There are a lot of changes underway at Rocketr – starting with our name.

Next month, Rocketr – the collaborative note-taking app, will be replaced by Pilot – the idea collaboration platform. Several months ago we began our shift from a consumer-based tool, to one that focuses on helping teams capture, discuss, and prioritize their ideas. We decided upon this route after spending hundreds of hours speaking with our users and watching them attempt to get Pilot up and running in their teams.

We’ve already taken significant steps to upgrade our web application which will be made available May 1st. The new application brings emphasis to the features we think people need in order to use Pilot as a place to collaborate around their ideas.

We are also well underway with the design and build of Pilot’s iOS applications (both iPhone and iPad). These new apps are much faster, feature an offline mode, and have a few handy new features such as the ability to keep multiple notes open at once. We think you’ll like it.

In the meantime though, we thought it would be great to gather feedback on the last of our Rocketr-branded applications, so today we’re launching Rocketr for iPhone.

Download Rocketr for iPhone here.

For those of you who download it, you should expect to receive an update two months from now prompting you to download the new Pilot app. Not to worry though, your credentials and data will carryover to the new application and you’ll be able to pick up right where you left off.

So please – we encourage you to take Rocketr for a spin. It’ll have its blemishes, but your feedback will help us polish them up as we launch Pilot for iPhone/iPad in June.

And for those who’ve followed us the whole way through our startup journey thus far – we genuinely appreciate all your support.

We are looking for a strong back-end engineer to join our startup beginning in 2013.

We are a seasoned team of designers, developers, and product people – all of whom get excited by the idea of building, shipping, and iterating on a startup. We all have a great deal of input into the product, are very open with the milestones we expect to hit (as a company), and understand that startups are experiments.

If the idea of spending 2013 (and potentially beyond) building a startup sounds fun… If you’re a good teammate… And if designing APIs for internal and external use is your cup of tea – read on, or drop us a line at hello@rocketr.com.

Postion: Sr. Rails Engineer
Salary: Competitive
Equity: Open to discussion
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada

Essentials:

• Extremely proficient with Ruby on Rails
• Experience with Postgresql and Redis
• Promoter of agile development techniques such as BDD, Refactoring, Continuous Integration, Iterative Development
• Strong understanding of what it takes to design and support an API for internal and external use
• Comfortable building reliable integrations with 3rd party APIs
• Excellent command of web engineering best practices
• Great communication skills both in person and in writing

Optional / Ideal:

• Experience with Javascript frameworks such as Ember or Backbone.js
• Monitoring and automating dev-ops systems
• iOS experience

What is Rocketr?

Rocketr is a web and mobile (iOS) productivity app that lets people collaborate around insights and ideas. We sit atop of archival services like Evernote, or email, and provide users a lightweight toolset for iterating on, and connecting ideas. We do so under the expectation that these ideas will go on to become tomorrow’s projects.

Who are we?

We’re a small team with a passion for disruptive ideas, open systems, and producing world class software. As people, we seek to be accountable and self-sufficient in our work. This is an environment where you may work from anywhere and at anytime, but where we also understand and enjoy the benefit that comes from face-to-face rapid iteration. As a company, we place importance on design, practical solutions, and experimentation.

If this position is of interest to you, please contact hello@rocketr.com and include a resume and link to your GitHub profile.

There have been some interesting posts on Hacker News of late around side projects.

Some have pointed to their potential to distract. Others, the importance of having an “end” in mind. And while these are very real considerations, I keep feeling as though the obvious has yet to be stated. The obvious being; life needs side projects. If nothing else, they are the lifeblood of creativity.

Without one, you are shutting the blinds on your imagination.

Side projects spark our creativity by taking us away from The Grind.

The Grind is the problem that you beat yourself up over solving every single day. It’s the job you’re in, or the business you’re building. The Grind gets our best hours, our fullest attention, and the whole of our willpower.

The idea that your job (or company) cannot, on its own, infuse you with creativity, is a difficult sell. We’ve all experienced moments of creativity while inside The Grind. But what we often fail to notice, is that creativity is something that happens at a distance.

