• Startups

    Time to Say Goodbye Seattle, Hello San Francisco

    January 15, 2010 / 3 Comments

    Cross posted from Seattle 2.0 >>

    A series of events yesterday convinced me that it’s time to write the blog post that I haven’t being willing to touch for over six months.  This is the blog post that says goodbye to Seattle and hello to San Francisco.
    Seattle is a great place to start a company and, after traveling a ton this past year, I strongly feel it is also one of the best places on Earth to live.  I anticipate that you, Seattle 2.0 readers, might point out that it seems a little ridiculous to be editor of Seattle 2.0 and then to move away.  As numerous people can attest, I’m a huge fan of Seattle startups, entrepreneurs, and as someone who was born and raised in the Seattle area I’m homesick as hell.  But I don’t live for the scene, much as I enjoy being a part of it.  For awhile, I did feel like the startup community was an end in itself and I think that is one danger to be aware of as you’re starting your own companies.  Your fellow upstarts are not, for the most part, your customers.  Impressing them is optional – impressing (and making money from) your customers is required.

    How Long Has This Being Going On

    I’ve been avoiding talking about my move kind of like someone who’s in a new relationship but doesn’t want to call the guy her boyfriend.  But the truth is that Seattle and I had to break up, because I’m seeing someone else… and it’s very serious.  I wasn’t planning to fall in love with a startup in the Bay Area but it happened, and as one of our investors (who is partial to the New York tech community) said, “you have to go to the place where the startup you want to work on is”.  I think he’s right, and beyond that I think you have to take your business where it is most likely to be successful.  For Twilio, that’s San Francisco.
    I saw Mikhail Seregine of Seattle-based startup Jambool (their San Francisco team shares an office with us at Pier 38) today, and we laughed at how much one chance meeting at a WTIA event could do.  One year ago Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, Mikhail, and I were eating dinner together at an event where our respective startups were presenting and look how much has changed since then (Twilio took funding, ClayValet closed, and I left Pelago).

    It’s a Choice, Not a Sacrifice

    Right about now I’m missing everything from our weather to our (often crappy) sports teams, and for the record Seattle really does have the best Thai food no matter what these foodies tell you.  Most of all, I’m missing A LOT of people including my parents, my sister, my friends, and the majority of business contacts I’ve built up in the past five years since dropping out of college.  Case in point, I saw Dave Schappell today at our office here in SF and probably hugged him hello a little too tight (sorry Dave).
    Why give all that up for a startup?  Why give it up for a company that, despite an impressive trajectory, still has statistically high odds of going nowhere like every startup?  Why risk messing up my marriage, going bankrupt trying to sell my real estate, etc. just to be constantly exhausted, have panic attacks, get sick, travel too much, sleep too little?  Why live like this?  My reason might surprise you.  It’s not that I love startups (although I do, for many reasons).
    My reason for choosing this crazy life is simple, I want to give people back hours of their lives.  I want to take things that are hard, and make them easy.  I want to free people up to do higher value things with their time.  It is the common thread of everything I’ve ever worked on, and it is the motivation behind each company I’ve chosen to work for and each product I’ve worked to create or bring to market.

    Tactics: On Becoming a Maker

    One of the top reasons I took on the role of 1st non-founding multiple-hat-wearing something-or-other (we call is “Director of Marketing”) is because I need to become more technical to achieve my long term goals of founding successful startups of my own.  Startup Weekend taught me something important about startups in the earliest stages: he who writes the codes makes the rules.  As it turns out, I really like the freedom and immediate gratification of creating working prototypes.  One of my proudest moments was when an app I wrote made it to the #3 spot on Hacker News, and no one said anything nasty about my code.  Phew!

    Tactics: On Becoming a Marketer

    Although I hold the title “Director of Marketing” I am not a traditional marketer, meaning I didn’t study it in school and I didn’t even really intend to get into marketing.  In most startups, engineers are the rockstars and marketing plays second fiddle but its becoming increasingly obvious that startups with engineering gurus who never bring anything to market are not viable businesses, and ultimately a waste of time and money for investors.  What I’m doing now allows me to stretch my wings as a marketer, and become intimately familiar with marketing channels and how to bring a product to the public.

    Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

    It’s not like I’m disappearing or anything, I’m still going to post my ramblings on here until Marcelo or the commenters kick me out.  I wasn’t going to do this because it is a little cheesy but what the hell.  I really want to thank some people who have been helpful to me in the Seattle startup community, and who I think are part of what makes Seattle a great place to be in tech.  I apologize in advance for anyone I’ve forgotten, and I’m sure I’ll be updating this post.
    my husband, Kevin – for putting up with my single-minded obsession with entrepreneurship, supporting me endlessly, and also kicking my ass when everyone is telling me what I want to hear
    • Marcelo Calbucci (Seattle 2.0)- for encouraging me to write for Seattle 2.0, live broadcast, and generally inspiring me to go after things I want in life, cooking yummy food and talking for hours
    • Michelle Goldberg (Ignition Partners) – for being a supportive mentor who believes in me, listens, and gets excited about the same things I do
    • Brian Westbrook – for being my better half when we cohost Seattle 2.0 TV, up for anything every time I call with something I want to film, teaching me to fake smile on camera for hours, and letting me play with his gear and toys
    • Rob Eickemann – for being the first person to say hi to me at the first tech event I ever went to, Six Hour Startup, as well as a friendly face at Saturday House and organizer of Startup Weekend
    • Cassie Wallender – for interviewing me at my first attempt to join a startup (I didn’t get it, maybe because I wore a suit to the interview hehe) at iLike
    • John Cook – for cofounding TechFlash, because it is helping keep Seattle startups on the map where they belong and helping them be taken seriously
    • Ksenia Oustiougova – for showing me how hard you have to dig in to get what you want, sharing your office space, and inspiring me to be less nice and more badass
    • Josh Maher & Nathan Kaiser – for hosting Lunch 2.0 and nPost events (respectively) that helped me meet tons of people, learn to pitch, and feel like I was a part of something special
    • STS mailing list – for letting me lurk, the entertainment, the wisdom, did I mention the entertainment?
    • numerous geeks like Brian Dorsey, Calvin Freitas, Colin Henry, Damon Cortesi and Aviel Ginzburg – for explaining things to me without making me feel stupid, encouraging me to keep getting better at coding, and answering my (often dumb) questions
    • Poker 2.0 – for your money 😉
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  • Code

    Stuff I Built: Simple International Calling Card with Twilio

    December 28, 2009 / 2 Comments

    Reposted from the Twilio Company Blog

    When I came downstairs this morning I was greeted by two bubbly and very sleep deprived Australians eager for some tea, and a chance to call Mum.  My first thought – there’s a Twilio app for that (or there will be soon)!

    Being in the Christmas sprint, I decided I’d quickly code up an application that would make it easy for them to call a U.S. number from the landline at our house or any local phone, and be forwarded to their mom’s, boyfriends, and other folks through a simple menu.  20 minutes later, we made our first call!

    Setting Up the International “Calling Card”

    Twilio doesn’t provide international phone numbers, but you can set up a U.S. number and have it forward to an international destination using the <Dial> verb.  You don’t even need to use the REST API to make the outbound calls, its so simple!

    Files to create:

    • * Handler for the incoming call, to greet the caller and read the menu, gather the menu selection keypress
    • * PHP handler for taking the keypress and directing the application to the right file to dial the number
    • * Files for each of the phone menu options, going to the different numbers to call

    Setting up incoming-call.php

    This first file is the one that I pointed the Twilio phone number to, to handle incoming calls.  It greets the caller and reads them a menu of people to call, and asks them to press a number to start.

    It looks something like this:

    <?php
 header("content-type: text/xml");
 echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
?>

<Response>

<Gather numDigits="1" action="make-call.php" method="POST">

 <Say voice="woman">Hey girls, ready to call someone? If you know your s\
election, you may make it at any time.</Say>
 <Say>Press 1 to Call Laurens Mom</Say>
 <Say>Press 2 to Call Jace</Say>
 <Say>Press 3 to Call Eleesa's Home</Say>
 <Say>Press 4 to Call Duh lane ah's Cell Phone</Say>
 <Say>To get help, Press 5 to Call Danielle</Say>

</Gather>

<Say voice="woman">Thanks for using this Twil ee oh app, created by Danielle. \
Happy holidays!</Say>

</Response>

    Setting up make-call.php

    After the caller has pressed as key, the application posts the results to make-call.php, so we need to create a php file that understands what to do next with that information, and route the call.

    <?php 
 
        if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '1') { 
                header("Location: call-laurens-mom.php");
                die;
        }

        if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '2') {
                header("Location: call-jace.php");
                die;
        }

        if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '3') {
                header("Location: call-elisas-home.php");
                die;
        }

        if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '4') {
                header("Location: call-dlaina-cell.php");
                die;
        }

        if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '5') {
                header("Location: call-danielle.php");
                die;
        }


        header("content-type: text/xml");
        echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";

?>

    Setting up TwiML to Connect the Call

    As you can see in the previous php script make-call.php, each selection directed the application to a different file.  This file is a very simple piece of TwiML that uses the <Dial> verb to connect the call.  Each one is pretty much the same, and looks like this:

    <?php
        header("content-type: text/xml");
        echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
?>

<Response>

<Say>Connecting you to Danielle, for help with this application..</Say>

<Dial>4256987497</Dial>

</Response>

    It’s Not Pre-paid, It’s Pay-As-You-Go

    The best part about this for Elisa and Lauren is that it isn’t a prepaid card where they spend $50 and and are stuck with the card, even if they don’t use it up.  I’m billing them for exactly the amount they use, and they don’t have to pay for it until after the fact.  I can imagine turning custom pay-as-you-go calling cards into a really interesting business.

