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?
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.
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.
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.