Tim Marman :: Loosely Coupled

Rethinking My Blog

2010-07-13T14:33:22-04:00

I've been writing here for over seven and a half years, during which I've written almost 1,100 posts. I've made a few changes recently to my site based on trends I've noticed, and thought this might be worth discussing in more depth.

Technical Platforms

When I first started writing, the blog was hosted on dotnetweblogs.com, where Scott started to host what eventually became .Text. That site was eventually subsumed by weblogs.asp.net, and the underlying platform was eventually migrated to Community Server.

At some point, I decided that it was important to move this content to a domain I controlled. I ended up running Community Server on slashstar.com - a domain that had some significance because /* is both a comment in many C-based languages and in XPath means "everything in context". (Remember, this was when XML/XSLT/XPath was taking off). My plan was to start a site where myself and a series of other bloggers (like in the DotNetWeblogs days) would write about a series of topics, and categories were organized and discoverable by sub-domain.

That vision never quite panned out and as a result decided to move to my own personal domain. Shortly after this transition, I migrated to BlogEngine.NET, which I think fit my needs a lot better than Community Server. That said, I've recently run into a number of limitations with their object model, and there are a number of features that I have no need for such as themes, widgets and other features.

Content

My posts have definitely slowed down a lot over the years - but this was especially true after I joined Twitter in Feb 2007. Twitter is the perfect outlet for some kinds of short-form and/or time-sensitive topics, which has two implications: 1) I've posted fewer, but longer, posts since I joined Twitter, and 2) there's a lot of stuff from the 4 years prior to Twitter that were probably better suited for Twitter. In many ways, I think this temporal content has diluted the higher quality (or, at least, longer) stuff I've written over the years.

Going forward

As a result of these things, I've decided to refocus what this site will be and how I'm going to organize my content.

Replacing BlogEngine.NET with MVC2. I've resisted the urge to reinvent the wheel by writing my own blog software to this point, but I finally kind of hit the wall with having complete control of my content. MVC routing made this process a lot easier, so I decided to take the plunge.

I now have much more control over the site structure and can better integrate my content throughout the site, while at the same time leveraging the existing BlogEngine.NET admin and Metablog API until the transition is complete. (I may eventually release this as Open Source, though I'm not sure it will necessarily be full-featured enough for a standalone product or whether I even want to bother rewriting the admin pages).

I've also taken the opportunity to try to make the content more readable - eliminating side bars and advertisements (which didn't make any money anyway). If there was a Readability JQuery plug-in, I would use it - but in general I tried to adopt some of the principles of Readability and Instapaper.

Discovering content. There's a lot of buried content on this site because I haven't done a good job (beyond the normal "blog" things) to surface that content. You may notice the most popular / most recent lists here, but I'm brainstorming some more interesting ways to promote that content. I am working on simplifying the category structure to make the posts easier to discover. Finally, I'm working on classifying content (particularly older posts) as "Twitter material", HOWTO or as a "timeless" post, and will promote these posts accordingly.

Integrating "content" produced elsewhere. The biggest problem I have right now is that I "do" a lot of things on other sites - tagging on Delicious, posting to Twitter, sharing or liking on Google Reader - and that's not reflected here. I hope to integrate some of this activity to bring this sharing to a single place, and just generally reflect my recent activity.

Writing. Perhaps most importantly, I want to write more regularly. My goal is to focus on producing one high-quality, longer-form article per month - I hope that having a more fixed schedule will help.

One Year after a Cancer Diagnosis

2010-01-12T22:18:00-05:00

Today was sort of a surreal day for me. Exactly one year ago today, I was sitting in the ambulatory surgery center at Weill-Cornell Medical Center waiting for an orchiectomy. This was after a whirlwind diagnosis between Christmas and New Year’s, where I went from having a little back pain to finding out I had cancer. And exactly one year ago today, I learned that the cancer had spread and I would need additional treatment.

I’m still trying to get my head around everything that happened. While it’s obviously had a permanent impact on my life, it is also very weird to think that this all happened within the past 12 months. Maybe it was just the way I’ve been dealing with it, but it feels like the distant past to me now.

What was perhaps even more surreal, however, was the fact – exactly one year later – I spent all morning at Weill-Cornell Medical Center going through nearly the same battery of tests. This year, the CAT scan and blood tests showed nothing and my appointment with Dr. Scherr was decidedly more positive. Of course, simply spending a few hours in the hospital – especially on the anniversary of such a fateful day – brings with it a wave and range of emotions that was difficult for me to fully comprehend. I have been simultaneously angry and grateful and nervous and relieved and relaxed and terrified today.

