Marcelo Calbucci |
Startup Score:
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I just published the Seattle Startup Index on the Seattle 2.0 blog. It's pretty cool to see companies being formed and growing.
Sampa is now at number 25 and moving 1 position up in the index from last month. We gained 3,167 positions on the Alexa Traffic Ranking overall.
This year, between Paul and I, we had more than 40 investor meetings. Each meeting takes about a day out of our other tasks. You have to schedule, prep, commute, meet, commute back, follow up, etc.
That would be great if the investors were truly interested in Sampa, or if the meeting would have resulted in a term sheet. The problem is that most investors are not really interested in investing on you. The worst part is that they know that but they are not up front about it. Why? They want to hear the pitch. They want to keep connected for when another lead investor comes in, they can jump onboard. Or they are an advisor or investor in a competitor, and they are just sniffing around.
Because of that, about a month ago, Paul and I completely changed our pitch strategy. To begin with Paul is the only one that go to first meetings. This way at least one of us can continue to work on the product. Second, we do some background check to make sure that they are serious about investing on our space.
Here is a checklist to see if a VC is a good fit for Sampa:
And prior to any meeting, we always check out www.thefunded.com . It can be quite entertaining.
PS: This post was written offline, that is probably why it has so few misspellings.
In case you don't follow the Sampa Blog, we just added support for Twango. Now your Twango Channels and Media can appear as first level elements on your Sampa site. Twango is pretty cool because they support all kinds of content, from pictures to video, from audio files to PowerPoint presentation.
The interesting thing for those that don't know, is that one of the co-founders of Twango is Philip Charmichael. Philip and I worked together on MSN Search between 2000 and 2002. Back then MSN Search was the number 1 search engine and Google was not that well known.
At ESIF, we've met Serena Glover (another Twango co-founder) and we decided to get together to see if there was a win-win. Sampa is the Mashup King application, so, of course there was a win-win. Sampa users get Twango and audio/video/etc., Twango gets a few new customers.
I'm looking for a great Offline Blog Post Editor. Any tips?
I tried the Windows Live Writer already, but I'm looking for other popular solutions.
I just thought it would be fun to see what email addresses our users are using. Here are the stats for the last 30 days:
No big surprises. I was just expecting Comcast/Verizon to be higher.
Most Sunday nights I watch Iron Chef, a TV show on the Food TV where two chefs cook many dishes in just one hour. The caveat is they only know the main ingredient before the countdown starts. The show has four in-house chefs that are the “Iron Chefs” and each night one of them “battles” a challenger, also a renowned chef.
Last Sunday was the Garbanzo Beans battle. Mario Batali (the Iron Chef) battled out Richard Blais. A group of judges score each dish based on platting, originality and taste, each of these criteria being worth 5, 5 and 10 points, respectively. The Iron Chefs win 80% of the time and pretty much every time the score is decided on the taste criterion.
This time was no different, Mario Batali won with a good overall margin because his dishes tasted much better, and hence, it scored greater on tasting. Every single time I watched this show, the defining factor has been taste. Not originality, not platting, but taste. This time, Mario Batali originality was not great and his platting was not even good.
It’s the taste stupid!
What this has to do with software and Web 2.0? Let’s start by the battle score criteria and convert that into the software world. Originality is the equivalent of Innovation, Platting is the equivalent of User Interface and Taste is the equivalent of Functionality.
Now, functionality will beat Innovation and User Interface every single time. Make no mistake, people use your software or a site with a purpose. If that purpose cannot get accomplished, everything else doesn’t matter.
Another great analogy is video games. People buy them for the “gameability”, not because of the graphics or the controller that detects if you are upside down. A better looking graphic is always more pleasing and a neat controller is always a piece of conversation and a ticket to be on the “in-crowd”. But if the game doesn’t deliver, everything else doesn’t matter.
On the Web 2.0 world of today there is a lot of emphasis in beauty and innovation on user experience.
