December 2011
1 post
Perseverance is probably the single best ability an entrepreneur can possess.
November 2011
1 post
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October 2011
6 posts
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The Startup Process: Trough of Sorrow
I think I may be squarely inside the startup trough of sorrow.
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Reinvigorating the DFW Startup Community: Phase 1 →
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Help Socialyzer Pitch at the Founder Showcase
We’ve applied to pitch at the 8th Founder Showcase competition out in San Francisco in November and now we need your help.
A large portion of who gets selected to pitch will be based on public voting that’s happening now through October 16th.
Help us out by visiting http://foundershowcase.strutta.com/entry/198166 and throwing us a vote, then share it out to your network of friends!
...
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Be the 1%
Jason Calacanis just published an excellent piece titled, Be the 1%: Chamath, Airbnb, Occupy Wall Street and the Choice Millennials Should Make, in which he argues that it’s more radical to create a company, sell it for a billion dollars and then be a force for social change, rather than protesting on the Brooklyn bridge.
He uses AirBnB, and their recent news, as an example:
The Airbnb...
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Building a Better Startup Community in DFW
I’ve had this blog post sitting in the hopper for months and I’ve been debating if I should post it or not, especially since I’ve been giving moving to SFO or NYC a really hard look.
However, I had a great conversation today with someone who has a lot of passion for trying to make DFW a great place for startups, and it’s prompted me to go ahead and publish this.
Even...
September 2011
2 posts
4 tags
There is a lot of tech talent in Dallas, just not...
Dallas has a real problem.
While there is no real lack of technical talent here in the DFW metroplex, there is a HUGE shortage of people that can fill the #2 & #3 technical positions at a startup.
I’m talking about technical co-founders and the first couple of additional developers. The people that will slave away, with little to no pay, in exchange for a huge chunk of equity and the...
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3#Labs: Scheduling tweets & posts make you MORE... →
3poundlabs:
Recently, Amanda from Spiderworking.com wrote an excellent article on scheduling posts to social networks (see it here). What is scheduling you say?
Basically, scheduling a post is when, instead of immediately sharing something on social networks, you queue the post or content for a…
August 2011
2 posts
2 tags
What I'm Working on Now
Anyone who knows me knows that the last couple years of my life have been pretty insane. They also know that I’ve had my hands in a number of different things, have been traveling quite a bit and in general have been hard to keep tabs on.
As of today I’m putting pretty much everything else on the back burner to focus on my new company 3#Labs.
What is 3#Labs?
The big vision for...
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Steve Jobs on Design and Building What You Believe...
This may very well be my favorite Steve Jobs quote of all time. It speaks to me on so many levels as an entrepreneur.
“We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best...
July 2011
1 post
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Applications for Tech Wildcatters Close July 24th,...
This post originally appeared on Launch DFW:
The application period for local B2B seed accelerator Tech Wildcatters is currently open until July 24th. If you’ve been working hard on your startup and are looking to take it to the next level then you should definitely consider applying for their third class, in which they will accept 7-10 companies.
What is Tech Wildcatters?
Tech Wildcatters is...
June 2011
1 post
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DFW Startup Weekend is here!
The local Startup Weekend event is upon us! 54 hours of startup building craziness is sure to be a lot of fun.
If you’re in any way involved or want to be involved in the DFW startup scene, you really need to be at this event.
Not only is it a fun challenge and a great exercise in creativity and teamwork, but it’s a great chance to meet and work with other folks in the community.
...
May 2011
2 posts
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What are YOUR ideas for Launch DFW?
A while back I wrote and open letter to the DFW startup community about what I believe is Launch DFW’s mission. In that, I outlined a few of my ideas for the future of the site. With Startup Weekend Dallas coming up in June, I’m hoping to pitch the idea of building out the new version of Launch DFW to folks that may not want to work on a real “company/startup” idea. To that end, I thought I would...
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Can We All Agree to Use the FriendDA?
Startup People, as a rule, are protective of their ideas. Heck, with headlines all the time about how Zuckerberg stole Facebook, lost co-founders, and other sinister stories, who can blame them.
The reality is that these are in the minority. I strongly believe that founders at very early stages are better of sharing as much as possible, as often as possible with the *right* people.
To that end,...
April 2011
6 posts
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So cool!! Virgin Galactic hiring first ever... →
candidlygreen asked: Hey there. My name is Ruth and I am kind of in a similar situation to you. I was wondering if we could have a conversation about business and living in Peru. Thanks!
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“Just being a deal is not enough.”
– Matt Coffin - Entrepreneur & Angel Investor
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Getting Better Sleep
A while back I posted about the Entrepreneur’s Purgatory; where you can’t sleep but are too tired to do productive work.
This has happened to me on innumerable occasions and it is so incredibly frustrating.
In doing a bit of research and reading about other peoples’ struggles with this I can across a nifty piece of software called F.lux.
It turns out that the blue light coming...
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Dear Recruiters...
… and anyone who happens to be performing a recruiting type function at this moment.
Stop being lazy.
