Pek Pongpaet

Takeaways from Speaking at U of C Booth School of Business Startup Panel

2010-03-07T22:29:50Z

On Thursday night March 4, 2010, I was on a panel of entrepreneurs speaking at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to a room of MBAs and Computer Science majors interested in entrepreneurship. The others on the panel were established Chicago internet entrepreneurs that have been involved in the Chicago startup community for a while now. This list included Harper Reed, ex-CTO of Threadless, now neophologist for Rackspace, Scott Robbin of Songza.com and Weightshift.com, and Adrian Holovaty of Everyblock.com. I felt very intimidated by this panel because everybody on it had accomplished something great except me. In a sense I was honored to be included in this group, but I couldn’t help thinking I was a sheep in wolves clothing trying to blend in the pack.

The panel was moderated by Robert Rosenberg, Assoc. VP, Communication Planning and Programming at University of Chicago, who incidentally reminded me of Steve Blank. The format was a seven minute intro by each speaker then followed by an hour of Q&A. I have to give a shout out to Borja Sotomayor for putting this panel together and making it happen.

It was very interesting to hear everyone speak and listen to their stories. Although I knew most of the speakers as friends, I really didn’t know their story. Harper gave us a glimpse of some of the issues Threadless had in regards to having to horizontally scale printers. Something you’d never think you’d have to think about in a startup, unless you were printing ungodly amounts of labels everyday. Scott Robbin told his story about how Songza took off and how he and Aza Raskin flew out to the west coast to meet with some serious big name investors and then selling to Amie Street in New York. I learned that Adrian got a $1.1MM grant to work on Everyblock which gave him the necessary runway to hire 6 people and build it into what it is today, right before MSNBC snatched them up. Some of you may also know Adrian as the benevolent dictator co-creator of the python framework called Django In short, everyone’s story was impressive and inspiring.

The Q&A panel was very well moderated by Prof Rosenberg. I thought he had good questions that led to great discussions. I thought it was interesting that none of the speakers had MBAs or even graduate degrees. I don’t think any of us had any business backgrounds at all. Scott had a degree in Acoustics. Fucking acoustics. He kind of stumbled into programming. None of the speakers had any sort of business plans either.

Questions from the audience included your typical – “How can I find a developer to work on my idea?”. Adrian had a good response to that: You have to have something to offer that a developer can respect. When you boil it down, in a startup, if you can’t create and produce, you need to be able to do sales and marketing – something that most developers hate. If you can sell what the developers make, that’s a great partnership. That’s oversimplifying it a bit but that’s it. He also made a point that a startup has to be able to make something. You don’t really have much of anything if you just have an idea.

Some of the other topics discussed:
Why there isn’t a vibrant Chicago startup community, differences between Chicago startups vs the other US cities, or why people don’t perceive Chicago to be a viable startup destination despite successes like Orbitz, GrubHub, Threadless, Groupon, Feedburner, Redbox etc.
Another question that was posed was how we as tech entrepreneurs with development backgrounds balanced or learned the business aspect.

In all, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience there. Borja thought it was a huge success based on the turnout and how many students stayed behind to ask questions and engage with the speakers. I certainly learned a lot and am sure the students di so as well.

How Fast Food Packaging Should Be Designed

2010-02-28T17:48:08Z

I’ve been on a documentary kick lately. I just saw shows like Super Size Me, and Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America’s Greatest Threat. I think childhood obesity is a big issue that won’t go away easily. Companies are bombarding kids with messages that undermine parents. So my views on the subject matter is a bit colored.

I’m a big fan of using design to solve problems and using infographics to educate or simplify messages. Here’s my take on how fast food packaging should be designed. I put this rough mockup together in a few minutes, but hopefully the point gets across. However I doubt that fast food companies would actually implement this as it wouldn’t be in their best interest to do this.

I was inspired by the ClearRX system designed by a visual arts grad student for Target prescriptions.

