Author: David Quail

Lean startup – in Objective C

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];

}
Now if only someone would write an initWithPassion, addsMonetaryValue functions this whole startup process would be a breeze!

C100 Internship program

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

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

*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.

Starting up during this bubble

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

4 days in the valleyEarlier 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

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.

Attassa acquired by Silicon Valley Yousendit

Attassa yousenditAfter over 3 years really hard work we’re thrilled to bring our technology and products into the Yousendit family.  Giddee up!

The acquisition was covered by multiple sources including the following: