Life in School and Startup

Today…was a long day.

I spent probably 3 hours bouncing around between drawing and screwing around with html trying to do a mock-up for JUST THE LANDING PAGE. All I have to say is holy f*cking sh*t. Being less than proficient at both makes getting anything in the design realm done such a pain. So today I’ve made a pact with myself. I’m really going to jump head first into web design.

I might spend fifty to one hundred hours getting where I want with my web design skills. But in the long run, I’m going to save one thousand hours that are lost due to my #bigfail web design skills.

HTML and CSS aren’t really the problem. It’s photoshop. And learning how to integrate my HTML and CSS with the photoshop. Does anyone that does web design have any tips or tools they use that increase their productivity? Anyone use any great teaching tools that they would recommend? Open to any and all suggestions.

For as long as I can remember, I have paid (or my parents have paid) for cable TV. I’ve lived through the rise of HD programming, the rise of TVs larger than a person, the rise of DVR, competition with satellite, etc. Things have come a long way in my lifetime, but only the most recent developments have given me reason to wake up tomorrow and finally stick it to the man. This man is named Time Warner Cable.

Tomorrow, everything I will be watching will be on ABC.com, NBC.com, Apple TV, and Hulu.  We’re going from ~300 channels to 4.  Also, we’re picking up Clear wireless internet (4G WiMax, yay for technology). It’s all free with internet. The $120/month bill is going to be $25/month for the same programming. We may miss mythbusters and dog whisperer, but almost everything else is online. Let me repeat…almost everything else is online. Couple that with a supposed AppleTV deal with the major networks and we’re in business for under 1/2 of what we’re paying right now.

A giant is falling due to the rise of technology. Good for hulu and boxee and netflix and everyone else who collectively make up a damn good alternative. As an entrepreneur, it’s nice to see the conventional wisdom beginning to bow to people who saw what a difference they could make, and executed well enough to cause people to make a lifestyle change. That speaks volumes, it really does.

Also, it’s going to force us to find alternatives for our time. We won’t be able to just say “hey, i need to kill some time, what’s on tv”. Admittedly, this may lead to more time playing Nintendo 64, but I would submit that that is a far more social and relationship-building event than sitting idle on the couch watching TV. My hope is that it will force us to talk more, work on the company more, go out to public places to watch sporting events. Watching TV now consists of watching things once through with limited commercials and then going back to our lives. Awesome.

I’m happy.  It may be rough to start out with, but I’m ready to see how we react.  Have you given up anything recently that you’ve had your whole life?  I’d love to hear about it.

Well, another year is begun. So much to look forward to! We’re already gearing up for our first round of closed beta, it’s all very exciting. Just thinking about all the things we have to do in the future makes me realize that this is probably going to be the busiest year of my life (at least so far). But no worries, my new word of the year “JFDI” will help me out a lot. It’s not a word per say but it’s a nice play off of Nike’s slogan with a little bit of added emphasis (thanks to Irwin Ki by the way for showing me the power of the word).

I’ll keep it short for tonight. Happy New Year everyone. Hope your New Year’s Resolutions last longer than February. BTW I suggest everyone come up with their own one word for the year. Make it something really near and dear to you, draw it nice and big on a piece of paper, and put it up on your wall.

Thanks @msuster for JFDI. I’ll use it well.

So far we’ve talked to around 15 bands and 15 record labels. I think all of them but 2 or 3 would be great fits for our product. But most importantly, all of them have expressed some real interest in our product. It’s hard to not get excited at the fact that real people that might really use your product not only express interest in buying it, but also are excited to work with you as you develop it. I’m very excited for what the future holds.

In the meantime, I’m having a hard time concentrating and really doing some solid work while at my parent’s house! Looking back at my “Productivity Advice” post, I can see why I’m not doing so hot. So much stuff around: parents, brothers, TV, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the dog, the cat, the cat playing with the end of my phone charger, girlfriend stuff. I need me a cave. But where?

Happy Holidays to everyone! No matter which holiday you celebrate, we hope you enjoy the festivities. And have a happy new year while you’re at it =D.

This week has been life changing for so many reasons.

First, I love my new job at Transloc. The CEO is one of those guys that just “has it”, the subtle swagger that you couldn’t reproduce if you tried. I hope to have that one day. We were out to lunch and he was talking to me about the concept of a triple bottom line when it comes to your business’s worth and productivity. Pretty awesome stuff, but damn near impossible to find ideas that fit into all 3 categories. The concepts made me think a lot about my graduation speech (read below) theme and how I can adjust my approach to business opportunities for the future.

