Spencer Fry

I Spy a Human!

2009-06-10T19:05:00-05:00

Carbonmade has an intern!

Since the beginning of June, I've been working with David Pham on Carbonmade. David is a college student at Texas and was referred to me by Tiffany Pham, his older sister and my friend from college. His task is to redo Carbonmade's loved, but seriously lacking, search. He's working under Jason's direction, but under my auspices. Meaning, I'm keeping an eye on you, David! :)

It's only been a week, but it's already been a blast working on Carbonmade together with someone in the same room. It's the first time I've experienced working together with someone on one of my startups. Shocking, I know. I've always worked remotely except for a week here or there. So this is a real treat for me.

I wrote about working face-to-face with Dave and Jason back in March and it looks like that's going to be a reality sooner rather than later. I'm bubbling inside with excitement over the thought. Working with David Pham has given me that itch and I don't think I can go back to working alone in my dormant apartment.

Don't Sell, Just Show

2009-06-04T15:12:00-05:00

As I mentioned on the Carbonmade blog last week, Dave and I presented at the NY Tech Meetup Showcase on Tuesday. Neither of us had any idea what to expect going in. All we knew is that we'd be sharing a table with another startup ("Hi, Aviary!"); needed to bring a laptop; and company schwag was optional -- we ended up just bringing a few hundred business cards.

People began to trickle in -- ahead of schedule even -- and without any preparation Dave and I began showing Carbonmade. I want to stress the word "show" because we never once tried to sell Carbonmade to anyone that came to our table. We just told them what it did and gave them a quick demo. We didn't act like salesman or marketers. We didn't end conversations with "you should try it" or "I hope you use Carbonmade." And we were hugely successful because we simply showed it off!

Going into this Showcase, as I mentioned before, I had no idea who was going to be there, but I certainly didn't think it'd be our target audience. It turned out that nearly everyone saw the benefit of the product and knew a friend or family member that could use it. Our market is huge: who doesn't know a dozen creative folks?

What I'm getting at in a somewhat long-winded way is that you shouldn't push your product on anyone. Don't try and sell them on why they should use you. Nobody wants that. Think about how we shy away from people the harder they try and push something on us. Instead, simply show off what you do and if they like it, great, and if they don't, no worries. But showing will always be better than selling.

Gathering User Feedback

2009-06-01T19:04:00-05:00

This past weekend I was at BarCamp NYC 4 taking in the presentations and meeting with people. In the last panel of the day by Whitney Hess, I was asked to comment on how we gather user feedback at Carbonmade. What we do is fairly simple: we provide an e-mail address and receive feedback and comments through that. You know those little things that contain an @ sign and a period? What a novel ideal!

But seriously, what the heck is up with this fad for plastering your web app with UserVoice or GetSatisfaction? Why take users away from your site? And why allow these websites to misrepresent your branding? 37signals already tore them a new one, so I won't rehash it here.

After I gave my little spiel about why providing a plain 'ol e-mail address is best -– everyone knows how to use one –- one guy spoke out: "but I don’t use Outlook, so I can't just click on it!" Who's saying you have to use Outlook? What's so difficult about copying and pasting the e-mail address we provide into your e-mail client (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Thunderbird, or whatever). How's that difficult?

He claimed that users would be put off by having to do this "laborious" task. I just think that’s nonsense. Anyone that is taking the time to find out how to contact you is going to take the e-mail address you provide and blast you off an e-mail. You can then take that e-mail -– we use Google Apps' Gmail -– and label it, assign it, etc.

It's Google's World

2009-05-12T03:20:00-05:00

I was late night chatting with my friend Avi Flombaum, founder of Designer Pages, a little under an hour ago, and the topic of web traffic came up. We both agreed that it's plain from both of our numbers that Google can either be your startup's best friend or worst enemy. He very poignantly said: "It’s Google’s world, we just live in it."

Google really is God. This is made even more apparent by the recent Google/Apple antitrust controversy. And with a whopping 63.7% of search engine market share as of March 2009, you better jump on the bandwagon as quickly as possible.

