L.A.B. Unleashed

I just finished Delivering Happiness by Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, and it was fantastic.  Truly inspiring, funny, and so insightful.  In the first part of the book Tony talks about all the crazy businesses he started when he was a kid – from a worm farm to a greeting card business, and that it was his goal to figure out a way to make money, even at a very young age (later he learns that service and company culture are just as important as making money).  This lead me to reminisce about some of the absolute crazy ideas I had as a kid, and wonder … what was I thinking?!

Many of the craziest of my tiny ventures were not actually about making money, they were more focused on creating movements or trying to make a difference in my small community.  I was always very ambitious, for better or for worse.  It wasn’t until years later at IBM where someone actually labeled me that way, stressing it was a *bad* thing, that I ever questioned that thinking.  Yes, I had the lemonade stand, the garage sale, and the greeting card making business (where I actually created the cards with construction paper and then went door to door selling them in the neighborhood).  I even tried the good ol’ offer of hard labor working to sweep a walk way for $1, rake leaves, organize a garage, etc.  Those were the money making ideas.  Of my other ideas, it was a split between ambitious and insane.  Let me tell you about the insane first.

2nd grade (age 7): My best childhood friend, Johanna, and I got it in our heads that we could build an airplane.  She had a lot of scrap wood in her back yard, and we spec’d it out on a piece of construction paper.  It would not only fly, it would also have the most amazing feature of of giant magnifying glass attached to the top, that could zap things.  I was really into zapping bugs with magnifying glasses at the time.  When my mom told me that it was impossible to build a plane with a glorious magnifying glass on top I had a fit.  A complete and utter fit.  I accused my mother of not believing in me, not supporting me, and ultimately holding me back.  Johanna and I worked on the plane for a month or so, gathering wood, making plans, and eventually, it fizzled.  We dragged all the wood into the forest and made a fort, which was pretty cool, and even secured the fort from intruders with a magnifying glass at every corner.  Note, there is no sun in the forest.

That one was insane, but I had some other good ideas too, that I actually learned from and tried to make a difference with.  There was Pollution Solutions (PS for short), a company I created with my sister, Amber, and my cousin, Mikey, where I was the CEO.  I asked my Dad what was the highest position someone could hold in a company, and he gave me the title of CEO.  We set up offices in my parents basement and worked tirelessly to create posters, flyers, and educate people in the neighborhood about stopping pollution and encouraging recycling.  We even wrote a letter to President Bush (the 1st one) about the importance of ending pollution and got a response back that I think my Mother still has.  After a while, Amber and Mikey, couldn’t take much more of my bossing around, and we decided to close up shop and just play video games.  We ruled Mario Brothers that year.

3rd grade (age 8): At school, with my friends Johanna and April, we kicked off a Recycling program in the lunch room.  We asked the lunch ladies if we could create signs for each trash bin so that the materials would be separated into paper, plastic, and other.  At the time, 1/2 pint milk cartons were standard with everyone’s lunch (and were 25 cents each), so we figured there were a lot of cartons that could get recycled.  The lunch ladies agreed, on one condition, that we actually took the trash home, sorted it ourselves, and brought it to the recycling center.  We were excited at first and thought that they were really behind us in the effort.  April created signs, which I vividly recall included people with square heads showing how to separate paper and plastic.  We watched during the very first lunch period, as people ignored the signs and threw their food garbage in with their milk cartons.  After sorting through one of those bags after school, I was done, and I’m pretty sure this is where my current germophobia resides from to this very day.