On the whole, I feel absolutely wonderful. I’m in better shape now than I have been in years – of course, working Equinox will help with that. There are still some lingering side effects from the surgery and chemotherapy - the most notable of which is neuropathy, which basically means occasional numbness and tingling in my feet and arms, cramping in my legs, and related complications – but overall I have very little to complain about.

I’ve talked a lot in the past about how adversity figures in and how this experience has made me a stronger person – but I decided I also want to be able to say that literally. After turning 30 and beating cancer, I decided a good goal was to beat my personal bests in weightlifting. So, consider this my public commitment - by the end of this year, I will either do a single rep of 550 lbs or do 35 reps of 225 lbs. I’ve only started lifting heavy again in recent weeks, but I think this is something I can do… and I will literally be able to say I cam out of this thing stronger.

Why Paying to Pitch is Necessarily a Scam

2009-10-29T09:06:00-04:00

There's been a bit of a backlash recently - spawned primarily by Jason Calacanis' post - against angel groups that charge entrepreneurs relatively significant sums to pitch their ideas. As Jason puts it, this is an “injustice” and an “abuse of power” – that the poor, desperate entrepreneurs shouldn't be footing the bill for any expenses for the rich angels they are seeking money from. In principle, I think we can all agree with this.

Much of the focus here has been on exposing the bad behavior of these investors, but I think the problem is deeper than that. In other words: By paying to pitch, entrepreneurs are actually hurting their already slim chances of raising money.

[more]

Early-stage ventures have a high rate of failure.

We all know that high-tech ventures – especially in the nascent stages – have a very high rate of failure. David Rose shed some last , he expects seven out of every ten investments to bust, two to make their money back, and one to carry the rest of the portfolio. (I may have the specific numbers wrong, so feel free to correct me). Now keep in mind - this isn't one in ten companies that pitches him - this is one in ten that David actually chooses to invest in. One has to assume that David and his peers get pitched by an order of magnitude (or two) more companies than they actually invest in.

Paying for access to investors is likely a negative indicator of success.

There are a variety of motivations behind why a company might pay for access to investors, but for the most part none of them reflect positively on the company’s chance of success.

With the rise of social tools, investors (both VCs and individual angels) are increasingly more accessible than ever before. Entrepreneurs with a good team, product and/or idea should be able to get a meeting without paying for the right to pitch. Moreover, if an entrepreneur is not resourceful or confident enough to get a meeting with a potential investor, why do we think said entrepreneur will be any more resourceful in terms of actually building a successful business (which we already established is a difficult thing to do)?

In other cases, entrepreneurs were resourceful enough to get introductions, but the investors declined to hear their pitch. If this happens repeatedly, it should be a pretty strong signal that there is something fundamentally wrong with the business or how it is presented. Paying money to pitch isn’t going to fix those problems.

Another group of entrepreneurs who pay to pitch are those who are desperate, as mentioned in Exhibit B. First of all, if you're running out of money, spending more on it to pitch doesn't seem like the best route to me. And, just like in dating, if you're desperate for cash then investors are going to see that and are not going to be as attracted to you. Again, this is a situation where paying just to be in front of the investor isn’t going to solve underlying problems.

Sophisticated investors should not invest in any company that pays to pitch them.

If an investor expects even the majority of the small group of businesses that make the investment cut to fail, then he or she would be foolish to invest in a company that has demonstrated that they are more likely to fail than the average business. First of all, if they did chose to invest, they are effectively taking valuable resources away from the company which will hurt its chance of being successful and providing a return on said investment. Moreover, it should give the investor pause in terms of how the entrepreneur may spend the investor’s money going forward.

Understanding this dynamic, a sophisticated investor should not invest in any company that paid for that access.

I recently had an exchange with Joe Rubin from Funding Post about the Perfect Venture Conference they are running. The event will bring "20 early-stage technology companies" and "40+ VC and Angels" together for a full day of one-on-one pitches. The fee for this "exclusive opportunity" is $2,500 per company.

