Brian Wins The Internet

Fear & Technical Debt

A few months ago, I noticed an area of our application that was performing terribly. It had always been slow, but with increased volumes, the issue was becoming more pronounced.

I wrote it in a rush while getting ready to demo our first prospective customer. It was the feature that got us the sale. It doesn’t have proper test coverage. It’s code is a messy stream of consciousness.

Only a handful of users use this particular feature, but they represent our core power-user group. Unfortunately, they haven’t been complaining about the slowness. They’ve simply become accustomed to it. Their silence gave me the perfect excuse to sweep the problem under the rug.

Every time I was about to dig into the code, I found a shiny new feature to write. Every time I was about to ask a teammate to do it, I remembered how shoddy the work was. I was embarrassed to hand it off.

This morning, while working on another feature that had to be implemented, I realized that I was going to have to dig into the problem code to make the new feature work. I took a deep breath and dove in.

An hour later I was done. Seriously. I had tests written for the old feature. I had tests written for the new feature. I had the performance enhancement in place (which turned out to be 2 lines of code.) I had the new feature in place.

The sad part. Our users, people I have personal relationships with, have had to suffer through the poor performance because I couldn’t muster up the courage to get in there and fix the problem. The effort I put into avoiding it had to be 10 times the effort it took to fix it.

What have you been avoiding?

My To Do List

Over the years, I’ve probably tried 50 different methods to keep track of work to be done. Here’s a small sampling of some of the techniques I’ve used:

Everything goes on the calendar
Google Tasks (web based software)
Remember The Milk (web based software)
Little notebook in my back pocket
Day planner
Email reminders to myself and manage from my inbox
Scraps of paper on my desk
Astrid (Android software)

After all of those iterations, I’ve finally found a workflow that has been effective for me. It’s relatively low tech, and it only chews up a few minutes each day.

Every morning, I sit down for 5 minutes (sometimes less) and write a plain text list of the things I want to accomplish that day in an Evernote note. If there are unfinished items on yesterday’s list, I copy them over (if they still need to be done.) Each item is on its own line and there isn’t any special formatting. I try not to use any special abbreviations since I might not remember later what I meant. The only standard abbreviation I use is “GRF” which stands for Get Response From and is my indicator that I should hear back from someone about a topic.

This morning’s list looked like this:

12/5
Change chain integration subfolders on S3
Tariff update

document quick search
Schedule google guides meetings
Prep for project meeting
Project meeting
Call Steve about data migration
Zoho meeting

As the day progresses, I keep the list open in my browser. It’s also synced to my phone, tablet, and other computers. Whenever I reach a stopping point on something, I flip to the list to see what I might do next.

As I complete things, I put the word “DONE” to the right of the item and move it to the bottom of the list.

As of right now, the list looks like this:

12/5
Tariff update
fix repeating lines on quick search
document quick search
Schedule google guides meetings - GRF CHRYSTAL
Clear aspect 9 inbox Prep for project meeting - DONE
Project meeting - DONE
Call Steve about data migration - DONE
Call Ricci back - DONE
Zoho meeting - DONE
Change chain integration subfolders on S3 - DONE
Change attachment extension on alliance parser errors - DONE
change quick search to show more than 10 items warning message - DONE

You might have noticed that there are more items on the list than there are in the morning. That’s because I add items that I’ve completed, even if they weren’t on the list. The reason I do this is for the emotional payoff. Many times, I get to the end of the day and I feel like I haven’t accomplished much. Seeing all of the DONE items is a huge payoff and that keeps me updating the list. It’s like a little game that I play with myself to see how high a score I can get.

Geek Note: Migrating Paperclip from AWS-S3 to Fog

Warning! Technical Post:

If you find the need to migrate your ruby Paperclip code from the no longer maintained AWS-S3 to Fog, you might want to pay attention to the following. It took me hours to get this straight.

