Seattle Startup Life

Happy Early April Fools Day! Let me introduce my latest blog with an annoucment:

Savan Kong will not be drinking for the entire month of April.

And, no, that wasn’t a joke. I know, I know. My last post was about happy hours and how it’s good for startups. Whatever. You can call me out on it in person if we ever meet.

But for now, onward to more important things. Here are three items that I’ve always wondered about in my startup life:

1. What’s the perfect ratio of PM to engineers? Educated guesses anyone? For example, Linkedin is looking for a Sr. Product Manager for New User Experience. Now, don’t get me wrong, they may actually have a position to fill, but do you really need a Sr. PM for just that facet of the site? Maybe. Maybe not. But wanting to hire a Sr. PM for just that role doesn’t seem like a smart move for a startup.Any advice on the perfect mix of PM to developers?
   Matt Goyer or Bryan Selner from Redfin? Andy Sack from Founders Co-op and Judy’s Book? Kevin Merritt from Blist? Mike Arcuri from Ontela?
2. Will all websites end up being a social network? Fast Company recently re-hauled their site to mimic traditional social networking functionality. With the emergence of behemoth online communities like Linkedin, Facebook, and Myspace, will it only be a matter of time before users demand the ability to communicate and collaborate with each other? A good friend of mine from Lakeside, Matt Johnson, works at Blist. Blist is trying to break into the consumer database market. I know, I know. Savan, databases aren’t super sexy. But you know what? It will be if you can manage sexy data like all of your pictures and information of Scarlett Johansson or Jessica Biel and distribute that information to your fanclub. Hats off to Kevin and his product team for making that move forward. I can’t think of a single web site out there right now that wouldn’t stand to become better by adding one or two social networking features (connections, groups, etc)
3. Why are there so many men compared to women in the VC/investment world? Alyssa Royse, blogger for the PI, recently asked the question: “Where are the women VCs in Seattle?” My first run with the VC/investment world was with Laura Jennings, former Microsoft VP, former Atlas Ventures Partner, and former boss of my mother (we helped raise their children - all very, very cute!). She exposed me to angels, the high-stakes (and losses) of the VC world, and general day to day trade-offs between startups and VC’s. Little did I know while talking to her in my teenage years that she would be the last VC I would meet that’s a woman. I’d personally love to meet more women in this capacity.

What do the Black and Tan, Hoegarden, Boddingtons, Car Bombs, and nodes and roots all have in common? They all make up the intrinsic DNA of a startup. I strongly believe that team building is deeply rooted in activities outside of the cube. When choosing a company, I try to assess many things. I believe that in order to really bond as a company – especially a startup – you should take the time to really get to know the people you’re working with (read: quality time at bars, clubs, lounges).
At Conenza, we have a great time at our happy hours. Since I’ve joined roughly 2 months ago, I’ve been to a show that my cube-mate Andrew Smith put together (Crown Arubaaaaaaaaaa!), spent endless hours at Fado, had great discussions at Imo and racked up sizable bills at Collin’s. I’ve learn so many things from people that I’d probably never pick up in a 30 minute meeting during the day. Unless you have a drinking problem or it’s against your religion, I believe that having informal, voluntary drinking sessions is an important (even imperative) aspect to building a startup team.
Alas, a list of why Happy Hours are awesome for team building. Feel free to send this to your HR department.

1. Happy Hours bring you all together at a specific time to talk about anything
2. Happy Hours loosen the tension between yourself and your peers (I’d advise not getting too drunk that you’d put on a red Christmas vest in the middle of March in a bar).
3. Happy Hours expose the chatterbox in everyone. Interestingly, people that usually don’t speak are so loquacious after 2 vodka tonics.
4. Happy Hours are a stress reliever.

Good excuses for a Happy Hour:

1. Introduce new hires
2. Entertain visiting out of town employees
3. Celebrate a milestone – release, etc
4. Celebrate birthdays
5. Show off your Christmas sweater in March
6. Celebrate that you made it through another 80 hour work week

And some tips to make the outing a good one:

1. Make the outings regular and semi-scheduled. This doesn’t mean that there should be a mandatory drinking session every Friday, but leaving that option open gives employees something to look forward to at the end of a week or month.
2. Have someone pick up the tab; rotate as necessary. If your company isn’t big enough to fund the drinks, allocate someone to be responsible for the bill. It takes the stress of having to round up everyone at the end. And usually, all of the tabs end up being roughly the same amount anyways.
3. Go somewhere unpretentious. You don’t need attitude while you’re drinking.
4. Go somewhere close to work. Engineers hate to walk. And the ladies that look good in heels hate to walk even more.
5. Have a backup plan just in case your first place is packed.