5th grade (age 10): One of the last ideas that I remember being pretty excited about was very cleverly (I thought anyway) named by Johanna and I – K.I.D.S.W.A.R.  KidsWar stood for “Kids In Doomed Shirley Want Airport Refused” … a little dark with the whole “doomsday” thing, but I always had a flare for the dramatic as well.  You see, growing up in Shirley, there was an Army Base called Fort Devons that was very much a part of the culture of the town.  Around the age of 10, the government was doing cut backs and closing down military bases all over the country.  Many of my friends were part of military families, and my Dad served as a civilian in the Airforce for over 30 years (Hanscom Airforce Base).  The closure of the base was sad, but when there were rumors that they would replace the army base with an airport, the town became up and arms.  Johanna and I decided to form a contingent group of kids from our class, to learn about the bad effects an airport would have on the town, and then get people to sign a petition to vote against the airport.  We organized a group of 10 kids, held weekly meetings, and even invited a speaker to come to my house to give us a presentation on the airport plans.  We created a petition, it was the first time I heard the phrase “we the undersigned”, which seemed so formal to me (and still does), and got people around the neighborhood to sign it.  We then sent it to our town’s selectmen, and in the end, the airport never made it to Shirley.  This little project actually taught me a lot about organizing a group behind a cause, educating ourselves about the issues, and then eventually taking action to ensure our voice was heard.

I wish I could say I focused on money making schemes as a child and found really clever ways to produce a side business, but the truth is, I was more interested in causes and organizing people to try to make a difference.  I think this is why TaskRabbit resonates with me so much, and executing on the ultimate vision of connecting a neighborhood to live more efficiently and help each other out re-invigorates me every morning.  I guess that resonates and the fact that we’ve found a way to make money with it too!

What crazy schemes did you come up with as a kid?  I want to hear them!

Tim Ferriss came to fbFund last Monday and gave a fabulous talk on creating a global phenomenon.  The author of the Four Hour Work Week (4HWW), a New York Times best seller, had some great insights about how to break into a market and secure earlyvangelists.  I was excited about this session, because I had read 4HWW on the plane the night before.  I read it in 3 hours instead of 6 using Tim’s speed reading techniques outlined in the book!   Actually I tried to read it faster, but didn’t quite double my speed.  I think it takes some practice. 

I can summarize the take aways from Tim’s talk in one word – optimization.  He shared great tips on the optimal time to post blog entries (7am / 6pm Tues, Thurs, & Sat), how to optimize the landing pages of a website for conversion metrics, how to launch a new product and being hyper focused about the initial target.  "What is the smallest meaningful number that will start a cascade effect?"

Also I enjoyed the excellent insights into naming companies.  You may remember that we thought long and hard about changing the name RunMyErrand.  To be honest, the name changing battle still haunts me on a daily basis, and I think that eventually we’ll have to make the switch.  I loved hearing about Tim’s very analytical approach to deciding on a name change, check out the description about 6 minutes into this video, and as we continue to obsess of this, we’ll absolutely follow his approach in making the final decision.

So I told my buddy back in Boston about the awesome talk, and you know what his response was?!  "OMG … I read the 4HWW back in college and was a total mess for the next 6 months … trying to start new companies left and right."  Made me laugh!

I continue to enjoy my book, Founders at Work.  A few nights ago, I read through the interview with the founder of del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter.   One of his comments (pp 230) really leaped off the page, grabbed me, and shook me with both hands ….

I have never had a great deal of trust for people who don’t execute on core ideas.  I understand the value of needing someone to deal with that kind of stuff — someone’s got to do the VC pitch and there’s got to be a CFO, etc.  But the guy who says, "I have a great idea and I’m looking for other people to implement it," I’m wary of — frequently because I think the process of idea-making relies on executing and failing or succeeding at the ideas, so that you can actually become better at coming up with ideas.  It’s something you can learn.  It’s a skill, like weightlifting.  That failed; that worked; continue.  You begin to learn how to make ideas.  So if you are someone who can’t execute and all you can do is come up with ideas, how do you know if they are any good?  You don’t really know if it’s a good idea until you’ve executed it.  You need to understand the cost of execution and so on.

I probably liked this quote so much, because I can identify with it.  I have an idea.  I know how to implement it.  So, here I am, giving it a shot, executing, and time will tell if it is any good or not.  Remy is actually not the first idea I’ve executed on either, and in previous attempts, I’ve learned how to quantify what it really takes to put a project together.  The time it takes, the skill level involved, what to think about, etc.  I can definitely see how past experiences have influenced my execution this time around, in a positive way.

