided to invest in local talent and pay for quality instead of revisiting old headaches. While our wallets certainly did not enjoy the experience, it was refreshing to get things done right the first time and ahead of schedule. If time is of the essence and you know your service will sell – investing in quality is one of the best things you can do to move things (and morale) forward.

4. Get Out There!

The amount of events in Atlanta catering to developers, social media and startups is getting ridiculous! (Be careful what you wish for, right?) Unfortunately this means one cannot make it to every event if one is to actually be productive. However, the few times I did make it out to contribute to the community or to be social have always paid off. If you’re working on your next big idea, make sure you get out there and talk to people – it will end up saving you a LOT of time. Whether they have connections they can introduce you to to speed things up or they’ll offer a perspective that will shut you down, either way, it’s worth the trip.

3. Embrace Uncomfortable

EasyAutoSales hummed along for over a year before we saw our first major change in objectives. We didn’t get smarter. We didn’t get a lucky break. All that really happened was that I ran out of money. Once the runway ended and we got on our credit cards’ shit list, it was basically fly or fail. Since I do this gig full-time, we basically had hours or days to fix what wasn’t working and it was through a number of these iterations we soon realized that our original dream of offering a free service was simply not going to cut it.

For those of you who are struggling with getting your idea off the ground, I highly recommend you try eating your own dog food. Until you hit rock bottom and are forced to be creative, you simply won’t think outside of the box and do what’s necessary to make things work. I know it sounds scary but I’m pretty sure that’s the point.

2. Screen Your Candidates, Vet Your Hires

I think one of my biggest takeaways from 2009 is that I really need to get a better grasp on the qualities of a great entrepreneur, and bring them onboard. Hiring people from successful exits is almost a no-brainer but unless your idea is TRULY amazing, those stars are hard to grab. One of the things I’m seeing locally is that startups tend to hire young and they tend to work on it part-time for a really, really long time. What we really should be doing is finding experienced entrepreneurs with money and connections and make them join our team. While having mentors is decent, I don’t think they’re sufficient. Offering advice is easy… but rarely do they produce results. Convincing your would-be mentors to eat your dog food and make it better will produce a lot more genuine effort and hopefully positive results.

1. TRUST Your Gut

My biggest takeaway from 2009 is to simply trust yourself. When you have to wear many hats at the same time, you don’t have time to weigh pros/cons for every decision – sometimes you just have to trust your common sense, do it, and see what happens.

In my case, I’ve known for a long while that some members of my team were just not startup material and having them around would do more harm than good. Whether they joined for the wrong reason or were simply not ready for the lifestyle, my gut was telling me that I really need to just let them go if we wanted to move forward. Due to existing relationships, what was originally a problem I could have nipped in the bud, turned out to be a 8 month babysitting exercise that ultimately, negatively affected various aspects of our service. In the end, I did get what I wanted and if anything, we’re more efficient now with less people than we were with more bodies. My only regret was not trusting my gut and making those executive calls earlier on – it’s surely a mistake I won’t be repeating in 2010.

What were some of your biggest lessons learned from 2009? Please DO share them below.

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2. Lessons Learned from Selling a Company
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With that said, we simply have not found a purpose for tracking, reporting and sharing all of this great data after two years of direct measurement. Ultimately the data can be useful for media buyers but to be honest, I don’t think media buyers are using this information when they are contacting us. Furthermore, with AdSense doing so well in terms of its eCPM’s in the automotive vertical, I have not yet found an ad network or direct buyer who has used this information and tell me they can pay me a better rate by doing a better job of targeting our users.

As much as I love pretty graphs, there’s simply no reason for Quantcast to be here.

Here are some issues we’re seeing.

• We want to track and provide accurate stats but our competitors do not. Therefore, the best way to compare apples to apples is to simply stop tracking so we can all be on the same page/lie.
• Having all the data available publicly is great – but if your stats aren’t up to par, you may be terminating a lot of opportunities you didn’t even know existed. If you aren’t broadcasting your stats, potential advertisers may at least drop you a line to ask for them.
• Quantcast reports on your sub-domains separately. If you’re not an advanced user, your development environment URL may sometimes get broadcasted into the wild without your knowledge. That’s just bad…
• With Google now rumored to add site speed into its algorithm to determine who they favor in search results, Quantcast becomes an unnecessary ping. Though slightly less accurate, ultimately you can still get the same set of demographics and related sites data even if you aren’t “quantified.” I already have Google Analytics for internal tracking so why do I really need Quantcasts’ version?

So with that, we have now jumped off the Quantcast direct measurement train. While I love analytics and firmly believe you cannot make good calls without diving deep into the stats – Quantcast has always been more for the outsiders than our internal team. Perhaps all of this will work out one day when everyone decides to share… in the meantime, we are closing the doors on our buffet of stats.

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However, did Apple do developers (and themselves) a favor by omitting the camera for this launch? Possibly… here are some thoughts:

1. The iPad launched with iTunes, the App Store, and a new iBooks store – all for the purpose of selling media to the general public.
2. Many publishers are eager to get on this train and many feel confident they can begin charging for content now that users will be consuming on this mobile device.
3. By making the iPad’s price low enough for the general public and the UI simple to understand, Apple may hope to attract a new target market; older people with disposable income who like to read print newspapers, books and print magazines.
4. Adding a camera or two would have increased the cost of production – and having the camera would have distracted users from opening their wallets and buying electronic media.
5. By omitting the camera, Apple may push some of the gadget geeks who already own iPhones and iPod Touches towards version 2 of the iPad. In the meantime, new iPad owners and users new to Apple products would need to stock up on new paid apps instead of syncing already paid for apps from their other Apple mobile devices. All great news for the bottom line!

Ultimately, the iPad is meant to be a secondary family device with its primary purpose used for consuming paid media. With no multi-tasking or a camera to distract users from video conferencing, taking pictures or making short movies; users are only left with the option to browse the stores and to buy stuff from them. (This is a page out of Zynga/Farmville’s business plan: design something lackluster so that users can fix/patch the problem by adding money to make it more interesting.)

While the hardware may be a disappointment for many of the Mac fanbois and gadget geeks, iPhone/iPad developers may certainly benefit by selling more apps and making more money. Perhaps once Jobs can prove that a marketplace within the walled garden is better than its competitors, it will open up other features to promote new types of apps.

What do you think? As a developer, does the new iPad make you more eager to want to tap into this market?

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2. Apple’s iPhone 4
3. Why Apple Will Never Get Social

Like many things on my plate, this blog is a work in progress. However, I felt that change was necessary in order to communicate all the things I’ve learned in the last two years in start-up life and otherwise.

If you’re still looking to get the dirt of a struggling start-up, no worries, a lot of that unfiltered, raw content will still be here. In fact, I’m hoping to do a post really soon about some of the biggest lessons learned in 2009 – I just hope it’s done in Q1 of 2010!

More to come…

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