I know that everyone has a different definition of what "early stage" means, but I think we have to interpret this here as someone who has bootstrapped or raised a small amount of seed money and is looking to raise their first institutional round. After all, if you've already raised a significant angel round or other institutional round, you probably don't need to pay for access to investors (since access to follow-on money and introductions is a big part of the investor value proposition).

So, we’re pretty much dealing with companies who haven't raised anything significant yet and probably don't have much in the way of a product. Let’s assume that all of the investors listed actually attend the event (which some of the evidence Jason selected suggested otherwise for competing groups) – the fact that these investors paid to pitch should still raise big red flags in the minds of investors. I’m going to make a gross generalization here, but I think it’s safe to say that the companies pitching here are probably the best of the best.

When I passed this feedback along to Joe, he defended the price by saying that it was cheaper than their previous events which always sold out. What Joe fails to understand (or at least admit to me) is that this isn’t a compelling data point for the entrepreneur. In fact, the only thing that tells me is that there were at least 20 companies desperate and naive enough to pay to be able to pitch last year.

His pitch would be much more compelling if he could show that a greater percentage of companies that present at his conference get funded as compared to those who connect directly and pitch for free. Of course, I’m arguing that the opposite is true – that those who pay to pitch at these events are hurting their chances of being funded.

Advice to fellow entrepreneurs

Before you consider paying, reach out to investors! Personal introductions are always better, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to see how many investors are willing to meet with you even if you cold call. Quite simply, it’s just not as hard to get an investor to hear your pitch as these prices suggest. (Now, if these fees actually improved your chances of getting money, well, then, sure that would be worth it).

As I said above, if a number of investors decline to even hear your pitch, this suggests that there may be fundamental flaws in the business or how you're presenting the business. In either case, paying to get in front of the investor is not going to solve these issues - and both need to be solved before any investor is really going to think about writing you a check.

More importantly, there are a lot of great free events out there that will both help you connect with investors and get mentoring and feedback. If you’re in NYC, you should check out the Entrepreneurs Roundtable, organized by Centrl founder Murat Aktihanoglu. Murat brings in a different investor each month to meet with entrepreneurs, provide feedback on their pitches, answer questions (both general and specific) and so on. In fact, he’s in the process of connecting early-stage startups with mentors who will help them refine their pitches to be delivered in the January meeting. I can all but guarantee this will be much more useful than any of these “pay-to-pitch” events discussed above – and this is free.

Speaking of which, nextNY offers many free events in NYC, some of which are pitch/investor focused (and you can always organize one of your own. With Nextburgh, I hope to eventually be able to help organize similar events in Pittsburgh.

Oh, and what about angel groups that charge a small fee to apply?

New York Angels – like many other angel groups – charges a non-refundable $150 fee to apply. I’ve heard David and others defend this fee in that, aside from covering expenses, it also provides a degree of “filtering”. In other words, the fee structure prevents “frivolous” applications, or at least covers the cost of having to “waste time on them”.

These fee structures are certainly less egregious than those $10,000 fees we talked about above. I certainly don't think there's any malicious intent here, nor do I think that the negative indicators that I discussed above would necessarily apply here. (To that point, I think the respective portfolios of NY Angels and Keiretsu Forum support this – NY Angels’ portfolio certainly seems more impressive, at least to me).

That said, at the risk of alienating David and other NY Angels, I still think this is an abuse of the power structure and these fees are bullshit. I can only hope that this discussion sheds light on this and maybe causes them to reconsider - or perhaps at least refund the fee to companies that reach a certain quality bar (such that it would truly be a filter, to see if you’re serious/far along enough to pay).

9/11

2009-09-11T21:08:00-04:00

8 years later – and on the eve of my 30th birthday – I figured I would once again repost what I first wrote here several years back. [more]

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I went to work at 1 Liberty Plaza across the street from the World Trade Center. We happened to have a global department meeting that morning, so I had passed through the transit hub at the base of the WTC earlier than usual - 7:45 instead of 8:45.

I still remember the sound of the first plane. I was in a conference room on the 12th floor facing south, so we couldn't actually see what was going on at the time. The paper and ash looked like confetti, and our first reaction was that it was some sort of ticker tape parade.

Without television or radio, we had no sense of what was going on. I called and woke my girlfriend who was living a few blocks south at the base of West St. My plan was to come down to her apartment and figure out what to do. I watched the second plane hit, and by the time I got to her building it had already been evacuated.