On to the chapter about Ann Winblad Cofounder, Open Systems and Hummer Winblad.  It’s nice to see some women founders being interviewed.  I’m always curious to see what their perspectives have been and if they differ from their male counterparts.  The other female interviewee I’ve read so far is Caterina Fake, cofounder of Flickr.  That was a really interesting chapter because Flickr started eons away from where it is today.  In the interview she describes an experience where her cofounder, who happens to be her husband, was told not to bring ‘his wife’ to VC meetings.  Lovely.

I had read the book, Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur, by Dermot Berkery, while still at IBM, but I didn’t want to raise any "red flags" at the time, so I kept it quiet.  Aside from the fact that the word "serious" in the title cracks me up, as if to say, if you are not "serious", you are wasting both your time and the authors by reading this book, it was an excellent read!  Well written, especially for the reader coming from a completely different place, technology, versus having a business background.  I would highly recommend it as a first read, just to sort of get your bearings on the whole process.  The content was unassuming, and everything was explained from the ground up.  I have to admit, I was drawn right into this fascinating, strange, new, world of venture capital, and actually thoroughly enjoyed it as a beach read during the last vacation to Puerto Rico.  It was recommended to me by a friend that works at a VC firm, the author and this friend are both Harvard Business School graduates.

I’m glad I read it with a highlighter in hand, so now I can go back and quickly look at points or ideas I found important the first time through.  There are some good case study examples, which is helpful in thinking about how to apply those concepts to what I want to do.  There is also an entire section on valuing an early-stage venture, where it describes the difficulty in applying the traditional valuation techniques and gives perspectives on how valuations are decided in these cases.

Pick it up if you are a *serious* entrepreneur … or even just a programmer, with an idea, and you want to learn what the whole VC funding process is all about!

I am loving this new book that I picked up.  Founders at Work, by Jessica Livingston, is a collection of interviews with the founders of some of the most famous technology startup companies.  I am about 1/2 through the 472 pages, and my favorite stories so far have been about how Paypal and Hotmail got started.  At the end of chapter 1, after reading the following quote by Max Levhin, I knew I had picked up a good read:

I think the hallmark of a really good entrepreneur is that you’re not really going to build one specific company.  The goal – at least the way I think about entrepreneurship – is you realize one day that you can’t really work for anyone else.  You have to start your own thing.  It almost doesn’t matter what that thing is.

Yep, you could say that struck a cord with me!  It has been interesting to hear the stories how some of these companies happened by accident.  Hotmail for instance was started with a completely different context in mind, and then they needed a way to share emails and data while one of them were still at work … hence, webmail was born.  It is also fascinating to hear about these brilliant teams of people that have come together, all with different skill sets, strengths, and weakness, and that is what helped them to succeed. 

Having started at Iris Associates in 2001, it was interesting to hear about the "old days" from the words of Ray Ozzie.  Having started just before IBM aquired Iris Associates, the original founders had already moved on, yet their names and stories continue to be spoken legend around Westford 5.

I am really enjoying the interview style format, where in each chapter Livingston talks with a founder from a different company.  It makes it a quick read, and one that you can put down and come back to quite easily.  I am getting a lot out of this book, overall.  Not only is it inspiring to hear stories of these great successes, it is helpful to hear about the bumps in the road they hit as well, and to try to gain perspective from their experiences.  Big Blue always placed much emphasis on its mentoring program, and this reads like an entrepreneur’s mentoring manual.  Livingston asks the good questions, and I am soaking up as much as possible!

For those of you reading this with a RSS Reader, click through and check out the new springy design of my blog!  I was feeling inspired with the warm weather and the dogwood tree starting to bloom outside of my office window.

Last night we went to see the movie 21 based off of Ben Mezrich’s book Bringing Down the House.  Although the reviews were not stellar, I loved the movie.  I read the book a few years ago, and even though it didn’t follow the story line to the T … who cares … it’s a movie!  It’s suppose to be entertaining, and entertaining it was!  The Showcase Cinema’s in Revere has gone through a huge overhaul, adding a winebar, piano entertainment in the lobby, and a gorgeous new theater called The Director’s Hall with pre-assigned seating and people that will actually go get snacks for you!  We liked it before because it was easy to drive and park there, instead of taking the T downtown.  The Lowes Boston Common is still my pick for a big movie night out, but this one is great for those no-hassle nights, as long as you are willing to deal with all the teenagers and wanna-be thugs.

