Going for the unreachable
I am writing this while listening to Pachebel’s Canon in D Major; a composition which with its tranquility gives a great contrast against the streams of content flowing by these days. If you listen to it while reading my post it might give a better insight to me as a person.
As you might have read in my last post I’ve been working on my startup Tyba for the last few months and for the last 3 weeks it’s been in a private alpha. Once you get users it becomes real and you thrive even more to get to that point where you want to be. For me that’s not profitability but having built a service which is truly useful to people. Behind the simple aspect of rating and tagging links I am working towards a much bigger goal. My vision is to create a service where the links recommended to you when you search come from sources you’ve chosen to trust. It’s an ambitious goal and it involves planting a whole forest of trees. Each tree is yet another idea that grows towards the perfect search results.
Each conversation I have and each day that passes I have new ideas and improvements to the old ones. When I look at all the trees I want to plant and sense the exponential growth of new ideas, it’s intimidating. I am a one-man startup on a budget which allows me to only outsource a few parts however that’s a decision I consciously made. It’s easier to get funding and let others do the planting but I always had the gut feeling that if I wanted to set this up right I needed to do it myself. I don’t discard the value of a team and funding but my intuition tells me that for now it’s best to have the flexiblity to change course in a heartbeat.
So what is this post really about? It’s about taking on a project which in your perspective is too large. It’s about going for a goal which seems so far and unreachable that you’re almost discouraged to start. One of the great lessons I’ve learned from Tyba so far is that the only thing that could hold it back (and occasionally has for moments) is the intimidation of the journey ahead, not the journey itself.
A journey is traveled one step at a time and this is what you can never forget; I often find that I have to remind myself of this. With Tyba since the start of the idea the tag line has been “Your judgement above the algorithm”. This implies that I want to create search results more relevant then algorithmic search like Google is doing. I want to personalize each and everyone’s search results; we’re all different people who apply different value to different sources, so why should we all be presented with the same results? Is it an impossible goal to be better at something then a company which holds thousands of the most brilliant minds in the world… I often feel it is. However it’s not something I am yet willing to accept. Admitting failure before even trying is not who I am and it’s not who I’ll ever be.
With Tyba I am walking babysteps everyday and having an incredible learning experience. I am going towards something and I am doing it by knowing that the only way to get there is to not be afraid to fail.
A traditional Spanish village instead of Silicon Valley and the launch of a startup
It’s been almost 3 months since my last blog post, a little over two months since my last tweet and no I am still alive. For those who’ve known me or gotten to know me through my writing or tweets quickly realized I was very hyper-connected. I would send dozens of tweets each day and engage in a lot of conversations. So what happened? I moved to a tiny village in the south of Spain where I was the first on my street (without a street name) to get a phone line and hence DSL. Which surprisingly is faster than the DSL I had back in the Netherlands. So what led me to go offline besides the occasional village power cut.
Before I moved I wasn’t planning on staying longer than a month and wanted to start the application for a visa to the US more specifically; Silicon Valley. So what made me trade in the world’s largest start-up hub for a tiny traditional Spanish village. Once I started living here it was as if I had entered a completely different world. It started with waking up and having the skies being blue and the sun shining; if you’ve lived in Holland, UK or similar places where skies are mostly grey, it’s like you emerge out of dark basement you’ve spent most of your life in. The village I live in is built upon a mountain side and is known as a traditional Pueblo Blanco, a village where all the houses are white. What made me stay though isn’t the weather because California might even be sunnier, neither is it the economic crisis luring over the US.
It was the people here that made me stay. A few days after I arrived I came walking down the street and the neighbours were having a family barbecue; without hesitation we were invited and dragged into join. Even with my limited Spanish I had one of the best nights of my life because you could just feel that these people were giving from their hearts. At least 3 times a week Francisco walks by and brings with him fruits and vegetables. He’s not the only one; vinegar, avocado’s, paprika’s, mandarins, so many people here are giving and what makes the difference with Holland and so many places I’ve been to in the world; people here give without even having the thought of expecting anything back. To some it might be a small example but it shows the nature of the people here. A nature you’re lucky to find in a handful of best friends anywhere else in the world.
Throughout my life, especially as I grew older I always said I put no value into material items. I said I did all my actions for myself and not for recognition. I said I wasn’t selfish. I believed all these things until I moved here and started realizing how we all say how we hold to these moral values but they have become words without meaning. Living here allowed me to put meaning back into those words, reflect upon the life I was living and the things I wanted to change. While being here I started reading some of the books recommend to me by commenter’s on this blog amongst which Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the within 6 days finished and now my all time favourite book; The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. A lot of pieces of the puzzle started coming together. It’s hard to put it all into words but to try… I feel like I’ve become a better person then before…less selfish…less materialistic…more myself. And don’t worry, I am still the technology loving self I always was and I haven’t become a hippie either.