Let's be honest here: Any marketing plan needs to begin with Google as it pays off in a huge way if you're successful. You cannot ignore it. Search Engine Optimization and that whole game needs to be played and it needs to be played well.

P.S. It's been great for Carbonmade (see: online portfolio in Google).

BoA to ING DIRECT

2009-05-06T21:42:00-05:00

Earlier this year Carbonmade became fortunate enough to be able to start building up our cash reserves for when we move into our new office and start hiring. Being Bank of America Small Business account holders since our beginning, I decided to open up a savings there back in January. Seemed logical.

I knew rates were bad, but I figured they were bad all around. Earlier this month I checked our interest gained. It was absurdly low and I knew something must be wrong. I contacted our bank representative and she replied back: "10,000 or less is 0.10%." No thank you, I replied.

Today I switched our savings account over to ING DIRECT. They're well known for having industry leading savings rates and ease of use. I use them for my personal savings too. Their rate is only at 1.5% right now, but it's still far better than BoA's, 15x better.

That'll teach me to read the fine print.

Cliche

2009-05-06T11:00:00-05:00

I'm trying my best not to be cliché with the blog posts I write. Yes, I've blogged about being passionate, treating your customers well, community building, etc. This is all stuff that's been written about numerous times before. Nonetheless, it's still important to reiterate these things as positive reinforcement every now and again.

That being said, starting with my next blog post I'm going to start shedding some more light on topics that are less frequently written about. I've got a lot to share: both about my past as an entrepreneur and what I do with Carbonmade. I hope some of it will be, at the very least, inspiring and (hopefully) informative.

NOT All About The Benjamins

2009-05-03T19:34:00-05:00

I mentor a few young entrepreneurs -- young both in age and in experience -- and one thing I always tell them is that you can't create a successful company if making money is your top priority. You need to have a basic idea about how you're going to turn a profit, but you shouldn't build the company around making a buck.

Building a company is a five to ten year process, so your top priority should be finding something you're passionate about and you enjoy waking to and falling asleep with at night. It's a marriage and nobody wants it to end in a messy divorce.

So when asked about ideas: "Spencer, I've got these ideas where I think I can make a lot of money." I always ask: "Is this something you're passionate about?" Any hesitance and I'll nix the idea.

It's not so much that people can't be successful selling crap they don't care about (see Billy Mays), but most people will get bored as things fail to grow how they'd like. They’ll then lose interest, because they never cared about it in the first place, and move on to something else. And the process will repeat itself. That's not a good formula for success, so when you're thinking about the next big idea: think about something you're passionate about and do that.

Active Users

2009-04-28T20:33:00-05:00

The other day I heard Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures speak at my friend Murat's Entrepreneurs Roundtable he holds in New York every month. I'd heard him speak there before, but Albert always brings new things to the table. While I'm thoroughly knowledgeable about the whole venture capital process -- which Albert was there to speak on -- I always walk away with tidbits to take back to Carbonmade. This month I took back the concept of an active user.

Active users are extremely important and it's something we haven't been actively tracking at Carbonmade. And therefore we haven't graphed. Thankfully, we have been tracking when users log in and what they do when they log in (add a new image, update their about, etc.) for about the past year, so it'll be relatively easy to build out graphs around this data. If you're not tracking that information yet, you should.

I tweeted Albert asking what he thought was a good time frame to consider a user active and what criteria determined an active user. He responded with: "@spencerfry 30-day active is a good metric for most services; criterion should be a meaningful activity." I’d been talking back and forth with Jason about what criteria to include in our graphs (was simply logging in enough?), so I'm glad Albert clarified this for me.

I was also thinking that while 30 days may be relevant for most web services out there, Carbonmade might be different, because artists typically don't create new work every month. They have projects that last longer and may only want to update their portfolio with 1/3rd of the work they create, etc., to keep up the quality. Because of that I think we'll also create 60 day and 90 day graphs as well.