    So there you have it.  If you have any international guests in your home this holiday season, or are interested in going into the calling card business, this might be a good place to start.  The app took less than 20 minutes to write, mostly because we were goofing around with the text to speech quite a bit, and is written with PHP.

    You do need an upgraded Twilio account to get a phone number and make international calls, so maybe some Twilio minutes would be a good thing to ask Santa to bring you.  Happy holidays!

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  • Posts

    Why I Won’t Touch LBS with a Ten Foot Pole

    December 14, 2009 / 8 Comments

    Pitch any VC and you’ll find certain markets, uses cases, and other oddities that have left a bad taste in their month.  No matter how interesting your product, or how much traction you have, they’re just not going to go there.  This can be frustrating and make you feel like they are being ignorant or bull headed.  I even though so, until I recently realized that I get annoyed by every single location based services idea I hear – mostly as a result of having worked on Whrrl.  People will tell me “the opportunity is huge” and all I can do is smile slightly, thinking that I know better but there is a no way they will understand, when I ask, “Really, why?”

    And why is the location based services opportunity huge, exactly?  Is it really an untapped need people have to get information about the world around them on the go.  While this might seem cool to a very small niche of geeks, is this anywhere near making it to the mainstream world?  I used to think so, and to believe that it was simple a problem people didn’t realize they had.  At a time, it was my job to evangelize a product that would help people to capture their experiences and share their location with friend.  Fundamentally, doing this is all about collecting “footstreaming” data on the company’s end so that they can slice and dice users in a different way, and sell advertisers on segments like “visits urban bar 2+ nights per week” or “goes to McDonald’s more than 3 times per month”, etc… you get the idea.

    People Will Balk When Location Data is Used for Advertisements

    Right now people are having fun using location data to share their location with friends on Foursquare, but the minute I begin to receive advertisements on Foursquare (or Twitter/Facebook where I am publishing my location) I am going to feel like my privacy has been invaded, and I am going to stop sharing.  Nevermind that the information is already public and that I’m already explicitly putting it out there for the world to read – right now only humans are answering back (if at all).  Getting advertisements related to my checkins would be the equivalent of interaction with bot Twitter users – lame!

    Possible Location Based Network of Choice: Facebook

    As I wrote in early November, Facebook seems like the best option for a successful location based network because it already has the critical mass of friends who I actually know and trust in real life AND the granular privacy settings that LBS users on every product have been clamoring for from day one.  A few weeks after my post, Jason Kincaid echoed my sentiment in his post “Watch Out Foursquare, Facebook is Poised to Dominate Geo”.

    Facebook Privacy Management Isn’t Great

    I have to wonder if anyone even remembers the debacle with Beacon?  It seems to me they’ve been aware of and actively working on LBS capabilities for the social network, along with advertising, for some time now and have probably been waiting for that mess to blow over (P.S. Looks like Facebook settled the Beacon thing for a cool $9.5 Million dollars).  To read more on this visit: http://www.beaconclasssettlement.com/

    What About Whrrl, Loopt, Brightkite and the Rest?

    MG Siegler, who has been covering LBS for a long time and even wrote about the launch of the Whrrl iPhone app (thanks MG!), posted “Location’s Social Paradox” today on TechCrunch, and opened with the statement:

    “There’s an absolute eruption of activity around location-based services right now.”

    It’s funny, it seems like each year is going to finally be the reckoning for social uses of devices with GPS. With each year comes a new crop of products, applications, companies, and avid users looking to take their products mainstream.  Last year it was Brightkite, a year before that you might saw it was Loopt or Whrrl.  Before that we had Dodgeball, Jaiku, and a slew of others.

    For various reasons, these products have had less penetration into the early adopter market than Foursquare.  Of course, there is a bit of an echo chamber when it comes to faddish apps in the Bay Area – but if crossing the chasm is the name of the game for LBS then making a fad and turning it into a trend might just be what Foursquare can accomplish that the others have not.

    So, Why Not Touch LBS?

    Other than crappy past experience, I’m just not sure the market is as big as I originally believed it was.  I think sharing location is useful with a very small number of people who actually care about where I am, and even then it might be more efficient for me to ask for or tell them location explicitly on a case-by-case basis (over chat, IM, phone, etc.) than to passively send the information out to followers on a network. And that’s just an issue of finding a use case for sharing location. Monetizing it as a business is an entirely different issue, because while I might share my location with friends as a feature of a product I am loathe to consider sharing it with a company looking to leverage my information for advertising dollars.