Another source of inspiration is the Steve Jobs presentation style. His messages are clear and concise. For example, he doesn’t say how many gigabytes an iPod has, because it’s too abstract. What does that mean to the users? An iPod can store 10,000 songs. That’s relevant to the consumers.

So putting the caloric information in terms that people would understand was important. My thought was that if people understood that eating this portion of fries equated to having to run on the treadmill for over half an hour, that is more tangible that 380 calories. What does that even mean 380 calories?

Slideshare is also a great resource for finding inspiring and well designed presentations. I’m also a big fan of the Nancy Duarte school of presentation design. She’s the person responsible for designing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation.

Winner of the Droid Giveaway

2010-02-27T21:53:10Z

We have our winner of the free Motorola Droid giveaway. Last week I decided to give away my Motorola Droid that I got from the Google Hackathon as a way to get more followers as well as to find interesting people to connect with. I used twitRand, a random Twitter follower picker to pick my winner and looked at their tweets to make sure they retweeted the message. I decided to hold off on making a post until the winner received her prize.

And our winner is … Katie Hommer @katiehommer. I asked her to write a blur about herself. Here it is:

“I received my phone! Again, thank you so much! I have been longing for a Droid since November, but I was going to wait for the price to come down!

My name is Katie and I hail from Iowa. A lot of people usually turn up their nose at Iowa, but I have been all over the world and Iowa is home. Most people would be surprised at the culture and the amount of things to do in Iowa. (We are also one of the few states the recognize gay marriages – go Iowa!) Being from Iowa, I am also a HUGE Iowa Hawkeye fan. After September rolls around, all of my weekends revolve around the Hawkeye football schedule. I work in the marketing field in a stifling cubical, but I actually do love my job and the people I get to work with. I am a social media geek and love all things internet-marketing related. In my spare time, I enjoy photography, running and hiking, camping, traveling, do-it-yourself projects and creating things in general. I hate the winter and love all other seasons. My boyfriend and I have a dog and my cat who I treat like children – I’m honestly boarder line crazy when it comes to my animals, but I feel that as long as I recognize that, I am OK. I also love 80’s/90’s hair-banger music – give me some 38 Special and Firehouse over Kanye any day of the week! OH! I am also addicted to good deals – it makes my week if I can find name-brand anything at 70% off. I look high-class on a Busch-Light budget. Winning the Droid from Pek definitely helped me perpetuate that addiction. If you’re interested in following my blog, check it out at http://katiehommer.blogspot.com.”

Thank you everyone for participating in the contest. If I get more free stuff, I’ll definitely have more contests – I had a blast.

Motorola Droid Giveaway

2010-02-22T15:04:06Z

I am giving away a free Motorola Droid no strings attached. I am not selling anything. You won’t have to sign up for magazine subscriptions or any memberships you don’t need. Just follow the instructions below to be entered to win this free Motorola Droid. Contest starts Monday February 22 9AM CST and ends February 23 9AM CST.

What do I have to do?

Two things:

Follow me on Twitter @pekpongpaet
Tweet this link and include the hashtag #freedroidpek

RT Free Motorola Droid Giveaway #freedroidpek http://bit.ly/freedroidpek

Tweet this! Follow @pekpongpaet

You can tweet this link as many times as you like. Each tweet will be eligible and a winner chosen at random using an algorithm. Please don’t use a bot to autogenerate tons of tweets and spam your followers.

Why are you doing this?

Short answer, I got this Droid for free. I value meeting interesting people on the internet and thought what better way than to give something away for free. I also value being able to reach and connect with more people more than I value the amount of money I would have gotten from selling this phone on ebay.

Where did you get this phone?

I went to a Google Android Hackathon in Chicago. I was given a free Droid there by Google.

