To apply, please send an email to coach at yottaa.com with the job’s title as the subject line. Tell us what your favorite color is, what make you really proud when running an engineering team, and, oh yeah, please include your resume too. Bonus points if you have a blog or twitter handle. Check out the details below.

At Yottaa, we are passionate about making the Web better, faster and smarter. We are focused on web performance optimization. We built deeply sophisticated technology and large distributed cloud systems. On the other side, we are passionate about hiding all these complexity away from users: with a clean UI, users can quickly get educated, make assessments, run benchmarks and carry out optimizations for their web sites, without getting lost in the technology maze that is powering the web. We are led by an experienced team of entrepreneurs and funded by top tier venture capital firms. We have offices in Boston and Beijing. You can take a look at what we have built so far at http://www.yottaa.com

We are looking for a head of engineering that can lead a team of 20-50 engineers. The team is made up of different disciplines (Web development, Networking, Distributed Computing, System and Application Design, Java, Ruby, C/C++, EC2, Open Source).

The ability to lead a team of 20+ with an extremely high talent concentration is critical. If you have a big brain, that’s great and we’d love to know that. More importantly, we are looking for someone who attracts even bigger brains.

Though you don’t have to be an expert in all technical areas, you need to have an understanding as well as an appreciation of the technology.

We are looking for a leader that can build and maintain a development culture that is highly productive as well as enjoyable to be a part of. The head of engineering needs to be able to help create a culture of people working for intrinsic goals rather than extrinsic ones.

We want someone that can implement an agile development process in an organization, and thrive in a distributed team environment.

Communication within the team as well as throughout the rest of the cross culture organization is a key component of the job. The ability to speak Chinese is important as is the understanding of US and Chinese cultures and how to work productively in both.

The location of this position is primarily based in Beijing, and requires a lot travel between Boston and Beijing.

We offer a competitive compensation package.

Interested in a lot of work, tons of challenges, and ups and downs as part of the normal course of life(at least it won’t be boring)? Interested in building something amazing and achieving something special? Let’s connect!

Web development, Ajax coding, web architect, ruby hacking, however you want to say it, you love to build amazing web apps! If you get fired up writing web applications that perform wonderfully across browsers, operating systems, languages and devices and your resulting maintainable code looks like well-documented poetry, then we want to talk to you.

To apply, please send an email to hr at yottaa.com with the job’s title as the subject line. Tell us what your favorite color is, what makes you smile and, oh yeah, please include your resume too. Bonus points if you tell us your twitter handle. Check out the details below.

At Yottaa, we are passionate about making the Web better, faster and smarter. We built deeply sophisticated technology and large distributed cloud systems spanning across the globe with hundreds of servers. On the other side, we are passionate about hiding all these complexity away from users: with a clean UI, users can quickly get educated, make assessments, run benchmarks and carry out optimizations for their web sites, without getting lost in the technology maze that is powering the web. You can take a look at what we have built so far at http://www.yottaa.com.

We have a track record of innovation to build on and a strong desire to radically improve the Web. If you are passionate about web performance, front end engineering, and if you’ve ever wanted to have a big impact, this is it.

Yottaa is committed to equal opportunity. We love robots, big data, solving difficult problems (and make them look easy), Red Sox, Patriots, etc. How about you?

Yottaa provides cloud services to help web site owners analyze, monitor and optimize their web performance. Yottaa is a well-funded startup, with offices located in Boston and Beijing. We are focused on building a world-class company, and we do so by drinking lots of coffee (ok, drinking coffee alone isn’t enough).

Responsibilities:
1. Marketing Leadership: bring marketing leadership into the team, establish and communicate marketing plans, orchestrate and execute such plans.
2. Community: Engage in conversations that surround our content and brand on Twitter, forums and blogs; build a community of passionate followers and enthusiasts who engage in dialogue with and about Yottaa.
3. PR: Orchestrate and manage PR activities; Conduct outreach and build relationships with top bloggers, media outlets and community sites.
4. Yottaa.com: Create and own the Yottaa web sites, manage content.
5. Customer engagement tools: Write and produce video case studies, success stories, customer testimonials, newsletters and press releases.

Requirements:
1. Experience in leading online marketing and PR activities in a startup environment
2. Strong organizational skills and the ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously while meeting deadlines
3. Analytical and data driven
4. Immersed in social media universe including Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Facebook, forums and blogs
5. Strong personal interest in web technology
6. Strong writing skills and the ability to crank writing output

Bonus Points: coding background in any computer language, or experience in running a web site.