Here’s how you define an attachment on your model in before (aws-s3) and after (fog) setups:

#BEFORE

has_attached_file :attached,

    :storage => :s3,

    :s3_credentials => {:access_key_id=>’MYKEY’,:secret_access_key=>’MYSEC’},

    :s3_permissions => :private,

    :path => “:id/:filename”,

    :bucket => ‘MYBUCKET’

#AFTER
has_attached_file :attached,
:storage => :fog
:fog_credentials => {:aws_access_key_id=>’MYKEY’,:aws_secret_access_key=>’MYSEC’, :provider=>’AWS’}
:fog_public => false,
:url => “:id/:filename”,
:fog_directory => ‘MYBUCKET’

Special callouts to the change from :access_key_id to :aws_access_key_id and :path to :url.

What Counsel Are You Getting?

HUGE DISCLAIMER: I’m not a lawyer. This isn’t legal advice. Listen to your lawyer, not me.

There’s nothing wrong with lawyers. While the profession takes a lot of knocks, most of the attorney’s I’ve met have been good people who genuinely want to help their clients. For a business, lawyers are more than just a necessity. When used judiciously (pun intended), they can be an excellent resource.

There is, however, an issue that I’ve seen time and time again that I think is dangerous to the overall health of a startup business. Startup managers need to understand the role that their attorneys are playing in the business and need to consider that role in each interaction. This becomes difficult because attorneys play different roles for a business on different days (and sometimes within the same day). In startups, where roles are constantly in flux, it’s even more important to understand these roles.

The first role that most people think of when considering attorney’s is as a legal advocate. Your lawyer represents you and your interests during a legal conflict whether in settlement negotiations or in open court. This assistance include not only the arguments and documentation of the case, but also the strategy and approach to the case as a whole. When you’re in this situation, it’s usually pretty obvious. Your lawyer will often take charge while you ride in the passenger seat.

Another role an attorney plays is as a provider of legal counsel outside of a specific conflict. She may help you with drafting contracts, government filings, reviewing public statements, so on and so forth. While some of this may be mundane, a good attorney’s insight will go a long way towards preventing your need of the first role above. She can also help you save a whole lot of money in the long run.

A less commonly articulated role attorneys is that of business counsel. This role is often amplified in startups. Imagine you’re negotiating with an investor for one million dollars, and your attorney says, “I’ve seen other clients get 10 million in this situation, so you should go back with a counteroffer.” I consider that business counsel. Legally, you wouldn’t be at risk for taking the million, and your lawyer might even be wrong about the market. Asking for 10 million could kill the deal, or make you very right. This is an incredibly valuable service. Your attorney should have worked with many similar businesses. This means she can do pattern recognition that you cannot. She’s seen companies make poor decisions and very good ones. Use that knowledge to your advantage.

Where business leaders can get in trouble is when they don’t clearly categorize an attorney’s advice as legal or business counsel. Legal counsel from your attorney carries a weight and authority. Like a doctor’s opinion, you’d be stupid to dismiss it without at least getting a second opinion. In my view, business counsel carries less weight. Your lawyer’s opinion on your business negotiations should only carry as much weight as you feel comfortable assigning. It should be mixed with your own opinions and those of other people in your circle of advisers.

As I write this, it seems very clean cut. In practice it is anything but.

Let’s take the following sentence, which you might hear in the middle of a long conversation about a complicated document. Your attorney says, “I think this clause opens you up to unreasonable liability and is not worth the money you’re getting.” In that single sentence, your attorney just gave you legal (“unreasonable liability”) and business (“not worth the money”) advice. Both pieces are valuable, but they should be weighed on their own scale. It’s up to you to be vigilant and apply the right filters to everything your attorney says. Improperly assigning the business advice the weight of legal advice abdicates your management prerogative to your attorney. Assigning the business weight to the legal advice could cost you your business (or worse).

The Joy of Sharing

The eBook market is still maturing. Innovation abounds. The latest stories are that Amazon is going to introduce a subscription based book store that is all you can eat.