About a month ago my entrepreneurial urges started itching again and what had once been a business plan pitched to VC’s and Angels I now made the decision to bootstrap it instead; to write as much code as I could myself, instead of outsourcing it. The purpose of my startup started changing, instead of building the features and design as I would like it. I built something bare bones. A web application which shares a lot in common with many others out there but it has one big difference. It’s going to transform into what users want. Everyone who looks at it sees a different use or direction it could into. I want to engage you into voicing your opinion and together with the other users vote and together built something we will love. I remember Loic le Meur writing about the Community CEO and thinking that would be amazing to be, but let me first build my vision. Instead I am going to try to engage as many people as possible to build our vision. True this is going to be difficult at times, you can never please everyone and you’re asking a lot from a community whose compensation is not monetary. However I believe that there are enough people out there who want to be involved; your opinion matters.
The startup is Tyba and it’s a simple concept: You download a Firefox extension which allows you to rate web pages and append tags (a feature I like is that when you come from Google or Yahoo the search term is automatically sent with your rating). The rating and tagging is simple, done by clicking stars or using keyboard shortcuts. Then when you feel like it you can login in to the web interface and organize the links you’ve rated into groups. These groups become public and anyone can view them. The other Tyba users can follow your groups and you in turn can also follow other people’s groups. When you follow a group you can do two things, see when new links are added to them and you can search through them. It’s a bit like building your own search engine with the links you rate and the groups other people make. Right now all this functionality is there in its most basic form.
Now all I need is users; daring and innovative people who aren’t scared of a private alpha with its bugs and downtime for upgrades, who are willing to give feedback and help decide upon the direction of Tyba. If you this sounds like you, go to Tyba.com and request an invite. I am sending the first 100 invites out tonight.
Let the right motivations drive you
I had a meeting today with another startup founder. We also met last week the day after Wikia launched Evolution; which came very close to what I’ve been working on in these last few months (see this post). I discussed a partnership and how our startups would complement each other. What it came down to is that we would open up our databases to one another and share our technology. I was thinking about doing this with a series of partners. Create a network where if one startup was successful it would lift the others along. The days I thought about it, it seemed like a great idea.
In our conversation he said that it looked like now Wikia Evolution has launched I was going for a defensive strategy. Straight away I thought “Let me listen carefully, because I have the feeling he’s right.” The more I started thinking about it, the more I realized that my “great idea” had the wrong motives. There was a valuable lesson I needed to learn from this: Looking at a strategy objectively it might be the best one but to truly judge it, you have to look at your underlying motives.
If you’re the one creating your startups strategy it’s important to let the right motivations drive you not the wrong ones. Plus! Never stop asking for feedback.
So what’s next?
A full blown offensive strategy that I will write about soon.
A short startup update:
It looks like the Firefox extension we’re developing gets new bugs with each feature we add. However we’re working hard to get rid of all of them so I can present the whole idea plus a private alpha version within the timespan of a few weeks. Anyone who is interested in participating in the private alpha can email me (the address is in the side column) or send me a message with your email address on Twitter.
Fwd: Email is not dead!
Over the last few years people have been claiming email is dead. I couldn’t disagree more. Conversations we have on Twitter, Facebook, YC HN etc.. happen there but what happens when you really want to communicate with one individual. You don’t use direct/private messages; you exchange email addresses. As long as this occurs email is still the central hub of my communication efforts. Anything worth saying to someone in more then two lines I email and I know you do too.
Yes, receiving hundreds of messages each day makes it difficult to respond to everyone. However that problem isn’t solved when you start dispersing your communication activities across five other networks. I am a big fan of Twitter because it has allowed me to build valuable relationships with several individuals. We update each other through Twitter but we talk in more then a 140 characters over email. There are many complaints that with the hundreds of emails coming in each day, how could you possibly answer each one of them. The solution is definitely not switching to Twitter/Friendfeed and spending half your day through an even larger stream of messages. If you make it your discipline to answer each email you receive, you’ll gain more value out of those conversations than anywhere else online. These are people that take the time to contact you and have filtered you as more valuable then the other 500 friends they have on a micro blogging service.