• The Seattle Times profiled Lifestyle Wireless. They supposedly send you text messages related to Sports, Lifestyle, and Faith. The only “catch” is that you have to buy cards to activate the service. Who in their right mind would buy such things when you can easily find that information for free using Google? Hello 466453. Also, the barrier to entry is so low that competitors (read 1-2 college students) could easily penetrate this market by coding for 4 months straight if you fed them Ramen and Redbulls. I predict the company will go out of business in a year.
• A friend of a friend (Matt Johnson > Andy Sack and Chris DeVore) started a new venture called Founders Coop. I think it’s a very interesting and exciting idea to help kick-start ideas and bring smart people together. From what I hear, Sack and DeVore know a great deal about the startup world.
• I wish I was going to this: Snap Summit 2.0.
• A great post by Curious Office. I couldn’t agree with them more. Arm Chair QB vs Entrepreneurs.

Conenza has been growing pretty rapidly lately. We’re packed like sardines (ode to Radiohead) in our current office and I love it. Being able to just turn your head and talk to someone about a question is so easy and efficient. It’s the simple things that make working at a startup great: the small kitchens, the intimate walks to lunch (and the intimate walks straight back), the ability to work on all aspects of the product, and especially the smart people. You see, a startup is essentially made up of two things: a great idea and really smart people. The right mixture of the two ingredients transforms the hodgepodge of humans and concepts into a well run machine.

I love talking to people that make me re-think myself. It’s an exhilarating feeling.  I had two meetings today that really challenged me. The first included Andrew Smith, Katherine James Schuitemaker and I going over user-flows. We did a walk-through of how media would be used in the next version of the social network we’re building. Towards the end of the meeting, Katherine suggested something she was thinking about on her way back from a recent trip. Her idea was very simple yet extremely complex. Her question (or challenge?) to us was: how do you build a visual representation of user profiles – their professional trends, decisions, challenges, success-metrics, personal stories – and show it in a compelling way? I took it a step further in my head. Once you build something, how do you make it a product that users will find useful?  It took fundamental ideas that I overlooked and turned it on its head. Needless to say, I was stunned at how hard I was thinking about this problem. Sometimes the best conversations are the ones sitting around a table, deep in thought.

If you enjoy solving complex problems with simple solutions, drop me a line. We can use you at Conenza.

Today, out of sheer curiosity, I had the urge to watch the first season of Heros. Hulu.com is already showing season 2, but I’m too fickle of a person to just jump into the second season. So, being the Asian nerd that I am, I scoured the internet searching for a place that would stream the episodes. I finally found what I was looking for on Netflix.com.

However, there was a problem: I was already sucked into the Blockbuster machine and had movies in the queue. I decided that having the ability to stream movies and TV shows outweighed the convenience of being able to drop off movies at close locations. I bit the bullet, canceled my Blockbuster account and registered for Netflix.

Boy, was I making a mistake.

The good:

The registration process was very straightforward. The first screen was nice and simple (name, address, etc). I was then taken to the credit card page; again, another painless process. After putting in my sensitive information, I was greeted with the homepage. Thinking that I was done with the trial registration, I proceeded to try and stream some movies. This is where the fun begins….

The bad and the badder and the baddest and the badderer

At first, I was welcomed by a friendly your-browser-is-whack-so-please-change-it screen. Wha? You don’t support Firefox 2 or Safari or Opera? Isn’t this supposed to be Netflix, the largest online place for renting movies? Grrr. I hate IE. (first movie watching attempt) Oh well. I switch regardless of my discontent for the Microsoft product.

I finally find my IE browser and launch Netflix.com again, re-sign in and conduct another search for “Heroes Season 1.” I hit the play button and am now prompted to install updates for Windows Media. Grrr. (second movie watching attempt) After the install, I return to the movie and try to watch my episode again. (third movie watching attempt) After the loading process, I was treated to a “Media Usage Rights Acquisition” pop-up letting me know that I needed to reactivate my account by clicking on the “My Account” link. Huh?

First, I wasn’t ever prompted to check my email for a registration email (I check it 10 minutes later for the heck of it; nothing was in my inbox). Second, how could I re-register for something I never confirmed registration for?

I click on the “My Account” button and attempted to troubleshoot my problem. Now, from this page, can you tell me what to click on to re-register my account? Can’t find it? Yea, neither could I.

