Life in School and Startup

You’ve almost certainly been in our situation before. Were chomping at the bit to get as much of our company up and running before the paycheck from mom and dad and the govt stops coming. Classes are now not only a serious burden to our drinking habit, but are a serious threat to the amount of time we have to spend coding or talking to potential clients. If only the world knew what they had coming for them they surely would all chip in and help us buy our last semester grades and fast food for every meal so that we wouldn’t have to waste 3 minutes cooking hot dogs for every meal. I give you this imagery because I want for you to reminisce on these days of lore and remember how gloriously poor you(we) were(are) in terms of money, cofounders, and hours in the day.

One of the most challenging quandrys that university student entrepreneurs face is the realization that they’ve more or less transcended what the university has to offer them. The academic content isn’t necessarily dry or inapplicable to all bottom-line-driven companies, it’s just that they don’t make classes specifically geared toward YOUR startup. If they offered a degree in Sound Around I would be there all day every paying attention and taking notes. The reality, however, is that generalized classes rarely provide knowledge directly applicable to obtaining our minimum viable product.

Here is where things get sticky. You, as an administrator, have a contract to uphold where you are bound by the university to correctly facilitate the pedogogical value in entrepreneurship teaching and mentorship. We are bound by our drive to get our company to a state where it is making both money and meaning in the world.  These two positions OFTEN have maligned objectives and goals.

From a student perspective here is my advice: if these types of students are enrolled in your entrepreneurship class, there is most likely nothing you can do to reign them in back to the class level. They are beyond the point of being driven by grades. As long as their behavior is not totally detrimental to the program just let them do their thing. There are other students that need the mentoring and attention.  Fighting a frivolous battle with driven entrepreneurs will take away significantly from the other 90% of the entrepreneurship students still finding their legs.  Additionally, working WITH students will ultimately help your university and the university system as a whole in its ability to bring talented individuals together to spawn the next google or facebook.

The university should be seen as a leverage point for entrepreneurs, not a hindrance to their overwhelming desire to start something great.

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.

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.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Steve and I are taking some time to chill with the family and take a break from work and school. May you all eat, drink, sleep, and watch a boatload of football.

Over the past few days I’ve heard about numerous acquisitions taking place. Additionally, over the few days I’ve been doing a lot of reading on websites such as wired, gigaOM, techcrunch, etc., and I’m a little confused. Is this a sign of hope, or just the end of ignorance?

Acquisitions! The ecomoy is turning around!

Reading! I’m just now hearing about things that have been happening all along!

One of the previous lines is true. Sadly, I don’t know which one it is. It’s amazing how much people don’t know. There is so much information out there, how can any one person soak it all up. Even for a single market niche, (e.g. current smart phone technology) I would have to read non-stop all day just to keep up with what is going on! I heard that back in the day (which was a Wednesday for you Dane Cook fans out there. Chew on it, it’s delicious), the amount people learned in a lifetime was equatable to the amount of information contained in one issue of the New York Times. Schools take a good approach to learning: learn something about everything and everything about something. People can only hope to do just that.

But I’m just rambling now. The moral of the story is that one of two good things is happening. Either the economy is looking up or I’m just more aware of what’s going on in the tech world.

EDIT ——-> Funnily enough, this was written the day after I wrote this http://bit.ly/Nz16f . Things are looking up around here.