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Lean interview about Row0 iPad app
Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2011
After a crazy week with Row0 where I was interviewed and featured in the Edmonton Journal and CTV National News and Sean was featured on Global TV, I took a moment to document some of the interview questions that weren’t shown in any of our coverage about the app.
What’s Row0?
Row0 is an iPad and iPhone app built for the World Junior Hockey Championships. It allowed hard core sports fans an opportunity to consume as much information about the event as humanly possible. It also allowed them to interact with other fans who care about the event as much as they do. It was available in the app store for 4 days before we removed it after getting some heat about content rights of articles and photos we were embedding.
What’s the first thing people ask you about Row0?
So many of the people I’ve chatted with, especially since the press releases about the app, ask me “Where did you come up with the idea?” I’ll often spew off some canned answer talking about my love for sports merging with my fascination with computers, but the truth of the matter is … not only do I not really remember how “the idea” actually came together, but the app which we released is just a minimum product that tests a few hypothesis about a greater vision. Answering “where did you come up with this idea” seems to imply that this is a good idea … when I really don’t believe this version of the app is good enough to be a bug business.
Well, what do you wish people would ask you about Row0?
The real question I wish I could answer is “Why did you decide to release *this* app first?”
Okay, you said that you don’t think that Row0 today is a big business, what IS the big opportunity that you’re going after here that Row0 sheds a bit of light onto?
I don’t know … but that’s the fun in all of this. Experimenting and collecting data as fast as possible to iterate towards the big idea instead of spending a tonne of capital with a “build it and they will come” attitude.
There are a few opportunities that I think could be pretty huge in this space. Without going into too much detail (I could probably write several pages on each opportunity), here’s a list of some of these really high level opportunities that Row0 helps us learn more about.
1. Elite athlete identity – How can we go way above and beyond what twitter and Facebook are doing to allow an athlete to create a brand for themselves, and to interact with their fans. A portal for blogs, tweets, photos, and interactivity with fans.
2. Digital program guide for sports teams enabling fans to interact with their favorite teams before, during and after a game or season.
3. Second screen service allowing fans to interact with other fans and content before, during and after an event.
OK, all those sound great even though they’re incredibly vague, but why build Row0? It doesn’t seem to be any of those?
You’re right, I believe that all 3 of these opportunities could be real businesses, but like any new software venture, each is riddled with leaps of faith and untested assumptions. With Row0, we took a page out of the lean startup handbook and put metrics in place to learn the following:
- How often will people return to read about a recurring sporting event they care about?
- What do they care about reading? Blogs? Player tweets? Fan tweets? Looking at event photos?
- While consuming sports content, how often would people interact with a game about the event?
- How often will people interact with each other during a sporting event?
- When will they consume content? Before, during or after an event?
- How do you best reach these fans? Social media, newspaper, news, feet on the ground marketing? Radio ads?
- Who owns the content? do bloggers care? Do photographers care?
Leveraging a number of unfair advantages (relationships with local journalists, sports bloggers, Radio personalities, the Edmonton Oilers), we felt very strongly that we could attract a good user base for our app. With that user base we could answer a lot of the above questions and then iterate closer towards a bigger vision.
Ah, very wise young lean startup grasshopper. Can you tell us more about the results of these tests?
We gathered a tonne of data. In 4 days we had over 1000 active users and every interaction within the app was instrumented. But lets save the details for a follow up interview / blog post ….
Lean startup – in Objective C
Posted in advice, david quail, software startup on October 7, 2011
I felt like modeling some of the lean startup process in objective C – including when to raise capital.
Idea *idea= [[Idea alloc] initWithPassion];
Experiment *experiment;
while ([idea.market representsMassiveProfit]){
experiment = [[Experiment alloc] initWithSomethingTestableAndIdea:idea];
[experiment validate];
if (experiment.addsValue){
[idea addObject:experiment];
}
if (capital + idea == majorGrowth){
if ([capital.source addsNonMonetaryValue] && [capital doesNotUnreasonablyDilute])
{
[capital accept];
}
}
[experiment release];
}
C100 Internship program
Posted in david quail on September 16, 2011
I want more Canadians, especially students, to get exposed to Silicon Valley companies and culture. We don’t have to clone “the valley” … but … there certainly is incredibly valuable experiences and connections in the Valley that can be leveraged from back in Canada.