I’d love to see them go a different way. In my book model, each copy would be tagged with an electronic signature that tragged it to the purchasers account. This would be similar to writing you name on the inside cover. Then you would have the opportunity to virtually lend that book to someone else. When you lent the book, it would leave your library and go into that person’s library. When that person was done with the book, she could give it back or lend it to someone else. This individual copy could be passed around forever.

Yes, I’m aware that I just created the basic utility of a physical book. Here’s where it gets cool. With a physical book, you lose two things as soon as thebook leaves your possession. You lose the ability to read the book, and you lose the potential joy of seeing all the people who benefit from your purchase.

The eBook has the potential to solve both of these problems. First, the system would allow you to “borrow back” your book. At any time, you could pull the book back to your library. The person with the borrowed copy would have the option to purchase their own copy or wait for you to push it back to them.

Next, and this is my favorite part, the entire gifting chain would be visible to everyone involved. You’d get to learn whether your book went to an old college buddy or was gifted to a school in Kenya. How cool would that be?

When I shared this idea with someone, their first reaction was,”but then they’ll sell less copies.” That may be true. However, the publishing business is in a race to the bottom on price, and this incremental volume change isn’t going to make a bit of difference at 99¢ per copy. Publishers need to find ways to create real value for people and use that value to justify a premium price. It would be an interesting experiment to see if people responded to a higher cost, sharable book next to a lower cost single use book on the same virtual shelf.

I know that I’d be willing to pay for the joy of sharing knowledge.

A Path for PSL - One Man’s Take

Last night, Philly Startup Leaders held a fishbowl event. Members of the community came together to discuss the future of the organization both in principal and in practice. A lot was said, and a lot was shared. At the end of the night, many words had been expelled from people’s mouths and keyboards, but I’m not sure that anything had fundamentally shifted. Though I’m loathe to stroke Alex Hillman’s ego by quoting him twice in the same week, I’m going to do so via the tweet pictured below.

While I genuinely believe that last night was both engaging and worthwhile, I am concerned that anything that comes from a group that large will be neutered by the process of consensus building. With that in mind, I thought it would be valuable to contribute my specific, actionable vision for the changes that the organization should make.

The Problem Statement

PSL is an organization with a clear mission statement that does not clearly align with the “boots on the ground” reality. The mission statement is tuned to a small, focused group with common goals and motivations. The actual organization is broad (1000+ members), with a wide range of motivations represented by vendors, entrepreneurs, mentors, students, etc. The leadership is guided by this mission statement and therefore is running a group that doesn’t actually exists. Analogously, they are setting the ground rules for a small college class and then are trying to apply them to a raucous high school auditorium. The problem isn’t the rules or the audience, it’s the mismatch.

The Philosophy of the Change

The problem can be solved through honesty, transparency, and boundaries.

First, PSL (in both leadership and membership) needs to openly admit that it is a broad community serving more than just leaders of tech startups. PSL serves everyone who actively participates. I’m going to pick on Fred Wilf of the Baer Crossey law firm for a moment. When Fred presented at the fishbowl, he was openly mocked on the live chat because he was a vendor. While this may (or may not) have been in jest, the underlying view was that vendors are only there to leech off of the group. From speaking directly with Fred earlier in the evening, I believe that he would feel a sincere sense of loss if he was no longer able to participate in PSL. This reflects the fact that PSL gives Fred an opportunity to participate constructively in the community, and that is valuable to him beyond any business that might come his way. In that respect, Fred is served by PSL. We should all honestly come to grips with all facets of his and other vendors’ various roles in the community.

Second, PSL needs to be transparent about who is in the community and why they are there. We’ve explored Fred’s role above. Another attendee last night was Kirk Watkins. Kirk is an experience businessman who participates in PSL to help younger entrepreneurs refine and grow their businesses. When you speak to him, he is very clear about why he participates, what he hopes to give (a lot), and what he hopes to get back (not much). The organization needs to give Kirk, and everyone else a more public and systematic way to express the role they play.