I'm curious what other people reading this blog consider an active user?

Super Busy

2009-04-22T02:39:00-05:00

I've been incredibly busy lately with work on Carbonmade. As soon as Dave and I got back from our vacations, we got right back into the swing of things and have been working long hours. Things are going very well, though, and we're making good progress on our next release. I'd love to give you a better idea of when exactly it'll be ready, but we prefer to surprise you. Aren't surprises more fun?

Treat Everyone Equally

2009-04-06T18:12:00-05:00

Ever since I founded my first web service back in 2002, I've had the philosophy that it's best to treat every customer equally. It never mattered to me if someone was paying me a dime or not. As long as they used my service, I gave them equal support and treated them well. I don't believe in priority support for paying customers as other web services offer and I'll explain why below.

What's often over looked, but seems obvious when you think about it, is that every customer that signs up for a free account has the potential to upgrade whether it's tomorrow or in three months. Marketing to someone already using your service through good relations and good support is far more cost effective than going out there and spending advertising dollars.

I often find that people using your service for free are often your biggest advocates or at least the most vocal ones. They appreciate you offering them something for free and answering their e-mails on top of that. I've received hundreds of e-mails from Carbonmade users on our free plan that are shocked that we're even responding to their e-mails. I can only assume from their responses that this isn't the case for other free services they use. And that's a shame.

Not only is it less expensive to market to the people on your free plan, but offering them a great experience will lead them to telling their friends. And their friends may in turn upgrade to a paying plan. Or tell their friends who will upgrade, etc. The cycle is infinite. Word of mouth is the absolute best form of marketing out there and it's a shame to damage it when a quick, thoughtful reply to an e-mail goes a long way in winning people over.

Criticism

2009-04-03T17:27:00-05:00

I got in a bit of a heated argument a few days back with a friend of mine. He works for a hedge fund and was hammering me with questions about my stock portfolio. He was picking my brain about my trading philosophy, the research I do, and my overall thoughts on the market. I appreciated the discourse, but felt that he was being a bit too abrasive and I let him know that. I'm not a professional trader and don't claim to be.

This got me thinking about how to best take criticism –- especially criticism of your startup, which I’ll get to in the next paragraph. Looking back, I didn't handle his barrage of questions in an ideal way. I answered them stubbornly and with a scorn look on my face: nobody likes being given the third degree. I immediately took up the defensive instead of opening up to what he had to say.

It's inevitable that you're going to receive criticism -– both constructive and not -– about your startup. You'll hear everything from "there's no market for this" to "you won't possibly survive a year." It comes with the territory and you need to have thick skin and a strong belief that your startup will succeed.

Those are two great qualities, but you also need to be open to criticism (something I'm still working on). You can't just shut it out like I did my friend's advice. Defending your startup's positions with constructive arguments will positively strengthen your convictions. If you don't believe it and cannot explain yourself, nobody else will bother listening.

You also need to be cognizant about where you fall short. You certainly shouldn't act on every piece of advice you hear, but you should take in everything and let it soak in before making any conclusions. Simply keep an open mind and be willing to adapt.

Skiing in Idaho

2009-03-27T22:30:00-05:00

It's important to take a vacation every once in a while to recharge your batteries. Because of this, I'm heading to Sun Valley in Idaho this Monday, March 30th to ski for a week. I'm going with four other people and we're going to make good use of my friend's house that overlooks the slopes. There's also a Jacuzzi outside that's going to be like a second home to me. Be back on April 6th, which just happens to be a day before my birthday.

I'm turning 25!

(Photo Credit: circumerromedia)

Transparency

2009-03-20T20:31:19-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about transparency in the past few days. Being sick gives you a lot of time to think (and write blog posts). Specifically, I've further convinced myself that there are major advantages to talking openly about what you're working on. But, I understand that certain things are best kept secret: like your company's "secret sauce".

Other than your "secret sauce" -- and your revenue and profit numbers -- speaking openly, and freely communicating with your customers, is a good thing. Talking about new features you're working on, your web statistics, how many people are using your service, and being open about obstacles and problems is a good thing. You gain the trust of your users and you may even receive some good input!

