Marcelo Calbucci's Blog

The Curious Story of the Smart Microsoft Developer Who Couldn’t Find a Job (he liked)

2012-02-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

This is the story of Pete, our fictional character. Pete is a principal developer at Microsoft. He kicks ass solving problems and bringing software to life. He worked on Windows TCP/IP stack for 4 years, then he worked on Visual Studio IDE team for 3 years and more recently he worked on Bing for 3 years doing some hard-core backend optimization for fast retrieval of large data sets. Pete always got top tier bonus, several Gold Star awards, and promotions every other year. But Pete is sad and he wants to leave Microsoft. He thinks the time is right for him to find another company to work for. Pete’s brain is considering Amazon, Google, Facebook and even eBay. Pete’s heart is thinking about joining a startup – well, Pete wants to do his own startup, but a first step for him would be to learn about startups by joining one.

Pete saw that my startup opened several new job positions and he thought that he could talk to me and see what they are and if there’s a match, but also learn a thing or two about startups, which might sway him in to one side or another on his decision on startup versus big company. Pete sent me this great email about his career at Microsoft, about his passion for technology and innovation and how Microsoft wasn’t as fulfilling as it used to be, and he wants to meet to discuss “EveryMove job openings”.

Here’s what I responded to Pete via email.

Pete, I’m more than honored that a person of your caliber and experience would consider EveryMove. I know exactly how you feel about Microsoft. I felt the same way before I left to do my first startup. Microsoft is great for lots of people, but there’s a minority that have this “virus” that want more than Microsoft can provide; they have an entrepreneurial spirit. You are one of those.

The sooner you accept that you won’t find another group inside of Microsoft the better it will be for you. You’ll go from being sad and demotivated to being depressed if you stay. You are way ahead of the curve because you know that already. My first recommendation is for you to go interview at Amazon, Google or Facebook. These are three different companies who provide a great paycheck and benefits, and you can explore a culture that’s significantly different from Microsoft.

I think joining a startup is a good way for you to learn a lot about it, before you risking learning on your own. However, I don’t think you are ready to join a startup yet.
My biggest concern about you joining a startup is that you don’t have enough breadth of expertise in building products. It’s nothing that you couldn’t learn in a short period of time, it’s just that at the stage my startup is in I can’t afford to have people who are learning fundamental building blocks of shipping web consumer products. Until our team has 6 or 8 developers, it’s hard to justify hiring someone who hasn’t “done” it.

Besides that, there are some mental hurdles you have to overcome by yourself about understanding the risk-reward of a startup. Taking a 30-40% salary cut is just one of those. There is also the lack of support and structure at a startup. I know it sounds great, but it’s a lot harder than you think to know what to build next and how, and mostly you’d have to figure this stuff by yourself. Delegation really doesn’t exist at a startup. You just do it.

But here is what you can do right now that will put you in a position to not only interview with EveryMove, but also with dozens of other startups in Seattle and increase your chances of getting an offer, and also make you hit the ground running, creating value for that startup and increasing the chances of that startup to be a successful business.

It’s simple: build something!

Pick a “side project”, a web product, and build it from beginning to end. It doesn’t matter if you are building something for fun or to make money, something you come up with yourself or if you are borrowing an idea from somewhere else but making it better. It just has to be from beginning to end: from buying the domain to the deploying a web product to a hosting service and running for a few months. You’ll learn HTTP, Razor, MVC 3, ASP.NET, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, Facebook Connect, Twitter API, SQL, service monitoring, analytics, etc. Those are fundamental building blocks we use day-in day-out.

Besides all the great technology you’ll learn, which I’m sure you can do in a short few months, there are other things you’ll learn that you were just superficially exposed at Microsoft. Things like user experience, product feature prioritization, product management (that’s not what PMs do at Microsoft for the most part), customer input and feedback, and a sense of ownership and control you never felt before.

If you do a side project like that or maybe two, let’s schedule an interview ASAP. I want you on my team. You proved you can do it and you “de-risked” yourself for a startup and made yourself that much more valuable.

I look forward to hearing back from you in 3 or 4 months.

Cheers,
Marcelo

This exact conversation is fictional, but a conversation just like that happens between me and a dev at Microsoft 2 or 3 times a week, either during face-to-face informational interviews or via email. By writing it on my blog, I can point people to it and help all of us be more prepared and successful in pursuing exciting opportunities of working together -- or not.

And since we are on topic, let me debunk some myths of working at a startup:

Startups don’t work longer hours than you’d at Microsoft or any other big company. I actually would say that startups are more focused on outcome and lifestyle, and big companies are more focused on keeping the workforce busy.
Startup is not one company. Is a class of companies and they differ from each other in many aspects, including work/life balance, compensation and benefits, methodologies and processes, tools and technologies, etc.
Startups do pay, if they raised money or are bringing revenue. The salary will vary between $60,000 and $120,000 depending on stage and your experience.
Startups will offer you anywhere from 0.10% to 1.25% of equity on the company for a Series A funded startup (on a non-executive role), or half or a third of that for a Series B funded startup. It varies a lot.
Startups are a lot more fun than big companies. Period.
At startup, in general, you make a bigger impact to a smaller portion of the population, while at big companies you make a smaller (tiny?) impact to a large number of users.
Startups tend to be more flexible in terms of time in the office, work hours, sick days, vacation days, holidays, work setup, etc.
Startups do offer health insurance and some other perks once they pass the 3-4 employees mark.
Startups are willing to explore and take risks on product, business model, marketing, etc. If you have a crazy idea, be careful if you work at a startup because everyone might just like it and do it.
Job security is a big issue at a startup. Some startups have 12-months of runway (which means they can be out of business in 12-months if they don’t raise more money or increase revenue) and some might have 24-months or 36-months. This is runway to prove a business. A lot of them fail, but you can always find a job at another startup or back at Microsoft, Google or Amazon.
Startup folks, even developers, tend to go out to more to events, meetups, conferences, etc. You become part of this community very quickly.
At a startup you’ll have to do things that you might not enjoy to help keep the ball rolling every once in a while.
As a developer, at a startup there is less emphasis at finding the perfect solution, and more emphasis on finding the fastest solution to a problem.

Any questions or comments? I’m more than happy to continue this conversation in the comments section below.

Two Opportunities for Startups using .NET

2012-01-30T11:08:00.000-08:00

It's surprising how few events there are (if any) for those building startups using .NET. There are lots of .NET events for enterprise and ISVs / VAR. Even thought Microsoft built the BizSpark initiative, which is awesome at supporting startups by addressing one of their main concerns (cost of software), there is not events who are community driven that allows startups to share experiences with other startups. Until now!

Today I'm kicking of the Dot Net Startup meetup and the Dot Net Startup discussion list.

1) Register for the first meetup:

Dot Net Startup Meetup
Speaker: Scott Porad, CTO at Cheezburger Network
Talk: Framework for Setup and Best Practices
When: Tuesday, February 7 - 6:00 PM
RSVP: http://www.dotnetstartup.com/events/49927842/

2) Join the discussion list:

http://groups.google.com/group/dotnetstartup

Let me know if you have suggestions on how to make the meetup and discussion list ultra-valuable, and let your friends who are doing (or planning on doing) a startup know about it.

Are you a CEO or a Founder? [VSP] = Very short post

2012-01-19T07:26:00.000-08:00

This is a bit nitpick of me, or not, but I see a lot of entrepreneurs who put “CEO at XYZ” on their LinkedIn profile. That’s a big mistake in my view. It gives the impression – for some people, not all – that you are a professional manager. It’s even stranger when your previous job was “Dev Lead at Microsoft” and now it says “CEO at XYZ”. The right title should always contain the word “Founder” or “Co-Founder” (if you are one that is). So call yourself “Co-founder & CEO”.

Why? Well, I think of the CEO as the “manager” and founder as the “entrepreneur”. Missing the second part is the most common on LinkedIn profiles of startup founders. Being a founder / co-founder tells the world that you started it. Seldom have I seen just “Founder”, but sometimes I do, and this founder also being the CEO is missing a great opportunity to simplify the life of whoever is reading their bio.