Yottaa offers competitive salaries, equity, health benefits plan, and the opportunity and joy to make impossible things happen along with a smart, motivated team.

Sound like an opportunity you’d thrive? We’d love to hear from you. Send us your Twitter username and a brief bio. You can contact us by either DMing @yottaa or email to hr at yottaa dot com.

Start-ups are where the job-creation action really occurs.

Research published last month by three economists has found that once the age of the businesses is taken into account, “size plays virtually no role,” says John C. Haltiwanger, a co-author of the study and an economist at the University of Maryland. “start-ups are where the job-creation action really occurs.”

A few weeks ago, I wrote about job creation, the importance of startups and how the government policy has been failing a few weeks ago at Yottaa’s blog site. In the article, I pointed out a few examples that the “extra hardship” government policy is bringing to the startup community. Further, I asked: What is the role of government and where should their priority be? Should they be helping jobs creation and drive economic recovery or should they be creating laws that limit that growth?

In an economy where official unemployment rate at 9.5% (the real unemployment rate is probably much higher), all politicians talk about job creation. The government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to “stimulate” the economy. -However, the main job creation engine, startups, has never received proper attention.

With only a small portion of the almost trillion dollar designed for “stimulus” and wall street, the government could make a real difference in the startup community and a real sustainable job creation engine to transform the economy for years to come. Here is the list of things that the government can do:

1. Make it possible for early stage startups to get bank loans and line of credit - both are impossible for early stage startups right now.

   While it was important for the government to step in helping consumer mortgage, it is equally important for the government to step in creating incentives for banks to change their attitude about startups. While innovation-minded countries such as Singapore and China have implemented policies to provide many forms of financial support to startups, US startups are very much left on their own (and maybe their venture investors) - these are the things that government policy can make a real difference.
   

   
   (A side note: I highly recommend you read the Zappos story and Tony Hsieh’s book “Delivering Happiness”. The difference between success and failure can be awfully small. A few month’s cash flow can make the difference between a $1.2B exit and bankruptcy).

2. Make it easier and more economical for early stage startups to provide benefits to employees.

   
   I went through this process at Yottaa recently and at Nexaweb a few years ago. -Boy, let me just say that the smaller the newer a company is, the worse deals you get.

3. Make patent less “deterring” to startups.

   The patent system deter startup innovations? Sound strange but it is true. there are lots of issues with the current patent system in general. The big issues for startups in particular are that It takes hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars to apply for a patent and tt take 4 to 7 years to get a patent granted - during this eternity, startups don’t get any patent protection.

 

I am aware of some other initiatives (such as the Startup Visa Act). I personally think the above would be my top three. What do you think?

It’s as simple as that honestly – I love it. I have been an active Foursquare user for quite a while. Certainly not an early adopter, but during the last many months, I have experienced quite a bit. From Boston to Washington DC, San Francisco to Tokyo and NYC to Beijing – I have been busy checking into places every chance I get and am amazed at the number of people and venues that Foursquare is tracking.

For instance, I’ve earned and lost Mayorships for several locations, but have had a great experience. As I travel quite a bit to Beijing for Yottaa, I’ve checked into numerous places in China. For some time I was Mayor of Mao LiveHouse in Beijing, which was a great night club that has since shut down. Even months after closing, I remained Mayor! Luckily that was one achievement for which I didn’t have to keep fighting.

Currently I have 11 friends, received 11 badges, and am still Mayor of Yottaa HQ in Cambridge. The wonderful @forjared has either given up challenging me for the title or given up on Foursquare altogether.

To me, Foursquare is charting a new market opportunity: location based social media and social gaming. Although it is not entirely earth shattering, it is comparable to how MySpace and Facebook charted social networking and where Twitter was with microblogging a few years ago. Readers should check out Ben Horowitz’s excellent article on Foursquare “Why Andeerssen Horowitz Invested in Foursquare”. There is great potential for innovators like Foursquare to own the market around location based social media and gaming.

Then there was the announcement of Facebook Places…

Much like Foursquare, I wanted to give Facebook Places a trial run. I created a Yottaa check-in and checked myself into our Cambridge office. Although similar to the Foursquare model, the implementation for Facebook Places is not well done. The user experience is not as good and many features are missing. For instance after I created the Yottaa check-in, it was listed at the wrong address and yet there is no apparent means to change that. On the other hand, I already have more friends using it and am seeing more frequent check-ins from more people going to more places.