There is this awesome little service called Google. If you put my name in it and hit “Search” you will find everything you need to know about me to pre-qualify (or un-qualify) me for whatever position you are recruiting for.
It really is that simple.
Why do I bring this up? I...
February 2011
5 posts
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Even the President Needs a Report Card
So today I launched Grade The President. It’s a simple site that allows you to tell the world what you think about President Barack Obama with a simple grade, A through F. I’ve had the domain gradethepresident.com (along with gradecongress.com and govgrader.com) sitting around for a while. I decided GTP would be a fun project to force myself to practice test and behavior driven...
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The Visa Issue - Update 1
Back in January I wrote about the Visa issue and some of the options available to me to stay long term here in Peru. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get a long-term solution figure out yet, so I’ll be doing the border hop. I had originally planned to make a quick trip to Ecuador, but do to some circumstances I’ll instead be making a quick trip back to the States to take...
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Chevron's Amazing Advertising Fail?
A few days ago there was a large thread on Hacker News about aerial footage of an un-contacted Amazon tribe in the Brazilian rainforest. It was particularly interesting to me as, living in Peru, this issue gets discussed quite a bit. After all, Peru’s president Alan Garcia has gone on the record stating that there is no proof such a tribe exists. Then this headline on the Huffington Post...
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You know you're an expat when...
…You start thinking in the locally currency. Ok, maybe not *fully* expat… but getting there. When I first arrived in Peru, I wouldn’t hesitate to pay 10-20 soles (~ $3-7usd) for a taxi, or s/. 20-40 for a great meal. Slowly but surely I’ve realized that it’s possible to get to pretty much anywhere in Lima for less than s/. 5 and you can eat really well for less than...
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Velocis Acquires UseQwitter.com
Over on the company blog, we announced today that Velocis has acquired the popular service UseQwitter.com. The story behind the acquisition is quite interesting, but that is a post for another day. Qwitter currently has roughly 160,000 active users and is adding on average 400 new users every day. This is pretty exciting for us because not only is this app full of potential, but it also gives us...
January 2011
8 posts
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Keep Your Customers Up to Date
The past week or has been unique in that I’ve had a couple experiences that have made me keenly aware of the need to make sure you are communicating effectively with your customers. Situation 1 A web app that has hundreds of thousands of active users has been offline for *months* due to a number of reasons. It has a very loyal following and the users are practically up in arms about the...
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If You Care About Foreign Markets, Watch the Name
Today I was doing my usual news browsing and I came across this headline:
Ex-eBay exec launches Ongo, a personal news service funded by media giants
The name really stood out. I kept saying it over and over again in my mind… why did that sound so familiar? Then it hit me.
Hongo (Spanish) masculine noun 1. fungus (biology) 2. mushroom (comestible) (especially Am); toadstool (no comestible)...
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1 Damn Easy Way to Improve User Experience
When I landed on this page after clicking through from Hacker News, I thought it was a joke… until I scrolled down and got to the actual content of the article. Here is my response:
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Self-Employed vs Business Owner
Derek Sivers published a well-written and insightful piece on learning to delegate as business owner. In it he makes a statement that I absolutely love:
There’s a big difference between being self-employed and being a business owner.
I’ve always hated the term “self-employed.” To me, it’s always seemed to conjure up the notion that no one else wanted to employ me so...
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The Visa Issue / Being a Foreign Internet...
If you’ve made the decision to be an Expat Entrepreneur, then you will quickly come up against this topic and it’s a minefield of questions. Do I need to get a visa before I leave my home country? What kind of visa? How long can I stay? Can I work on this visa? etc etc. My suggestion to you would be to research this as much as humanly possible before you hop on a plane to some random...
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Discounts Don't Work
When it comes to the custom software development world the story usually goes something like this:
Idea guy: So I have this cool app I want to build, it does X, Y and Z… can you give me a quote? Dev: Sure, that sounds interesting… based on my extensive experience, I’d guesstimate that it might be around $XXX in total. However, given the flexible nature of software, we generally...
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Sunnytrail is Easy Startup Metrics
Tracking the finer details of your startup is important. You can read about this all across the web and your brain quickly becomes filled with terms like “Lifetime Customer Value”, “Churn Rate”, “Revenue per user”, “Cohorts” and much more. All of this is great. It’s important stuff that you should know about, especially if you’re running...
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Going Freemium with @TweetSaver
So I recently pushed out a major update to TweetSaver, my app that allows Twitter users to archive, tag, search and share their Tweets. You can read about the details of the update here. The main highlight is that I’ve introduced free accounts to the service. When TweetSaver was originally launched, I was staunchly against giving it away for free. I felt that since I was willing to pay...
December 2010
1 post
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The Obligatory End of Year Post
I generally hate this kind of posts, but decided to do one anyway since it’s been a while since I las blogged. The end of the year has been a busy time.
Professional Highlights of 2010
Left my employer to really focus on my own company. Velocis has had a great 7 months and is growing nicely. I was able employ 2 other people for much of that time.
Launch of FoundTown.com, our first major...