What about pitches? If you are one of the few who gets bothered with dozens of pitches each day, emails with ulterior motives, then kindly respond to them in a 140 characters “Thank you for emailing me but I am currently not interested… Best regards …”
Using the Gmail (Google Apps) interface has allowed me to respond to most emails within a matter of 24 hours, often if I am behind my laptop within 15 minutes. By the way, the reason I wrote this post is because I’ve set up my blog to now let me email-in my blog posts. I needed to write a post to test this out, I think this topic was applicable.
If you disagree with my post please voice it in the comments also I would love to hear your uses for email.
My startup’s secret recipe
Update 2:
I’ve put this at the top of the page because it’s important. I messed up. The original post which is below gives a glimpse of my current strategy but didn’t explain what would happen if you try this yourself. I love blogging for the very reason I am writing this. I got comments not just on this blog but also over at YC Hacker News saying what I was doing is a “dumb idea”. I then went back to my post and reread it as more of these comments came in. I realized something, they were absolutely right. After I read my post, stood back and looked at it from their point of view, I saw what they meant. I responded explaining why my strategy would work for me but while I was doing this I wasn’t telling you why you shouldn’t try it.
In my first update below this post I explain why it works for my application but for most people it will fail. One comment over at YC HN summarized all the bottlenecks perfectly:
Plus you will find many other typical problems with remote and distributed teams (cross-communication, misunderstanding, less bouncing of ideas, bonding, agility/speed of change, etc.) to be other big bottlenecks once/if things get moving.Being in the same place, at the same time, and working closely together with people you respect and trust is essential to creating a fast moving startup less likely to die or stagnate.
There are reasons why the most successful ones were two guys in a garage.
Then there was a comment saying
…that said, it seems very closed to me, and I would feel a bit nervous working for him.
I hope my personality and the way I portait myself through my blog takes this feeling away from anyone who has it. My idea for now might be under a cover of secrecy but openness is a goal in the near future.
So please go ahead and embark on reading my post…
About 6 weeks ago I wanted to start on a working prototype, but I didn’t want to decide upon a full time team yet. I want to be location independent for as long as possible while I play with the idea of India, San Francisco or somewhere else. If I would hire an outsourcing team it would mean taking the risk that they could run with the idea. Being half way across the world means there would be nothing I could do about it. Investing into a patent application would mean the idea would become public knowledge and NCA’s/NDA’s only reach so far.
Then I remembered this small company that had a brilliant strategy, Coca-Cola. Their secret recipe is known to only a few people but thousands are producing it each day. This got me thinking… I made a note of all the parts that needed to be developed. I then separated the parts in such a way that if you were working on one part you wouldn’t know the bigger picture. Right now there are two parts almost done, the database backend and one of the user interfaces. There are a lot more parts that need to be developed but I am coming close to a working prototype.
To be in full control of a web application you either need to have a rock star development team that jumps on the gun when you say so, or you need to be able to do it yourself. I am not a programmer by heart and coding fulltime is definitely not my passion, however I can enjoy it. I believe one of the most important things for a startup is to move quickly. You can stay years in development but it’s from your users you learn. If my startup fails because we didn’t move quick enough it’s my fault. I am responsible to time the market and after launch translate the user’s needs into changes and features. Therefore I am down in the trenches at the moment, so that later when other developers continue my work, I can sit down with them and think of solutions not just Photoshop mock ups.
Update 1:
There has been a lot of responses in the comments but also on other sites from people wondering if this does not just produce flaky code. I have pasted here my response to Tom Holder (see his comment below in the comment section)
Thank you. Your comment summarizes the response I’ve had from a lot of developers and you are right. However there are a few details I should have but didn’t explain. For me it’s only temporary to get the foundation ready - the startup itself will have a full team. I am also doing this to give myself time to continue to talk to possible investors and decide where I want to locate.
Will I then throw away all the code and start over?
No and this is why: I have two user interfaces, one for the web and one as a browser extension, in any case they would have been developed by different people. They’re two completely independent parts. As last I have the backend, a complex database structure but is setup to only accept a few easy and standard queries. The rest of the queries are handled on database level.
Looking at one of these parts you can’t find out my completive advantage, looking at them all together you have my startup. I am incredibly aware of the risks I take with this and especially if I switch developers the problems that can (probably will) come up. I find it harder to read other people’s code then to start from scratch and make it myself. Therefore all the complicated parts occur on database level, the code I wrote myself. So no matter what happens there will always be someone in the team (myself) who can work on that, or explain it to others.
So beware because this strategy may work for my startup but the people who critize it are right, for many applications this can turn into a nightmare of spaghetti code.
Is lasting value diluted by blogs?
A few days ago Robert Scoble posted an entry to his blog talking about how tech blogging has become ruled by PR agencies, ‘troll commenters’, ‘shiny objects’ and one day conversations. I am not a tech blogger but his thoughts are becoming more and more applicable to the blogosphere as a whole.