In case you haven’t experience either service yet, here are two interesting articles covering both sides of the argument:

1. “Why Facebook Places Will Make Foursquare into a Footnote”


2. “Facebook Places Dull Enough Not to Pose a Threat to Foursquare, Gowalla?”

This debate reminds me of the fear that software companies had towards Microsoft in the 1990s. During that period the announcement of Microsoft working on competing products was the beginning of the end for other software developers. A simple rumor alone could stop startups from getting funding, hiring key personnel or establishing a customer base. Everyone knew the first few iterations of a new Microsoft product would more than likely be broken – if it came out at all. That didn’t matter though because customers trusted Microsoft and they believe Microsoft will be the winner in the long term.

Platform giants like Microsoft during the 1990s had a huge competitive advantage. These behemoths possess so much influence and almost nothing can compete against them.

Successfully starting a company is a difficult art. On one end, you need to aim for a large and promising market opportunity. You have to prove to the world that this market exists and that this new market cares about your product or services. On the other side, once this new market opportunity is revealed other players start competing with you. Platform giants might come lumbering in, “copy” your model and then steal the market opportunity away by leveraging their unfair advantages – all before you have time to react.

Fortunately the Microsoft of 2010 is not such a company any more as software development has shifted away from desktops and onto the web. Unfortunately, new platform giants have emerged. Google is one example and although some won’t admit it, Google can also strike fear in the web community almost as much as Microsoft did in the PC era.

Facebook is another example of the new generation of platform giants.

Facebook has built an empire with 500 million users. This empire now possesses influence unmatched by any other company on the market today. Foursquare may have innovated and showed the promise of location-based social media/gaming, but the Facebook behemoth is starting to move into that space as well. Despite strong growth, better features and over 3 million users, Foursquare is going to be challenged to compete against a brand that commands 500 million users.

I still feel that Facebook Places has a long way to go to catch up to what Foursquare has already built and implemented. From a user experience stand point, Foursquare wins hands down. It is also entirely possible that Facebook Places never gets the system right and squanders the opportunity (Remember when they tried and failed to compete against Twitter?).

The question becomes – if Facebook gets its act right, then what happens to Foursquare? They still might become a highly successful startup in terms of an exit (For example, “My bet is that Foursquare devolves over time to a location-based game, or set of games”, as pointed out by @payne92 at Repeat After Me: “Location” is a Feature, not a Product) :

It is a fascinating race to watch and many entrepreneurs like me are asking the big question:

“Does Facebook Places mean the beginning of the end for the big dreams of companies like Foursquare and Gowalla?”

Only time will tell, but I’ll leave you with this:

Fellow entrepreneurs, remember the past and the dangers of playing with fire.

Two words: UX (User Experience) and cloudInno (Cloud Innovation)

Yottaa is focused on building a better user experience through innovative cloud solutions – we want to make Internet User Experience ‘yottaarific’ and we are doing so by innovating at the forefront of cloud computing.

Not clear? Let me explain a bit more:

1. UX (User Experience) – Back in 2000 I was compelled by a vision for a richer web beyond the document-centric HTML ‘click and reload’ model. So I left my role at EMC to start Nexaweb , a pioneer in Ajax and Rich Internet Application technology to begin my journey. Fast forward to 2009 when I founded Yottaa and the idea of ‘a better Internet experience’ became the driving focus for what we would build. Here I was again focused on striving to evolve user experience again, though tackling totally different problems from a totally different perspective.


2. cloudInno (Cloud Innovation) – Today numerous exciting things are happening ‘in the cloud’: Amazon EC2, Hadoop, MandoDB, Microsoft Azure and Google AppEngine to name a few. However to me the most exciting things are not ‘in the cloud’, but ‘on the cloud’ – meaning those innovations that are enabled by cloud computing. There are tremendous disruptive innovation possibilities unleashed by the power of cloud computing and here at Yottaa we have been busy working on some of them.

We started Yottaa in 2009 and since then it has been a very busy, but very fun ride:

Boy, what a crazy day!	Lunch and Learn
Two cookies?	Hmm, Duck…

Here at Yottaa we are very excited about the upcoming release of the public Beta for our initial product offering, yottaa Insight. yottaa Insight is an open data, free service that allows users to monitor, measure and analyze web performance. Below is a screen shot:

Using yottaa Insight to analyze www.Google.com

Let’s be yottaarific!