Then there is the “Founder, CEO, President & Chairman of XYZ”. I guess you kind of overdid there my friend. Keep it simple “Founder & CEO” or “Co-founder & CEO” are my preferred way to describe that role (same for the CTO co-founder).

The one title that I like the least is “Co-founder & COO”. A two or three person startup having a COO is just crazy! This means the COO wanted a big title, but the CEO title was taken. If you and your co-founder CEO both have a business background (versus a product background), you guys probably have one more business person than you should on the team. Either one of you must learn and become the VP of Product (or CPO nowadays), or you better raise a lot of money fast to justify this org-chart.

Do you feel the need to change the world through software?

2012-01-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

EveryMove is kicking off the year with a bang! And by a “bang” I mean an incredible opportunity for me, for our team members and for a few new team members to build a very disruptive company tackling a big systemic problem around a person’s physical activity. If you are passionate about building software that makes a big impact in millions of lives, including your own, check out the job opportunities at EveryMove (and let your friends know about them as well).

Seattle 2.0: From humble beginnings to a new home at GeekWire.

2011-12-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

Today I’m ecstatic to announce that Seattle 2.0 has a new home: GeekWire. It’s a perfect match and you can read more on the GeekWire blog post. This is a 5-year chapter on my life, and as such, I feel the need to write a post for myself so I can read it 20 years from now and I’m sharing it with you.

It was a personal pain

When I left Microsoft to build my first startup, Seattle was lagging in online resources for tech entrepreneurs. No blogs, no online calendars, no list of lawyers or recruiters, few and far between events. After attending more NWEN Breakfasts and MITEF Dinners than a normal person should, I’ve met enough people and became clear that they were seeking the same thing I was: to build a community, share ideas and find resources. This is when in late 2006 I bought the domain seattle20.com and a few months later I was posting about events I found out that I thought would be interesting for tech entrepreneurs.

2007: List of Events & Startups

It was just a blog, with a few blog posts a week, each with a tip for an event in town. Not long after I started Seattle 2.0, John Cook compiled a list of tech startups in Seattle (at the time, 64 in total). Greg Linden, a founder of one of those startups, ranked them by their Alexa ranking and I took the idea and compiled a monthly Startup Index in Seattle, each month adding new startups, compiling the index and publishing under the brand “Seattle Startup Index”. On the first few months of the index I searched for new startups, added them to the list and compiled the rank, a very manual and boring process.

2008: Momentum & Content

Then, something happened. I didn’t have to search for events anymore. Event organizers were reaching out to me. I didn’t have to find out new startups anymore. Founders were sending their links to me. We also started to create more content on the blog, initially with me writing articles, then a few folks writing guests posts and in September of 2008, after a meeting with Alyssa Royse, we decided to create a team of blog contributors. We never paid money to anyone to write on Seattle 2.0, but we gave them something else: an audience to their voice.

It was clear that Seattle 2.0 had momentum and it was become a busy task.

2009: Awards & Beyond

Right about that time, my first startup (Sampa) was struggling to find a business model, despite the (limited) product success we had -- in a different blog post you can read that story. Danielle Morrill had joined the Seattle 2.0 contributor team and she was full of energy and boundless ideas. I remember sending an email in early 2009 to about 6 people, including Danielle, Alyssa, Andy Sack and a few others about the concept of creating an Award for the tech startup community. The email was about having fun, going to a bar and have a super informal event. In a few days, the ambition went from that to create a full-fledge Awards event. Danielle was crazy enough to go all-in with me on this endeavor. It was a stunning success. It launched Seattle 2.0 into a whole new sphere and my personal reputation as the community builder of tech startups in Seattle. I give a lot of credit for the tremendous speech Glenn Kelman delivered at that Award and for him to be fool enough to believe and support on a rookie event organizer who wanted to build a stronger community.

I actually give myself a lot less credit to the success of the Seattle 2.0 Awards than people might think. It was like people were thirsty for water and I was the truck driver who dropped a case of water bottles there. Anyone could have done it if they had seen the need and stepped up to the plate.

It’s a business! It’ll be huge!

So the time had come to abandon “just a blog” and build a bit more of a site so that I didn’t have to spend time doing manual work and possibly build Seattle 2.0 into a real business. I was just shutting down Sampa and I thought I could create a model of online content and resources and startup events, make it successful in Seattle and then expand it to other cities.

The second event I did was StartupDay. It was also an unbelievably successful for my standards. First of all, I didn’t lose money. Second, attendees, sponsors and speakers gave amazing positive comment on the event. I did many unusual things, like start the event late-ish (10:00 am), do it on a Saturday (so people didn’t have to explain at work why they were attending an event on how to build a tech startup), 20-minute talks (so the speakers were forced to deliver only the goods and none of the fillings), and build the talks in a progressive series as if you were reading a book on how to build a startup (from the “why do it?” to “when/what” to “how” to what happens afterward). Rich Barton was the closing keynote speaker and he was extremely important for the success of the event, both to bring reputation and credibility to help sell tickets, but also as an amazing keynote speaker who brought it home.

2010: It’s not for me

Between September of 2009 and January of 2010, Seattle 2.0 was my full time job, and then something unexpected happened. Remember the dream of building Seattle 2.0 into an online content/resources and events business? Yeah, I hated that business. I’m a product guy and that business was a services business. Despite the growth and early success, I was just not cut to do it. I thought I was the Melody Biringer (founder of CRAVE) of the Tech Startup world, but I was not. (BTW, Melody was critical in helping me figure out how to build successful events).

Then I decided to bring a person to run Seattle 2.0. I spent time looking for this person and on Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve 2009 (I can’t remember for sure) I went to Danielle Morrill’s house in the morning while she cooked lunch to talk about people who could run Seattle 2.0. She mentioned Jennifer Cabala, who she met through Seattle’s Social Media Club. I’ve met Jennifer once at an SMC event.

I had coffee with Jennifer and I’ve got a good feeling. Jennifer was a professional newscaster for many years, working for KING5, and she was ready for something new on her career. Jennifer didn’t have a lot of experience running a business, but I decided to make a bet. After a couple of months, Jennifer joined Seattle 2.0 full-time. In 2010 we did 3 events and expanded the site, contributors and a lot more. Jennifer brought discipline to the blog and pushed the website to be better. Turned out we weren’t able to build the business both of us wanted and at the same time Jennifer got an amazing offer to work at Startup Weekend from Marc Nager. I was an advisor to Startup Weekend and Marc and I had supported each other many times in the past. I gave Jennifer my full support on this move.

2011: No more events… Well, just a few more

So in early 2011 I was back running Seattle 2.0 while working a full-time job. I had decided not to do more events. They were very stressful and the financial risk was huge (it’s as easy to make $20K on an event as it’s to lose $20K and you don’t know where you’ll land until the week of the event after you committed yourself to it). However, I didn’t listen to myself and I decided to do the Seattle 2.0 Awards once more. Well, not really. The story is more like this: Dave Schappell sent me an email in January and asked if I had an event for Mark Suster to speak at. I told him if I did the Awards he would be great at it, and then the Awards was back on.

It’s not focused enough if you have two targets

A few weeks after I set the Seattle 2.0 Awards 2011 in motion, I joined Russell Benaroya in building EveryMove. The more I worked on EveryMove, the less time I had to Seattle 2.0. Once EveryMove joined the TechStars program, then everything went downhill for Seattle 2.0. I had no time to blog, to publish the Startup Index, to manage the job board and contributors, to promote the site, etc. I was destroying the amazing community and asset I created by neglecting it. It was painful to feel it could die. So I went on a hunt for the next CEO of Seattle 2.0, or someone who could acquire it.

The Anatomy of an Acquisition

The first offer to acquire Seattle 2.0 I received was in mid-2010. It was an OK offer, but the deal fell through a few weeks later. From mid-2010 to mid-2011 I received 3 different offers to buy Seattle 2.0. We never found the mid-point where everyone was happy. I also received some interests from people who would like to run Seattle 2.0 for me. A few of those I would never have at the helm of Seattle 2.0 because they lacked the culture fit to what I was trying to build.