Thrird, PSL needs to create some boundaries. Once we’ve established different roles in the community, it’s natural to admit that not every event is appropriate for every role. There are times when entrepreneurs need to be able to take off their public face to express worries they’d only share with their peers. Vendors, and even mentors, detract from these events. There are other times when startup leaders are looking to expand their networks and learn from those who have been there. Both vendors and experienced business people add great value in these situations. PSL needs to help manage these boundaries so each event can blossom from the proper mix of attendees.

Brass Tacks: How To Get It Done

Roles, Dues, and Segmentation. That’s it. If those three things are addressed, then the sky is the limit.

Every member should have to identify the role they play in the community. The roles are clear and simple. The board should have final decision making power if a member is improperly categorized. All existing members should be required to re-register by January 1 and should select a role through that process. Without further ado, here are the roles:

Startup Leader: Any member who is actively participating in a day-to-day role in a company that was legally registered less than 2 years ago and personally owns over 20% of said company.

Startup Member: Any member who is actively participating in a day-to-day role in a company that was legally registered less than 2 years ago and does not own over 20% of said company.

Sustained Business Leader: Any member who is actively participating in a day-to-day company that is more than 2 years old and personally owns over 20% of said company.
Supporting Partner: Any member who intends to solicit members of the community regardless of any other criteria that might put them in another category. The leadership will need to actively address members in other categories that should be Supporting Partners.

Student: Individuals actively enrolled in an undergraduate or post-graduate program at a local college / university.
General Member: Everyone else.

Now for the controversy… Dues. All members should pay dues. The objective here is to weed out the passive, casual member. This modest barrier for entry will lighten the load of having to support a 1000+ member organization when we really probably have a 400 member organization with 600 hangers on.

Now for the hedge… In Kind Participation. All members should have the opportunity to contribute to events instead of paying their cash dues. For example, a Supporting Partner might participate in a panel event and be given a $100 in kind credit. A startup leader or student might help setup or tear down an event in return for a $20 credit. The board should determine the need for participation and relative compensation.

Dues:
Startup Leaders & Startup Members: $60/year
Sustained Business Leaders, Students: $20/year

General Members: $80/year
Supporting Partners: $500/year or $5,000 for an entire company

Finally, the organization’s events and communications should be segmented based on the roles above. Certain events might be open to all, while mentoring events might be just for Startup Leaders and Sustained Business Leaders. Similarly, the mailing list should be replaced by 3 groups (“Everyone”, “Startup Leaders Only”, and “Startup Leaders-Startup Members-Sustained Business Leaders”). Whether we leave the mailing list technology in place or go to a forum or LinkedIn group is merely an implementation detail.

So, that’s my take on some simple, actionable steps towards moving the community forward. Congratulations on making it to the end!

What is a Startup Leader?

A few things came together today that got me riffing on the topic of community & leadership.

First, tonight is the Philly Startup Leaders Fishbowl event where members of the extended Philadelphia startup eco-system will come together to discuss what PSL needs to do to stay (or become) relevant.

Second, Joe Petrucci from Flying Kite published this article. While I was honored to be mentioned in both the piece and the ensuing commentary by Alex Hillman, they both got me thinking about the nature of “Startup Leaders” versus “Leaders of Startups.”

A Startup Leader, is relatively simple to define, though hard to execute. File some papers with the government, form your LLC, and you’re set. You’re leading a startup. Even this low barrier would probably trigger some push back. There are people in the community who would say, “I have an idea, and I’ve started drafting a business plan. I’m a startup leader.” Doing it well, is more involved. It often means cultivating a relentless focus on your business. Investing 100% of your capacity (and more) is the norm. This mentality can create a “take” view of the world. The focus can cultivate a world view that says, “If I can’t measure the return to my business today, I should be doing something else.”

You’ll see the evidence of this world view in people who go to startup events and don’t ask about your business. They are their to pitch, sell, and extract information. They sometimes get what they asked for, but rarely get what they could have with a different approach.

