Cerdafied...startups, people & the variety Hour

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Betty!

I blogged a couple choices for Betty the other day. I provided no context for what we were using Betty for, so the feedback was purely based on face value and knee-jerk reactions. In the poll, it was nearly a 50/50 tie between the two images provided. People provided some great feedback and so here's where we landed:

By way of background, we chose a classic name for a classic purpose, so the image ought to be nothing less than classic. Other than that we wanted a warm welcome and a subtle indication that you'll be taken care of. Straight up.

Now, back to regularly scheduled programming. We'll soon open the "closed" alpha product to the first 50 registered. Once we get some feedback and tweak accordingly, we'll continue toward the closed beta round. If you haven't registered and would like to, go here.

Thanks for playing.

Technorati Tags: Cc:Betty

facebook: your new tell-all outlet

When many of us think of our lives, we bucket the various segments into chapters of sorts. We have childhood, high school, college for some, grad school for some, career and/or home making, married life, parenthood, 401K contributing and ultimately retiring. In my case, I was born in Torrance, a city in the South Bay of Los Angeles. I went to Catholic school there for 7 years, then moved to Switzerland for a year, then moved to Paso Robles for high school, to San Luis Obispo for college, and to the East Bay of San Francisco to get busy settling down. There were at least five different chapters there, of relationship discontinuity. Meaning, by the time I was in high school I didn't have any contact with the people from grade school anymore. By the time I was in college I had little contact with anyone from high school. And so on.

facebook has changed all that by collapsing our different chapters or era's in our lives, in one place, for better or worse.

facebook, if you remember used to only be open to college students with a .edu email address. Then a few years ago it opened up to the rest of us. The initial flurry of new adoption seemed to come from the tech centric Silicon Valley types. Suddenly, all of my Silicon Valley contacts began migrating from LinkedIn to facebook. (And then everyone thought facebook was going to knock off LinkedIn, which of course hasn't really happened). But for a short time all of my facebook contacts were people I'd met in my career oriented chapter. And because I was developing facebook applications I became more active on facebook.

Then, a new tipping point emerged. People I knew from high school began showing up on facebook. In the last 6 months alone, hundreds of my high school classmates have joined. My next high school reunion is in fact being planned on facebook! Then the parents of my kids friends joined up, and it keeps spreading. Then...in the last week, I've now added dozens of GRADE SCHOOL friends. Yes, I said grade school. I'm going back to the early to mid 80s here. Crazy. People are posting pictures and wall messages, in the context of those relationships as they were. Now, some people, I can imagine aren't interested in collating their life chapters and identities in one place. A picture of them beer bonging in 1989 might not bode so well for their image with their clients or work colleagues. Some people simply aren't nostalgic, and some just want the past to be the past.

For me, I've been living the tell-all digital media life for some time anyway, so I don't mind. Most of it is in fact really funny to me...

I got a facebook notification yesterday, that I was tagged in a photo, so naturally I went to the link, and proceeded to laugh my ass off for about 10 minutes. It was a snapshot of great times with great people, and in an era that seemed somewhat cut short. I then went on to forward the picture to the few people I know, that knew me back in the era of the photo. A great thing to smile about for sure.

Then I realized, even if you don't know me now, and you didn't know me then, you might get some giggles from this photo. So here goes:

click to enlarge

(I'm in the picture on the left of course:)

Technorati Tags: st. catherine laboure, facebook

Who's the better "Betty"?

Please vote for your favorite "Betty".

The '1961 Mad Men era Betty' with curly hair or the '2008 Daria's all grown up now Betty' with glasses? And if you're so inclined say 'why' in the comments section.

Click Here to take survey

(Ok, i know... you're still asking what IS Betty. She'll introduce herself soon).

Technorati Tags: Cc:Betty

instincts and oysters

Here's a story for ya... (I'm saving a more elaborate version for the book).

At one of the companies I ran, we hired a lady in marketing right... Her English was horrible. I could hardly understand her. But she had what seemed like some goods in social/digital media marketing - something that back then few marketers had discerned or embraced. My instinct was to walk away and shut down the interview process, but I was intrigued enough that I had my co-founder interview her. He came away with a very strong impression, as someone stronger than anyone else we'd met. That swayed me. So then I had her interview with two of my investors. One of them was lukewarm for the same reasons I was, and the other felt strongly that she was a winner. We did reference checks on every angle and she checked out favorably. We collectively thought she was worth a shot.

Ok...so I called her to set up a meeting to discuss an offer and answer any further questions. She asked to meet for lunch, which I thought was a good idea. This way I we could break bread and connect at that level. We met at Zibibbo for lunch, where I saw another one of my investors also having lunch with someone. We waived and went on about our business. Now, when I do a business lunch like that, I prefer to eat light so that I have plenty of time to talk, so the bill is kept down, so the wrong message isn't sent, etc. She ordered soup and I ordered a half dozen oysters. I don't really like oysters, and actually haven't had any since then, but it sounded light and simple so I did it. Ok, file that away a sec...