We don’t generate creativity by sheer force. We experience it by stepping back. The reason you feel creative when you start a new job, is because the problem set is new – and so the job behaves like a side project in those first few months. The same is true of stepping into someone else’s writing – you perceive the writer’s grind from a distance, allowing your insight to flow freely and easily – sometimes producing an “of course!” reaction (in the writer) typical of someone who was trying, with all their will, to uncover that same insight.

Side projects exist to refresh the mind. They’re our version of a ‘Shut Down’ command.

We try to be supportive of creativity at our office. In addition to working anywhere-anytime, we try to find ways to participate in puzzles outside of the task at hand.

Travis, for example, is one of the top open source contributors in the country  (with nearly 2 million downloads). Forking and contributing a patch can feel like oxygen when the thought of single-handedly shipping an iPhone app becomes overwhelming.

He and Evan (who designed the app) are participating in Pixel Hack Day next weekend. This despite the fact that we’ve been burning the candle at both ends for weeks on end as we approach our ship date.

As for me, I recently had a chance to be a Speakers Coach for TEDxToronto. And once the physical exhaustion had a chance to wear off, I returned to The Grind renewed and inspired.

So to all of the speakers who allowed me to enter their grind – thank you. I received more from the experience than you know.

Ronald Deibert is the Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary research and development “hothouse” working at the intersection of the Internet, global security, and human rights. He is a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor projects.

He is also a pleasure to work with.

Discuss on Hacker News

Let me be honest. 99.99% of the time, your tech startup doesn’t interest me.

It interests you – and that’s great – but I couldn’t care less about it. In fact, I hate tech startups.

I just like mine.

I hate the bubble we live in. Not the financial one, the egoic one. I hate the idea of answering the question “What do you do?” with, “I have a tech startup.” I’d rather tell you I have a software company – even if ‘The Social Network’ didn’t describe it that way.

I’m not interested in the sex appeal of being an internet entrepreneur. I get it… it’s a great pickup line. But I’d prefer to win hearts by talking about how I desperately want the world to open their notebooks and share ideas.

I submit to Hacker News for feedback and validation. Not street cred and points.

I read TechCrunch to see what my competition is doing. Not for the valuations.

I don’t use very many apps. In many ways, I’m part of the late majority.

I don’t network for the open bar. I go to meet the 2 people I scouted before arriving.

I hate the letters C, E and O. The mission alone is enough of an accolade.

I see investment as something I wish I didn’t need because of how hard it is to separate the investor from the money. All I ever want is to work with people who want this as bad as I do. Still, I resolve to doing it because I love our company, and I cannot sleep until the whole world sees what what we see.

I don’t wear 80 hour work weeks as a badge of honour. I choose them by accident when I’ve discovered the next clue and can’t stop the inertia of putting it all together.

Most days, I wish I was a farmer so I could go about my business quietly. I wish all of our users were seated in a stadium so I could look them in the eye when taking in their suggestions. I wish the internet wasn’t cool.

So the next time I take a coffee with you, please know that I’m not interested in your tech startup and all the glitter that comes with it. I’m interested in you – the entrepreneur. The person bordering on insanity, trying with every ounce of energy to make real an idea they sometimes wish had never been bestowed upon them.

Thanks to sfarnsworth for the use of their photo.

“I just got back from vacation,” is how I’ve begun nearly all of my conversations these past two weeks.

My entrepreneurial friends stare at me… puzzled. As I stare back at them, watching their wheels turn, I prepare for the inevitable variation of a “must be nice” comment.

“So where did you go?” they ask with a tinge of envy characteristic of any tired soul looking to catch its breath.

“Burning Man,” I say as the space between us starts to fall away.

I’ve been back in the matrix for almost two weeks now – returned to my daily grind – desperately holding on to what I know, I know.

That we are all the same. That identity is a joke. That all there is, is love and dust.