A Leader of Startups is more amorphous, and also much harder to achieve. The real leaders of this startup community are people who selflessly set aside time and energy to help guide a group that naturally resists leadership. Frankly, most people who view themselves as Startup Leaders don’t want to be lead by anyone else. This means that the people who sit at the top of org charts don’t automatically become the community’s leaders. Unlike more sheepish flocks, the Leaders of Startups have to earn their stripes by caring and contributing.

Being a Leader of Startups means prioritizing the long haul over the immediate. It means genuinely caring about the community instead of seeing the community as a faucet for leads and funding. It means giving to someone without immediately identifying the ROI. At a surface level, this flies in the face of the focus needed to lead your individual startup. At a deeper level, those who lead successful startups and the community at large know that the activities are not only complimentary, their also inseparable. For those who grasp this, the real returns are bigger than any bubble valuation.

In my experience, these rare people approach all of their problems holistically. They take a long view in both business and community that creates sustainability at both levels. They get that this country and this city were built by leaders who did not distinguish between business, community, and family. That’s why the latest bubble starup leader who fled to New York or San Fran isn’t that big a deal. Those people (gross generalization warning) often are taking the short view. They’re looking at how to build their business, but not how to build something greater. And trust me, there are definitely things greater than your business.

As Alex put it, in reference to Chris Cera, “This is why I love Chris as a leader. He’s often reluctant, but he knows what he wants for the community he’s a part of.” (emphasis added) Chris, and our other leaders see themselves as “part of” the community. When you’re part of the community, leaving is a sacrifice, not an opportunity.

Who Moved My Shampoo?

Shampoo bottles change… a lot.

I’m not talking about the liquid product inside. I’m talking about the bottles themselves. It seems like every time I go to the store with instructions from my better half to “get the same thing we have now,” the same thing doesn’t exist anymore. While I’m sure that the “Pantene Pro-V for Medium-Thick Dry Hair” is there somewhere, the slightly-curved-and-tapered-bottle-with-vertical-block-lettering has been replaced by a somewhat-rounded-bottle-with-horizontal-serif-lettering-and-light-blue-gradient-background. This almost makes my head explode (which would eliminate the need for shampoo).

Why do these bottles change so much? I suspect that if you asked the people who change them (which I haven’t), they would answer that the frequent changes impart a sense of “improved” or “new” which in turn increases sales. They would probably even sight a study to prove this point.

I don’t buy it. (The theory that is… I definitely buy the shampoo.)

I think that the bottles change because someone has a full time job to manage the brand for the shampoo. Her name is probably Ashleigh. Every day, Ashleigh stops at Starbucks, admires the updated logo on her cup, then goes to work. She sits down at her desk, reviews the latest policy on recording unpaid leave, and brings up last week’s sales numbers. Sales are great. Ashleigh could let the brand hold steady for 6 months to a year before she’d see a drop in sales. But then a strange feeling sets in. Ashleigh is being paid to manage the shampoo brand. If she doesn’t do anything today then she’s not managing the brand (note the active verb).

So Ashleigh diligently sets about updating the brand. A curve here, a font update there, and voilà, the brand has been managed. All is well with the universe.

Or is it?

We know that Ashleigh’s universe is great, but meanwhile, Tom over in shaving cream is struggling. His brand is getting clobbered. He’d love it if someone would stop by and brainstorm on a new campaign with him. Ashleigh would be perfect, but she’s busy in the next cube working on her job. Tom wouldn’t want to ask her to neglect her job to help him. That would be selfish.

Fast forward six months. Mega-corp decides to exit the shaving cream business and focus on shampoo. This “refocusing on dynamic segments” is lauded as pro-active leadership. Actually, it’s not. It’s not even noticed, because the total impact to Mega-corp is .00006% revenue.

Now think about your small business. If Ashleigh and Tom worked for you and Ashleigh didn’t drop her unneeded re-branding to help Tom, what would the impact be? With 25 employees, I bet each one’s contribution is worth more than .00006%.

Are you fostering an environment where everyone’s first job is to do the most valuable thing or an environment where everyone’s job is to do their job?

Really?