Standing in Battery Park, I stared at the burning towers. It was only as I watched the first tower fall that I began to understand the gravity of the situation. I simply stood there in shock with countless others as a cloud of dust and debris and God knows what else enveloped us.

I was on the FDR ramp on my way uptown and did not see the second tower fall. At this point, everything was pretty much a blur. Things hadn't quite sunk in, but all I could think about was where my girlfriend (now wife) was. I finally got through to my parents on a landline. Tara was ok. She wisely ran to the ferry terminal and managed to get on the last ferry off of Manhattan and was making her way to a friend's apartment in Jersey City.

All trains leaving the city were closed, so I eventually ended up at Chris' apartment, a good friend who I worked with and who left the office with me. We eventually met my father for dinner who was still in his office a few blocks away coordinating things. I don't remember what I ate or what was said that night. The only thing I really remember was how grateful I was to be sitting with my father and a few close friends, knowing my mother and sister and girlfriend were all safe.

The greatest gift was waking up on my birthday the next morning at home with those I love and learning that none of my family and friends had been taken. There were 2,749 other families that were not so lucky, and my heart goes out to each and every one.

I still don't fully understand the impact that day had on my life and I don't know that I ever will. I do know, however, that I never forget September 11th, 2001.

Friday Fun: The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog

2009-07-31T13:19:58-04:00

I’m sure you’ve all heard the titular phrase, which contains all of the letters in the English alphabet and is often used to test typewriters or keyboards (or, these days, to showcase fonts).

Well, it really does happen.

(via Caroline)

Fixing LCD Image Persistence on Multi-Monitor Systems

2009-07-23T08:59:29-04:00

When I first installed Windows 7, the power management was not working properly and the screensaver would not kick in nor woo. After I forgot to manually turn off the monitors one night, Something was wrong with power management when I first installed Windows 7 and my monitors did not shut nor did the screensaver kick in. As a result of that first night, I noticed a terrible “ghosting” effect that resembled the burn in of a CRT.

Fortunately, it turns out that burn in (or, more accurately, image persistence) is not permanent with LCDs. Though it is said that letting the monitors “relax” for a few days will fix the issue, it didn’t go away for me. Another common solution, however, is to use a solid white image as a screensaver – this basically burns in a white image and eliminates the ghosted image that was there before.

Another approach to removing LCD image persistence is to first create a solid white image and display the image as a screensaver covering the entire display area for an extended period of time, which operates the pixels in a uniform ON state rather than an OFF state as with turning the display off.

One issue I ran into though is that all of photo screensavers didn’t quite work with multiple monitor setups. Rather, they would show the white image on the primary monitor and have the other screens blank. Though this wouldn’t cause new burn-in, it obviously wouldn’t fix the issue that I had on each of my three monitors.

However, I was able to use UltraMon to achieve this, using the default integrated screensaver and changing the background color to be white. (Speaking of which - even with the new keyboard shortcuts in Windows 7, UltraMon is essential for multi-monitor setups. A new version was just released with proper Windows 7 support as well).

So, my monitors turn white after 2 minutes and then turn off after 30 minutes (based on the power settings). I’ve been running this for a day now and already I’ve noticed some of the ghosting is reduced. I’ll update this post again after a few more days to see how well it works.

Oh, and if you’re going to do this, it’s probably a good idea to reduce the brightness on your monitors so you don’t burn out the backlight bulb. Don’t make it a long-term thing either – once you’ve fixed the image persistence, you can go back to your previous settings.

As a side note, if you’re having similar issues with power management in Vista or Windows 7, there’s a new command line utility that can help you troubleshoot the problem. In my case, I was easily able to identify a USB driver that was preventing the system from entering the suspend state, and the issue was fixed as soon as I updated that particular driver.

Augmented Reality on the iPhone

2009-07-14T14:45:08-04:00

Wow… this iPhone app from acrossair is just too cool (via The iPhone FAQ).

Instead of a static map, Nearest Tube displays subway information in real-time, overlaid in 3D on top of live video of the user's surroundings. Holding the iPhone 3GS horizontal will show arrows pointing to different train stops, and tilting the device upwards will overlay signs in the direction of different stops. These signs look like a heads-up-display, and give more information about how far away the station is and what lines connect there.

You really need to see this thing in action:

If you ask me, that’s much cooler than that app that’s been getting a lot of press about where to stand on the subway. (That’s something that is most useful during rush hour and most New Yorkers have figured that out already!).