Cerdafied...startups, people & the variety Hour

work hard, play hard

I spent Friday night at the Oracle Arena watching the Warriors spank the Mavericks. But beforehand in the parking lot, I had an opportunity to talk with some people. We talked sports of course, beers and careers. I met a guy who runs a hot sauce company. Turns out he was into Latin Jazz like I am, but he's also a phone geek. I had my Jangl tee shirt on and he asked where I got it. I told him the office manager gave it to me, which is true:) Then he told all his buddies about it - his buddies who were drinking Olympia's and eating big mac's. I'm not sure which would make it a better commercial: Jangl, McDonald's or Olympia. (I had no idea Olympia was still around - that was the first beer I had back in the day).

Then Saturday our band played a music festival out at Lake Del Valle, so I thought I'd camp out. There was this huge camp fire with people playing every song in folk music history. I was talking to this mother/daughter and they were telling me about how they each had a MySpace page - the mother to keep an eye on the daughter. Then the daughter told me she didn't keep her pic in her profile, and she blocks or ignores anyone who tries to contact her. I told them both how impressive that was, but then I HAD to tell them about Jangl. I'm pretty sure I got two new customers out of it.

New meaning to working hard and playing hard;)

Technorati Tags: jangl, olympia, big mac, two day town, warriors playoffs

punchy, sleepy, looking fwd to a croissant

Thursday afternoon I'll be wandering the halls of the Sofitel and ultimately presenting 20 minutes of Jangl at the Dow Jones Wireless Ventures event.

Getting my game head on for this, it reminded me of a time when I met an angel investor at the Sofitel. I was fund raising for a prior project called Ooma. This guy's name was Carson Chen. He sure was a nice guy. He was a former Cisco engineering leader who focused on the cable market. When he retired he got on some boards and helped some young companies out. He happened to be Shawn Fanning's landlord, and ended up investing in Shawn at Snocap. Shawn turned us onto Carson after we did a jam session BBQ together. (Shawn played Vdrums and was pretty good actually).

Anyway, Carson bought us an almond crusted croissant inside the Sofitel at the bakery/coffee place. He was really enthused about these croissants, citing someone had turned him onto these, so he felt obliged to keep passing the torch. It sounded kind of odd, but as soon as I had one, I knew what he meant. Of course I'm passing the news on about these croissants right now...and you must think it sounds kind of odd. WTF?

I'm headed to the bakery as soon as I'm done pitching. Here's the title slide, featuring the gaussian blur - a tip from Presentation Zen.

-MC

Technorati Tags: jangl, wireless ventures, presentation zen

Warriors vs. Mavs

The Warriors are scrappy. They have made the playoffs for the first time in 13 years. I was living with my wife and 1 year old in an apartment in Alameda back then, and was recovering from student debt, so I enjoyed that series on an old 12" TV and some pacificos. Good times. But times have changed. The Warriors are going to kick ass all over the Mavs Friday night...and I'm going to be there:)

Technorati Tags: warriors

Tagged.com right now.

Technorati Tags: jangl, tagged

lifestyle...not anonymity

Almost four years ago I was working on an app (at a different company) that combined the functionality of a soft phone, IM client, video conferencing client, uber control panel with nerd knobs galore and inbox. Even then, while Skype began its way to phenomenon and Vonage began it's way to today, I was betting on lifestyle based utility as the driver for enhanced communication services. (That app fell by the wayside, but it was pretty cool).

Fast forward to late 2005 while Jangl was prepping for a pilot launch into Match.com, I felt I was finally getting close to a proof point. While prepping we had an interface that looked a lot like Jajah's. There was a field to enter your number, a field to enter a callee number and a GO to get a number. We called this FLINK, for fone link. We knew we didn't want cheap talk to be at the forefront of our business model, so the end goal was to place this functionality deeper into a user experience, which is what we finally launched into production Fall of last year.

I was combing through blogs from that time and stumbled upon this one. Even prior to then, analysts were calling this "anonymous calling". Was it/is it really anonymous calling? Anonymous is defined as lacking individuality or character or name. This is hardly accurate for what the application really is. "Private calling" is more like it, in this context. When people are getting to know another, they're sharing little bits and pieces of information about themselves at a time. Again, hardly anonymous. In any case, it's about lifestyle.

Then this week, blogs have been hitting about another implementation Jangl's done with big 8 social networking company Tagged. It's not just about dating though, although that's part of it. It's also about taking your Tagged life with you. Taking that persona you have on Tagged, out to your phone. You can be at the beach, and you might get a call from a Tagged friend, thru a Jangl number. Watch for more of this. (It's been great working with the Tagged guys by the way).

-MC

Technorati Tags: jangl, tagged, lifestyle, mashable, voip

Let the horizon be.

So there's a lot going on right now... Lots of briefings with press, a presentation at Wireless Ventures Thursday, the Red Herring 100 event we're finalists for next week, upcoming board meeting, upcoming release, a public service, etc. The timing of all these things is always weird. Seems that no matter how much I plan, how much great news there is going on, I always have things I'd like to say that aren't quite appropriate yet for me to say. There are always those golden nuggets on the horizon. It's not a horrible problem to have, and I'm not trying to whine, I'm just concluding this reality.

Generally, the best course of action is to say the least amount possible, in order to preserve the appropriate flow. And while it's always healthy to believe your stuff really is the most exciting stuff in the world, the reality is there are more people that don't give a crap than you'd like to think! At times like these it's best to abstract from it all and decipher what matters most, and to ultimately let the horizon be. Patience, grasshopper.