Having beautiful pixels is easily achievable. It is just a matter of hiring the right designer (or being one). That is probably why this has been the selling point of many Web 2.0 companies (“your blog/wiki will look beautiful if you use our service”).
Innovation is always great, as long it is useful. It doesn’t matter if you are the first to do a service that nobody cares or uses.
On Web 2.0, a lot of the innovation effort is being applied to User Experience, which is one of those very powerful things that can really distinguish what you do, or make you the joke of the day.
There is a deep connection between User Experience and Functionality. Trying to serve Lasagna on a champagne glass might ruin both, but eating Sushi with chopsticks works just right. Also, a bad Lasagna will taste bad on a plate or on a champagne glass.
There are two core lessons that I want to emphasize.
First, if you are building any kind of software, site or just a single feature you must start by focusing on the functionality (what), get it right, then figure out the user experience (how) and last do the pixel beautification. If you really focus on your customer that is the only way to do it and you’re probably already doing it. If you focus on your competition, you’re probably doing the opposite, by focusing on how to make your thing look better, then how to change the experience and last how to add new functionality – that is a loser method!
The second lesson, which might not be so clear from the lines above, is that you should not waste your time rethinking (innovating) the User Experience if you are not an expert. Why redesign scrollbars? Why use vertical tabs on the side if every other software uses horizontal? Just use what has been proven out there, copy it and focus on your core skill/differentiator. If you are building a speech recognition engine, focus on getting the accuracy to 99.9%, not on how to make sure the UI looks pretty. You can always fix the UI later, but the hard stuff is always hard.
One last note on this topic: Investors have a hard time looking beyond the book cover. It is mostly a time-constraint (or brain-constraint) issue, so, if you’re looking for external capital make sure that you have a pretty and compelling UI.
I just receive a spam (since it is commercial and unsolicited) from The New York Venture Summit starting with the following:
"Due to popular demand, we have decided to extend the opportunity for companies to submit their executive summaries as well as “Early Bird” registration until Wednesday, May 23rd. Don’t miss this opportunity!"
This is a conference, which means it has limited inventory. If it is being so successful, I'd assume that their inventory is sold out and the message would say "we are sorry, but we cannot accomodate any other company at this moment".
UPDATE: In case you're wondering if this relates to Startups, Entrepreneurship or Technology, the answer is no. I meant to post this in my son's blog but I used the wrong email address. 
Forget diamonds. Forget flowers. Forget lunch at a fancy restaurant.
This year you should give your mother something she will never forget: Her own website!
Sampa is doing a promotion that will last only 3 days so you better hurry. Check it out.
And for the icing on the (virtual) cake leave a welcome message for her.
Yesterday I had the honor of meeting Andy Sack (founder and CEO of Judy's Book) for the first time face to face. We exchanged many emails on the past, ranging from marketing campaigns to blog comment spam.
The meeting was mostly for us to exchange experiences in the Web 2.0 world.
First of all, Andy is one of those people that you must have a piece of paper and a pen by your side to make notes of great quote opportunities that come out of his mouth. By far, the most valuable information I've got from that meeting was this (not exact words)...
"You'll only raise Angel money from people that are 1 or 2 degrees away from you. This is, angels that know you or angels that know somebody that knows you." -- Andy Sack
He complemented this by saying that Angels are more likely to invest in you if they know you well for at least six months or more.
I just wish somebody had told me that when I was starting Sampa, so I would have started cultivating relationships with Angel Investors back then. What I did instead was not talk to any investor until the Alpha came out, and then, if an Angel passed on the deal I would call it a day and not contact him/her again.
Instead, I should have fostered the relationship, building trust and, maybe, a year or so later pitch from as an entrepreneur to an investor.
To finish, another great quote...
"A lot more deals are done in coffee shops than on Angel forums." -- Andy Sack
If you care even a tiny bit about cars, this video will make you loose your breath.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x157l2_bugatti-veyron-at-top-speed
Be warned.
I decided to re-brand the Seattle 2.0 blog.