On the 23rd of May 2010, Lei reached the summit of Everest and became the first Chinese woman, as well as the first Asian-American woman to climb the highest mountain on every continent and to ski to both the North and South Poles. She successfully completed her “7+2″ conquest.

Known as the “Seven Plus Two” challenge, this grueling mission consists of reaching nine of the most extreme points in the world: the highest peak on each continent - called the Seven Summits - and crossing the last degrees of the icy, snowy North and South poles on cross-country skis.

Before her, there were only 9 people in the world that have finished “7+2″. Now Lei becomes the 10th.

Lei is an average woman. A Boston resident, 36-year old, 5′2”, you wouldn’t associate her with such athleticism and madness if you just meet her. Before this, her life story was very similar to a lot of people (In particular, in my own life and the high tech world). Born in China, immigrated to US, she went to good schools (Tsinghua University in Beijing and Wharton for MBA) and had good jobs in high tech and financing. Her life story would have been just like the rest of us…

Except that she had a dream and she wouldn’t let her dream die. In 2004, she decided to pursue her dream. It was not an easy process. As she wrote, when she was in her 20s, the longest distance she ran was just about 1000 meters. Now in mid 30s, she can easily keep her training at half marathon to full marathon intensity. Being short and small, she used to easily allow herself to fall behind others; now she takes pride in competing in running and climbing, and ignoring the physical advantages of her competitors. On a mountaineering trip, everyone has to carry about the same load of gear and food. A 60 lb pack may be only 1/3 of a normal man’s body weight, but it is more than 50% of her weight. So she just has to be stronger!

I have heard about Lei many times. Over the last few months when she set out for Mount Everest, my friends in Boston couldn’t stop but cheering for her and wishing her success. Every time when I think about her story, it gives me so much power to push for my own limit and pursue my own dreams. Average people can achieve amazing things. The dream lives on, as famously stated by Ted Kennedy.

Congratulations to Lei on her amazing accomplishment!

• Support Lei’s 2010 Everest climb - Donate on Paypal;


• Lei and Mount Everest on Facebook;


• More about Lei: http://www.LeisVentures.com

Lei, thank you for being such an inspiration to the rest of us.

With hundreds of thousands of servers, Yottaa has a highly distributed cloud infrastructure spanning across many data centers in many geographic locations globally. Yottaa is looking for a Director of Operations to help set up and run such an infrastructure.

Besides the technical responsibilities, this role also requires managing vendor relationships, optimizing infrastructure costs and leading a team of system engineers to validate, test, and deploy Yottaa’s software onto its massive cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities:

• Select and negotiate with network providers, hosting providers and infrastructure providers;
• Maintain relationship with the above providers;
• Monitor and optimize infrastructure costs;
• Lead a team of system engineers to:
  • Validate and test Yottaa’s software.
  • Set up and manage policies, procedures and tools related to reliability, availability and security
  • Roll out new services to production environment
  • Operate, monitor and manage large scale web systems that may contain thousands of servers distributed at many global locations

Requirements:

• Familiarity with network providers and hosting providers
• Hands on experience in network operations and administration
• Hands on experience testing and deploying large scale server software
• Hands on experience in managing large scale web infrastructure
• Expert knowledge of unit testing, load testing and automated testing

This position is Boston based.

If you are passionate about running one of the largest computing infrastructures on earth, please contact coach at yottaa.com. Yottaa is a Boston and Beijing based company building some amazingly cool and fun stuff related to cloud computing. We look forward to hearing from you.

Here are the patterns that I identified and use:

1. Strong will power: Someone who is persistent in his/her pursuit and won’t give up easily, whatever the pursuit might be. It is not entirely accidental that a lot of entrepreneurs are avid long distance runners because long distance running like marathon is more about having a strong mind than anything else.


2. Relentlessly resourceful: Someone who is able to figure out how to make things happen against all the odds. Someone who would try from many different angles and perspectives in order to achieve a goal and take failed attempts as input for finding better ways.


3. Passion. Starting a new business is hard, and you’d better love it for what it is. Having the passion for solving a particular problem and being compelled by the vision of how better the world would be if the business succeeds are the key reasons that one would get up every morning and fight against all the odds to make it happen.


4. Intelligence. Someone who is highly intelligent. Intelligence is the basic foundation upon which everything else is built. Passion without intelligence is called romance. And it is a good idea to stay away from those with strong will power but without the smarts.