That said, together with the C100, I’m thrilled to start a program called the C100 internship program, a program that will connect exceptional Canadian students with Silicon Valley comapnies.
Read more about it on the website www.c100interns.com
Tweetgab startup weekend project
Posted in software startup, startup weekend, startups, Uncategorized on August 15, 2011
Twitter is an unbelievable tool for getting the sense of what’s going and what’s being said at any given moment. It truly is a tool for measuring “the pulse” of any event.” One of the greatest things about twitter is that it’s completely free form. There’s really no rules – as long as the content crams into 140 characters, it can be said. As a result, the data within twitter has become very chronological. A stream of unrelated tweets, with no real surrounding context.
No where is this felt more than at Conferences where organizers are beginning to use twitter to broadcast on projectors what the audience is saying. This is great in theory, but there’s still no real structure of the data. It’s just a stream of tweets, bound by a hashtag with no real context.
I attended a Startup Weekend in Palo Alto last week and formed a team which tried to solve this problem. Here’s the presentation … Pardon the number of “Um”‘s … I really need to learn to speak better publicly.
Effective networking while at an event
Posted in advice, david quail on July 16, 2011
*This post was inspired by an “effective networking” panel appearance I had at the AccelerateAB conference
Networking – the type you do when building relationships – rather than connecting wires and routers – is an investment. Time spent building these relationships pays dividends some time after the investment is made. Right or wrong, business is often done with your friends and people you know and trust.
I’m not going to quantify the value of this investment in this post but rather make a fe w notes regarding things you can do while at a networking event.
1. Resist your introverted temptation to stay at home and hack. It truly does pay off.
2. The goal of the event is to go home with a handful of contacts that you genuinely want to go for lunch or beer with … not a pocketful of biz cards from faceless names.
3. Ask them “what’s your story,” rather than “what do you do / where do you work?”
4. Stay in touch with Facebook rather than linkedin. Facebook allows you to start building a real relationship with someone. Linkedin allows you to view their resume. Nuff said.
5. Humility goes a LONG way. No one wants to get to know the blow hard know it all.
6. Have a story and passion, even if you’re faking it.
7. If you can get em to talk most … you’ve won. That’s like dating women.
8. Organize an event (poker night, pub crawl, tech talk). People will come to YOU and think of you as someone who has their sh$it together.
9. Share your thoughts on their business, connect them with others that may help … but dont try to solve everyones problems. Face it … you’re guessing just like they are (and everyone else in the room.) If you do try … you WILL be that blowhard know it all.
10. Recognize Malcolm Gladwell’s Mavens. Get to know them, their value and network can literally be 1000X anyone in the room.
11. But don’t ignore the geek in the corner of the room. They could be your best contact you’ve ever made.
4 days in the valley interview with YouSendIt
Posted in david quail, startup on May 11, 2011
Our first 4daysinthevalley students just left home after being immersed in Silicon Valley. I was incredibly impressed with both the students who came and the people they spoke to.
Here’s a video overview about the program that one of our sponsors – YouSendIt put together.
Starting up during this bubble
Posted in Uncategorized on March 27, 2011
Over the past few months I’ve often been heard saying what a wonderful time we’re in to start a company. The convergence of mobile, cloud services and social media has created a boom of opportunities ripe for the picking.
But after being here in the Bay area for just over a month, I’m starting to think this is actually a pretty terrible time to start a company. Mostly cause I’m convinced we’re in a bubble …
1. Tech talent is incredibly hard to find right now.
It’s well documented how hard it is to find technologists right now. Google, Facebook, Apple, Zynga, and others are resorting to pretty extreme measures recruiting talent. It’s hard to compete with those guys when you’re a startup. New York times had a good article about the competition for talent. I’ve gone to about a dozen networking events, and talked to enough startups to see this first hand. EVERYONE is pulling out all the stops to try to find technical help. EVERYONE!