    This begs a deeper question, which is ‘what is the future of advertising’?  At one time, contextual information such as location was considered useful for providing more deeply relevant ads, but is this still realistic or meaningful today.  While a curiousity, it is still to be seen if these more timely and location-relevant ads would actually create more *action* against offers, like visiting a restaurant or cashing in on a special (coupon).  For now, I think this remains a feature – not a product, and it is why Facebook is still best positioned to experiment.  Maybe they will acquire a product with a network and significant traction (such as Foursquare) to nudge things along.

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  • The Future

    The Real Future of Sex – Humans not Robots

    December 10, 2009 / 0 Comments

    About a month ago at an the NWEN event, I pitched a product idea for an adult content site offering a platform and community for mature streaming video content called StreamHer.com. It was partly just for the shock value of being a woman pitching a porn site, but it was easy to find developers interested in working on the project for fun (including my wonderful husband).

    The idea isn’t unique at all, it is an execution play and since I’m busily and happily working on another startup, it is really just a hobby of mine for the time being. I can’t say I mind the market research. What is interesting to me is learning what people want out of porn, and how this is different between women and men. Hopefully through understanding this, I can create a content site and content delivery platform that will cater to the growing market.

    Violet Blues Speaks at LeWeb on Future of Sex

    I think it is was interesting to hear Violet Blue speak today, and even more fascinating to watch the audience reactions than the talk itself as well as the tweets flying by. I say interesting and not enjoyable because the presentation lacked any emotion (it was read off the page basically) or apparent passion for the topic (not that she doesn’t have it, but I couldn’t see evidence of it). Sex is an incredibly important topic in human life, and something virtually every single person in the room cares about on some level.

    While is is a curiosity to see all the technology available to serve any multitude of sexual needs, I’ve always thought that the future of sex – just like the future of the internet – would be more about people and less about gadgets. Just like in social media, the technology is just a tool, it is still the connection with other human beings that is the most important thing. To steal Chris Pirillo’s quote from yesterday’s talk here at LeWeb, “focusing on the tools makes you a tool”. I think the same can be said for sex.

    Ra Ra Women, Really?

    Last time I checked, sexual exploration was something for all genders. Yes, women are definitely playing catch up historically as we are now equally free to explore fetishes, fantasies and non-tradition ways of having sex. Freedom from religion and tradition is a huge part of this, and something that is still pretty unique to the Wester world. And, as Violet Blue points out, Oprah did quote the stat which I’ve been talking about quite a bit as we develop the concept for StreamHer.com, that 1 in 3 commercial porn consumers online is a woman now. But is this truly disruptive?

    Humans, Not Machines

    Violet closed her presentation with the statement:

    “The future of sex isn’t written yet, but humans want to be the ones to write it”

    Based on how things are going, it looks like we will.  I mean, who else will?  Personally, I’m interested in this history – it’s going to impact me in my lifetime, as well as my children (if I ever have any).

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  • Startups

    Handicapping LeWeb Startup Competition: First Impressions

    December 7, 2009 / 7 Comments

    I just did the 5 minute “it’s okay to be an asshole” pass over these companies as I prep for LeWeb and get my blog coverage prepared, and here are my thoughts.  Keep in mind that 5 minutes times 16 companies not chump change, and I’m sure I’ll be diving deeper once I meet with the teams later this week.

    Here’s the grading scale

    F: does not work

    C: feature (needs to be integrated into something larger to achieve distribution and be worth paying for)

    B: product (serves a function, but doesn’t have a clear point of monetization and return to investors)

    A: company (a product comprised of features serves customers and returns revenues, there is a clear business model if revenues aren’t yet coming in)

    1. CloudSplit

    Track how much you’re spending on cloud computing with CloudSplit, and receive suggestions on how to reduce cost.  This seems like an interesting tool, but I have to believe that the more important thing to measure is how much you are SAVING after switching to cloud computing over your previous solution.  The person who would actually look at this tool on a daily basis is probably a systems administrator of a small/medium business who is trying to convince management to head into the cloud.  He’s going find that reliability, scalability, and cost savings from the original system are the most pressing concerns.  With so few enterprises in the cloud at this point, optimization seems far off.

    First impression: feature

    2. FitnessKeeper, Inc.

    Looks like the iPhone app is already launched, cool, I’ll check it out.  Polished website, I’m guessing these guys aren’t quite as early stage as some of the others.