My soon to be ex-Manager is leaving IBM and we had a big going away dinner for him last night.  It was a lot of fun, and he surprised each of us with a very thoughtful gift.  He picked out a book that he thought we would like, and it was funny to see what everyone got.  He even wrote a nice little message to each of us inside the front cover which just made it very special.  I am American, Golf – Anika’s Way, Darwinisms, Why Women Should Rule the World, where just a few of the others.  For me he picked, The Ten Best of Everything: An Ultimate Guide for Travelers, which pretty much hits the nail on the head!  It’s a very cool book, with all kinds of great tips for places to see, stay, and enjoy all around the globe!  As I was perusing the pages last night, I noticed Venice, Italy, came up a few times, and it got me remembering what an amazing city it is!  One of my favorite memories in Venice was when we stopped by Harry’s Bar around noon on a Monday.  It was a comfortably warm, but not too hot, bright and sunny day!  It was so bright and sunny, that I remember the water ways sparkling, almost blinding, as the rays of sun danced around the Grand Canal.  Harry’s Bar is right at the mouth of the Grand Canal, and has a famous reputation for its celebrity visitors.  I was hoping to run into Ben Affleck again, but to no avail.  In all the books I read about Venice, this was a MUST stop on the list of places to eat.  What we didn’t realize was there are two very distinct parts to this fine establishment: a bar, and an upstairs restaurant.  We should have opted to stay at the bar, but I wasn’t sure if they would serve their famous Croques Monsieur (toasted ham and cheese sandwich) down there.  Come to find out they do, so I recommend staying down at the bar/lounge for other travelers.  The upstairs is very formal, with impeccable service and waiters in white suits with black bow ties.  It felt kind of funny only ordering a Bellini and cheese sandwich, but that is what we did, and I have to say it was still very indulgent.  The peach Bellini was invented at Harry’s Bar and was delicious!  I think the waiter could tell we didn’t realize the upstairs was typical for a heartier lunch, so after our Bellini’s and sandwich, he brought over a slice of the richest chocolate fudge cake I have ever tasted.  Magnificent … and compliments of the house, which was very sweet!  Here is a picture I dug up that Kevin took of me across our table.  You can see my peach Bellini and how bright the sun was coming through the window that day!

Well, about 1 week ago I finally finished the book, Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg, founder of salon.com.  Have I mentioned I am a slow reader?  I haven’t let that stop me though, I just try to plug through at my own pathetic pace.  In any case, overall I found pieces of the book really captivating, but the overall plot/story left me disappointed and slightly disheartened at the end.  The book chronicles a startup company’s efforts to produce an opensource PIM (personal information manager), similar to Outlook or Notes.  The difference is that it was going to be Peer-to-Peer and run on any OS.  So, let’s start with the positives, because I did learn a ton!  There was a lot of programming/computer science history, that many of my co-workers experienced first hand, working in the early days at Lotus, but was news to me.  As I was reading the book, I kept a sticky note pad close, and marked off the quotes or thoughts that I found interesting.  Here are my top 10 highlights from the book (with page numbers in case you want to "take my tour").

1. The phrase "yet another" is commonly prefixed to things that many others have already done in the past.  In this light, the Yahoo search engine actually stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". – pp. 100
2. "Its not a real project until commitments are made to defer some capabilities.  Doing everything at once is not an option." – pp. 121
3. Software can be made "Good, Fast, & Cheap … pick any two". – pp. 119
4. It is important to avoid ambiguity.  Use different words to describe different things.  For instance, "item", can mean many different things when you are having a design discussion.  It is important to be explicit about what you mean. pp. 192
5. Hungarian notation is my preferable scheme for naming variables.  Although it doesn’t make much sense in English, it makes a lot of sense in C++ – "prepBut nI vrbLike adjHungarian!  qWhat’s artThe adjBig nProglem?" -pp. 197
6. Wizzy Wig – WYSIWYG – "What you see is what you get" – pp. 280
7. The reason I am more comfortable coding than writing is that "With code, the computer tells you if it understands what you write."  When trying to write a book, or article, or blog, you never know as you go if you are getting your point across. – pp. 299
8. In 2038 the internal clocks of all UNIX based computer systems will roll over to zero.  This was found when a never ending, recurring meeting was schedule with Chandler, and the event would replicate itself until 2038, and then just stop. – pp. 326
9. "The art of making software well is, in a sense, the ability to send a vision through that atomizer in such a way that it can eventually be put back together – like the packets of data that separate to cross the Internet and get reassembled into coherent messages for your computer".  Reminiscent of Charley and the Chocolate Factory, when the om-pa loom-pa men send a chocolate bar through the television. – pp. 334
10. Hofstadter’s Law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law". Got to love the recursion in that statement! – pp. 331