2. Tech talent is incredibly expensive right now
I’ve spoken to several developers and recruiters over the last month. iPhone developer contractors are making $200 / hour, sometimes $250. That’s ridiculous. Permanent full time developers are making upwards of $180/year. That’s insane. As a startup, you’ve gotta promise a lot of upside to overcome those numbers. Chatting with Otavio Good last weekend at Super Happy dev house about recruitment challenges really highlighted this for me. His company Wordlense is a super hot startup right now, and IMO, the sky’s the limit with their potential. Yet recruitment is posing it’s own challenges for them now (albeit they are looking for elite A++ level talent).
3. Now’s a perfect time to SAVE!
You really can make a killing right now in the market. Why not save up some cash, wait for the market to hit the tank (and developer salaries to plummet) … and THEN use your savings to fund your startup. Use this time to hone your skills and build your network.
4. It’s hard to be heard through the noise
Simply put, competition is steep right now. It’s more difficult to be heard by your market.
The biggest challenge with starting up during a bubble like this is finding technical talent that isn’t going to break the bank. The biggest challenge during a downtime is finding funding. I’ll take my chances on the latter thanks ….
An inspiration for 4 days in the valley
Posted in Uncategorized on March 26, 2011
Earlier this month I launched 4 days in the valley. I’m stoked to be working on this program to help foster entrepreneurship at the University level in Canada. I blogged about one of the inspirations on the 4daysinthevalley blog but I thought I’d share the inspiration here on my blog as well …
About 1 month after graduation from the University of Regina with a Computer Science degree, I attended my first interview. 2 kids about 22 years old wearing Bermuda shorts, flip flops, and ragged looking t-shirts welcomed me at the door (I was wearing dress pants, a shirt and tie). They led me into their board room, where on the middle of the floor sat an old picnic table. We chatted about the job, about how they still didn’t know exactly what product they were building, but that it was going after a general pain. They were using php, but thinking about changing to Java.
I still remember thinking to myself “what am I doing talking with these bozos?” I left the interview thinking about how I couldn’t wait to go talk to Sasktel, or SGI … companies that clearly had their sh#$t together unlike these dudes in their $10 tee shirts. In hindsight, I really wish I’d had someone tell me that taking that job would have been the best career decision I could have ever made.
Things worked out well for me. I took a job at a company called Saflink in Edmonton, ended up by some strange twist of events starting a Attassa with 2 awesome friends, was able to get that company acquired, and had the time of my life doing it and can’t wait to do it again. But it was mostly luck that I was exposed to the startup world. That experience really inspired me to make more students in Canada aware of the possibility of starting a technology company. The valley is a fantastic place … but there’s nothing in the water here that makes people smarter. There’s no reason you can’t make something big in Edmonton, Regina, Toronto, or Gull Lake Saskatchewan! 72 valley hours is a great way to start spreading that message.
Startups should look for pain … not a nail
One thing we absolutely got correct when starting our company – we started by identifying a pain, and looked to fix it. In particular we realized that email as a collaboration tool was broken, especially for collaborating over documents. We set out to fix that high level pain rather than to find a problem that we could solve with our technical areas of expertise.
“Look to solve pain” is not novel advice to anyone looking to start a company, but still, all too often, you see people trying to think of startup ideas that will leverage their technical expertise. While it obviously doesn’t’ hurt being an iPhone expert if you’re building a mobile company, there’s no reason you need to limit your options to just mobile iPhone apps. Any programmer is capable of ramping up *enough* in an area such as mobile, web, desktop to build out a minimum viable product. You can always bring in help latter once you’ve found product market fit.
Startup weekend – startup lessons learned presentation
Posted in advice, software start up, startup, startup weekend, Uncategorized on February 19, 2011
During the demo’s at a recent startup weekend event in Edmonton I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to share the experience of starting a technology company and eventually selling it. I also highlighted some lessons learned, things we did right, and things we failed at.
I plan on writing posts that dive a little deeper into the presentation, but for now, here’s the slide deck from the presentation.