    First impression: not sure, need to see if app is paid
    3. FriendBinder

    Seems very similar to FriendFeed.  Tried to use Facebook Connect feature, but it appears to be broken.  I was able to add Twitter and YouTube but all I see in the stream are my own updates- where are my friends?

    The site looks somewhat amateur in design, along the lines of a Startup Weekend projects, and their last Twitter update is 11/23 so I wonder if this is actually anyone’s full time dedicated company or just a side project that managed to make it in.

    First impression: product

    4. Kukunu
    This name is already a problem, I typed it in a KunuKunu a few times.  Ah, another travel planning site… can this really be anything unique from the other hundred thousand (at least) services in this space?  Interesting they have an orange favicon in the browser bar and no orange on their site, is this a rebrand of a more mature product?

    Looks like social travel planning, guides etc.  This product will be a total community play and I imagine money will have to come from advertising and lead generation.  Done right there is still a lot of money in that since travel is a big ticket item, I requested and invite into the private beta so we’ll see what happens.  Follow them on Twitter too @kukunu

    5. Mendeley
    Mendeley helps faciliate the organization, sharing, and discovery of research papers.  Cool – this actually falls in the category of “I don’t know another company innovating in this space” and I imagine with the .gov movement towards more open data this fits well, if I wanted to research something like… global warming.

    Oh crap, it’s desktop software.  Do not want!

    Okay, this still looks pretty cool but I need to do a review of it when I have time… 5 minutes won’t cover a desktop app.

    6. Shutl

    Cute branding (and on their Twitter page too) and of course I love isite that count their launch date down to the second.

    But waht does it do? If I wan’t writing a review there’s no way I’d provide my contact info, but I just did so hopefully that means I will learn more soon.  Oh!  Their Twitter profile actually gives me more info than the website:

    “Shopping online will never be the same… All Shutl’s announcements will be made here first. Watch this space!”

    My guess: social shopping

    7. Siteheart Inc.

    This redirected to Liqpay and I don’t see any ign of Siteheart Inc… so hopefully I’m on the right website.  Well this is cool, payments via phone – definitely something interesting and a reason to chat with them about Twilio too.  We’ll wait and see if this is the right website

    8. Sokoz

    The site is in French, but never fear – Google translator is here!  A side note, it might not be a good thing that I can’t figure out what it does based on the images without the translation.  The read button that says “Acheter” (or “buy”) is a hint, but only because I know that word.

    Okay cool, the translation is in – this is a service for ecommerce sites to help them sell things?  I will just talk to them in person… too tired, 5 minutes is up

    9. Sports Predictions

    Redirects to GetInLive.com, so I hope I am on the right website.  This website design is so fresh, and I don’t usually like dark backgrounds… very striking look.  The problem is, now that I’m on the site I don’t know what it is I am supposed to actually DO.  There isn’t a clear goal for the user, and I’m left wondering what I’m even looking at.  Everton vs. Tottenham are 2-2, is that soccer (football) or something else?  It also says “calculating 4,972,973” data points and it looks like it should be ticking over with new data points… what could those possibly be?

    10. Storific

    This is another in private beta, but their messaging should give you some hints.  This is absolutely a product designed to service business for some kind of in-store experience, their idea of being “Storified”.  I wish I had a retail outfit I could legitimately sign up for their alpha.
    I’m pretty interested in theis space, it is pretty bleeding edge and reminds me of the “Future of Retails” meetups I brought together at the Red Mango at Pacific Place back when I will still working on Whrrl.  Curious.

    11. Stribe

    Now here is something I need, a product that can instantly create a social network on any website.  I like that my first thought was “like Ning… well, not really” because Ning is a seperate walled garden from the other walled garden that is my website.  I just signed up for an account on behalf of Twilio, I would love to give this a test drive.  Cool name too, I am surprised it wasn’t taken.  Looks like this is a widget, not clear if it is a full product offering to solve a business problem or just help solve it… and how to make money?  We will find out.

    First impression: Feature
    12. Superfeedr

    Saw these guys around, at PariSoma in San rancisco and also at the ReadWriteWeb Realtime Summit that was held about a month ago in Silicon Valley.  They are parsing feeds from the realtime web and making them useful for developers.  I’m still trying to figure out how to partner with these guys on a contest for Twilio, what they are doing is cool and I think people will eventually demand this data enough — but is the demand for it there now.

    And how repeatable is this?  It seems like this might be an execution play, and there is also TweetHooks out there.  Is this a standalone product, or does it need to be part of some overarching service?  Looks like they are already charge, so good on them for that.

    First impression: product

    13. task.ly

    Managing to-do lists more efficiently, a big bold statement on there about the vision the Google Wave creators had as compared to the task.ly vision.  I love their design, and hope the product will be as simple as it seems to be from their branding/marketing copy (clearly what they are going for).  This is a crowded space, but productivity tools are fun and monetizable.