Interesting that post from Vivek Wadhwa on TechCrunch about “Can Entrepreneurs Be Made”. I would disagree with Vivek. No, you cannot teach someone to have passion for something. You can not teach strong will power, intelligence or being relentlessly resourceful. I hear about “pattern recognition” from VCs and other people a lot as well. I have never seem anyone use “gene” as part of the pattern recognition. Nobody judges an entrepreneur by whether his father or mother started a business before or not. On this regard, Vivek’s study is flawed as his article is based on survey results related to family genes as evidence to dispute against pattern recognition.

On the other side, is there value to teach entrepreneurship and is there value for programs like Kauffman Labs as Vivek mentioned in his article? Yes, absolutely. There are millions of people who do have the intelligence, are resourceful, have strong minds and have passion for a certain things, but just haven’t made the jump yet. Surrounding them with other entrepreneurs, mentors and a startup atmosphere is the best way to light up their inner fire. For many reasons (not the least that Wall Street and Google hire tons of smart people to golden hand cuffs), only a tiny percentage of “qualified people” (those who have the ingredients to be entrepreneurs) would become an entrepreneur. So there is a large pool of people (in the order of millions) that entrepreneurship programs, ranging from MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship Center to Kauffman Foundation to TechStars, can make a big difference for.

Fred Wilson has a post on this subject as well: Nature vs Nurture and Entrepreneurship. He listed five attributes for entrepreneurs:

1. A stubborn belief in one’s self


2. A confidence bordering on arrogance


3. A desire to accept risk and ambiguity, and the ability to live with them


4. An ability to construct a vision and sell it to many others


5. A magnet for talent

These attributes are very much along the similar lines as mine, though I would disagree with the “stubborn” and “arrogance” thing. Vivek rightfully pointed out “Silicon Valley investors often have a picture in their heads of the type of person who is worthy of funding: young, brash, stubborn, and arrogant”. No. There are plenty of successful entrepreneurs who are very humble and very flexible. It is not about being stubborn. It is about having the strong will power to make something happen. In doing so, many entrepreneurs are perfectly happy for being the opposite of “stubborn” about a lot of other things. It is not about being “arrogant”. Arrogant people are those who haven’t seem enough yet. Good entrepreneurs are confident but also have keen ears and eyes to learn from other people.

Responsibilities

Skills / Requirements

Location: Beijing or Boston

Close-by, San Francisco’s Open Table IPO’d in May.

Otherwise, it was all Massachusetts, Chicago, Seattle, and Texas. Massachusetts tops the list in 2009.

2010 should look different as we wouldn’t be surprised to see Silicon Valley-based startups Yelp, Zynga, Playdom, Tesla, Facebook and LiveOps IPO.

However, east coast does have a list of really good firms up and coming, not necessarily achieving stardom in 2010, but maybe in the next 2-5 years? Here is a short list of Boston based firms to watch for in the next few years in my humble opinion:

1. BrightCove: Internet video platform. Jeremy and co have done really well and BrightCove is on the way to stardom (Thanks Dharmesh for the suggestion)


2. Hubspot: marketing automation


3. VisibleMeasures: Internet video measurement. Brian Shin and the team have achieved a lot over the last few years. I’m sure 2010 will be another stellar year for them.

The following companies are fairly new. Some of them are still in stealth mode:

1. Akiba: Database virtualization. I expect nothing less than flawless exceution from my Nexaweb colleague David McFarlane


2. Sonian: email and other messaging archiving. After closing Series A financing in 2009, 2010 is going to be a great year for Greg and the folks at Sonian.


3. Performable: Stealth mode company led by my friend David Cancel. I know David well enough to know that this is going to be a great company.


4. Yottaa: “stealth mode” cloud computing company that I’m personally involved with. I’ve not been excited like this for a long time. There are so many amazing things at Yottaa. For example, this is the place that I have the smallest brain among all team members (but thank god, I found ways to enjoy being the dumb person. A couple of days ago I asked Tony for “business justification” on something he proposed - couldn’t believe how much I sound like the manager asking for TPS report cover sheet in the movie “Office”). I have a hard time catching up with them. Ok, time to really learn some Ruby:-)

What other firms in Boston area are interesting? My list above is fairly biased towards “software as a service” related companies. Please leave suggestions in the comment area. Thanks!