Second, some company just launched a product with the name “Mobile Stage”. This pisses me off on many levels, but there’s not much we can do about it except get a new name. We’ll keep all of this Mobile Stage stuff up for a while – at least until we settle on something else. If you have any ideas please feel free to share.

Third, I graduated college on Saturday. The ceremony was awesome, got to hang out with a bunch of my friends, and the day after graduation really wooped some reality into my otherwise scattered brain. Sunday was the first legitimate day of paying for 100% of my bills, and having literally nothing but my startup to work on. Productivity was decent – it must improve.

Fourth, I was the student speaker at my graduation. This turned out to be a pretty badass experience for me – writing a speech is not easy, and rewriting it from front to back 2 days before you’re delivering it isn’t necessarily the best idea. Public speaking is fun, I really enjoyed myself up there (500-600 people in attendance), and would do it again in a heartbeat. Video is embedded below.

Have a happy holidays, everyone. Take some time off to spend with the famset, and to relax and read a book.

Find an “office”. Claim your own space. Build a work cave, a bomb shelter, a hiding place.

For me at least, working out of the apartment is an oxymoron. The simple fact that I am in my apartment dramatically increases my likely hood to facebook, twitter, techcrunch, venture hacks, techmeme, msuster – both sides of the table, holy shit the list of distractions goes on and on forever. There’s nothing wrong with a little advice/culture seeking on the internet but if you read that all day, no one is going to build your company for you.

It’s like reading, computer, tv, etc. in bed. Your body gets used to doing things other than sleeping and so when it comes to time go to bed, you might have trouble falling to sleep. Replace sleep with work in the previous sentence and you have a nice little parallel to my life of doing work at my apartment.

But there’s hope. For me it’s the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program’s conference room on Centennial Campus. At this Pocket Stage (going through a name change – just trying that name on for size) Compound, I feel like shit needs to get done when I’m there. I feel like if I don’t do work when I’m there, a countdown should be running. But instead of a clock it’s my % equity in the company.

Advice: if you’re a college student / entrepreneur, find a work space you can call your own, it will help.

If you’ll read the last post it will make a lot more sense.

This agony get exponentially worse with a) the future b) late nights c) alcohol and d) good press (everywhere) about your competitors.

Sorry this is only Seth Godin-esk in length but I’ve got to tell the masses immediately.

The worst thing about being an aspiring non-coding tech entrepreneur is the inability to help pre-launch. Sure, there’s customer development, setting up beta testing, keeping up with social media, etc. — but sitting around waiting for your MVP to be done is agonizing. Every day that passes is a day your competition gains traction because you (and your cooler/better product) aren’t there win the market.

Advice: If you’re an aspiring tech entrepreneur that isn’t too old of a dog yet (it’s hard to teach them new tricks), learn how to code in your spare time. It will open countless doors for you…or so it seems from my point of view.

Maybe the grass is always greener…what do I know anyways?

—edit—

Just making sure everyone knows, MVP stands for minimum viable product not most valuable player here.

4 months minus two days since my last post.

A more appropriate title would be: Social Media – the day of awakening.

So tonight, instead of studying for my final, I really fell in love with social media for the first time. We’ve been dating for years but tonight was the night that we really hit it off for the first time. I owe the rebirthing of this relationship to Tweetdeck; not the iPhone app but the desktop application. I can manage my Twitter (all the columns I want (or don’t)), Facebook, Myspace- which I’m actually creating just so I can have another thing to manage on Tweetdeck, and LinkedIn. And I can do it all in one place that’s visually attractive and easy to manage. It’s truly wonderful.

What have I been up to for the past 4 months? Customer development. I’ve been talking with bands, bloggers and record labels trying to validate that there’s a market for this. The results have been satisfying. Record labels range from sufficiently interested to overjoyed at the prospect of their band getting their very own iPhone application. It almost seems trivial to me because we’ve been talking about the idea for the last 6 months. But to them it’s like a dream come true.

I also fell in love with the idea of being a blogger for TechCrunch one day. I’ll be writing more often to keep you (the total of zero readers who keep coming back to this) updated more often and to practice writing. See you in the funny papers.