I'm always candid with our Carbonmade customers. Simply ask me any question -– publicly or privately –- and I'll answer it. I don't try and mask our shortcomings or make up stories. I just tell it how it is and nearly everyone will be understanding aslong as you you treat them like human beings and not just numbers.

Working When Sick

2009-03-19T20:52:00-05:00

Being sick is the worst. I didn't use to get sick, but this year and last I've been sick twice each winter: I'll blame New York. Not only do you feel like hell, but you also get super behind in your work. This week I'm trying my best to keep working through the cold, even though it's probably making it last longer.

Dave is also injured -- he hurt his wrist working an 18 hour day -- and has been out of production for the past few weeks. So instead of calling this past week a wash and moving on when we're both feeling better, we’ve been brainstorming three, four, five hours a day over Skype the past week. We're in "plan the next 6 months" mode this week and it’s been really great to gain some perspective.

It's not work in the day-to-day sense -- work that we both need to get done and are falling behind on -- but it’s nice to step back and figure things out for the long-term. And my cold and Dave's busted wrist has allowed us to do this. Lots of neat stuff in the pipeline!

Face Time

2009-03-15T19:49:00-05:00

Nothing beats working together in person.

I've been working with Dave and Jason for nearly three years now. And most of that time has been remotely besides a week here and there. While Dave and Jason live together in an apartment in Chicago and are able to talk each other in person, I’m left to communicate over Campfire, telephone, and Skype.

You have to be really good at writing to get your point across over text: think about how many times the wrong meaning is conveyed. Speaking over the phone is better, but there are still problems with that. While we gain an insight from the inflection of a person's voice, we still can't read a person's face or body language. Video conferencing tries to correct for this, but I know that I act differently in front of a camera. I'm just not use to them.

Not working out of the same place leads to longer, more drawn out conversations that could probably be handled in 1/10th of the time in person with far less confusion. Face-to-face interaction helps keep everyone on the same page. Dave and I spoke for 5 hours yesterday -- accomplished a lot -- but I sure as hell wish we had been in the same room.

What I'm driving at is that nothing beats good 'ol human face time. And we're in the process of figuring out a way for our team to be less remote and work with each other more in person. Working remotely is fine for the little details, but anything big picture just has to be done sitting side by side: hand holding optional.

Be Relentlessly Resourceful

2009-03-09T19:48:27-05:00

Paul Graham is undeniably a smart guy and has done a lot for young wannabe entrepreneurs with Y Combinator and Hacker News.

I don't drink the Paul Graham Kool-Aid across the board, but every now and again I think he nails it. This is especially true with his latest piece: Be Relentlessly Resourceful.

I've certainly tried to put into writing what makes a good entrepreneur and I never could quite lay it out properly. Being relentlessly resourceful certainly encompasses what I think is most important: being able to think through any problem by any means necessary.

Bravo to Paul Graham for defining it so succinctly.

Using Twitter for Carbonmade

2009-03-06T19:08:00-06:00

We're up to 645 followers and counting!

About six months ago we started using Twitter for Carbonmade. Three months later we added a link to Twitter on our blog. Last month, I added a link to Twitter to the signature of our e-mails.

I think Twitter has become a powerful marketing tool. Not in the "let's spam our customers" marketing way, but in the "let's communicate and participate in conversations with our customers" way. I’ve had great dialogue back and forth with dozens of people already.

How do I find these people? Besides people following us through the link on our website and the signatures of our emails, I also check @replies and Twitter Search for mentions of Carbonmade. I then follow the person and send them an @reply thanking them for using Carbonmade, seeing if they have any questions, etc. Simply letting them know that I’m here if they need me.

What I don't do is search for generic terms like "portfolio" or "web design" and I certainly don't do searches for our competitors and try and poach their customers (some companies do). That just doesn’t sit right with me and I’d never stoop that low. They'll find us sooner or later.