Disclaimer: Part of this post is not my writing, but rather re-posted from http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-no-longer-the-home-of-startup-ipos-2009-12.

The World According to Americans

(Credit: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/world-accordign-to-USA.jpg)

The next cartoon is also quite funny:

(Credit: http://kelsocartography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan.jpg)

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a good cartoon for Chinese. So here is one that I sorta assembled (I can think of tons of funny cartoon ideas. I wish i know how to draw them!):

The World According to Chinese

I am going through these things myself at Yottaa. This is my 2nd time in going through these things. My first time was around 2000 to 2001 when I started Nexaweb. Nobody was doing blogging at the time. Frankly, I wish I blogged about what I learned at the time. Because when I need this knowledge again, I remember absolutely nothing about these things. —We are genetically programmed to suck at such stuff and our memory got erased quickly even if we force ourselves through a learning process.

Anyway, through Yottaa, I think that I’ve become a semi-expert in these things now. I’m determined to write down what I learned so that they might be useful for my fellow entrepreneurs. This post focuses on banking.

What is the first thing you should do when you close financing? Well, even before the unbelievable party that you are going to throw:-), you’d better have a bank account that you can deposit the money. How are you going to do that? The followings outline the considerations you should think about from a banking point of view.

1. Account types: banks offer many types of accounts, ranging from checking accounts, simple saving account, and money market account to more sophisticated investment accounts. It is helpful to know the differences between these account types.
   
   
   At minimum you need a checking account which permits unlimited transactions in and out. But checking accounts do not bear Interest. Interest bearing accounts include saving accounts, money market accounts and so on, but they only permit a limited number of transactions per month. For example, saving accounts only permit 6 transactions per month by legal regulations.
   


2. Liquidity vs. investment: The money you raised will be consumed over a period of time. During the period, you want to make sure that cash is available when you need it. On the other side, it also makes sense to consider some form of “investment” for the portion of your cash not needed initially.
   
   
   There are many forms of investments banks offer, ranging from simple saving accounts, money market account, CD account, to even more sophisticated ones. Different type of investment service has different risk/reward profiles. For example, simple saving accounts are the safest (insured by FDIC), liquid, and yield interest but the current interest rate is very low (0.25% for example). Money market accounts are not FDIC insured but they are safe as long as the bank itself is safe. Monday market accounts provide liquidity and offer better interest rate than simple saving accounts. CD accounts may offer even higher return but typically require you to commit to a certain period of time (6 months minimum, typically 12 months), during which there is no liquidity.
   
   
   The common choices for startups I have seen are to stay with simple saving accounts or money market accounts.
   


3. Banking fees: banking services normally charge fees. Such fees are part of the banking cost that you should take into consideration. Most banks may waive such fees if you maintain a certain level of account balance.
   
   
   Some banks give you “earning credit” for your checking account balance. “Earning credit” is different from “interest” that does not generate additional cash, but can be used to offset some of the banking fees. If your balance reaches a certain level, you could have enough earning credit to offset all your banking fees.
   


4. Online banking service: Most banks provide online banking service that you access and manage your accounts from a web browser. Nevertheless, it is still a good idea to check it out to make sure such service is available.
   


5. Do you need equipment financing or loan from the bank? Most banks do not offer equipment financing or loans to startups (they typically require a long credit history, revenue, etc in order to be considered for loans). The only exception is Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Even SVB is nearly impossible to get a loan for young startups, but they at least offer you a glimpse of hope.
   
6. Do you need international banking? This one is tricky as it highly depends on local regulations. You would most likely choose another set of banks in the other country. In Yottaa’s case, we need banking in China because we have a team in Beijing. Fortunately, Bank of America provides banking operations in Beijing so my life is slightly simpler (Still work in progress. After a few weeks, I have not been able to move capital yet. So I’m very much homeless in Beijing:-) Any tips would be appreciated!).

Which bank should you choose? It depends on what you need. In my case (for Yottaa), I evaluated a few banks and eventually picked Bank of America. There is no way that Yottaa can get a loan from them, but it is ok because Yottaa does not plan to get a loan. The other attributes of Bank of America make them look like a better choice for Yottaa(lower fees, better service and engagements, international presence, I love their account service team, etc).