When I describe my Burning Man experience to my startup peers, their first reaction is to look frantically for a way to make sense of it. They grasp at labels like “art/music festival” or “hippie commune.” Some reach for judgments, like “I’m not into psychedelics,” or “I have no desire to walk around naked.” But inevitably, they ask. They ask because their intuition tells them that Burning Man is an experience earned, not intellectualized. A rare case of curiosity escaping our need to conclude.

And so I tell them. I let them in on the secret…

That we’re optimizing for the wrong variable. That despite choosing a creative profession… despite taking ownership over our future… despite the skill with which we translate ambition into tangible things… we are still missing the point.

Contrary to how often you’ll hear it, it’s important to note that Burning Man isn’t all that “radically self-reliant” (an irony fittingly spraypainted across a massive Bank of Un-America installation reaffirming that all views in Black Rock City are equal). Sure we battle the elements of forty degree heat (nearly triple-digits fahrenheit), cold nights, and a never-ending film of dust courtesy the day’s impromptu sandstorms. But in terms of finding, preparing, and replenishing our food, we’re essentially canvasing the aisles of Walmart in advance, and delegating all re-stocking in the process.

That being said, there is still merit to abstracting commerce away from the picture. Without it, we begin to navigate absent a compass. And while I don’t mean to suggest we aren’t all ultimately guided by the moral compass that lives inside, I do mean to suggest that often times, we relate to each other without turning it on.

For one week, the 47,000+ people of Black Rock City all greeted each other in the same way – with nothing standing between them. Conversations didn’t begin with titles and handshakes. Instead, they opened with an eyes-wide smile and a deep embrace – one that lasted many more seconds than a hug you’d give your best friend on his wedding day.

Even to say that the “person” became the focus wouldn’t be accurate. The warmth exchanged wasn’t conditional on physical form, intelligence, or the amount of clothing being worn. It was love for love’s sake. The language of the soul.

As I pinned my rationale mind to the floor for a moment, I thought to myself;

“This is real life.”

It was then that I began to try and put the pieces back together.

I would be returning to the default world soon. And when I did, what was I going to see in the life I had designed? What would I want from myself after experiencing a world of non-judgment, expression, and celebration for the smallest of life’s details?

I’m still answering those questions. In the meantime though, I’m falling back on a little promise I made to myself as I took my seat on the plane. It was a bit of a rough sketch, but it has worked for me so far;

Don’t strive for legacy or riches – happiness isn’t tied to these achievements. Rather, strive to transform and channel your energy into others – whether directly or through form – always remembering that this energy is on lend. It is bigger than you. You are just a vessel – the river bank, or the wind tunnel. We are all playing the same game. We are all made up of the same stuff. And though we are not the centre of the universe, we have been granted a wonderful role to play – so play it well.

Expect godliness from yourself. Do everything with care – not just what you define as your work. Everything is your work – from the rhythm of your breath, to your economic contribution. One is no more important than the other. Deal in love and seek out experience. Don’t place stock in any other currency – there is nothing here today that will still be standing at the end of time.

Don’t just build something of significance. Be something of significance. Broaden your definition of self to include everyone around you. They are a reflection of you, as you are of them. Set yourself on fire as often as you can. That which remains, is you. Don’t be surprised to discover that you still exist without personality, identity, and beliefs. They are temporary – all of this is. Enjoy it for what it is, because soon enough it will be behind you, and you’ll wish you had.

And with that – startup life became a little less serious… a little more modest… and a lot more sustainable.

Thank you to extramatic for the use of their photo.

Four months ago I took on something of an experiment when I became a ‘Lean Practitioner’ at Rocketr.

It was an undefined intern role designed to expedite the company to a position of better product-market fit. In the hopes of a creating a better blueprint for a role like this; I’ve decided to recap the good, the bad, and in typical lean fashion, the “still to be determined” parts of my role.

A little bit of background…

The influence of the Lean Startup movement has been rampant in recent years. Much has been written about its success - extensions of the philosophy have been proposed – and the contributions of Lean stalwarts are now considered required reading for startups. From it’s beginning, Rocketr has tried to stay true to Lean principles; from rigorous customer development and experimentation, to quick iterations and data-driven decisions. While this responsibility typically falls to the CEO, as the business grows, so too do the demands on their time. Hence why there seemed to be a lot of value in having a supporting role, which is where I entered the picture.

