Mathieu Thouvenin [EN]

Startup School 2009

2009-10-27T04:55:28Z

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook

This year again I had the pleasure to attend Startup School. Startup School is a conference for hackers that want to create their Startup. It’s basically a crash course on a lot of different aspects that matters when you create a startup, from human resources, funding, vision and execution. It’s not like a normal class though, because it’s not one professor, but a lot of different experts speaking about their own experience of creating startups. This year again the speakers were amazing, and the main ones were Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Tony Hsieh, Jason Fried, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Chris Anderson and other very good speakers. The atmosphere of energy in the room at startup school is something you have to experience to believe. Many founders have told that this event was what finally made them take the leap.

So, what did speakers talked about this year? I’m going to go over the best moments of the conference, in my opinion. After the break.

Paul Graham is such a great entrepreneur. He started the conference and talked about what startups are really like, with quotes from a lot of CEOs of the YCombinator baked startups. You can read his talk on his website, along to some great essays.

Greg McAdoo from the famous VC firm Sequoia Capital told that during the last 12 months, Sequoia did no less than 12 Seed/Series A investments, which was more than during the 2 previous years. He then pointed out that since the 1970s, most of the successful companies were created and got funding during tough economic times. He concludes by pointing our that there’s a correlation between difficult economic times and the conditions needed to build a great company. In difficult times, people are more careful about their spendings, it’s easier to get office space, you’re hiring only resources you need, etc… Linking back to last year’s “RIP Good Times” from Sequoia, that the point was that during good times a lot of startups fall into bad habits, which is much more difficult (and hence very good) in difficult times.

Jason Fried is one of the Founder of 37signals, that make simple, useful and in a word great web applications. He emphasized his presentation on the fact that you should sell your product, first because it puts a value on it, users are going to care much more about it, give more valuable feedback. “Selling your product is something you have to learn” and he compared that skill to playing Piano, the more you practice, you better you’re going to be at it, so start practicing and selling your product now. Jason also compared cocaine (or other drugs) to VC funding simply because it’s addictive. Investors want you to come back for money they want you to be addicted to the money from Round A, Round B, Round C,… it’s just addiction.

Chris Anderson talked about Freemium business models. I’m not going to say much about it, because everything is very well explained in his book, “Free” which I recommend you to read.

Evan Williams and Biz Stone answered a lot of questions both from Jessica Livingston and the audience that was able to send their questions via… Twitter, of course. They talked about the before Twitter and how they got the idea and started to really work on it. Everything started when they all worked on Odeo, but they were not really into it, not really passionate about it, they found that podcasting was kind of boring, and didn’t wanted to be the kings of the podcasting. Then one day they gave employees 2 weeks to work on something, and that’s how Twitter was born. Another part of their talked that I really liked is their current focus of making Twitter a great company, and the fact that they are working really hard to have a good corporate culture. Twitter is participating and donating a lot to some associations, for example, which is an example to follow. All the rest of the questions and answers are available on TechCrunch.

Mark Zuckerberg started his talk by saying that the crowd in the room were “his people”, which was a really good ice breaker. Mark basically explained how he arrived to what Facebook is today, and what are the goals of the company. Facebook is trying to get the world to be more open, and he also mentioned that openness and transparency are going to be important in the future. One of his quote that I really liked was “not taking any risks is the riskiest thing you can do”.

It was the first time I was seeing a presentation by Tony Hsieh, and it was pretty impressive! If you don’t know Zappos, it’s basically a website that sells clothes and shoes online… but wait, far from everything you experienced before in terms of customer service. He basically wants to think of Zappos as a company that deliver happiness, and that maybe in 5 or 10 years, Zappos will be an Airline, or a company doing other things far from what they are doing right now. Zappos has very clear core values, values that inspire employees, and that are reasons of hiring or firing employees. He said that “vision and culture can inspire passion and performance”. Before going into details about the different types of Happiness, Tony asked the question “What is your goal in Life?” then he asked us “Why?” Then to the answer he asked Why again? And in the end everything leads to HAPPINESS, that’s what people want, and that’s what Zappos is delivering, both to employees and customers.

To conclude, it was once again a memorable day. Attendees and Speakers are simply amazing, and you leave the room with inspiration, motivation and you simply want to Crush It! (More about this expression soon.)

You can see the full set of pictures I took on my Flickr, all the talks and slides are available online at Justin.tv, TechCrunch did a nice coverage of the event too, and Mark Bao well summarized all the sessions with key points.

Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Founders of Twitter

Mobile phones changed Everything

2009-10-27T03:17:02Z

Amazing ad by HTC, that represents so well how mobile phones changed everything. And it’s just the beginning…

This ad is part of the huge marketing push that HTC started today, all accross the world, for the “revealing” of their brand and their first attempt to go mainstream.

Some Crush It, Some just Fail

2009-10-19T02:14:51Z

I’ve been wanted to write this blog post for a little while now. I’ve been working in companies that promote brands that listen to their customers, brands that want to improve themselves, that want to innovate, change and adapt themselves to their customers as much as possible. It’s really cool to see brands doing that, brands that are changing, or at least trying hard to change. Some example of those brands: Ford, Netflix, eBay, and many more. I want to congratulate those brands, they are just Crushing It!

Unfortunately, it’s still a fraction of companies that are doing this. I’m hoping hard that more and more brands are going to change, and finally listen to their customers, and change things that are wrong with their service or product. On the other side, I’ve been seeing more and more companies with really poor service, bad customer support, that are sometimes listening to their customers, but nothing is really changing. Most people seems to be fine, satisfied with mediocre services, because they are locked in those services or simply because of the lack of choice. I’m tired of this, tired of paying for poor service, and not being treated like a customer paying for a service should be. Is asking for good products too much to ask? It seems for some companies.

One of these companies is Zipcar. I wrote about this service a couple of months ago on the old version of this blog. Unfortunately, I realized with the months that their service was really bad. It went from cars that didn’t had insurance (to pass my drivers license!), cars with really damaged equipment (like really used tires), cars that are not where they are supposed to be, reservations cancelled or changed at the last minute for “technical reasons” and many more problems. And I’m not even talking about their really bad iPhone app, because TechCrunch already wrote about it. Last problem with them was just this week-end. The car I rented to go biking with friends didn’t had battery anymore, Zipcar was perfectly aware of the problem up to 24 hours before my reservation, and no one called me, they couldn’t find a replacement car for me, so I had to give up on what was supposed to be a great day, because of a company not doing his job. They first offered me $11 (one hour of rental, versus the 16 hours reservation I had) when I called. What a joke. But still, this company is acting poorly, letting customers complain online, closed their ears, and still trying to broadcast messages, the old way. It’s too easy to just criticize. That’s why I’m sending a letter to Zipcar, with solutions that would have made me happy today, and how they could have improved the customer support experience I just had. And I’m sure we all have ideas to improve millions of products, we should just share them.

To finish with Zipcar, I’m going to quote Alex Payne:

Dealing with Zipcar has been one of the worst consumer experiences I’ve ever had. While I know plenty of folks who’ve used the service without issue, I hope that if they’ll keep a close watch on Zipcar from here on out. It’s my intention to sign up with City Car Share. They have fewer cars in the Bay Area and no presence in other cities, but far lower rates and a good reputation. They don’t have cars on my block here, but close enough.

I really hope that more and more people are going to counter those old brands. WE have the power, without us, brands can’t live. It’s time to change, and use products and services from responsible companies. Companies that are changing, listening to us, adapting themselves to what we want. That’s how it should be.

Livestrong Day

2009-09-27T21:00:40Z

Following his diagnosis of advanced testicular cancer on October 2, 1996, before he knew whether he would survive, Lance Armstrong started his foundation to fight cancer and help others affected by the disease: LIVESTRONG. LIVESTRONG Day is a global day of action to inspire people to join in the global fight against cancer in communities around the world. This year, LIVESTRONG Day will take place on October 2 to demonstrate that each person can make a difference in the cancer fight.

I’ve always been a supporter of LIVESTRONG and a fan of Lance Armstrong. That’s why I created a band that you can put on your website a couple of years ago, but I never really promoted it. If you want to support LIVESTRONG and put a little yellow band on your website, like at the top right of this page, follow the instructions here. I’m not affiliated with LIVESTRONG, I’m just a supporter trying to help. If you want to help to, promote the LIVESTRONG foundation, donate on Livestrong.org or help spread the word to your friends and family.

Changes

2009-08-20T07:56:05Z

This blog deserve an update. So many things happened in the last couple of months that I couldn’t even take few minutes to write more than 140 characters. So what’s up? I got promoted and now have a new job, and I launched a second iPhone app.

Since a couple of days I’m now working at Seesmic as Product Manager. This is a great opportunity to work with my friend Loic again so I accepted the challenge! “Oh OK, you’re working for that video conversation website?” Maybe you’ve been in a cavern in the last months, but Seesmic is now focusing on making software to manage your community, manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts in one place. We have a Desktop version, a new Web version and we’ll soon be available on mobile devices starting by the iPhone. So many things are happening in that space, that the next couple of months are going to be very exciting.