1. IPO market start to open up for venture backed startups: A123 System, LogMeIn, SolarWind, etc.


2. Notable M&A exits: Cisco/Tanderberg ($3B), Cisco/Starent ($2.9B), Cisco/ScanSafe ($160M), Cisco/DVN($40M), Compuware/Gomez($296M),HP/3Com($6B), Google/Admob($750M), EA/Playfish($300M+)…


3. Good activities from VCs: Though the VC industry is still showing signs of struggling in general, quite a few VCs are quietly doing lots of things including raising new fund (notably Andreessen & Horowitz) and doing deals. Another notable example that I love is Founder Collective launched by folks like Chris Dixon. I myself saw quite a few good Series A deals done over the last 4 months.


4. China’s growth rate is going to be 8%+, despite its target of “only” 7% early in the year.

Coincidentally, my friends at RTMAsia reported that “Since September, RTM Asia has seen a strong uptick in US technology vendors looking to expand, with many putting Asia-Pacific expansion in their 2010 plans”. They included am impressive list of activities that they are involved with (I’m not sure whether I can disclose their list or not).

If the tide is turning, it would be great for everyone. On the other side, we shouldn’t read too much into it . At my new company, Yottaa, in some sense, we don’t really care whether the tide is turning or not. Startups like us do what we need to do no matter what.

Do you see the tide turning?

1. Stay virtual for as long as you could

When I started Nexaweb in 2000, I rented an office almost immediately - 849 Mass Avenue in Central Square, two rooms, right above Starbucks! It was a fantastic startup office! Starbucks was our conference room and we had so much coffee! The rent was about $2000/month, which really hurt when we had no funding.

In contrast, we deliberately decided to be virtual when we started Yottaa in early 2009. For a long time, Yottaa conference room #1 was my dinning room. Cambridge Center Starbucks served very well as Yottaa conference #2, and BeanTown coffee house in One Kendall Square is conference room #3. I loved these places and am very sure many more conferences yet to be had at these places going forward.

Being virtual is a great experience that I recommend highly for the initial phase of any startup. Zero rent obviously helps. It is cool and fun to be working in coffee shops. More importantly, it helps build the culture by forcing the team to be diligent and creative about team work and collaboration, molding the “lean mentality” into the core DNA (caution: Starbucks coffee cost adds up quickly!). Further, the big deal in my opinion is that it indirectly influences an entrepreneur to be social. Asking someone for a cup of coffee to talk about your idea is natural if you are spending 60% of your time in coffee shops anyway. I’m very grateful that so many people had coffee with me over the last 6 months. These conversations helped transform the idea of Yottaa from my initial “huh?” to something truly exciting.

When does the “virtual phase” apply? You and your co-founders know each other well and know how to work together. If not, “virtual workplace” may not be a good fit. In any case, make sure that you have Skype chat and face-to-face sessions on a weekly basis.

2. Move into a “shared workplace”?

At a certain point of time, “being virtual” loses its appeal, especially if you have new team members or the “virtual phase” has been too long. At this point, you could consider a “shared workplace”. “Shared workplace” fits best for teams whose size is under 3 people. At above 3 people, you should consider option #5 “get a room” or option #4 “get a few desks”.

Here is a good list of shared workplace in Boston area:

1. Beta House (in Central Square): occupies two stores in a house with a balcony and sun roof. Interesting folks to socialize with;


2. Dogpatch Labs: I’ve not been there yet (though it is very close to Yottaa Cambridge office). But I know some very cool people there and would look forward to checking it out;


3. Cambridge Innovation Center’s (Cambridge Co-work Center, C3) - it is more expensive than most other places, but the environment is a notch above most others.

3. Get a few desks from another company (”sublet”)

An alternative to shared workplace is to get a few desks from another company who has some extra space. This is not a bad option and has its own appeal: you have your own desk and you know who comes in and out in the office (which shared workplace does not guarantee so).

This option applies to small teams as well as bigger team. If you are interested in this option and are looking for space for 4 to 10 people, I know a few great choices in Boston and Cambridge. Ping me if you need an intro.

4. Get a room!

There is a list of fully furnished office choices in Boston area that fit very well for lean startups. You can start with one room and grow to a few rooms. The office space is fully furnished and managed - all what you need to bring is your laptop.

The top three options in Cambridge area are:

1. Cambridge Innovation Center: CIC is at Kendall Square area in Cambridge.


2. Interact Business Suites: InteractSuites is located at Cambridge Galleria area, close to Lechmere T station and very accessible.


3. Regus: Regus has an office in Central Square as well as in Charlestown.

Among the three, I highly recommend InteractSuites. It is an obvious choice if this category fits what you are looking for.