In early September (a few weeks into the TechStars program), I sent an email to a few folks asking to advice on what to do. Jonathan Sposato, one of the co-founders of GeekWire and prolific entrepreneur, asked to meet with me. Jonathan and I have two (maybe three) parallels life. Jonathan was a TechStars mentor to EveryMove (now an advisor and investor). We’ve met and exchange several emails. I shared all the assets of Seattle 2.0, financials and other pertinent information. He circled back with his team and a few weeks later Jonathan said GeekWire was interested in acquiring Seattle 2.0. Once that’s done, we had to understand how the assets would be leverage by GeekWire and what value would be assigned to the acquisition. It took probably 8 weeks to do all that and we found a place where everyone was happy.

Because we were at the same page, the final contract took just a few back-and-forth to get it right. I signed it. Jonathan signed it. The deal is done.

What’s next for Seattle 2.0?

GeekWire will continue to produce and host the Seattle 2.0 Awards and StartupDay. Many of the services, resources and tools on Seattle 2.0 will be migrated to GeekWire over time. You should expect what you got on Seattle 2.0, but better, faster and more awesome. I will be involved in a limited capacity to help on a smooth transition, supporting it, and, in the interest of full disclosure, I have a financial interest over the next 3 years on the success of GeekWire.

Acknowledgements

There is no way I could have done what I did without the support and contributing work from many, many individuals. I’ll certainly miss at least a dozen folks on this post, but I must acknowledge many.

Danielle Morrill: No one has done more for Seattle 2.0 to be what it’s than Danielle. She was all-in at a time that most was critical. If Twilio hadn’t taken her from Seattle, she would likely be the CEO of Seattle 2.0 today and be expanding it to 12 different markets in 3 different countries. She’s unstoppable at building communities.

Jennifer Cabala: Jennifer took a huge risk by leaving her high-paying stable job to an uncertain low-paying position. She is a true entrepreneur because she understood the trade-off between getting a little less for a few years yet learn orders of magnitude more by doing something completely new. She took a leap for herself and for me, and I hope I didn’t disappoint her.

Dave Schappell: Dave was an unbelievable supporter. He sent a heart-felt email to STS (thousands of startup folks) pleading for them to support, sponsor, attend and promote the first Seattle 2.0 Awards. I didn’t ask for it. He just did. And since then he has been doing a significant amount of behind the scenes to make sure all the events were successful.

Alyssa Royse: Alyssa was an early inspiration for Seattle 2.0 with an unbelievable can-do attitude and gave me the courage to build the content and bring in contributors.

Andy Sack: Andy was an advisor to my first startup and we had a good relationship. But after the first Seattle 2.0 Awards in 2009, just as I was walking off the stage, Andy came to me with an enormous smile and full of joy, gave me a hug and told me how amazing the Awards were and how happy he was. After that, he has been an amazing supporter, even offering to invest on Seattle 2.0 (that never came to be because I couldn’t figure out a structure where that would make sense).

Jordana Ayer: Except by a few folks, most people on startupland don’t know my wife. But she has unknowingly sponsored and invested on Seattle 2.0 and its events, while I figure out how not to lose buckets of money on each of those events.

John Cook: John gave the inspiration to the Seattle Startup Index, which boosted our traffic to whole new levels. He could have considered Seattle 2.0 a treat and never published a link or reference to us, but he didn’t. He covered all our events (btw, his coverage of the Seattle 2.0 Awards were just freaking awesome) and helped where he could (Todd, you helped too!)

Jonathan Sposato: Maybe it’s because Jonathan got 4 out of 10 Awards during the first Seattle 2.0 Awards, but Jonathan has been a friend and supporter on multiple ways. He spoke on multiple events, made introductions when I needed and he’s an awesome gentleman.

Melody Biringer: Melody and I were together on the EO Accelerator program. She’s the founder of CRAVE, which most women reading this post probably know about, and most men never heard of. She’s a rock star at building community and events around women interests across the globe. She helped me with the basics of how to create a successful event. If it weren’t for Melody, the first Seattle 2.0 Awards would likely have been a disaster!

There are a few more folks I should thank, and I’m sorry I won’t write a paragraph why I’m thanking you, but you, I and many others know why. You spoke, sponsored or helped at one of the events. You wrote guest blog posts. You sponsored the website or other initiative. You promoted the crap of something when I need it. Or, you just told me to do it, and I did.

Many thanks to:

Aaron Franklin, Alex Algard , Alex Berg, Alex Castro, Andy Liu, Annie Eissler, Anthony Stevens , Arun Mistry, Ben Elowitz, Ben Elowitz, Ben Huh, Berry Zimmerman, Betsy Aoki, Bill Bromfield, Bill Bryant, Bob Crimmins, Boedian Lumanau, Brad Feld, Brenna Rogers, Brett Laffel, Brian Westbrook, Brier Dudley, Brook Wessel, Charlie Carter, Chris DeVore, Chris Dishman, Chris Hopf, Chris Hurley, Clay Nielsen, Colin Wong, Craig Sherman, Dan Shapiro, Dave McClure, Dave Remer, Daryn Nakhuda, David Aronchick, David Geller, David Sheldon, Don Dodge, Emily Shrock, Enrique Godreau, Eric Koester, Garry Tan, Gerry Langeler, Glenn Kelman, Greg Gottesman, Greg Linden, Hadi Partovi, Hillel Cooperman, Hiram Machado, Jacob Mullins, Jan Miksovsky, Janis Machala, Jeff Barr, Jeff Lawson, Jennifer Pitts, Jenny Lam, Jeremy Freeland, Jesse Proudman, Joe Heitzeberg, Joel Ard, Josh Petersen, Karl da Gama Campos, Keith Smith, Kelly Smith, Ken Myer, Kevin Leneway, Kevin Morrill, Konstantin Guericke, Ksenia Oustiougova, Lauren Hall-Stigerts, Lyndi Thompson, Lynn Edwards, Mark Alan Effinger, Mark Suster, Mark Tranter, Mary Abdian, Mason Boswell, Matt Hulett, Matt McIlwain, Matt Paulin, Megan Casey, Megan Muir, Mike Matieu, Mithun Dhar, Monica Harrington, Nathan Parcells, Neil Patel, Paul Gross, Paul Rusyn, Paul Shoemaker, Peter Cancelmo, Rajeev Goel, Rand Fishkin, Rashmi Sinha, Rebecca Lovell, Renate Kroll, Rich Barton, Richard Luck, Richard Vershave, Rodica Buzescu, Roy Leban, Russell Benaroya, Sasha Pasulka, Scott Oki, Scott Porad, Shannon Swift, Shauna Causey, Shayan Zadeh, Shelly Farnham, Steve Fisher, Steve Stratz, Sunny Gupta, T.A. McCann, Todd Bishop, Todd Hooper, Tolis Dimopoulos, Tony Wright, Tory Duffy, Vin Ricci, Vivek Bhaskaran and William Carleton.

Expect more, pay nothing

2011-11-14T16:22:00.001-08:00

Well, it has been a while since I last blogged here. I've been busy with EveryMove and TechStars Demo Day and now there is a ton of other stuff happening that I can't talk about it yet. Say tuned for some great news.

What would have it been to live in Da Vinci and Michelangelo’s era?

2011-10-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

500 years from now people will be wondering how it was to live in Steve Jobs era.

It was awesome to witness it. Thanks Steve. RIP.

Facebook: Help me help you be more successful

2011-09-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

This week Facebook announced a truckload of innovations on their offerings, from a new news feed to the timeline, from improvements on the social graph to changes on sharing. Most of it sounds great, but I believe they are missing an enormous opportunity at redefining the web, mobile and desktop experience. In a sentence, Facebook is primarily innovating “inward” and it should be innovating mostly “outward”. Let me explain.

Let’s bring back the most successful software company of all times, Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft is known as the company that makes boatloads of money with Windows and Office, but that’s almost a consequence of a decision they made very early on their existence, and that’s to focus on empowering developers and ISVs (independent software vendors) to build the most powerful innovations on top of their backs. I’m sure Microsoft didn’t do this to be good Samaritans, but because it made business sense.