In summary, opening up another communication line (ugh, I hate that corporate speak) with our customers has been very effective for us -- but more importantly it's been a lot of fun to communicate in 140 character conversations. I'd also recommend keeping it very personal and using "I" instead of "We" and even mentioning your name in the Bio of your Twitter account.

Blog on Your Own Domain

2009-03-04T20:58:11-06:00

User jack7890 asked a question on Hacker News about whether or not startups should host their own blog or use a service such as WordPress or Tumblr. His question specifically was:

We want to start a blog for our startup, but we not sure whether we should integrate it into our site (e.g. www.example.com/blog) or if we should just use Wordpress and then link to it from our site (e.g. www.example.wordpress.com).

I first responded to him:

I don't understand the sudden fad for professional companies to host their blogs on Wordpress, Tumblr, etc. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Keep your blog on your own domain as a subdomain or a subdirectory and NOT on example.tumblr.com or example.wordpress.com. Both are great services, but shouldn't be where you host your company's blog.

I then clarified my point when asked why?

Everyone who responded to you pretty much covered it. But, I'll add that integrating your blog with your website is important for a few obvious reasons: (1) keeping your blog on your own website is better user experience; (2) you can more tightly integrate the rest of your website; (3) it's better in terms of SEO (yes, SEO matters); and (4) you have more control over it running on your own servers.

By "looking professional" I mean "acting professional". Acting professional is simply a synonym for delivering a quality service, in my opinion. I'm not talking about putting on a facade here. I'm talking about taking everything into consideration, because even the littlest things affect a person's overall experience with your product.

This all also applies to people looking to host their own personal blog. For as little as $7.50/year through GoDaddy or other domain services you can get your own domain, so why not blog under your own identity? Web hosting is dirt cheap these days: I recommend A Small Orange for $25/year hosting, which should be sufficient for most personal blogs out there.

What are your thoughts?

Photos: New Workspace

2009-03-04T16:01:00-06:00

Here are some photographs I snapped this morning of my new workspace:

My new Design Within Reach's Transporte Work Table and Herman Miller's Aeron Classic Carbon desk chair have completely changed my life. I had been using a chair that I bought freshman year of college (2002) that was being held together by Duck Tape and a dining room table as my desk. I couldn't even stretch out my limbs under my previous table without knocking my knees against its legs.

What a relief.

Don't Neglect Your Customers

2009-02-28T16:43:00-06:00

Good 'ol fashion customer service is the single most important thing you can offer your customers. Responding to people on time with respect and understanding will go a lot farther in building your brand and increasing your customer base than any set of features. We've seen that ring true one hundred times over with Carbonmade.

I began working on Carbonmade in late 2006 -- about a year into its "launch" -- and growth was stagnant. Dave and Jason didn’t have time to actively support our customers as they were working excessive hours for their design studio’s clients to pay their living expenses and Carbonmade was only a side project back then. My first priority when joining the team on the business side of things was to shore up support. I had seen firsthand how well it had done for me when founding TypeFrag.

From day one I instituted two mantras: (1) everyone would be treated equally whether they were a paying customer (Wooh!) or a free customers (Meh) -- Wooh! and Meh are our two plans. (2) E-mails would be answered whenever I was awake (so not just your typical 9-5) and no e-mail would be left unanswered when I went to sleep at night. And along with that, I'd clear out all e-mails when I woke up in the morning as well.

The reasoning behind (2) is quite simple: the more quickly you respond to e-mails the happier your customers will be. The reasoning behind (1) is what so many startups fail to consider. Any customer that is signed up for your free plan is potentially a paying customer and therefore just as important. Not only that, but free customers are often your biggest advocates. Maybe they can't afford to upgrade, so in turn are extremely grateful for the free service you provide them and will spread their joy to everyone they know. It's a lot easier and less expensive to market to your free customers than to market to people who haven’t used your service yet and startups forget this all the time. Good customer service is the most effective marketing plan.