After adding a couple of nice feature to Voilà! and playing with the new iPhone 3.0 SDK, I decided that it was time to work on a really nice and simple app I wanted to realize for a while. I met with Jeremy, a talented designer in San Francisco, and he like the idea, so we decided to work on Serenade together. Serenade is a free iPhone application that allows you to share songs you’re listening to on your iPhone or iPod touch with the world. Right now, you can share them on Twitter, but Facebook is around the corner, and other nice features. We have a lot more to add (like lyrics, top songs,…) to make it the best social music player, but it’s a good start. We’re working on it, and it’s very rewarding. Apple is probably going to launch some sort of social features like we have in Serenade in the next version of iTunes, that proves that this space is hot! Anyway, you can learn more about Serenade on Crist Drive’s website, as well as on Vimeo where we made a really nice ad.

This is it, I’ll try to update my blog more often now, even if it’s not going to be as often as my Twitter or my Tumblr accounts.

State of Mind

2009-05-20T02:17:49Z

This video summarize very well how I feel right now, and what I want to do. Yes, we can change the world.

This video has been produced by GrassHopper. Big up for them!

Scout Labs launches

2009-02-16T03:51:28Z

I was waiting this day for more than a year now. Scout Labs launches and is finally available for all. Scout Labs is a web-based application that helps companies tune in to what customers are saying about them — what they love, hate, want, wish… right now, all across the Internet (blogs, twitter, social networks, etc.) It’s really quite amazing, if I do say so myself!

Scout Labs really is a useful application, but I am happy to say that it is also my “life’s work” if that means “the thing I am meant to be doing”. 1 year of dreaming, planning and building. 1 year of stress beyond belief. 1 year of real joy, learning so much and working alongside my talented Scout’ teammates and friends. And, now, finally, elated pride in the amazing product that we have built and will continue to evolve (it is just the beginning!).

It was not easy, and it’s not going to be easy. It’s an absolutely terrible time in history to be launching a product targeted at businesses (even though Scout Labs is a very advanced tool, available at a fraction of the cost of our closest competition.) Who might be interested? Anyone who runs a company (small, medium or large) or works at a company or agency in the areas of product management, marketing, brand management, PR, communications, or customer service. I invite you to take a look at Scout Labs, and try it for free for 30-days. Please let us know what you think about it we’re listening to you and are ready to improve the product with you. You can follow us on our blog, or on Twitter.

Thank you.

They talk about us: TechCrunch, CNET, MediaPost, Marketing Vox, ClickZ.

Voilà! on the App Store

2009-02-10T05:00:29Z

After weeks of hard work, I'm proud to announce that my first iPhone application, Voilà!, is finally available on the App Store. Voilà! allows you to update and securely share your location on the Web and with your friends. How? Voilà! updates your current location to Yahoo!Fire Eagle, which make your location (or part of it) available to your favorite web services. With Voilà! you can also update your location on your Twitter profile, send a message on your Twitter account or share it by email. Everything in a very simple an beautiful interface. It is available worldwide on the App Store for 0.99 cents or 0.79 Euros. Please try it, and send your feedback!

This my first, but certainly not the last. I'll continue to develop Crist Drive, and talk more about what I learnt while developing Voilà! here, very soon.

Coming Soon

2009-02-08T07:40:25Z

Mathieu http://www.mathieuthouvenin.com/

Expatriate

2008-12-16T05:42:14Z

Change. Does that sounds familiar? I’m not going to talk about politics but my blog, my life, blogs and the web in general.

I finished my studies and I graduated from the ISC Paris. After my internship I’ve been hired by Scout Labs and after administrative stuff and some round-trips to France, I now work full-time in San Francisco. It has always been my dream to live and work here, since I was a kid. I’m now fully living my dream at 100%, day after day.

But it wasn’t enough. I decided to redo my blog completely and the old archives are not available anymore. It was time to change. I’m going to blog both in English and in French, on different subjects. I will probably blog less in general, and I will be present daily on my micro-blog Tumblr and my Twitter account. Most of my online activity is available in my Lifestream (and by RSS). It looks like a small change but represent well the change in blogging that happened in the last couple of months. People are less concentrated in one blog and more present in a lot of different web services, complementary to a blog. The announcement of Motion by Six Apart today just confirm that change.

Have fun and feel free to comment on this post and all the future ones.

For your information, this blog is now powered by Movable Type, and I’d like to thank you Stéphane Rangaya for his design that I adapted and Bastien for his suggestions.