Facebook is missing this element. Most of the partnerships they establish are “inward” trying to improve the experience inside of Facebook, all great and dandy if they put similar or great efforts outwards. This is the equivalent of Microsoft Word supporting conversion to PDF, or embedding YouTube videos on documents, or anything that improves MS Word user experience. It’s inward. The Facebook Timeline feature is inward. The news feed is inward. The frictionless sharing is inward.

Now, of course I’m taking a biased view of what Facebook should focus on. I have my own startup tapping into the powerful social graph Facebook is in control off. As such, I wish Facebook would have empowered me even more (some might say given me more rope to hang myself) to more effectively build an awesome product. The number of innovations that will come out over the next 5-10 years will outshine anything that happened in this world over the last 30 years.

Let me be more specific about what I’d like to see from Facebook that would be the catalyst for an unbelievable number of innovations:

Facebook Ads

Facebook should be aiming to Google’s jugular right about now. They have the attention of brands and advertisers. They should launch their own version of Google Adsense. Publishers are very frustrated (probably for the last 4 years) with Google Adsense because of poor performance and ever lower CPCs. In addition, from experience, Adsense doesn’t play well with content behind a sign in screen. Facebook could today launch the tag and send a shockwave on the web. I’d try Facebook Ads in a split second. Particularly if I have some controls about the type of ads (based on the interest graph) that should appear on my site.

Facebook Payment

Raise your hand if you love PayPal! … Bueller? … I’m not talking about the goddamn awful UI, or incredibly slow search features, or the fact that PayPal is quite unfriendly to setup and install on your site. I biggest issue with PayPal is that it’s focused on their own success at converting a user than the success of their money-receiver users at getting paid. Here’s the thing about Facebook: They get how to build incredibly simple to integrate, nearly frictionless experiences. I can easily see how a Facebook Payment system would be fantastic, even enabling one-click (err, two-clicks to avoid a lawsuit) “Buy This” or “Subscribe Now” or whatever I want to do on my site. Most people are already logged in to Facebook all the time, and users don’t lose their FB password as often as people seem to lose their PayPal password.

Facebook Intelligent Open Graph

The Open Graph is awesome. I use it. It’s amazing I can get a few dozen data points from an individual by her just clicking “Join using Facebook Connect”. But I want more! I want one hundred or more new APIs from Facebook that enables me to do things I could never do own my own. Just is just the tip of the Iceberg, but I wish Facebook would provide a Facial recognition API (upload a picture and tell me who’s in it). Or an API that tells me about the user’s friends: who is a family member? Who are the people I went to college with? Who are the people I exchange more ‘likes’ with? Who are the people who live closest to me? Or, how about better Geo APIs? Popular destinations near a place? Places a user’s friends have been more often too? Facebook has not only a trove of data; it has a trove of technology that can be productized. Think of the transition that Amazon went through to provide all the Cloud Computing services. Facebook can provide a lot of interesting value. BTW, I’d pay!

The bottom line is pretty simple: the current strategy by Mark Zuckerberg is based on how much data he can get from you and how many hours a day you spend on Facebook.com. The first part is absolutely fine with me; the second part is where I’m challenging Mark to rethink. Think at how Facebook will be an indispensable component of thousands of new companies.

Looking for an experienced developer to join a startup

2011-08-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

Short and sweet: EveryMove is looking to hire an experienced and awesome developer to join our efforts at making the world a better place. EveryMove is a funded startup in Seattle tackling a big problem. Our development stack is Microsoft (C#, .NET, MVC/Razor, SQL, jQuery).

If you know anyone point them to this blog post:
http://blog.everymove.org/2011/08/everymove-is-looking-for-sr-developer.html

Please, share this with your friends, colleagues, disgruntled employees, etc.

Co-founder search: How did a business guy score me?

2011-08-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

Maybe it’s just me noticing that now, but there is a lot more chat on the blogosphere, twittersphere, hackernewsphere, and on Google Groups about this specie called “Business Guy” who are looking for this other specie called “Tech Guys” to make sweet startup love. I was particularly moved to write this post after I saw a tweet by Marc Nager to a post by Jason Freedman who also linked to a post by Will Miceli. The gist is: You don’t find a technical co-founder, you earn one!

Damn, that’s so true. And it works both ways.

So, back in January of this year, a guy named Russell Benaroya was looking for the mythical technical co-founder. Long story short, we are business-married and living the dream.

Why did I say “yes”?

I’ll skip the complexities of a co-founder partnership negotiation, which only happens after you believe that’s the right match. Like a pre-nuptial agreement, you don’t talk about that on your first date, but you talk about before you get married. That will be another blog post.

Although I was the founder & CEO of my first startup, we only “took off” after Paul Gross joined the company as the CEO and I moved to the CTO role. So, I’ve reported to someone who was a lot more business savvy than me (not true when I worked at Microsoft) and learned the value of having that person. From that, I learned what I wanted from the next CEO of my startup (if it wasn’t going to be me).

How to pick a CEO

You might have heard this before, but many people say the job of the CEO is to set the vision, hire the right people, figure out how they get paid and step out of the way for them to do their work. I think that’s absolutely true. The best leaders are the ones who are not only moving aside for you to do your job, but they go to great lengths for you not to get bothered by things that might prevent you from doing your job (like excessive meetings, running out of money, a grease chair, lack of food, etc.)

But that’s not enough for me to decide if this is the CEO I want to go to business with. I was looking particularly for two things:

Does he have a track record of making things happen?
What part of the business will he do it?

Making things happen don’t necessarily means doing things by your own hand, but knowing how to recruit the right talent, outsource the right skills, and bring in the right resources and services, to… ship something. Turns out that Russell built a (non-technology) health-related startup. If it was successful or not, if he did it all by himself, or if he had a team of amazing leaders reporting to him, was less important. He did it. He pulled it together, executed and sold it.

The second point is actually a “but” on the first point. Yes, you can be good a bringing people together to make things happen, but what if you don’t have all the financial resources to bring all those folks together (like most startups)? Which part of building a startup will you pick up? There is design, marketing, development, biz-dev, sales, operations, customer support and everything else needed in a business. I put this question to myself last week: If I was the CEO of EveryMove, and I had to recruit Russell to be anything but the CEO, which job I would want him to do? Turns out that Russell is a phenomenal biz-dev guy. He can bring people to the table who would blow your mind away. Which is also a very handy skill for fund-raising, but fund-raising is just a dot in the life of a startup, and biz-dev is a long line.

Maybe when I accepted to join forces with him, it wasn’t as clear as it is now why this is the right match, but it some deep level I understood that.

Now, I don’t want people to think this was a one-sided “sell”. He probably had similar thoughts about evaluating how to get a co-founder CTO, but that’s for him to tell.

The bottom line is simple for those looking for a technical co-founder: if you have no track record of getting stuff done, it will be very unlikely you’ll find that person. Will Miceli knew that, so he went to prove that he could do it first and the technical co-founder was a consequence.

My Morning (Internet) Routine

2011-07-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if I’m more addicted to the Internet than the average person, but I know I’m very addicted. Part of the reason I write this blog is to keep a record for myself to go back in 5, 10 or 20 years and see what I was thinking back then. This is one of those posts.

Basically, my routine includes the following supplements & drugs:

1) Check my 3 inboxes (@calbucci.com, @seattle20.com, @everymove.com)
2) Check my Twitter accounts DMs/Replies/Stream w/ TweetDeck (@calbucci, @seattle20, @everymove)
3) Go to Google Reader and consume the blog stream
4) Go to MSNBC.COM & TechMeme to see headlines and read a few news items
5) Go to Facebook
6) Check the Weather for today
7) Go to Seattle 2.0 to check the headlines
8) Check out my Klout score
9) Go to AngelList, Quora, HackerNews, GeekWire, Google+, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow and see pending requests, notifications, some news, comments, etc.

A couple of times a week I’ll…

10) Sign up for one other service I might have just found out about
11) Unsubscribe from some service that keeps sending me daily emails and I never really used it.

Then, throughout the day I repeat steps 1-9 about 5-10 times until I go to bed and while in bed.