I click the “Help” link and do a search for “reregistering”. The next window gives me a link to a page where supposedly I can re-register my account. I click on it hoping something magical would happen.

Nope. Grrr. (fourth movie watching attempt) All I get is this page and a big SUCKER feeling in my stomach.

What the hell? I then proceeded to log out, reboot, and re-sign into my account. Nope. Nothing. Again. (fifth movie watching attempt) I proceed to call the help line and talk to a representative. She tells me that the reason my registration was never registered was because I didn’t put it the “Security Number”. Wha? From the screens above (see first and second attempt), Netflix never ASKED me for the security code. And when asking me to revisit my account page, why wasn’t anything flagged next to the “Payment Method” link so I know where to look? Grr. I put in my security code and head back to the video page. Nothing. Again. Grrr. (sixth attempt)

My question is: Why is something so simple, so hard to do? 6 attempts to get something right? Are you kidding me? Netflix really needs to do some focus groups and run more user scenarios. It’s pain points like these that ruins great ideas.

It’s 12:56am and I’m still waiting to watch my movie.

UPDATE: 7:00 pm, 3/17/2008

My account still doesn’t work. I call customer service again and this time speak to Jessica. She tries to put in my security code again and still nothing works. I proceed to give her another credit card number and the system denies me AGAIN. She advises me to call the bank and credit card companies to see what’s wrong. I know for a fact that there is nothing wrong with either accounts.

In the end, I decide to cancel my trial period with Netflix.com. It was too much of a pain in the ass. Blockbuster, are you paying attention?

My brother , Savannara, just got a promotion recently becoming Nokia’s newest Marketing Communications Manager. He’s a sharp dude that’ll bring a lot of energy to the table. It’s funny: growing up he’s never been the most loquacious guy, so seeing him get a role like this is inspiring.

I hope to see him soon so he can school me on how to market mobile products in Finland (he lives there).

Myspace invades Seattle!

• Picnik is now on Myspace (I personally love the integration with Flickr; good job guys)
  
• Myspace expands into Seattle. This has me re-thinking selling my condo….

Biking replaces golfing!

• This story is so indicative of many startup soldiers in Pioneer Square.
  

I subscribe to a ton of magazines. I have stacks of them spread across 2 houses. Most I don’t get to on time (within their published month), some I do briefly, and some I re-read over and over again. The best magazine this month was by Fast Company, profiling their “most innovative” company, Google. Here are some great quotes and practices for business.

“I have this open-door thing every day, where for two hours, I just sit at my desk–it’s like office hours–and whoever wants to come by and show me stuff can. I get to see a bunch of the cool and interesting demos, and engineers get quick feedback. We need to move fast, and we need employees to want to move fast, too.“- Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products and User Experience

“Innovation is superfragile. It’s like a flower in early spring, where just the wrong weather will kill it. It’s very easy to kill, by having the barriers of entry too high, by requiring people to say yes to something. We try very hard to let people innovate sort of freely.”
– Douglas Merrill, CIO and VP of Engineering

“”The culture has been literally built for innovation and for engineers. We’re not told by some consultant who studies the market for six months and then says, ‘Here’s what the market wants.’ We get an idea, launch quickly, and learn from the market. That’s the equivalent of unwrapping an onion skin. You don’t get real insight until you listen to the market and peel back the first layer, then another and another….

Most engineers will work on one or two teams, typically five-to-seven person teams–the project manager, quality assurance, three to four engineers. They’re responsible for getting their stuff done. That is much different from a top-down organization. Often we don’t even know where we’re going at first.” Shannon Maher, Engineering site director (London)

Google people just “get it.” I hope to have a shred of their innovation when I grow up.

• I’m wondering who will actually print out a Zillow Flyer and give it to a seller as an “educational” tool. Sara Bonert from Zillow, any stats?
• The winners of the SEOmoz contest are posted
• Kevin Merritt always gives great insight to things related to business in his cleaver narrative ways

From Cooke’s Venture blog:

“Seattle’s Moblastic, which allows users to send photos over cell phones, has been acquired by Pleasanton, Calif.-based FunMobility in a deal of undisclosed size.

Moblastic was started as a project at the MIT Media Lab, created by founders Seong Kim, Jang Kim and Joseph Corral. Corral and Jang Kim will join FunMobility’s consumer team.

In addition to a Facebook application, Moblastic has developed a way to add animated glitter, sparkles and other features to cell phone photos.”

I wonder how this will impact the folks at Ontela? Dan? Mike?