Rules

This contest is open to anyone with a Twitter account who is at least 18 years of age.
This contest is open to US residents in North America only since this Verizon Droid wouldn’t make much sense anywhere else. You can still tweet this link, I would appreciate that.
Contest is 1 day only. Winner will be chosen at random after the 24 hours at my convenience. I will tweet out the winner as well as make an announcement on my blog.
In order to be eligible, the contestant must have tweeted the link and hashtag and must be following my twitter account @pekpongpaet at the time of the drawing. The contestant is free to unfollow the account once the contest is over.
To enter in this contest, you must use your own Twitter account. Any twitter account that looks like a spam account (based on your tweets) will not be considered.
Motorola Droid phone will be given as is. It’s brand new in perfect working condition. I will not be liable or responsible for issues or problems you may have with the phone.

Masters Demo Videos

2010-02-22T07:15:12Z

Today I participated in the Chicago Shaolin Kungfu/Wushu Tournament as chief judge of the contemporary wushu division. Students from All Star Kung Fu, Chicago Wushu, and Extreme Kungfu were present. It was great to see the next generation of martial artists perform. One of the things that many look forward to at these events are the Masters Demo. This is usually where the instructors perform a demonstration. The idea here is that the tournament is really for the kids, so the instructors usually don’t compete. However, the instructors sometimes get to showcase their skill and talent in the Masters Demo. There’s no judging for these performances, just a display of years of training.

Today I was looking forward to seeing the instructors from All Star Kung Fu, most of them ex-pro athletes from China do their Masters Demo. Here are some videos:

Masters Demo – All Star Kung Fu

Masters Demo Warmup

Don Hyun K Performing RopeDart

Super Awesome Video Slideshows for Valentine’s Day

2010-02-14T09:19:18Z

If you’ve never heard of Animoto, you should check this out. They let you easily create video slideshows from your photos and videos in minutes. I’ve known about Animoto since way back, but I never really got around to playing with them. For Valentine’s Day, I figured I would use them to put together an awesome video for Kim. Here’s the result:

As you can see, the result is pretty slick. It was really easy to create. You just select photos from you computer to upload, select a song from their selection and animoto creates a unique video based on the music you chose and the photos you uploaded. Their algorithm is dynamic guaranteeing a unique slideshow for everyone. I was pretty pleased with the results. Kim certainly was. You can create a 30 second slideshow for free. A 3-minute slideshow costs $3 – that’s what I used. You embed Animoto videos as is or you can also choose to upload it to Youtube.

My only gripes were that the output was a bit low res and the music selection was weak. For an extra $5, I can get a hi-res version with an ISO file that I can burn to DVD. I don’t know if I’ll go for that. I think they should partner with more music distributors to offer you a larger library of music. The other thing you have to watch out for is that they will try real hard to steer you into getting the “All Access” pass for $30/year. If you only want to get 1 video, click on the small “info” link and scroll down to the “$3 single video” link. They made that really hard to find. However if you plan to use these videos for commercial use, you’ll have to shell out $249/year for their pro license.

Jay Goltz on Business

2010-02-12T04:32:08Z

I recently had the privilege of listening Jay Goltz give a talk. Jay is a successful Chicago entrepreneur, professional keynote speaker, and blogger for the New York Times business blog. Jay’s founded many successful businesses in the Chicago area including Artist Frame Service, Jayson Home & Garden, Chicago Art Source, and Bella Moulding. I’ve actually read about Jay from the book Small Giants before I got a chance to meet him in person. It’s not the norm that I take a lot of notes at these talks, but with Jay I left with 2-3 pages worth of notes.

Jay’s big secret to business is not much of a secret at all: Take care of customers. For him, in order to be successful in business, you have to succeed in 3 areas: Marketing, Management, and Finance.

On Management

Hire the right person
Turn off the entrepreneur when interviewing people. Don’t lead the interviewee
Don’t hurry hiring
Lower expectations, raise standards. People don’t know what to expect, so set the standard.
Hold people responsible
Get rid of your own naivete

On Finance

Keep inventory under control
Debt is sometimes OK. Don’t pay cash for depreciating assets you can finance to solve cashflow problems.
You can’t give all 3: quality, price, and service. You have to pick 2.

Here are some of his general tips.

Always keep asking yourself: What am I doing wrong?
Entrepreneurship – there’s no balance. Only controlled sacrifice.
Success doesn’t equal happiness
Figure out the right people. It’s not all you.
Don’t price things based on customers, but the cost of goods/services.
Stupid is stupid regardless of age. I thought this point was funny.

Book Review: The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions (Kindle)

2010-02-10T05:40:26Z

I’ve been reading a lot of business and entrepreneurship books lately. I’m especially interested in ones that deal with internet companies. One book that has been sitting in my queue for a while is this one called: “The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions”. I saw that it was cheaper than the usual 9.99 on the Kindle and immediately bought it. It’s a fairly small book but I literally read it in 3 sittings. i can’t say that with many books.

The book is the story of how Gurbaksh Chahal, who dropped out of school at the age of 16 and at the age of 18 sold his first internet company ClickAgents, an ad network, to ValueClick for $22 million in stock and then at the age of 25 sold his second internet company BlueLithium, another ad network, to Yahoo for $300 million in cash.

Gurbaksh, a Sikh Indian who’s family emigrated to the US when he was 4, was amazed at the opportunities of the Internet from a very young age. His family struggled to provide for him and his 3 other siblings. Both his parents worked double shifts. His story is an inspiring true story of rags to riches.

What is amazing is that while many of the internet companies during the dot com bubble didn’t even have business models, this 16 year old’s company was keeping it real and posting profits. He had over $100,000 in his bank account when he decided to go to his father to ask his permission to drop out of school. If you aren’t from an Asian family, it is probably impossible to understand how hard that must have been and how disappointed his parents must have felt.

His book has a good mix of life story and business wisdom. You’ll also learn a lot about south Asian tradition, especially Sikh. I’ve read many business books a most are pretty dry. This one was a great read and I honestly wish it hadn’t ended so soon. I give it 5 stars.

On Innovation Part 2 (How Apple Does It)

2010-02-05T03:51:54Z

Back on the topic of innovation. I’ve been thinking about it a lot these days. We can’t talk about innovation for 5 minutes before someone invariably mentions Apple and how innovative they are. Well, I thought I’d take some people on a bit of a visual history tour so people can see where Apple gets their innovative ideas.

An old Gizmodo article shows the similarity between the iPhone calculator app and the Braun ET44 calculator.

Another article I found on Metro Hippie shows even more similarities between Braun products and Apple products.

I’m not trying to hate on Apple if that’s what you fanboys are thinking. The point is that Apple liberally “borrows” ideas from others that they see work well. The point is that Apple’s “concepts” are seen as innovations, but clearly, these designs were not dreamed up in the Apple ivory tower. More often than not, innovation comes from without. People get tunnel vision on what they are working on or they are too close to the problem that they can’t see how things could possibly work better. Sometimes what is needed is inspiration from a fresh perspective from those who look at the world from a different point of view.

Which brings me to one of the most famous quotes of all time:

Good artists copy, great artists steal. – Pablo Picasso

Concept UI: iPad Curved Keypad

2010-01-28T04:00:52Z

With all the buzz going on with the release of Apple’s new iPad – a multitouch tablet computer, my friend Scott Robbin came up with a keyboard concept that he believes is an improvement from what Apple is offering. I thought it was a great idea because made the tablet work like a blackberry almost. You used your thumbs to enter the key strokes as opposed to hunting and pecking with one hand while holding the iPad with the other. It also had the advantage of not obstructing the center with your hands or the keyboard.

However I thought that Scott’s concept, as well as the original iPad soft keyboard have limitations of their own, namely that both require you to use both hands. Scott’s post sparked my own idea of a soft keyboard that would require only one hand to operate.

You’ll have to forgive the actual design, but I whipped it together in a few minutes using the Shear filter in Photoshop. The point is that the curved keypad allows you to use your thumb to type while holding the iPad with the same hand. This way, you use the iPad on the train or bus if you had to hold onto the railing. Naturally if you were left handed, you could flip the keyboard to the other side.