I made her an offer and she accepted. She engaged a web design firm for our website, engaged a PR firm, and engaged a videographer to do some web testimonial oriented videos. In all of these cases these were firms she'd worked with in the past, which is always a good sign when there's history. Some weeks into the projects every one of these firms reached out to me, citing gross incompetence and misalignment. They needed me to get involved and run point in order to turn out a successful result. Of course, as I got involved, her toes felt stepped on and her empowerment spade. I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, and considered chalking it up to language barriers, but tensions increased the longer we kept her. And nothing got done unless I was in the middle of it. It was clear we'd made a bad hiring decision.

Another problem... there was already dysfunction between the investors and management team, so burning a head like this wouldn't be good board meeting fodder. I also didn't want to disrupt our team (when you're a small company any people movement is felt by all). So I tried parking her under a peer of hers, someone who at the time was considering climbing the ranks into a VP position. It sounded like a win win. I could get relief on all the marketing projects, the other marketing guy could get some experience dealing with a handful, and she could keep her job. Not so fast. She was demoralized having to work for this other guy, and things began to get tense between them. I knew what needed to be done, but was trying to give her every chance to redeem herself. Big mistake. Ok, file this away with the oysters for a sec...

We had a board meeting for about 2 and 1/2 hours, which seemed to go rather well considering the climate amongst us. Then one of the investors grabbed me and asked to talk one on one, while another investor grabbed my finance guy and asked to talk one on one, and by then we had a third investor join, who asked to talk to my co-founder one on one. It was the ol' divide and conquer move - a tactic the cops use when trying to get someone to spill the beans on the others. So there I was in my office with my least favorite investor. He handed me a letter that had been written to him from this marketing lady. She had thrown me completely under the bus.
She had created lots of diagrams about our company's decision making process and workflow, all of which highlighted her superiority and our inferiority. Now...any startup vet would see this as the way startups function. But she hadn't done much time inside of a startup, and was operating on classroom MBA practices. It was a bunch of bullshit. She was clearly nuts and it was an easy case to make.

Yes it sucked that we misfired on the hire. Yes, I shouldn't have given her the benefit of the doubt. Yes I should have fired her sooner. Yes it sucked that our investors handled it the way they did. Yes it sucked that I took the blame for a bad hire that we all made. But you know what sucked the most? ...that her biggest complaint was about my "lavish lifestyle" and how I eat nothing but OYSTERS!

The moral of the story...trust your instincts and don't order the oysters!

Technorati Tags: startups

a dime a dozen

Ideas are indeed a dime a dozen. Different people come at them different ways. I tend to ideate on instinct and do so late at night while TiVo is playing and my family snoozing. I and feel my way around an idea by creating a presentation deck for it. I use Keynote, which is Apple's powerpoint. Some wouldn't bother going thru such an exercise, but the creative aspect helps me sell myself into our out of place. I've been ideating for the past several months and have decided to take a handful of the idea concepts and post them to Slideshare. Of course, neither of these is among the idea I'm pursuing (Cc:Betty).

Tkrew - Monster.com for kids with a social media angle

Chadr - SMS based chat rooms

Smash - Free SMS

Swarm - Location based shopping deals on mobile phones

Myburbs - Craigslist meets LinkedIn, local.

Disclaimer: some are good, some are bad, and some are ugly, so hold your fire.

Technorati Tags: startup ideas, keynote, slideshare, mc

proxy in a boxy

Conventional startup business wisdom encourages finding proxy examples to your thesis, ideas, assumptions, and models. It's about validation before you know the real answers; and with enough of it, you can get your head around something enough to place a bet (whether you're an entrepreneur, prospective employee or VC).

While I often hunt for such proxies for the ideas I encounter, I have a problems with the practice...

People are jaded by the proxy. They apply lessons learned in different times and places, and assume they apply here and now. Then they get stuck in this defined box, and can't find a way out. How can you change the game if your mindset won't let you?

I once worked on an idea that was sort of a 'geocities for phones', whereby consumers could publish content to their phone, much like they published content to a web page circa '99. When framed that way, while it was a perfectly reasonable proxy, it turned some people sideways and they ratholed on why geocities didn't work out so well, or where they are today, etc. All this, and I was talking about something in the era of $4B spent on ringtones!

I also had an idea that was "Monster for kids", but because I framed it that way, some of the reactions I got characterized that as a low margin and costly business. Well it is low margin now because it's mass market, but in its growth phase it was hot. If it were just for kids, there might be new, niche, pop culture approaches in an age where these kids all get/discern and live in social networks. Oh, and of course it was costly - they did superbowl ads after all!

The question lingers...can too much proxy be boxy?

Technorati Tags: startups, proxies