For me, the decision to craft an internship around this role was a masterstroke. It was an opportunity to interact directly with users, the founders, and our design and engineering teams. I was uniquely placed at the centre of a startup to observe its everyday workings.

Objective

To truly own the role of “lean” in a startup, you must also own a handful of the company’s assets. Namely, you are the keeper of:

• The changing use cases and critical paths within the application
• The hypotheses and assumptions (the “bets”) that the founding team has made (whether consciously or unconsciously)
• The experiment list – a running inventory of what’s been tried and learned

Most of this was uncharted territory. There were no established criteria to fall back on and I had to thrive in conditions of uncertainty, be adaptable, and most importantly, take a whole lot of initiative. If you’re considering a similar role, this is what should prepare for.

With respect to what we’ve learned so far, here are a handful of tips based on what we did right, what we didn’t do so well, and what we are hoping to try in the next chapter…

The Lessons

The Good:

• Adopt a “Lean” State of Mind. I had a terrific ramp-up phase. I devoured books, blogs, and host of other materials on Lean methodologies. I spoke to industry professionals and usability/customer development experts during my initial weeks. They had some great advice and put me on to some fantastic resources (UX Tools, people, events, etc.).
• Embrace Community. The Lean community in Toronto is exceptional and played a large part in getting me started. I participated in a Lean Startup Machine conference and attended a few Lean Coffee TO meetups. I learned how to “get out of the building” and out of my comfort zone. The community was also a great source of leads for customer development interviews.
• Iterate Quickly.  We tried a number of things straight out the gate. This included running a couple of experiments on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to test out potential new revenue models, as well as some early conversations around metrics we wanted to track. However, not all of these projects gained the same momentum so we always tried to zero in on the most timely issues. If we happened to stall, we iterated quickly to the next order of business. We didn’t waste time being stuck.
• Learn the Product. This happened almost serendipitously. After dozens of interviews, you can’t help but have a firm handle on the product’s features, functionality… even it’s quirks. There are a couple of ways to cheat a bit as well (see “Play a Big Role in QA”) if you want to really learn a product quickly.
• The Art of the Interview. Mastering the customer development interview is paramount to getting value from this role. I used everything from clickable prototypes to design mockups in order to vet assumptions. More importantly though, I became exceptional at listening, probing, and revealing insights by learning how to let people speak. This can only be honed through practice and repetition. 1:1 meetings with Andrew were helpful for sharing interview tips and tactics.
• Play a Big Role in QA. Flagging bugs and assisting in their triage is a great way to learn an application. It’s also something that will win you points with your development team and help you to document critical paths for your next round of usability tests.
• Start Writing. Begin with the basics. There’s no denying the power of a well crafted e-mail, or a thoughtful blog post. This is something I’m getting better at everyday and has really helped refine my communication skills.

The Bad (or “Not So Good”):

• A Little Bit of Structure. Be careful that you have a thorough understanding of the things that need to be done before setting up an internship of this nature. Mapping out my future responsibilities has always been a tough chore. I’m mostly responding to what the day calls for. And while this might have its advantages, a loose roadmap would do well to help track my role’s progress and set targets.
• Minimize Downtime. As I’m not directly involved in the app’s development, there can be a bit of lull in between interview rounds at times. We tried to offset this by getting me involved in the QA process early, but we still need to improve at putting my skills to use when I’m not in the thick of interviews, experiments, or testing.

The Still To Be Determined:

• Increase the Pace of Feedback. As we go full on into our third round of usability tests later this month, we will need to get extraordinarily good at recording and communicating large amounts qualitative feedback and translating that back into product improvements – fast. Frequent and improved communication with the design and engineering teams will be key.