Technorati Tags: wireless ventures, jangl, red herring 100

My dad uses MySpace

So I called my dad Sunday night like I always do. He had been bbq'ing as he usually does on weekends. We got caught up on a number of things. I invited him to come see the band Ben and I are in this weekend. He said he might be up with a date. He is in his mid 50s and he must date more now than ever in his life! I knew he had been using Match.com at one point, but I thought I'd ask him where he's finding his prospects these days. His answers: "I meet them on MySpace and ****. I've met nurses, lawyers, all kinds there". This, coming from a guy who's still in the phase of using the Internet to sending email jokes to all his family and friends in bulk! The world is a changed place.

Technorati Tags: myspace

the pursuit of traction

Most companies in the new era of social or enhanced communications have a beta service which has been their opening salvo. Their bet is that they'll get people to use and ultimately pay them for their service (or for future additions to it). It's a complex beast because these companies are trying to innovate a service that's simple yet offers a magnitude greater utility than existing offerings. Getting right what people are willing to adopt is a tough proposition. In some cases, companies are stuck only on this pursuit as a no name brand, since they don't have enough credibility or scale (or just raw BD skills) to get partnerships done. Partnerships represent a great model to go prove traction and leverage existing brand names toward the cause.

Dave Evans, the Online Dating Insider has a good write up on the rise of multimedia dating profiles, and some of the players there, including us (thanks Dave).

Jangl initially pursued a major partnership in it's earliest days, and ultimately secured one with online dating site Match.com. We have lots of people using (and even paying) for our service, which is traction. In parallel, we've made a lot less noise about our five iterations of Jangl branded beta services. We had a tough time translating the implementation in our partner implementation, into our Jangl.com implementation. We finally found a way, then we optimized it. Now, at this point, we've totally catapulted it into a brand new offering. In the new offering (not yet announced or launched) we're increasing our addressable market from 200 million mobiles/200 online profiles into closer to 1 billion of each. Yes our initial core value prop being privacy is inherent in this new offering, but so are other items like international reach, convenience and ultimately a whole new inflection of how this is done.

-MC

Technorati Tags: dave evans

Is Southwest tricking us?

My family and I took a trip this past weekend to Phoenix. We flew the airline that has the lowest fares and most direct flights to/from Phoenix: Southwest. Or so I thought...

On my outgoing flight, I wasn't allowed to checking my 2 kids online, nor in the airport kiosk. Instead, I had to wait in the absolute longest line possible, which at the end of it all we missed our flight. When I asked why I couldn't check my kids in, I was told that these were "child fares", so they needed to verify they were children. The only problem with this, was that I was charged the same price for these "child fares" as for my "adult fares". Since they were the same price, why did it matter? When we finally got through the line and then through security, I heard on the intercom, the 10 minute last call boarding for my flight. We all ran, making it to the gate in 2 minutes. They refused us at that point. Crap. Since we missed our flight, we were re-routed through San Diego, and ultimately ended up in Phoenix 6 hours later than we planned.

I figured, well...it is what it is, next time I'll just buy all adult fares, which could have avoided all this.

Then, when we were returning home, I called the night before to inform Southwest that all my fares were the same, so perhaps they could lift the block, thereby enabling me to checkin online the day before the flight. They agreed, and we were set. Or so I thought...

We returned our rental car at the Phoenix airport, and then made our way to curbside, with our A boarding passes in hand. The Bill Bransky's in front of us were on some boys trip, so they were lugging their golf clubs, dressed in their finest Tommy Bahama's, red faced, smelling like scotch and polo cologne, and puffing sticks. It was about an hour wait in that line. Painful. So we made our way through security, although the drill Sgt. tough-guy woman terrorized my 8 year old for walking through with a metal finger splint on his broken finger. She yelled and called the magic wand over to check him all out. Kid was totally scared. It took both me and my wife ultimately yelling at Sgt. tough-guy to mellow out. (Who gave TSA the license to treat people as if they were in the marines? What a bunch of assholes they are, nearly every time I deal with them). Anyway, I digress.

We made it to our gate and noticed the flight was delayed. But I noticed the flight destination kept flashing Los Angeles and Oakland. Of course, we were flying to Oakland. I was curious and so I approached the counter. I know those people at the counter have more important things to do than talk to customers, but I thought I might steal some love. So I asked why it said Los Angeles. The Southwest guy working the flight told me the flight would make a stop in Los Angeles before going to Oakland. I indicated that I didn't pay to stop, I paid for a direct flight. His response: "Direct means the flight can have up to 6 stops. Non-stop means there are no stops." I was beside myself. I argued that this was not made clear, otherwise I would have opted for a different flight. He maintained his position and indicated that I must have overlooked this.

Unfortunately I had way to much time on my hands to meet and greet others that were waiting for this flight. None of the Oakland bound people I talked with realized we'd be making a stop either. We all felt had.

It's not just the time it takes to fly out of the way and make the stop. It's the psychology of realizing for freaks like me that I'm twice as likely to crash (based on the increased likelihood of crashes upon take off and landing). Ok that part isn't their problem;). But it is the lack of empathy and insulting of ones intelligence that bugs. If they would just admit to the problem and fix it, I'm sure everyone would forgive and forget.

The original plan was to get home by 5pm and have plenty of time to shop and cook, as well as get the kids ready for Monday. We didn't make it home until about 9pm. Not the end of the world by any means, but I know I won't be flying Southwest if I can help it.

Technorati Tags: southwest sucks, TSA

new TED site

It's seldom a big deal when someone turns up a new website. In this instance, it's a very big deal. TED, prior to now was a member only event, which had some year round book mailings and emails to keep you tuned in. As of Monday, April 16, TED is now a community oriented site, rich with content from past TED events. It's a social network now too. I even have a profile there now. I encourage anyone to spend some time there and soak it in. It's hard to stop browsing so reserve some time.

Technorati Tags: TED