    First impression: Product

    14. Tigerlily

    Ah a product for marketers, I want to try this one out – it is for making better use of Facebook as a marketing tool through Facebook pages.  Reminds me a bit of Involver.  Very explicit about Facebook fans on these pages being leads, which is sending me the right signals that these guys see it as a business and not just a “make prettier Facebook pages” play.

    Ooh they appear to have contest and quiz management, that is smart!  So I tried to set up the free version but something is not working here, Facebook doesn’t seem to want to make selecting Tiegerlily an option… oh well, I’m zonked, I’ll try again tomorrow.
    15. The Hyperwords Company

    Firefox add on, gotta restart to run it… the basic idea is that it provides resources (dictionary, wikipedia, etc.) for words on your website.  We’ll see… I’m not sure what I think, but there are some glowing quotes on here.

    Sounds like the uses go way beyond the dictionary, to include translations, converting metric to standard, etc.  Can’t wait to find out how they want to make money.

    First impression: feature
    16. Wordy

    Pay as you go copy editing! The video on the front page looks slick, but it was having a difficult time buffering.  This is a clever idea, let’s get a quick quote on this blog post so far.  Just a little copy paste here…

    Whoa 46.29 Euros and 92 minutes (or ~0.50 Euros per minute)… yikes, that is a bit pricey for me – I don’t even get paid to blog!  This is cool how do I become a copy editor?  How do I make money as a copy editor?  Do they use Amazon Mechanical Turk?  That would be clever.  I’m not sure who is going to pay for this, but I’d love to speak with them… the quote I got was so far from the 0.03 Euros advertised on the front page.  Let’s see what the quote is for “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” That is 0.27 Euros, and will take 1 minute to turn around.

    Well it is 3am, time to hit the sheets for a nap and then we’re off to the airport.  Can’t wait to meet all the startups in Paris, and find out if some of my guesses and criticisms were correctly placed.  Au revoir!

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  • Posts

    SaaS, Supply Chain, PASCAL and Past Professional Lives

    November 20, 2009 / 1 Comment

    I don’t know why, but I rarely write about my “past lives” professionally, even though I think about my experiences all the time and draw on them to help me make decisions. I remember, for example, hearing the term “SaaS” for the first time over four years ago when I was working for Expeditors International. Expeditors is an amazingly successful non-asset based common carrier – in layman’s terms: a shipping company that doesn’t own any planes, trains, ships, trucks, etc. Sound familiar? Like a software company that doesn’t own any computers. They created multi-tenancy for shippers, and I decided to work there because the model is brilliant. How funny that now I find myself in the cloud computing space.

    SaaS came up because I was sitting in a meeting with 50 other people in this Fortune 500 company, listening to the newly appointed CTO speak about the changes we would be making to our technical infrastructure over the next five years. We would transition away from Cobal, SmallTalk, and all the other languages and technologies we were using to Java. There wouldn’t be any more layoffs (half of the 2,000 IT employees had already been let go), the remaining staff would have 1 year to learn Java. The company would be moving to the cloud, because it was just too expense to run an international company the way we were doing it. We were still using the same systems which, though revolutionary when created, were becoming outdated.

    In my day-to-day, I wrote scripts in PASCAL to automate business processes. I wish I could go back to Expeditors now with the Twilio API – oh my god, we’d have saved even more time. I created elaborate scripting within the windows OS that worked with our electronic filing system, home grown CRM / accounting tool, and Excel to automate entire jobs. It was like crack, saving time and money and freeing people from mundane tasks. I didn’t know anyone else in the Business Process Management world, I thought I was entirely alone – and it was fun!

    Of course I didn’t get hired into this job, instead I started out as an intern and then customer service rep on a team that was losing money each month. Due to the nature of the particular product this team supported margins were small but each customer generated at least twice the work as they would on other products. We were doing all sorts of painfully manual things, and it was a waste. Morale on the team sucked, and at first I thought I was doomed to become sad and jaded with work at just 19 years old. Fortunately, it didn’t turn out that way at all. With the help of better processes, a new manager (and then another even better one), and pulling together as a team we got profitable and I got promoted.

    So… you’re probably wondering why I left? When I joined the company, I just wanted to work – but after being there almost three years and seeing what kind of impact I could have, I wanted to build new things, not just fix broken processes and eliminate inefficiency. The company’s migration to Java was on a 5 year plan, so a lot of the projects I was planning with the VP of Business Processes were going to be sitting on hold for quite awhile. I was becoming frustrated with the pace, and since I was 22 and about to get married I decided it was as good a time as any to take a leap and join a company that would build things, or start one.