It will be solely dedicated at helping entrepreneurs build great tech companies in the Seattle area.
Want to participate? Send me an email (marcelo@ [mycompany]).
Hope that someone reading this blog can help me with this problem (or know someone who can). And the story goes like this...
Three users have recently reported being unable to access their Sampa site. They can access pretty much any site on the Internet but not a Sampa site (e.g. http://marcelo.sampasite.com)
Data points:
The problem is that NSLOOKUP works fine, but IE cannot resolve the address (one user tried using Firefox and it didn’t work either). I don’t know if NSLOOKUP uses Microsoft’s DNS Client, or it has its own Socket implementation. I don’t even know where to start this investigation short of asking people to install a network sniffing tool, which is probably way beyond these users’ ability.
I want to write some C++ debugging tool that I can give to these users to help them identify the problem, but I’m not sure where to start.
Anyone has any idea of what else I can investigate to get to the bottom of this issue? Could this be some anti-phishing tool problem?
Web 2.0 really changed everything. I'm not talking about the technology behind Web 2.0 companies, but the whole aspect of user generated content.
Here I was writing a review of Branding for Dummies. A few hours laters one of the authors (Barbara Findlay Schenck) leaves a comment on my blog. Pretty cool, hum?
In an Web 1.0 style you'd go to Amazon.com and leave your review and rating of the book there. Sure this author would probably read it, but the solution is not a forum for a conversation. Not only that, but when I write posts on my blog, I control the content. I can review it, delete it or link to other posts or sites that might interest me. Traditional Web 1.0? Nope, you can't do that.
This is not a rant about Amazon or any of the traditional Web 1.0 sites. This is a post to show the power of Web 2.0 for consumers and users, like you and me.
I also want to ackowledge that any smart business person is listen carefully to what their consumers / clients / users are doing, and Barbara did just that. She probably has a Google Alert, or Technorati Feed on her name or her book title, like I do, so, when anyone writes anything about her, she will be the first to know and ready to react.
There is a no brainer way to know when somebody is about to take a big career move and leave their current employer: The number of connections that they added recently to LinkedIn.
I might be a year late on this one, but I just saw An Inconvenient Truth and I thought it was a pretty good documentary. I think the data presented is compelling and the way Al Gore explain concepts in layman terms is pretty good.
Today I reached a whole new level on Technorati's Blog Rank: 93,749. This is the first time I'm below the 100,000 mark. With about 71 million blogs being ranked by Technorati, that puts me on the top 0.13%. In other words, before I was a "C" blogger, now I'm a proud "C+" blogger. 
I guess the next milestone is the 50,000 mark, which would put me into the "B-" blogger category.
During one of our many pitches to investors we heard the phrase: "Microsoft has no startup DNA". The basic interpretation is that if you are an entrepreneur coming out of Microsoft you'll have a hard time convincing investors that you can think and execute in a startup environment.
Recently, I've met with another ex-Microsoft senior exec, that told me he was surprised at how much of a liability having spent so much time at Microsoft has become.
What do I have to say about this?
Yes, it is true. Microsoft has no startup DNA. Not only the company as a whole is uncapable of fostering a startup mentality, but also 99% of the people working at Microsoft have no startup DNA. They would not be able to be entrepreneurs and to create a business from scratch.
Now, there are 1% of those (which is a lot on a 70,000-employee company) that do have it. Most of them are still fighting the system from the inside. Stressing themselves out at why they can't get anything done. But a small amount of them don't put up with that and quit and create their own companies, or join very early stage startups.
So, dear investor, don't tell me I have no startup DNA. Odds are that I have more than you do, because most investors on this region got their fortune from Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon or Real Networks, and they really never founded any company.
I'm the Co-founder & CTO of EveryMove. Prior lives included a failed startup, the Seattle 2.0 organization (sold to GeekWire) and many years at Microsoft.
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EveryMove is creating a rewards platform that allows health insurance companies, employers and brands to incent healthy choices.