In addition to it, here are my top used iPhone Apps:

Daily Use: Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram
Weekly Use: Yelp, Amazon, Pandora, LinkedIn, CardMunch (until it stopped working)
Monthly Use: Fandango, Skype, MyWi, RunKeeper, QRReader, Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, Living Social, Groupon, Glympse
Every once in a blue moon: TripIt, Beluga, Uber.

I have another 50-100 apps installed on my phone I pretty much never use them.

What I’ve Been Up To Lately (On past and new worries)

2011-07-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

I’ve been very busy at my new startup, EveryMove, and that has been consuming most of my time. I passed the point where I try to have much of a life outside of EveryMove and because of that I’ve been saying “no” to new ideas, new projects, existing projects, coffee meetings, advisor roles, or anything. I’m sure I’m not getting a lot of new friends by refusing to meet for coffee with entrepreneurs who want some advice, but Dharmesh said it better.

Anyway, I’ll be at the Startup Weekend Barbeque this Monday if you want to talk to me in person (I’m always open on email).

At EveryMove we are working on our core product and that’s where I’m spending most of my brain cells in. We launched two products over the last month or so, but those were private and experimental only and we don’t want people to get confused about what we are doing so we avoid mentioning them.

If I’d divide up my (work) day, 40% of the time I’m coding the new product, 40% working on the UX, value prop, design, etc., and 20% working on business related tasks. I forgot how much decisions must be made at the early days of a startup. There is a ton to be done, each one affecting (holding back or pushing forward) the other.

I’m finding this time around so much easier than when I started Sampa in January of 2005. Back then I didn’t know squat about startups and I didn’t know much about a lot of technologies I needed, so I spend a many months just learning stuff. Now, I can short circuit all that because I’m either good and/or proficient enough to get the job done. I can say that technology is not getting in the way of building a technology business.

Contrary to when I started Sampa where I was anxious about software scalability, customer support, AJAX-based limitations of IE 6 and crap that didn’t matter, today I’m worried about UX, value proposition to end users, life-time value of a customer and distribution strategy.

I’ll finish this post with some great news. Oops. Can’t talk about it yet, but it’s a big deal for EveryMove (and for me of course).

The best conference if a startup is in your future!

2011-07-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

I know I’m extremely biased by this, but StartupDay 2011 has just been announced and it’s by far the best conference on a 12,440-miles radius from you if you see a tech startup in your future, which means to work at a startup or to found a new startup. You can register right-now and get the ridiculously low early-bird price.

Now, let me back my claim using a simple 5-point argument:

Point #1: This is the third time this conference is being done. We had two very successful sold out events on the previous two years. No conference survives for a third-year if it’s not creating real value for the attendees, speakers and sponsors.

Point #2: Seattle 2.0 has partnered with Startup Weekend to put this year’s conference together. Two organizations that kick asses working together doesn’t happen all the time.

Point #3: Most conferences focus on people working on that “industry” already. StartupDay is the only conference for pre-entrepreneurs. You won’t learn how to build a startup, but you’ll learn what you’ll need to learn to build a successful startup. Your brain will get the exercise of a lifetime.

Point #4: 20-minute talks! Each speaker has a total of 20-minutes. You’d be surprised how good the talks become once you remove all the fluff and chit-chat. It’s powerful and effective.

Point #5: Amazing speakers speaking from experience. StartupDay goes above and beyond to bring you the best minds of the tech startup world right to your backyard. This year speakers include Eric Ries, the founder of the Lean Startup movement; Sean Ellis, one of the best marketing minds around tech startups, and many others.

Convinced? So don’t waste much time and register today. This year will sell out pretty fast.

[GeekPost] MVC done wrong

2011-06-22T10:29:00.001-07:00

{Super-Geek developer post below. Skip for your own mental health}

So, EveryMove is my first project using MVC (Model-View-Controller). I'm pretty sure it wasn't invented by Ruby-on-Rails, but RoR made it "popular". My weapon is ASP.NET MVC 3. I'm actually using a subset of MVC named by Microsoft MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel). No need to explain what it is for rant below, but the only thing you should know is that it requires 3-pieces to render a single page: A Controller, a Model (or ViewModel) and a View.

It's a wonderful way to separate pieces in the code to build large websites, but my problem is how Microsoft decided that MVC should be split into different folders. So you have a folder called "/Controller", a folder called "/Models" and a folder called "/Views". Inside of the "/Views" folder you have sub-folders for each controller you implement.

Now picture this: You want to add a new field to the sign up form on your website. It requires you to open and edit 3 different files. Not only that, but those files are not close together in the folder structure, they are in 3 different folders. If you use the shell or the command prompt, you still need to do quite a bit of navigation to open all three and edit them.

I'm not a genius by any means, but my previous startup used my own made-up MVC model. The difference was that 100% of the code was on the same file. They still would use different methods, but it was on the same file. So, renaming a field, adding something to the UI or a new page, require opening and editing a single file. It was very productive.

I can't do this with ASP.NET MVC. Actually, I could, but it would be unnatural to the way things are setup, both on the environment (Visual Studio) and for the conventions used by MVC/Razor/.NET.

I'm all in favor of productivity, and I think Microsoft made the wrong productivity choice for developers adopting this convention. As I searched for best practices on how to organize large projects on the web, I've found more people complaining about the same thing. Once you have a few dozen controllers, hundreds or thousands of views, you'll also need hundreds or thousands of ViewModels files, and these are very small files, a few dozen lines. It feels like a huge waste of keystroke and clicks to me.

You're doing it wrong: QR Code edition

2011-06-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

So... There's this thing, called QR Code... Never mind. Every single place today has QR Codes. Magazines, billboards, restaurants, T-Shirts, product boxes, etc.

I think there are lots of smart ways to use QR Code and lots of dumb ways to use it. But this is not what this post is about. I want to pick on a "small" technicality of QR Codes. Their resolution!

Recently I was what an event and someone wore a T-Shirt with a QR Code on the back. I could guarantee you no QR Reader would be capable of scanning that QR code because of its high-resolution (high dots per inch) and because the waves the t-shirt was making.

Let me start by showing two QR Codes, let's see if you can spot the difference:

OK, this is hard, I know. Go ahead and scan those to see what happen. What? They are identical? Yes! They are identical. Both take you to exactly to the same place, this blog post on Seattle 2.0.

But you can see how the right one is more fuzzy and detailed than the left one, right? If this is on a piece of paper or at the side box of a product, there might not be a problem since they won't bend and twist, but if that's on a T-Shirt, or on a rough surface, or on a sticker that might get bended just a little when placed, the left one is a much better choice because the QR detection will be using bigger pixels (you can see how the squares on the left are bigger than on the right).

So, what's the magic? Simple. The right one (more likely to give you a problem scanning it) links directly to the URL on Seattle 2.0. The right one, links to a URL shortening service (http://bit.ly/kI4vVk). Because the URL itself is so smaller, the QR Code needs less "dots" to describe it. QR is just an encoding mechanism for characters. This means more characters, more dots; less characters, less dots. On this case, less dots is better.

Do you want to get even sweeter than that? just add ".qr" to the end of the Bit.ly URL and you'll get your nice low resolution QR Code... http://bit.ly/kI4vVk.qr

There might be a 100 reasons for people to think you are clueless, this is one less for you to have to worry about it.

Hey Amazon, how about the “Green Shipping” option?

2011-06-01T12:08:00.001-07:00

I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon. Primarily books, but I also buy electronics, toys for the kids, things for the house or car, office supplies, etc. Most of the time, I get them in the two-day delivery by clicking on “Two-Day 1-Click – Free”. That’s because I have Amazon Prime (free two day shipping) and I have enabled the 1-Click purchase option.

My problem is that I’m slightly more self-conscious of clicking that button because when I buy a book in the morning, due to Amazon efficiency, it will be shipping 30-minutes after my order. On the afternoon I decide to buy another book and 30-minutes later it’s on its way as well. Awesome! Except by the fact they are using two different boxes, have created more wasted products (invoice, packing, packaging, truck delivery, etc.).

I wish Amazon had a button called “Green Shipping”. The idea is simple and similar to Amazon Tote (a service they tested in Seattle and they canned it): Every time I press the “Green Shipping” option, my order is rolled up and delivered to my house once a week. Ideally, I’d like orders posted until midnight Wednesday to appear at my door step by Friday end of day, but I think each person has a different need, so maybe Amazon can give us a knob to control which day is the cutoff for shipping.

If I need something urgent, on a Monday, I’ll just use the One-Day shipping anyway, but if I’m not in a hurry, I don’t mind a few more days here and there to get my order and it’s likely to make me feel less guilty about those UPS trucks stopping by my house.

UIE Web App Masters Tour: Borderline failure by IPM.

2011-05-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

I’m a big fan of Jared Spool, an authority on Web User Experience. I saw him speak at Warm Gun in San Francisco last year and got hooked into his work. So when I learned about the Web App Masters Tour, a two-day conference he was putting together here in Seattle I immediately registered to attend. What could I expect but an awesome *experience* from a user experience guru? That’s where the problem started: too high expectations.

Combine my wrong level of expectations with a poorly executed conference, and I feel that I overpaid, I wasted time and, worse, I felt like I didn’t get my basic (UX) needs satisfied. But before I continue, I must disclose I tend to be over-dramatic, so maybe someone actually got a much better experience than I did.

But what do I know?

I’m unabashedly claiming to be a conference connoisseur. By that I mean I can distinguish the nuances that make a conference go from good to great to awesome to OMG-let’s-do-that-again. Maybe it was the 4-years at college were I peaked at throwing parties to 1,000+ people and then applied those lessons at the Seattle 2.0 events I successfully organized -- yes, there is a lot in common between drunk college students and entrepreneurs and technologists (wait, they are actually the same, just a few years older).

Why did it suck?

Well, so far I have not talked a single thing about the conference itself and I wouldn’t say it sucked, but it was close to it.

The biggest mistake this conference had was to given speakers ONE HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES to give their talk! Seriously, 75 minutes! Have you ever seen anyone giving an engaging and exciting talk for 75 minutes? OK, maybe Tony Robbins can do that, but must people will suck at it, and so they did. It’s not these weren’t expert or smart people, or even good speakers. It’s just they can’t pack enough information to make a 75-minute presentation interesting.

Actually, the situation was so bad in terms of Information per Minute (IPM) that this is the first conference in my entire life I got home at the end of the day and I didn’t have a headache! Zero. I felt like I should read a book about quantum physics to supply the lessons I was prepared to get.

The next thing I’d say was a failure was the kick-off talk by Jared himself. He was not as energetic as he was at Warm Gun. He was calm, paced and at points slow speaking. He should have setup the tone. Primed the attendees. Prepared us for what was to come. The opening was a give away for the next two days.

This event was also very bland. There were the talks, the coffee breaks, the lunches and a small networking event at the end of day 1. That’s it. Not a lot of vendor tables. No mechanism to meet people. Not a lot of interaction with the audience. There wasn't even 200 people on the audience. It was just bland.

The highlights were Kate Brigham from PatientsLikeMe and Luke Wroblewski. Those were the kind of talks I came here to listen.

Here are my suggestions for Jared to improve this event:

Make the talks just 20-minutes long! If you can’t convey 3 lessons in 20-minutes, you should not be giving a talk. If you have more than 20-minutes you’ll add fillings. I just want the meat! See the videos from the StartupDay conference I organized.
Make this a one-day conference. To commit two days is hard. Particularly for anyone working at a startup. That will help you save in hotel and other speakers’ expenses as well. You won’t be able to charge $800 for a single day, but you probably can get $400 for one day.
You won’t make a difference in UI/UX if you target people who already know UI/UX. Target developers, marketers and executives for this event. Maybe students as well.
Add a workshop or anything else to it.
Match a UX designer with a person with a problem. Let the problem be exposed in the morning, and show how they solved the problem by the end of the day. Do that for 5 ‘problems’. The winner gets an iPad.
Help to create an e-harmony of UX expert and people who need UX experts.
Partner with the local organizations, like Seattle 2.0, to promote and attract the right kind of attendees and create the right kind of buzz.

That’s my $0.02. I really, really, really want technologists and startups to know more about UX and I hope Jared can make his conferences more powerful and impact more people (that need to).

Launch Your Site Before You Even Built It! (Announcement)

2011-05-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

As I started on a new startup, I knew how important it was to collect email addresses, Facebook ‘Likes’ and Twitter followers as soon as possible. If you are launching a month from now, or nine months from now, there is no reason not to have a landing page that can at a minimum collect that information. It’s certainly better than “Come back in a few months” page.

That’s why today I’m launching the Easy Landing Site open source project. I was inspired by LaunchRock, a Startup Weekend project built in 54-hours to allow site owners to have an easy to setup (and hosted) ‘viral Launching Soon page’. LaunchRock is in private beta, so you must be invited to use, plus it has the upside/downside of being hosted (less control).

The basis of Easy Landing Site is actually from our own EveryMove.org landing page.

Easy Landing Site is actually a Visual Studio 2010 Project Template. What this means is that from Visual Studio, you can click “New Project” and install right from there. You config a few variables with your site name, your Facebook page, your Twitter account and a few other things, press the Build button and your site is ready to be deployed. In other words, you built a temporary viral Landing page for your site in just 5-minutes.

Now, this is not the basis project for your startup. It’s just a simple, easy to build and deploy, project template. I’d like feedback but no feature requests. It’s unlikely that anything will be added to it by me. It does the job that it’s meant to do.

By the way, this was built using ASP.NET MVC 3 and a few other bags of tricks. In total it took me about 4 hours to create this project, another 2-3 hours to convert this into a template and about 3-4 hours fighting the Visual Studio gallery. Thanks to Ian Mercer for feedback and "code review".

My outdated Computer Science degree: Was it a waste of time?

2011-04-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine shared a link on Facebook and it mentioned a lot of technology acronyms. His friend, in turn, commented it all sounded like gibberish to her and he commented back saying all those things didn’t even exist when he went to college. Wow. I never thought it like that and I started wondering how much of the technologies I use to create software today I had not learned in college. Turns it, it’s a lot.

I went to college between 1991 and 1995. I’ve got a Computer Science degree. That degree was a new degree at my University so a lot of what we were learning was cutting edge because the curriculum had just been set 3-4 years before. At the time, the Web didn’t exist. It was invented in 1993, but only became popular in 1995. The building block of the web was HTML and Web Servers (HTTP). I learned nothing about that in college.

Today, I build web-based services. I use .NET (launched in 2002). I’m still learning about MVC (Model-View-Controller) which was a concept that existed for a long time, but I didn’t learn in college and it only started getting more attention after Ruby on Rails launched around 2004. I do a lot of JavaScript (invented in 1996 or so) and AJAX, a technology that was enabled by IE 5 in 1999 but only became a popular/viable after Firefox 1 launched in 2004.

Cloud computing didn’t exist when I went to college. The standard practice of client-server applications (this is what we used to call software in the ‘cloud’ back then) was to have a very big server, so there was no concept of scale-out (multiple servers), or network architecture with servers taking unique roles. Your one big server was everything.

Video encoding was impossible back then, so I learned nothing about it. Not that I need to learn how to write my own video codec, but I use YouTube/Vimeo embeds, I use a Flash Player and all that was enabled by new codec and streaming technology that didn’t exist in 1995.

Mobile development also didn’t exist. You were lucky (or rich) if you had a cell phone back then and those were very dumb devices. Actually, the whole concept of Mobile applications only started to appear circa 1999 when Microsoft launched Windows CE 3.0 with several partners. As soon as I got one of those devices, I wrote an app (it was an English-Portuguese dictionary).

Databases were also very simple back then. Of course there was ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) on those databases, but they were just tables and indexes. Think about dBase IV if you remember that. Now we have an immense amount of storage technologies, not only in software, but in hardware as well. From RAID to External HD, from cloud-based relational database to NoSQL.

Was it a waste of my time?

As I start a new project (EveryMove) I have to wonder how much I have to learn to keep up with new technology, methodologies, tools and processes. It’s an immense effort and unless you are at a constant learning mode, it’s very easy to get behind. If you take a 4-year break and go build a restaurant then decide to come back, you’d be shocked how much changes in such a short period of time.