What I found most interesting and which has been my reservation since day one of blogging is that it often seems you are writing for the moment and not for a lifetime. However when I often spend an hour in front of a blank screen thinking about what I am going to write, to then take the time to do so, I write to create something that lasts.
When you’re blogging you are doing something different then when you’re writing on a website or writing a book. There times you write for the moment but yet you keep it stored for a lifetime. It seems to be an unspoken blogger’s ethic. I am going to defy this yet I continueìng blogging and not turning to essay writing. I try to write most of my blog posts as mini-essays though; content that can be read now or in ten years. I also encourage everyone to keep the conversation alive. Good writing is timeless. Many of the discussion points I raise deserve to still be discussed in a week from now (also do this on other blogs). I differ from a lot of bloggers by no longer looking at visitor statistics but rather judge my posts on the comments they’ve received.
I also find myself having different behavior when I visit a website than when I visit a blog. If I go to a blog I read the latest post, sometimes two and then I leave. There could be a wealth of great content but because the nature of the site I don’t look further. If I go to a website (they still exist) I often find myself reading far more pages. To conclude, I think for those of us who live the fast paced internet life we have become trained to filter out content. Blogs just make it easy for us by all we have to do is look at the post date.
I am implementing a few changes. I have unpublished a lot of the posts that are no longer relevant and I’ll continue to do this with each “in-the-moment post”. Once I find a good plugin to move these posts to a separate section of the website I’ll do that. Over the next few weeks I hope to be able to redesign this blog so that it encourages every new visitor to go and read all posts.
Great content stays hidden
The problem with the Internet is that the gems are often hidden. I love reading, not just books but especially blog posts. Why? I believe that we grow as people by listening to others. I don’t necessarily have to agree with someone else but listening to their opinion allows me to think about my own. Thinking about it, it’’s not reading I love –it’s thinking. Books and blog post are just mediums through which I can get a lot to think about in a short time. This might also explain my passion for discussions. When you are with someone who is on the same wavelength, you can bounce back ideas and opinions for hours. It’s one of my favourite things to do.
The internet is no longer a static place, it has become dynamic. First came the hyperlinks, then the search engines and now social media sites. I find myself spending hours discovering new content from the blogs I follow, YC Hacker News and Twitter. What’s a shame is that great content often never even arises above the surface; even with access to all these new content aggregators. With thousands of opinions being written in each niche, is it really a handful of sites that have one worth listening to?
In each niche there are a few authority sites that make up for most of the content we see (The Long Tail theory is applicable). Is it so that each blog with great content can slowly accumulate readers till it hits a critical mass and becomes an authority? Or is it so that at the start of a niche, when there are no authority sites yet, several arise and once they have a monopoly they stay there?
p.s. On a side note about reading, I went to Amazon today to order all the books I’ve been recommended to read from people who’s opinion I value. I’ve put them here below, I’ll share my opinion on each book once I’ve finished it. Hover over the images to see the book’s titles.
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The business philosophy that I always follow
“No matter if you fail at your business, if you’ve been honest and respectful along the way you can always come back to the people who worked with you. A long time ago when someone said this to me it became the start of me thinking about my business philosophy. I strongly believe that if you take the time to write down a set of rules that you will always follow it can save you from a lot of mistakes.
Most times when you enter into a project, a friendship or any other type of commitment and it fails, you look back and say to yourself “I’ve had the feeling from the start that this wouldn’t work out”. This gut feeling, your intuition, you chose to ignore at the time. Often because you saw a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or you couldn’t find a rational reason to justify your feeling. This has led to my number one rule in life and business; never ignore that gut feeling. It’s easier said than done because in today’s society we are taught to rationalize and make decisions based on facts not feelings. That’s why I think it’s good to have a list of rules you will never break because they force you to take the time and evaluate a commitment.
My second rule is based a lot upon my first. Most people judge their network based upon the number of people in it. I wrote earlier about how I try to build connections with everyone I have a conversation with. However I have a rule that throws people out of my network as quickly as they came in. I try to find people who have integrity and honesty, if they don’t, I don’t want to waste my time on them. It’s a drastic method and it often means you face difficult decisions.
One of the first meetings I had with an angel investor I left feeling uncomfortable about the person. It’s hard not to be tempted by the money but I chose to pass on any offer he would make me. When you sell a part of your company, no matter how small, you again engage in a commitment. I try to never make one with someone I don’t feel right about.
Over time more rules will definitely be added to my list and I will post about them. I would love to hear if you have any rules you chose to follow in life and/or business.
