My Morning (Internet) Routine

I don’t know if I’m more addicted to the Internet than the average person, but I know I’m very addicted.  Part of the reason I write this blog is to keep a record for myself to go back in 5, 10 or 20 years and see what I was thinking back then. This is one of those posts.

Basically, my routine includes the following supplements & drugs:

1) Check my 3 inboxes (@calbucci.com, @seattle20.com, @everymove.com)
2) Check my Twitter accounts DMs/Replies/Stream w/ TweetDeck (@calbucci, @seattle20, @everymove)
3) Go to Google Reader and consume the blog stream
4) Go to MSNBC.COM & TechMeme to see headlines and read a few news items
5) Go to Facebook
6) Check the Weather for today
7) Go to Seattle 2.0 to check the headlines
8) Check out my Klout score
9) Go to AngelList, Quora, HackerNews, GeekWire, Google+, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow and see pending requests, notifications, some news, comments, etc.

A couple of times a week I’ll…

10) Sign up for one other service I might have just found out about
11) Unsubscribe from some service that keeps sending me daily emails and I never really used it.

Then, throughout the day I repeat steps 1-9 about 5-10 times until I go to bed and while in bed.

In addition to it, here are my top used iPhone Apps:

Daily Use: Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram
Weekly Use: Yelp, Amazon, Pandora, LinkedIn, CardMunch (until it stopped working)
Monthly Use: Fandango, Skype, MyWi, RunKeeper, QRReader, Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, Living Social, Groupon, Glympse
Every once in a blue moon: TripIt, Beluga, Uber.

I have another 50-100 apps installed on my phone I pretty much never use them.

What I’ve Been Up To Lately (On past and new worries)

I’ve been very busy at my new startup, EveryMove, and that has been consuming most of my time. I passed the point where I try to have much of a life outside of EveryMove and because of that I’ve been saying “no” to new ideas, new projects, existing projects, coffee meetings, advisor roles, or anything. I’m sure I’m not getting a lot of new friends by refusing to meet for coffee with entrepreneurs who want some advice, but Dharmesh said it better.

Anyway, I’ll be at the Startup Weekend Barbeque this Monday if you want to talk to me in person (I’m always open on email).

At EveryMove we are working on our core product and that’s where I’m spending most of my brain cells in. We launched two products over the last month or so, but those were private and experimental only and we don’t want people to get confused about what we are doing so we avoid mentioning them.

If I’d divide up my (work) day, 40% of the time I’m coding the new product, 40% working on the UX, value prop, design, etc., and 20% working on business related tasks. I forgot how much decisions must be made at the early days of a startup. There is a ton to be done, each one affecting (holding back or pushing forward) the other.

I’m finding this time around so much easier than when I started Sampa in January of 2005. Back then I didn’t know squat about startups and I didn’t know much about a lot of technologies I needed, so I spend a many months just learning stuff.  Now, I can short circuit all that because I’m either good and/or proficient enough to get the job done. I can say that technology is not getting in the way of building a technology business.

Contrary to when I started Sampa where I was anxious about software scalability, customer support, AJAX-based limitations of IE 6 and crap that didn’t matter, today I’m worried about UX, value proposition to end users, life-time value of a customer and distribution strategy.

I’ll finish this post with some great news. Oops. Can’t talk about it yet, but it’s a big deal for EveryMove (and for me of course).

The best conference if a startup is in your future!

I know I’m extremely biased by this, but StartupDay 2011 has just been announced and it’s by far the best conference on a 12,440-miles radius from you if you see a tech startup in your future, which means to work at a startup or to found a new startup. You can register right-now and get the ridiculously low early-bird price.

Now, let me back my claim using a simple 5-point argument:

Point #1: This is the third time this conference is being done. We had two very successful sold out events on the previous two years. No conference survives for a third-year if it’s not creating real value for the attendees, speakers and sponsors.

Point #2: Seattle 2.0 has partnered with Startup Weekend to put this year’s conference together. Two organizations that kick asses working together doesn’t happen all the time.

Point #3: Most conferences focus on people working on that “industry” already. StartupDay is the only conference for pre-entrepreneurs. You won’t learn how to build a startup, but you’ll learn what you’ll need to learn to build a successful startup. Your brain will get the exercise of a lifetime.

Point #4: 20-minute talks! Each speaker has a total of 20-minutes. You’d be surprised how good the talks become once you remove all the fluff and chit-chat. It’s powerful and effective.

Point #5: Amazing speakers speaking from experience. StartupDay goes above and beyond to bring you the best minds of the tech startup world right to your backyard. This year speakers include Eric Ries, the founder of the Lean Startup movement; Sean Ellis, one of the best marketing minds around tech startups, and many others.

Convinced? So don’t waste much time and register today. This year will sell out pretty fast.