November 2010
11 posts
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Floxee Joins the Velocis Family
Floxee is now under new ownership. Here is the story: Back in May of this year, I left Squeejee to focus on building my own company, Velocis. At that time I took TweetSaver, an app that I developed with the Squeejee team, with me and continue to operate it. Fast-forward a few months and a few conversations between myself and Jim (Squeejee Founder) and we had worked out a deal for me to take over...
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First #ExpatEntrepreneur Meetup In the Books
Last night here in Lima I hosted the very first Expat Entrepreneur meetup. 9 people, including myself, had rsvp’d to attend, and 4 of us made it. In Peru, I’ve come to expect that if a certain number of people commit to an event, roughly 50% will make it, so I was pleased with attendance for the first meetup. The demographic breakdown of attendees was 2 Americans, 1 German, and 1...
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Peru's Most Famous Expat Entrepreneur
Inca Kola. This fluorescent yellow, slightly bubble-gummy flavored soft drink IS Peru. As much as is Machu Picchu, Lake Titicacca, and the mysterious Nazca Lines. And yet, it was invented by a British expat. The excellent En Perú blog has the full, and very interesting, story:
Stepping off a ship in the port of Callao in 1910, a British immigrant couple called the Lindleys were starting a new...
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There Are Always Greener Pastures
The recent hubbub regarding Facebook poaching engineers from Google and Google’s huge counter-offers, as well as Facebook poaching from Foursquare and buying startups as “talent acquisitions” has got me thinking about Technical Cofounders vs Hiring Developers. Dave Albert wrote a good piece recently that covers some good points as well. My main point is this:
There are always...
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Make it Easy for Customers to Give You Money
This may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s something I’ve been slamming up against lately and the lesson here applies broadly. Recently here in Lima I received both my first water bill and electricity bill at my new place. In all the places I’ve rented before, the owner took care of this stuff, but now I’m in a house so it’s my responsibility. And boy is it...
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One UI Doesn't Fit All
I love Skype. It’s one of the primary tools I utilize that allows me to run my business from anywhere in the world (currently Lima, Perú), so I was genuinely excited when I saw a tweet saying the Skype 5.0 beta was available for download. I rushed to the download page and waited impatiently for the 5 minutes it took to download on my 2mpbs connection. I installed it. I double-clicked the...
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Know When to Take a Break
Today I spent 4 hours straight trying to figure out a single issue with the code for Freshie, the FreshBooks iPad client that I’m building. Generally in my experience with software development, 4 hours is about the maximum number of productive coding hours that can be accomplished in a reasonable/normal work day. As you might imagine, by the end of the 4 hours I was pretty much bashing my...
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Your Users Are Stupid, Design Accordingly
The truth is often times very harsh, but it is still truth. If your web application ever reaches such levels of success as to be used by “the general public” then you must make an effort to design for the lowest common denominator (as much as is possible). Why? If things are too complicated, it could result in $12,000,000 (yes $12 Million!) in lost sales. At least, that is...
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Is Our Digital Society Losing Something?
I was browsing through the recent submissions to Hacker News and came across this article. The author made a number of arguments about the change to digital music that just made me cringe:
When people ditched their CDs, they lost album art and liner notes, but those were never a part of the actual listening experience. The music bursting from headphone and speakers was still music, was the same...
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Why The Middlemen Suck
If you’re a content middleman, you are of no use to me, especially when all I see is this: I suppose you could argue that services like this help surface great content. That may be true in a few cases, but what good does it for anyone if they can’t actually get to the original content? None. It’s that simple. High quality curators, real people taking the time to share content...
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Know the Local Holidays
If you’re building a business abroad, or using foreign workers for your business, it behooves you to invest a bit of time investigating the local culture, specifically the local holidays. Today in Perú is “Dia de Todos Los Santos” (Day of All the Saints), one of about 15 National holidays the country observes, most of which are based in its Catholic heritage. If you don’t...
October 2010
7 posts
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Know Your Market (or iterate quickly)
If you use the internet then you’ve probably heard of Groupon, or at least you’ve seen their ads on just about every website that displays ads. The company has been aggressively expanding into international markets and they’ve recently arrived in Perú in September. In a recent interview, Groupon’s country manager stated the company is spending $50,000 a month on Google...
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How to Avoid the Entrepreneur's Purgatory
Entrepreneur’s Purgatory
[ahn-truh-pruh-nurz pur-guh-tawr-ee] - noun: A place of being or state of mind and body such that an entrepreneur is unable to sleep, but is too tired to accomplish productive activities.
I conceived this term in the wee morning hours one day after tossing and turning endlessly in my bed all night; unable to sleep because of my brain racing at 500mph with ideas for...
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5 Tips to Avoid Disaster When Changing Your...
I’m often fairly surprised how often startups (and businesses in general for that matter) make large, drastic changes to their product or service and a growing number without giving a decent heads up to their customers & community. While there has been a lot of chatter on the web recently about the new Gap logo, today surfaced another story of a startup making huge pricing changes. ...