• Expanding our Repertoire of Experiments. Sometimes we rely on the experiments we know as oppose to carefully assessing the situation we’re in and designing an experiment to fit exactly what we need. With riskier features and revenue ideas on the horizon, we need to remind ourselves that we can dig a little deeper than a handful of our favourite interview questions.

• Quantifiable Metrics. Soon I’ll be jumping back into SQL in an effort to put together a few skunkworks initiatives around extracting data. I try to remember that not all code has to be perfect. This allows me to contribute where I can, without having to worry if my skills are on par with our engineering team. You can still add value by writing throwaway code.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the impact of technology on human behaviour. I come from a background in psychology, coupled with research experience and a growing interest in user experience design. Add in a bit of programming experience and you have the makings of a lean intern.

If you’re considering a role like this, I can tell you that it’s a great way to hone your skills and get a multi-faceted view of how startups actually work. It might even be the best way to get your feet wet for that inevitable day when you start your own.

Here’s hoping the lean community takes this blueprint as a starting point, and remixes it liberally. I’d love to hear of other experiences.

“So it’s like a wiki?” he says, moving his fingers in circles against his temples. His eyes are closed. He’s concentrating. He has 10 minutes to understand me.

This is the story of how we interviewed at, and were turned down by, Y Combinator. I decided to write about the experience because storytelling is one function where we startups tend to shit the bed. Hopefully this post helps kick that ball forward a bit.

This past May, it cost $2,428.13 to have three of us spend 10 minutes with Paul Graham. Being from out of town (Toronto) this included flights, taxis, and accommodation for 3 nights. In hindsight, spending three nights in sleepy Mountain View was a great decision. There’s nothing to do but talk about your business from morning to night. The extra time also meant we were extremely well prepared for the interview. Or so I had myself believe.

Only now, having been tested by the pressures of a ticking clock and the questions of an impatient (and widely respected) mind, do I have the courage to say that the reason we didn’t get into YC was because I didn’t know my business well enough.

Sounds crazy, right? I mean, as far as titles go, I’m the guy who’s primary role is to know what the hell business we’re in. I’m not asked to write the code that brings it to life, or define the user experience that sets the tone – I’m asked to tell our story clearly, effectively, and when needed, very f*cking quickly. So maybe this post should have been titled, ‘What I should have said to PG’ – because this one was on me.

The following is a rough outline of my conversation with PG.

“So what is Rocketr?” he opened. To which I replied…

“Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. We connect people through their notepads. Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them. The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks.”

“So people can all write to the same place. So it’s like a wiki?” he asked.

“Not really, no. A wiki is more like a google doc – it has one true version at any given time. Sure, there’s a revision history, but nobody lives in the revision history. Rocketr is about having one author for a given note, and a threaded conversation around it.”

It may not be immediately obvious what’s wrong with this picture, but if you picked up on it, kudos to you. There are 2 things wrong with how the interview opened:

1. PG drove and I quickly found myself back on my heels.
2. I stripped out so much of the marketing jargon (a YC rule), that I skipped right over the customer’s pain and the value of solving it. I gave the “features” pitch, not the “benefits” pitch.

I came into the interview ready to react. I had an answer for everything, but no real story that I was going to tell. In hindsight, I should have opened like this:

“Rocketr bridges two worlds that could not be further apart right now – how we capture information (using personal tools), and how we get work done (using team-based tools). We’re betting that these worlds will converge, because if they don’t, it will get harder and harder for teams if they can’t collaborate at the speed that information is changing around them. Oh… and the medium we use to facilitate all this, is note-taking – something we all know how to do.”

Yes – it’s a little longer, but that shouldn’t matter if I’m the one driving for those 10 minutes. Even if I was interrupted, I could pick the story up where it left off. In this version, I’m illustrating the pain, the trends, and only at the end do I mention the vehicle by which we go about it.

The missteps continued when he asked, “Who needs what you’re making?” I reacted with something like the following:

“There are two sides to the market. Organizations need this to drive innovation and individuals needs this to satisfy both use cases – personal note-taking and sharing those notes for the purpose of getting feedback. Currently, they’re resorting to email for the latter which is a terrible environment for notes to grow up in.”