So what has good customer service brought Carbonmade? Our growth shot up exponentially within a month of me focusing on customer service and it hasn’t dipped since. (And I can say with conviction that customer service is what increased our growth as we released fewer than a half-dozen changes to Carbonmade since I joined the company.) We now receive daily e-mail thank you's from our customers for our wonderful customer support and even write-ups in The Consumerist for our good deeds. Thanks for reading and I assure you that you'll see similar growth trends if you follow my two mantras above. Do not neglect support.

Blogging from New Work City

2009-02-26T01:43:00-06:00

I'm running tonight's New Work City's After Dark. This is just my second time taking the reigns from Tony while he's away. Last week things went really well; we lasted until just past midnight. I hope to do the same tonight, but I'm not sure how many people here are looking to work that late with me.

There's about ten of us here, but I don't know everyone's Twitter name -- shout outs to @tonybgoode, @todd_sundsted, @mikedizon, @seecross, and others. It's a great mix of people this week. Everyone seems to be working on something different and fun. Make sure to sign up for the Meetup group for info on the next one.

Arts, Culture and Technology

2009-02-25T22:49:00-06:00

I attended the Arts, Culture and Technology Meetup last night hosted by the lovely Julia Kaganskiy. It was a smashing success and I'm already looking forward to the next one. Here's a bit about the group:

This group is designed to explore the ways in which social media and technology can help bring arts and culture to the masses. "Democratizing" the arts has been a long-standing goal in the art world, and no medium makes it more feasible than the web. Yet, few cultural institutions seem to be taking advantage of this opportunity to its fullest potential, whether due to skepticism or lack of resources.

The following people had five minutes to present their project to the group:

Christina Ray of Glowlab Gallery
Manish Vora of Artlog
Barry Hoggard of ArtCal, ArtCat and Culture Pundits
Victor Samra of MoMA
Amanda McCormick of The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Jaki Levy of Arrow Root Media
Luke Crawford of Muxtape
David Garrison of Indaba Music
Michael Sabat of Mobile Commons

Here's a photo of Manish:

Here's a photo of Luke:

You can see more photographs on my Flickr.

Accounting Packets

2009-02-22T21:21:00-06:00

I got our accounting materials back from our accountant on Saturday -- please don't judge them by the color scheme of their website. ;) They're extremely thorough and some of the nicest people I've ever worked with.

I'm about to go through things now, but I can already tell from the size of these packages that there's a lot inside! What's left for me to do now is mail a bunch of stuff to the government and 2008 will be a wrap. I'm just happy to be done.

I'm going to spend the rest of Sunday getting 2009 up-to-date. Don't leave this stuff until the last minute or you're going to be frustrated and hurried when April comes around. If you have any questions about accounting, drop me an e-mail or post 'em in the comments.

Sporting the Glue T-Shirt

2009-02-20T09:00:00-06:00

I took a photo of myself with the Glue t-shirt on Wednesday night:

It got picked up on Twitter right after:

Thanks for the mention, @fraser and @LauraGiaimo! ;)

Entrepreneurs Roundtable 11

2009-02-19T19:28:00-06:00

@muratny's Entrepreneurs Roundtable (11) happened last Wednesday. The speakers this month were Connectors Group's Gary Whitehill Jr. and Jeevan Padiyar. Connectors Group is an angel group about 50 deep looking for passionate, coachable entrepreneurs to invest between 25k and 2 million into.

I wrote down a few astute words of advice from CG:

If you’re going to take on angel money, make sure they're going to add value; understand the space you're in; have had previous success in the space; and are able to bring people to help your business grow. You don't want dumb money. You want the smarts behind the check.

After they spoke, a few up-and-coming startups pitched to Gary and Javeen.

CloudContacts
Salescoop
Tigerbow

CloudContacts is trying to fix our business card problem; Salescoop is trying to create a new shopping experience; and Tigerbow allows you to send gifts over email. Check 'em out if you’re interested.

Next month's Entrepreneurs Roundtable (12) features DFJ Gotham's Daniel Schultz.