    In hindsight, I gave up a sweet job – although it didn’t pay well at all, it was really rewarding to help people. But MAKING things, instead of fixing broken things that are inherently wrong in their design, is its own drug. I admit I was starstruck by “startups” and joined one without taking a deep enough look at whether or not it solved a really impactful problem, but I never forgot how I felt about Expeditors and so when Twilio presented itself 2 years late I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to change the way people do business.

    There, a little piece of my past life out there – it feels good to capture memories, and I’m so glad I worked for Expeditors. Better investment than any startup I’ve worked for (so far) – 20% of my income went to purchasing stock, woo!

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    Yep, It’s Porn – StreamHer.com Takes 2nd Place at Entepreneur Idol

    November 6, 2009 / 2 Comments

    Ask anyone, I love to pitch.  It’s exciting, you get immediate feedback, and an adrenaline rush – what’s not to love?

    Last night at NWEN‘s Entrepreneur Idol, I pitched an idea which my husband and I have been discussing over the past couple weeks: live streaming adult content, like Ustream — but for porn (which is against Ustream’s TOS).  It all started when I complained on Twitter that Lovers Package is like going to WalMart to purchase erotic toys and video.

    First of all, I should probably point out that this product is in the concept stage and no development work has gone into it at this point.  I could easily cobble together existing software to create a prototype site with a couple models, but I’m enjoying marketing the idea and talking to a lot of people right now – particularly women.

    What About Zivity? They’re Featured on TechCrunch A Lot

    I checked out Zivity (link is NSFW), hadn’t heard of them until last night (might be a failure of their marketing since I think I am their target market – or at least my husband is), and the site has black background… which sent warning bells ringing immediately for me… bleagh, but I digress. More disappointing that some of the aesthtics (although they are devoid of ads, which is nice) according to Compete.com the site’s traffic is pretty flat, and not doing that much better than Seattle 2.0:

    I hear they are founded by a woman, it would be great to figure out what is (or isn’t) working for them.  Compare this to forthegirls.com (NSFW) which is targeted directly at women

    I’ve Heard the Porn Industry is HUGE

    Yep, you heard right.  Huge and losing money like any other media industry, due to the proliferation of free amateur content on the web.  According to an article in yesterday’s Austin Chronicle (Austin is a hotbed for sex workers, if you didn’t know), “The porn industry, according to the best estimates, makes four times what Hollywood makes”.  That’s a lot of money, I’m not even sure how much. Wikipedia says:

    The sex industry earns as much as $13 billion a year in the United States and has been credited with driving technological advances in popular media , such as home video and DVD, pay-per-view, live streaming video and video on demand

    For a startup, a big market is actually a big problem.  How do you approach it?  Where do you start?  How do you get enough attention to your site and cut through the noise?  I figure if I pursue this, it would be great to start with a market that is under-served, and familiar to me, women.

    Imagine a site that has content similar to what you might read in Cosmo’s “70 Ways to Excite Your Man” or “10 Positions to Try Tonight”, except that you have video content, an anonymous persona, and you can see live demonstrations of the positions, preferences, or toys suggested – and you can ask questions.  Of course, experts in various niches would emerge and could become well-paid affiliates for specific products.

    What Motivates Me

    Personally, I’m excited about developing the business model and providing an awesome content distribution platform. I’ve spoken with several women who either run in home pleasure parties (like Tupperware for sex toys) or write online reviews (or create educational content) and they’re making good money, but have plenty of complaints about the technology and ability to re-use what they’ve created to generate as much revenue as possible.  One thing that I am learning as I talk to more women is just how many different preferences there are, and how many different needs can be served (definitely a topic for another post).  It’s not even about being wild and crazy, it’s mostly about feeling confident and sexy with their partners – or even by themselves.

    I’ve been asked if I’ll be producing video of my own, or if I already have an online persona in the porn world, and the answer is no to both question.  I won’t say that I’ll never do it, but frankly I think there are so many talented and ambitious models and actresses out there looking to reach a greater audience, that I’ll leave that to them for now.  Will I watch?  Sure!

    What’s Next?  When Can I Watch?

    I’ve got a honey-do list for Kevin to get started on while I get back to work on what I actually do for a living, which has nothing to do with this.  If you’ve signed up for the beta list you’ll receive an email from me once and awhile about our progress and invitations to test out features as they are released.  Be patient with us, it could be awhile.

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  • Posts

    What I Want From Location Based Apps? Facebook.