Just reading that now makes me shudder. So far I’ve communicated that we are “another note-taking app”  with some social features AND that every entity on Earth needs us. Kill me.

What I should have said was:

“Paul, we think Y Combinator needs this in a big way. You’re managing 460+ companies. I’m guessing you send them articles, competitive intel, potential customer leads, and a wealth of other ideas. You’re probably using email to do it. And while you might use labels or folders to keep all this information organized on your end, your startups don’t have access to that. You’re effectively relying on them to either a) action every idea immediately, or b) do multiple queries of their inbox every time they want to revisit an idea you guys discussed.”

Not perfect, but much better. It becomes obvious that the pain increases the more “teams” or “topics” you’re managing. Furthermore, by putting YC in the middle of the story, I am making it easy for him to stand in the customer’s shoes. This all but guarantees his next question will move the conversation forward – not sideways.

And if you don’t have the lucky fortune of being able to use YC as an example customer, then use someone close to them – like one of their companies. And be sure to use peoples’ names. It will make it easier for them to empathize with the plight.

No matter which way you look at it, 10 minutes goes fast. It’s incredibly easy to get flustered and not have enough time left on the clock to recover. And despite all the wonderful resources that point to the questions you’ll be asked, I promise you, you will be asked many more that aren’t listed.

My recommendation for any startup reading this, is to shift your mindset ever so slightly. Prepare like you would, but when you walk in that door, have a 4 or 5 minute story to tell, instead of 25 answers to 25 commonly asked questions. In fact, take this approach on every occasion where you get to pitch your business.

The next time someone asks you, “So what does your startup do?”, lay it on thick. Tell a story. Get them to empathize.

And most importantly, drive.

One thing’s for certain… this startup thing ain’t for the faint of heart…

Granted, the economics of entrepreneurship have changed and now, more than ever, almost anyone can put together the pocket change to play a hand. What is less obvious, is the whirlwind that follows that decision.

Despite the falling cost of capital and an investment climate where you can choose to take only what you need (whether to test an idea, find product-market fit, or scale the business), there is still one economic reality that hasn’t really changed all that much;

It is really f*cking hard to build a company.

It is an exercise in physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. There is a hard cap on the number of people who would expose themselves to it if they knew what lay ahead.

602 days ago, Rocketr got its start. On Day 99 we released what we now consider a prototype, into private beta. On Day 181, the team was put on salary and the bank statements started to show up in the mail with real transactions on them – the kind you look at. The kind that create a sense of urgency.

On Day 219, I gambled. I signed a contract with a mobile development team to build our iPhone app as we continued developing on the web. It was a $50,000 contract and I didn’t have the money when I signed it. Day 220 to 252 were among the most stressful days of my life. I didn’t sleep much and spent a lot of nights looking in the mirror. No one is happier to have those days behind them.

On Day 271, the team split. Half of us no longer wanted to endure the uncertainty of starting a company. Prior to beginning, we had all turned to each other and asked every hard question imaginable. It took 271 days to discover that we did, in fact, have limits that could not have been foreseen without a previous experience to refer to.

On Day 289, I stood on a stage in Vancouver in front of investors and peers, having been named one of the top startups in Canada for 2011. We launched our iPhone app that day (the one I couldn’t afford). It was approved by Apple the night before. We were featured in the App Store. The app crashed. People rated us poorly. We fixed it and wrote apologies to everyone. Some people wrote back…

95% Exhaustion. 5% Invincibility. That is what’s in store. That is startup status quo.

As a recovering addict might put it – today, for me, is a good day. I feel a little wiser, if not a little more humbled. Best of all, there is an overwhelming sense of renewal.

Rocketr has been re-imagined from concept to company. The vision of a playground for ideas remains, but the path there has changed. In the coming weeks, we will be re-launching the product (across web and iPhone) and introducing the team. Those of us who’ve come this far have been joined by others with the same burning desire to build something incredible.

And we think that once you see it, you’ll agree we’re headed in exactly that direction.