There are more highlights that I have, and I could go on and on about them, but I hope those give you a feel for the book.  Now for the negative … The book started with the goal of following the creation of Chandler, named after the founders dog … love that!  Chandler is a new piece of collaboration software that was going to take about 1 year to build.  Well, 3 years later, Chandler is still not at a 1.0 release, last I checked 0.6 was coming soon.  The book allows you to sit in on fascinating design discussions, which is my favorite part of software development, and a part that I usually do not get to do on a daily basis.  So, it was fun to feel like I was hanging out in the room while they were dreaming up all these brilliant ideas to implement into Chandler.  The disappointing and disheartening part, is that many of these great ideas were compromised and in the end cut to make releases, and a 1 year project, 3 years later, is still in it’s infancy stages.  As someone with hope and an investment in the software industry, I was really rooting for Chandler.  I guess its lack of progress underscores Rosendberg’s theme for the book …. "Software is hard".  It’s hard to build, hard to test, and hard to release.

I do recommend the book for anyone that is interested in software, not just programmers, but really anyone interested in technology.  It was very well written, and I do feel that I gained a lot from it.

On NPR’s Marketplace segment last night, they were talking about Microsoft [finally] delivering Vista to the consumer today.  Microsoft tried to hype things up a bit by making copies of Vista available at 12:00am today, Tuesday 1/30/2007, similar to stunts pulled for Harry Potter books or Star Wars movies when they hit the market.  The more interesting part of the segment was an interview with Scott Rosenburg about his new book, Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software.  Rosenburg’s quotes about programming large pieces of software, such as Notes or Domino or Vista, were right on.  His thoughts on measuring development’s progress ….

…sometimes people in the field try to measure it by lines of code, it’s sort of like how many words have you written on an article. And the problem is that sometimes the best piece of code is one that uses very few lines to accomplish what it’s trying to do. So it’s very hard to measure progress…

I’m intrigued by the book.  The title is key catching, and I always say I get my best ideas for solving coding problems in my sleep.  The reviews on amazon.com allude to connections to the development of Lotus 1-2-3, and that the book does dig deep into some OO programming discussions.  Going to check Borders for it today, I’ll let you know how it is ….

If find myself so much more chipper lately.  Even though the cold has settled in and the scooter has been officially put into hibernation, I haven’t minded taking the 2 shuttle buses to the office.  I think its all the holiday music I’ve been listening to.  It is so soothing and gets me motivated.  The Trans Siberian Orchestra is running in a recursive loop on my pink ipod mini. 

I’ve been using my new found commuting time to catch up on some reading.  The first book I finished is called, All Souls, and was recommended to me by Charlie – a fun, smart, down to earth tour guide I met through a Junior League training.  He knows the author, has worked with him throughout the city, and I hoped it would give me a new perspective and insight into some of the neighborhoods around town.  What makes this book so good is the tone in which it was written.  It’s very conversational, matter-of-fact like, and as you are reading it you feel like you are sitting down with the author over a cup of coffee, listening to him tell you about his life.  Amidst this conversation you get swept up in the humor and the sorrow he encounters in his live.  Growing up in South Boston, he saw a lot of tragedy in his family, losing 4 siblings to violence.  His second book, Easter Rising, I am about 3/4 of the way finished with now, and this book is more reflective of how he changed his life and rose above this tragedy and violence.  I highly recommend both – excellent reads!  Me … the reading challenged …. has never flown through 2 books so quickly!