When is the last time that:

Someone came to tell you that they just did something way outside their job description?
You coached someone on how to see opportunities?
You explained the big picture goals (and how you’re going to get there) to the whole team, including the helpdesk, bookkeeper, and receptionist?
Praised someone for going off plan and taking a risk.
Let it slide when someone tried to help with the big picture, even though it didn’t go so well?

Startup Therapy Is Taking Off

The message below is a post that I just made to the mailing list for “Startup Therapy”, a new entrepreneur’s group in Philly. I think that what we’re doing has the potential to be really powerful. It’s reminiscent of the Junto that met on the same streets 300 years ago.

One of the things that’s really cool about this group is that we’re not afraid to be exclusive. There’s such a drive to “include everyone” in our society that we dilute their potential by allowing participants who don’t contribute value for the group as a whole. While there are definitely areas where inclusiveness needs to be a part of the core model, like IndyHall, this doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to do things.

If you’d like to get involved in Startup Therapy, hit me up on twitter @bglick.

Message sent to Startup Therapy Group - August 27, 2011:

Hey everybody!
We had a great Startup Therapy session yesterday. From IndyHall, we headed over to the aptly named Revolution House for great conversation and grub.
In addition to some really helpful discussions on marketing / media strategies and leveraging each other’s professional networks, we continued to refine the mission and values for the group. An important item came out of that discussion, and the group asked me to share it with this list.

Startup Therapy is a group that values in-person participation. There are a lot of groups in the area that allow passive membership on mailing lists, newsgroups, etc. Startup Therapy is evolving into something different. We want to be a smaller group with a high level of engagement. The online presence that evolves, will do so to support of the offline, real world relationships.

The weekly lunch meetings are the first step in building a vibrant, close-knit group. The next stage will be to begin hosting focused sessions where we can explore and learn about topics at a deeper level than larger events allow. To paraphrase Brendan McCorkle, there are plenty of places to get Startup 101 classes, but where can we get 201 & 301 classes.

Some of the topics that were suggested for sessions included:
Enterprise Selling
Raising Capital - Beyond the Basics

Setting Startup Priorities
Call To Action! (Yes, that means you.)
If you have not been to one of our lunches, make the time to join us by September 30th. We gather at Indy Hall (20 N 3rd St, Suite 201) just before noon on Fridays and leave for lunch promptly at twelve.

If you have been participating, now’s the time to step it up and organize a learning session. We’re a decentralized group, which means you are the leader who needs to take the initiative and share your expertise with the group. If you’re not sure how to get started, just post a message here and I’m sure everyone will jump in and help.

As a final note, if you don’t participate in person, you’re not part of the group. At some point in the near future, we’ll be culling the Google Group to those people who are contributing to the collective. We understand that this is different than the approach that other local groups have taken, and that’s what we think will make us special.

Please reply to this message with any constructive comments and criticisms. The goal of this message is to spark a conversation that will help us define who we really are (and want to be).
All the best,
Brian Glick

The Magic Sales Tool

As part of the nascent “Startup Therapy” group here in Philly, I participated in a great conversation yesterday about all things startup related. One of the topics we touched on was selling into big companies.

Here’s a great article that covers some of the major things to consider: http://www.successmagazine.com/Selling-to-Big-Companies/PARAMS/article/570/channel/16

One thing that this article overlooks (or maybe assumes) is that you need to build personal relationships based on openness and trust. Big companies are made up of real people. Real people who get their asses kicked (aka fired) when they choose the wrong vendor. If your contacts at the company don’t trust you, they won’t go to bat for you with their boss.

What’s the magic, super-secret trick that instantly creates trust in the corporate environment?

There isn’t one. In my humble experience, the old fashioned approach is the one that works. Spend time with people. Genuinely listen. Help them with things that don’t provide you with an immediate return. Give them open and honest feedback. Really care about them as human beings. (Don’t just pretend to). Build solutions that will help them (not just your bottom line).

What should you do if you’re in a rush, don’t really care about your customers, and have a product that requires “mistruths” to be sold?

Start a business in my industry, because I’d love to compete with you.