    November 4, 2009 / 2 Comments

    It’s been awhile since I did any writing or thinking about what I want out of location based app, but back when I worked on Whrrl as their community manager, this was on my mind all the time.  After I left the company, I kept using the product for awhile until someone asked me if I would still use it if I hadn’t been involved in its creation.  So I decided to take a break from it, and see if I actually needed Whrrl in my life… and to find out what about it would draw me back in.  Recently I downloaded Whrrl onto my iPhone (now version 2.2 I think) to try out some of the new features and here’s why:

    • It organizes my pictures in a particular place/time (story) into a single album in Facebook
    • It allows me to quickly share to Facebook and Twitter in realtime, and Whrrl stories tend to generate a lot of comments compared to my other content

    There are also a lot of features I don’t care about, like how big my audience is or what my friends are doing.  Yeah, I said it – I don’t use Whrrl to find out what my friends are doing — just to publish what I’m doing.  That’s actually pretty weird, entirely the reverse of how consumer products are normally used (people would rather be voyeurs than contributors, except for a small % of users).

    Whrrl is like many other apps in the space which fundamentally do the same things, although they’re packaged up into storytelling (Whrrl), friend-finding (Loopt), local blogging (Brightkite), games (Foursquare), and the list goes on and on.  Each ones tries to claim they’re different, but to me its about picking one of these and fully investing in it because I don’t want the experience of showing up at one location, and checking into 4 different apps.  Truly, if there was an app that would check me into all the other services I’d use that one — but all of these guys are trying to hang on tight to location information and most don’t offer open APIs that would allow for collaborative checkins.  The problem is that all the value goes to the service where you actually provide the checkin, the portal service.  Really this just seems like something Facebook will eventualy offer… and then all these guys could be eliminated.

    Why?

    Because Whrrl, Loopt, Brightkite, and Foursquare are products (and in some case just an amalgamation of features) — not companies.  They would make great Facebook apps for adding value to LBS checking on the Facebook iPhone app… and my guess is that the feature is coming soon.  Each of them would love to cash in on the rich “foot-streaming” data that checkins provide, creating complex recommendations algorithms for telling me what i should do, say, buy, etc. in a certain context.  But to do that you need a huge base of users and data, and if you’re not openly integrable into a larger platform then the chances of getting that big on a single unique feature (the ability to check in at a location, and then do a bunch of things you can already do on Facebook).

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  • Posts

    What Were You Doing When…?

    September 5, 2009 / 0 Comments

    1 year ago (September 2008)

    I was working at Pelago and the Whrrl iPhone application had been launched for about 2 months.  I was transitioning into a marketing and community management role from my previous job on the “data team” as a content monkey.

    2 years ago (2007)

    I was a newlywed and Kevin and I had just returned from our honeymoon so that I could finish the interview process at Pelago and begin my job there, at my first tech startup (woo!)

    3 years ago (2006)

    I was recently promoted to Business Process Analyst at Expeditors International and was in the process of saving millions of dollars for the company through improved business processes.  I lived in my little penthouse studio apartment in Downtown Seattle (5th and Wall St), and had a pomeranian dog named Zeus.

    4 years ago (2005)

    I was recently hired full time at Expeditors International after spending 3 months as an intern, and I was living in a room in a tiny dirty apartment in Downtown Seattle with the strangest roommate ever.  I had been dating Kevin for almost six months.

    5 years ago (2004)

    I was returning to college for my sophomore year after spending the entire summer traveling around the U.S. and driving cross country.  I was recently moved back in with my parents on Bainbridge Island to save money after traveling so much, and I was working for both the family business and also starting a web consulting business of my own. I was remaking my vision of my life, trying to figure out if I should take my deferred offer at the University of Washington and move to the city or if I should just start working. I began to contemplate an internship at a large company to see what it would be like.

    6 years ago (2003)

    I was living in Bremerton fully immersed in the music scene with my cat Rocky.  I was about to begin college classes at Olympic Community College after a long summer following high school, with very little motivation or direction.  I took many amazing road trips, read tons of books, and had an incredible amount of angst regarding what to do with my free time.  Ah, those were the days… I also joined another McDonalds near to my apartment and worked a lot of extra hours to pay for all my adventures. I saw the poor working-class side of the world first hand through a lot of my friends and began to realize that without direction it was likely I would end up stuck in this world forever. Time for a change.

    7 years ago (2002)

    I was restless high school senior who had completed so many credits she only needed to attend part time.  I filled my days with music and art, and a lot of soul searching and wandering.  I was playing and singing in a couple bands and really into the music scene and my boyfriend.  It’s amazing that I graduated, looking back. I was, as always, working for my Dad and the tennis club where I played as well as doing odd jobs on the side, as well as working at McDonald’s which I enjoyed.

    8 years ago (2001)

    I was realing from the suicide of a friend, and only days from both September 11th and another friend’s drug overdose that would leave him in a coma for six months (it is a miracle he is alive and can walk and talk again) and my best friend (his girlfriend) in limbo for the next year. I was playing tennis every day and was pretty good at it to, and played tournaments around the state.

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