I already wrote that Computer Science schools have a hard time keeping their curriculum up-to-date with new technologies.

I think there are two things I learned while getting my Computer Science degree that are with me since then and have proved extremely valuable. The first is the Computer Science fundamentals, things like data structure, algorithms, compression, I/O concepts, networking principles, security, etc. Those things are like physics laws, they don’t change and once “discovered” they become part of our knowledge, and it turns out that most of those things date back to 1940s and 1950s, way before computers using microchips. A person going through Computer Science College today will learn exactly the same thing I did back in the 90s and a person going to college in 2030 will also learn those things. But that’s not enough, which brings me to…

The second thing I took away from college was the need to be self-taught and realize you have to learn dozens of new things every year. Contrary to other degrees like English, History, Law, Civil Engineering, Biology, Dentistry, Medicine and many others, in Computer Science what you learning is not necessarily augmenting previous learning, but replacing it. Which means there is no point on your career you can be considered a big shot because you know more than everyone else. Just take a 15-day vacation in Europe and you fall behind others!

Big deal: Me, EveryMove and the future of what’s important!

2011-04-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

Short & sweet...
I’m the Co-founder & CTO of EveryMove with my new friend Russell Benaroya. EveryMove will change how people think and act in terms of physical activity and their overall health.

Long & spicy...

It has been nearly 18-months since my last (and first) big entrepreneurial endeavour ended. In August of 2009 we shutdown Sampa for good. I had more than one idea since Sampa. Heck, I probably had two dozen ideas, maybe a hundred. Several of those I pitched to many friends and investors. I was mentally tired, so I decided I should stop trying to build a new business and give my brain a break and not be the boss. I joined Conceivian in early August of 2010. After six months there it became clear I needed to get back at building my own thing. I’m not getting younger and you get just one life to play around, and I didn’t want to regret not having built the next big company.

A few days before my last day at Conceivian I sent an email to a handful of friends telling them I was moving on and for them to let me know if they knew of any opportunity. Less than 30-minutes later I’ve got an email from Andy Liu saying he needed to talk to me.

I spent about a month talking to Andy and Russell Benaroya about this idea of how to impact people’s life and change their behavior towards physical activity. It’s not a surprise to anyone that as a society we are becoming more sedentary than ever, and that has tremendous long term implications on our health, on our kids health, on our academic and work performance, and on the cost of health insurance and health care.

Initially I was not so interested on their pitch to me. My two reasons were: I don’t understand the health care industry and I don’t know how to modify people’s behavior towards being more fit and healthy. But Andy is a great entrepreneur and investor, and he and I have been trying to do something together since I was done with Sampa, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and kept listening.

The Pilot

Russell Benaroya had worked with Premera Blue Cross to fund a pilot study with Premera’s own employees. It was a 6-week pilot where people would log their physical activities, earn points and compete in a team against other teams at Premera using the simple prototype we built. The Pilot was just finishing when Russell, Andy and I started talking about me joining them. Russell was conducting two focus groups with 20 individuals each who participated in the pilot test to understand their reactions and feedback. I sat in the back of the room making notes and observing everything.

Half-way through the focus group I was blown away by many of the findings and discussions. I won’t disclose them here because that’s our customer development secret, but I can tell you I was moved! I knew I could make a difference on these people’s life. I know I can build a software product that will dramatically improve their health. I was sold!

Next morning, we met for coffee and I told them I was very excited about the opportunity. After a week (or two) of negotiations, we were a team. Russell Benaroya is the CEO, and I’m the CTO.

Russell and I have very complementary skills. He has actually been in the health industry for the last six years. You can see his background on our website (BTW, sign up to get some emails about EveryMove).

I come from a tech-consumer background. Together, we are putting together a business and product vision that could revolutionize the life of millions (tens of millions? hundreds of millions?) of people, and that’s big!

But, what is EveryMove?

We are not ready to publicly disclose what we are building (read: we are still figuring it out). I can tell you is not a fitness tracking application (there are hundreds of those), it’s not a fitness game (probably a 1,000 of those) and it’s not a support forum or content website. It’s different. There is nothing like it out there. We are actually looking at building something that will nicely integrate with existing fitness and health services out there, from RunKeeper to Fitbit, from Weight Watchers to Spark People.

What EveryMove will do is make you be more fit and healthy; and by “you” we mean the average person, not the person that is already an avid runner or cyclist; and by “fit and healthy” we mean fit and healthy.

Why this is big?

You know how you use email instead of paper mail? You know how you save your pictures on your computer instead of shoebox? You know how you buy airline tickets online instead of a travel agent at a shopping mall? Yeah, the entire health industry is about 15-years behind that. Pretty much every aspect of health care, from diseases to forms, from fitness to food and diet still doesn’t have a meaningful bridge to the online world -- yet.

I hear people talking about how big the Travel industry is ($800 billion according to some) and how they are going to disrupt the incumbents, yada, yada, yada. Well, the Health care industry is actually over $2.5 trillion and this industry is still running Windows 95 on 386 machines! Talk about a disruption waiting to happen. The only industry that is as big and as behind on technology adoption is education.

I’m excited because this is not only a big vision with a big financial potential, but also with a big and meaningful purpose. That’s big! Stay with me and enjoy the ride.

The inner secrets of the Seattle 2.0 Awards

2011-04-04T15:19:00.001-07:00

Today we just announced the finalists of the Seattle 2.0 Awards 2011. It’s a moment I always look forward with pride and fear. Pride not of my own, but seeing and hearing the pride from the founders, investors, executives and everyone else involved with the finalists. Fear because it’s amazing how much crap I have to dodge every year.

Last week about 30 people on the Selection Committee voted for their choices on each category amongst the nominations made by the public. This time, each person on the committee got four votes on each category (on previous years it was two votes). The top 5 most voted on each category were called the finalists.

I always try to infuse the selection committee with as much diversity of professions, experiences, age and gender as possible to get a good spread of views. This process has worked remarkably well at nominating amazingly competent and deserving finalists. Certainly there are more deserving and competent companies and people who could be the finalists, but we only have 5 slots on each category.

I was sick last week and spent most of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in ultra-slow-mode, which accumulated a significant amount of work to be done between Friday and Monday so we could have the vote starting today.

I spent countless hours researching each of the finalists, finding headshots or logos, their website, LinkedIn and Twitter account, writing short descriptions of the product or biographies about them so the website would be ready today. In addition to that I sent email to all finalists congratulating them and telling about the process, sent email to the press, prepared the marketing plan and a lot more. I end up working late on Sunday and I was exhausted at the end.

I’m very happy so far with this year’s Awards. Although this is a lot of work, I drive a lot of satisfaction from the energy these Awards create. Go Seattle!

Training for a Half-Marathon: From Zero to 13.1 Miles

2011-03-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

I’m not a person who likes to exercise. I usually go to the gym once a quarter. I tried many things on the past, but I can’t stick to any particular exercise routine. Most of my exercise comes from playing soccer once a week, biking with the kids at a park (during summer), hiking every once in a while, and that’s it. Last December a friend of mine mentioned how he was just like me until he signed up for a biathlon (triathlon?) and that he didn’t want to lose the money nor look bad in front of his kids and that gave him the motivation necessary to train for it. I thought with myself I never tried that, so why not? Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I signed up for the Seattle Rock-N-Roll Half-Marathon.

I quickly read on the Internet that it takes between 12-16 weeks to train for a Half-Marathon for a beginner, so I went to my Calendar and marked early March as to when I should start training – The Seattle Rock-N-Roll is in late June.

Let the training begin

I thought I would start training in Austin, during SXSW since my hotel was by the river and they had a nice flat trail. Wishful thinking. There was no time during SXSW. So last Sunday (about 14 weeks before the race), I decided to go to the Marymoor Park here in Redmond and run the trail to Seattle. I wanted to run as slow as possible and see how far I could go.

As someone who has never run before, I didn’t know how my body would react to it. I’m on my late 30s, and you keep hearing and reading stories about how your knee is going to hurt or damage, how your tendons might suffer, etc.

