Monthly Archives: April 2010

Why you need a co-founder (from the tech point of view)

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I’ve always known that I’ve needed a co-founder, but I haven’t really found one that is interested in what I’m working on, has the same level of commitment, or can put the nose to the grind like I want them do (I’m a workaholic).  Recently however, I finally understand why you really need one.

From a tech point of view, I’ve never really grasped what was needed to get a product off the ground.   Honestly, I always thought the most difficult part of the job was writing the code (and it’s a never ending job).  However, now that I have a better understanding of HOW to get users, executing it is a different matter.  It’s literally just as difficult and time consuming as writing code. This is where your non-tech co-founder comes in.

I should say that because i’m trying to do most of both jobs by myself right now (with some help from wifey), it has given me a better understanding of what I’m now looking for in a co-founder.  What you really need to look for (if you’re a coder) is a person who understands how to market your product.  And not in that bullshit fluffy amorphous definition of marketing (like how most of the blogs i’ve read define it), they need to have a solid concrete marketing/strategy plan that they can execute.

Some the things they’ll need – You’ll need someone who understands what SEO is.  Someone who understands what keywords to target and attack, that your competitors haven’t attacked yet.  if you have some $$ for user acquisition from adwords, they have to understand how to do that.  Aside from that, he/she must write for your blog consistently and frequently.  Not only do they have to write blog postings, they have to comment on other blogs. They have to comment on forums.  They have to reach out to respected leaders in your vertical and speak to them.  They have to also speak out to the industry as a whole, via meetups, speaking arrangements, demos, and if they can, throw their own events on your subject matter.  They have to twitter about interesting things they find on your subject matter.  They have to reach out to other twitterers who also tweet about your subject matter.  They have to consistently pitch blogs to review/post about your product.  Then they have to relay any feedback to you, so you can integrate it into your next development cycle.

But they just can’t do all that without an overall ‘story’.  They need to craft a strategy that they can sell to bloggers who they pitch your story to.  All the marketing has to align with the story you’re trying to paint.   Then comes the press release portion of it.  They need to make sure to release press releases often enough for you to stay relevant and to build to crescendo of some major event/release.

Ok… i think I got most of what I think is necessary in a non-tech co-founder out.  The more and more I get into this game, the more I see why VCs and Angels talk about the team.  You really do have to work in tandem to succeed.  One without the other is REALLY HARD (it’s sort-of what im going through right now).  Luckily I have my wife helping pick up some of the slack, but I would urge every tech out there to find a good co-founder, it just helps with the number of things you have to do.

Launch of Simplizt

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I’d like to announce the launch of Simplizt.com!  Simplizt is an intuitive task management system that I developed after trying to find a system that was simple and straight forward to use.  I felt all the other systems out there lacked three features I was looking for:  the ability to have tasks live on multiple lists, the ability to assign tasks to others and finally something just easy to use.

I’ve started trying to get the word out there.  I think this is probably the toughest part of launching any start up.  So far I’ve done what I’ve read about in the blogs, I’ve created a minimally viable product (MVP), that hopefully I can get user’s feedback on. I’m working on hitting the 10 things that Fred Wilson has mentioned are needed to make a successful web product.  Finally, I’m trying to get users as I continue on this journey towards making Simplizt the de-facto task management system!

Won’t you join me and help me test out my product?

Are you willing to strikeout?

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Simon Sinek brings up a great point on his Re:Focus blog “Are you willing to strikeout?” He talks about Babe Ruth, who set the home run record, while at the same time setting the league strike-out record.

Most people want to hit home runs, the problem is they are afraid to fail in order to get there. As Babe Ruth proved, you can’t have one without the other. It’s perfectly fine to be a good, solid player who doesn’t go down swinging that often…but it also means you won’t hit that many home runs. Those players are needed on a team – they are the consistent and reliable players.

That’s pretty much how I view some of the projects that I work on.  The tasks of each of my sites may seem overwhelming, but I feel like I wouldn’t want it any other way.  I’d much rather hit the home run and strike out, than being a singles hitter.   Like the old saying goes, ‘Go big or go home!’.

One thing I probably would disagree with Simon on is the notion of the ‘fail’.  I don’t think Babe Ruth was trying to be the strike out king.  He just realized that he may strike out along the way of smacking a home run.  The same thing applies for entrepreneurs, don’t just give up and think ‘I’ll just fail at this and move on’.  I would say re-assess and re-define and get back in the box and start swinging for the fences again.

First Impressions of the iPad (my iPad review)

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So I decided to take some time out today to go to the Apple store and checkout the iPad.  It’s MUCH lighter than I thought it would be.  You can easily hold the device in one hand and can grip it enough that it won’t fall out of your hands easily.  In addition, the add-on case that you can buy from Apple has a thin rubber skin which helps with the gripping.

A nice pleasant surprise was the eBook reader.  My wife, who uses a Kindle, saw the eBook reader instantly said, if she didn’t have a Kindle, she would have probably bought the device on the spot.  That’s enough for me to say that I think the iPad will cut into the Kindle market share.  However, I would like to point out that the Kindle was specifically made to be read and to fade into the background, which is why it’s a dull gray color.   You can read the Kindle for several hours without it straining your eyes.  I’m not sure how long you could read the iPad without eye strain.  There still is a reflective gloss on the device and the brightness of the device may cause some issues to book readers.

One feature that definitely surprised me was the keyboard feature.  In my mind I thought that the device would most likely need a pen device in order for the device to be really usable.  But to my surprise, when I started using the keyboard functionality in the email app, it was really easy to type on.  I made several spelling mistakes, but only a few more than I would make typing on a normal keyboard.  I think this definitely lends the iPad to do more than I originally thought it would be able to do.  However, the only draw back to the typing functionality was that you would need to lay the iPad down on a flat surface to type much like you would need to do with a normal keyboard.  This is where I would imagine a pen-like device would work, so that you could write with one hand and not really need to lay down the device to type.

One downside that I saw was that most applications were not really made for the iPad yet.  The games seemed to have rendered fine, but other apps on the device looked like they were created for the iPhone.  You could tell because the anti-aliasing wasn’t as smooth and it should have been.  When you zoomed in on the application (to about the size of the iPhone), the application looked much better.