Well, I ran about 3.2 miles on Sunday for about 40 minutes (2.7 miles running, .5 miles walking at the end). Interestingly enough, my legs felt great. I bought the right shoes and socks to do this. The only reason I couldn’t run any longer was because of my lungs. I ran out of energy on my chest. My heartbeat was fast, but OK.

OMG, It’s 5K!

As soon as I got back into the car with my wife and kids, I thought a 3 mile run was a pretty good start and then I decided to switch my data entry to Kilometers instead of miles (I’m a metrics guy). Then I realized I ran about 5 Km. Wait, what? 5K? That’s a 5K race! My first run of my entire life (I never ran before) was a 5K!

I really felt awesome. Thank you body for not breaking down on me.

On Tuesday I ran another 5K at a Treadmill. I realized that running on the trail is more fun than treadmill, but treadmill gives you more control over your pace.

Today I ran another 5K and a slightly faster pace (under 35 minutes).

In case it’s not obvious, I ran three 5K “races” in 5 days! That’s coming from a guy that couldn’t stick to any exercise routine whatsoever.

The Plan

I put together my own half-marathon plan. I looked at the Internet for several half-marathon training routines, and created my own version adapting it to my needs. Pretty much I’ll exercise 6 days a week and rest on Monday. I’ll run on Tuesday and Thursday at the gym. I’ll do Cross-Fit training or strength training at home every Wednesday. I’ll play soccer on Fridays. I’ll run near my house on Saturday (or maybe on a park), and on Sunday is the day I’ll do the longest run of the week.

The one thing I forget was to bring a water bottle. Today was my third training and I forgot it again, and I got pretty thirsty.

Now I just need to find enough 40-45 minutes podcasts for me to listen during training. Any suggestions?

The 5 different classes of people at SXSW

2011-03-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

Picture by Betsy Weber

Trying to label SXSW is pretty hard. We love to label things and find patterns so it makes it easier for us to understand what things are, but calling SXSW a conference is not the right label. Not only that, but depending on who you are, SXSW will present itself in a whole different experience.

I remember Chris Pirillo talking at Gnomedex how he wanted to deliver a single experience to all attendees, so people would feel they went to the same event and loved or hated the same things. SXSW is the opposite of that. No two persons here had the same experience, so the feedback will be all over the map.

However, I think I manage to bucket the event into five different experiences (there are certainly more).

The Individual

This attendee came to SXSW without knowing anyone else here. He might have come alone or with a friend. They attended lots of panels and talks. They walked the expo booths. They might have gone to the some well-known parties. They enjoyed the conference, but they are unlikely to understand the hype and all the press it gets.

The Sponsor

A lot of people here are actually representing their companies who are sponsoring the event. It goes from big companies to tiny startups, from Microsoft to GroupMe, from AOL to Startup Weekend. These are the most stressed people on SXSW. They have real work to be done, but they also want to go out and enjoy the event. You see they are done with their duties when they are not running around and they are looking a lot more relaxed.

The Connected

I’m on this group. I think most of the attendees are on this group as well. You know tens or hundreds of people attending the event. No matter where you are you bump into friends. It’s really hard to pick where to go, in terms of talks, panels and parties, because you have friends spread all over the place.

The High-Profile

Everyone is equal according to the law. Everyone is very special according to their mom. At SXSW elitism is the rule. There are layers upon layers of social casts. If you are Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist), Andrew Mason (CEO of Groupon), Marissa Mayer (VP of Products at Google), you are at the top of cast pyramid. You are invited to super exclusive parties, dinners and brunches. Then there are different parties for each layers, until you get to the bottom of the layer pyramid and you are not invited to any exclusive party, only to the public everyone-with-a-badge-can-get-in party, like Mashable. BTW, even on the Mashable party a lot of the “elite” shows up, so you might bump into some famous tech/startup names anywhere.

I’m sure I missed a lot of other classes of experiences at SXSW. Feel free to add them to the comments.

Random Thoughts About SXSW

2011-03-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

Wow. That’s one word to describe the tip of the iceberg of South-by-Southwest. This is the biggest conference I’ve ever been to. There are probably 15,000 people here. I’ve been to trade-shows with 100,000-200,000 people, but they were trade-shows, with booths, not conference with panels, talks, keynotes, etc.

Thought 1: There was a line for the volunteers to register volunteers for the event!

This is massive. The entire city of Austin is taken over for SXSW. All hotels, bars, restaurants and conference rooms are taken. The official event itself happens in about a dozen (two dozen?) different venues, each venue with a dozen (or two or three dozen) conference rooms with different things happening at the same time.

Thought 2: Rookie mistake – I’m trying to see too much

Besides the dozens of parallel talks happening all the time, which can drive you nuts choosing between them, there are also the unofficial events (parties, cocktails, lunches, dinners, brunches, meetups, drinkups) Next year my strategy will be to figure out what’s the minimum amount I should plan to go ahead of time, and let the rest fall into place during the event.

Thought 3: The Tech & Startup world are here

I’m a fairly knowledgeable tech person. I’m also a fairly early-adopter of tech trends. SXSW is where the influencers come to be influenced. It’s where the innovations the cutting-edge-press will start paying attention to are shown it the first time. It’s hard to describe it.

Thought 4: There are a lot of women here

Everyone keeps talking about the lack of women in tech. I don’t know what’s the deal with SXSW, but about 40-45% of the attendees are women. There are a lot of foreigners here as well. I also noticed a few common groups: the tech-people, the startup-people and the marketing-people. (BTW, I’m excluding the Film people & the music people).

Thought 5: Where every Marketing trick on the book (and not on the book) is tried.

The amount of marketing dollars spent at SXSW is enough to make Fred Wilson have a heart attack. It’s pretty ridiculous. Branded food trucks, people on costumes holding signs, fliers, QR-codes everywhere, games, giant projections on buildings façades, banners & signs, parties, exclusive parties, and exclusive VIP rooms inside exclusive parties. My first thought is that most of this is absolutely wasted money. My second thought is how companies (& people) are desperate for attention and they don’t know how to get it, so they throw money at the problem.

Thought 6: It’s like carnival in Brazil. No sleep.

Talks and panels start at 9:30AM, run all day long until 5:30-6:00PM, then the parties, receptions, cocktails, dinners’ start. One after the other and overlapping each other: From 6-9pm, from 6-11pm, from 8-11pm, from 9p-2am, non-stop. If you try to accommodate just a slice of that into your schedule you are dead by the third day.

Thought 7: This is where technology is stretched to its limits

I don’t think when people invent technology like Wi-Fi, 3GS or Foursquare, they ever think of a scenario where 10,000+ people will be using those services simultaneously at the same place. So far I’ve been pretty happy. I have problems, but most of the time it’s working for me. I can’t live without a connection.

Thought 8: I walk a lot!

There are many ways to get around, but most stuff is happening in a 6-block radius from the Austin Convention Center (the main venue). So things are not far enough to take a cab, although there are shuttle, pedicab, and other ways to get around.

Thought 9: It’s going to get bigger!

It’s my first year at SXSW. I’ve read about it last year on how the conference lost it’s ‘touch’. I read it recently how very prominent people justified why they weren’t coming here because it’s not great anymore. Sorry. They are wrong. It’s not what they want it to be. It’s probably not even what it used to be. But it’s big, powerful and it will only get bigger and more powerful. I put a lot of events together. I can tell you SXSW has tremendous momentum. People here talk about the plans for next year like if it’s summer. There always will be a summer. There “always” will be SXSW.

Now I’m going to watch my friend Michelle Broderick give her talk on Marketing.

Google Account Hell

2011-03-12T10:28:00.000-08:00

I've been on this situation for a while but it's getting worse. I have two Google Accounts with the exact same email address. One is marcelo@calbucci.com which is a Google Account I created probably 6-years ago or so. The other is marcelo@calbucci.com which is a Google Account because of Google Apps for your Domain.

You'd think Google would treat them as a single account, but they don't. It's very, very confusing and frustrating. It screw things up when people invite me to edit their Google Docs. It screw things up with my Google Profile and now things got a lot worse because I enabled Two-Steps Authentication.

I'm hoping that Google will come to their senses and fix this madness. I can't be the only person who has this problem.