Where will life take this entrepreneur?
A few days ago I was asked if I wanted to work on a startup. I was interested and replied. I got emailed two ‘interview’ questions; how would you massively grow our user base and how would you monetize our service? They are the dilemmas of ever new internet service. I haven’t had a response yet from the CEO about my strategies. If I choose not to take the position or they don’t have a place for me, I’ll be sure to post my answers here. I make it a rule in life and business that I listen to my instincts and would always want to meet the people first.
I have a lot of options at the moment and I am going to choose the best one. Working for a startup would give me more experience, allow me to build up a reserve to fund my own company (I wouldn’t be dependent on VCs - I like this part) and expand my network. It would also mean though I would postpone my entry to university and I would have to wait with my own startup.
What I would love to do most is go to university and build my startup next to it. I am right now trying to get a meeting with Professor David Edelshain of Cass Business School, London (also a senior lecturer at NYU). I have met him on a brief occasion at the open day of Cass in London and was impressed with his openness, honesty and personality. Definitely someone I would want to learn from. I will continue emailing to see if I can get a hold of him; it seems right now I can’t get past the gatekeepers.
Right now I am actively pursuing all options; I wouldn’t be surprised if in the end I would end up doing something completely different. Isn’t this how it usually goes in life?
This post is a more personal one than usual. I would love to hear if you’re interested in more of these posts, my previous ones or if you enjoy a mix.
Creating Passionate People
Creating Passionate People is a title I took and changed from the blog Creating Passionate Users. It was a blog which offered an incredible amount of advice on how to treat your users. Unfortunately the writer stopped with it.
Not everyone though has an application where you are trying to convert your users into evangelists. What everyone does have, is thousands of people they connect with. Online these are brief connections, often short exchanges that get buried when you move on to the next thing. You get a reply on Twitter, you engage in a brief conversation and that’s it. You get a comment on your blog, you might comment back but then that’s it.
I’ve received so many tweets, comments and lengthy emails from people I’ve gotten in contact with through the internet in just the last few weeks. That a stranger is willing to write a 1000 word email to give me tips on my Blog and Social Media Experiment, Amazing! What’s more amazing is that this didn’t happen once; I’ve gotten dozens and dozens of great tips from numerous people, I even got a book!
I strongly believe that if you take an effort to take an interest in other people and build relationships you are Creating Passionate People. People who are passionate about the time you take to leave a comment on their blog or an email you sent them. I for one have become passionate about people who have done this for me in the last few weeks. I have written here how I am doing this.
I started to organize everyone I’ve had a meaningful conversation with in the last two weeks. It soon split itself up in four categories; Business, Twitter, Blogs, Emails. I then did the following steps:
I opened up Excel and I made a sheet for each of these categories. I then setup a series of headings: - Name - Email - Username (If Twitter) - Company - Location - Website - Biography (If Twitter / Blog) - Comments - Actions - Last Date of Contact
I went through my Twitter replies of the last two weeks and looked at which users I’ve had a conversation with. I browsed to their profile and added them in a row in Excel. I copied the standard information but more importantly; I read their blog. In the comments column I added a little note about what we talked about and my first impressions. In the last column I added the date we last had contact.
For business contacts I did a similar activity, instead of Twitter profiles, I had business cards 
and notes I’ve made. For people I have been emailing in the last two weeks it often took a few searches through Gmail. Last I went back to all the blogs I commented on. I went to all the websites of the people who commented on my blog. The most important part of this are the comments you write down. It’s amazing how quickly you can forget little details and impressions you’ve had.
Now it comes to part which I am advocating, the actions. I’ve gotten so much value from these brief connections, I decided to try and scrap the word brief. In the actions section I wrote down how I could continue the conversation. I went over each person individually, I read the comments I had gathered and decided if I still needed to send an email to thank them, write a comment on their blog, any interesting questions I wanted to ask but hadn’t yet etc…
I am going to keep my Excel sheet updated and I am going to see if I can continue the conversation with as many people as possible. I read an article a few weeks ago about how a person can only obtain a connection with a limited number of people, I believe the internet is changing this. If you make an effort to maintain them you can be connected to as many people as you like. As your conversation becomes larger you also soon find out with who you want to continue to talk.
What’s interesting is that I got the idea for this post from the title of a book a Twitterer had sent to me (one I’ve had an amazing conversation with over the last two weeks). It arrived this morning and the title is SuperNetworking. I skimmed through it and realized that if I would write this after I had the read the book my idea might have been coloured by it. If I pick up any interesting things that I would like to add to this post as result of reading the book, I will be sure to write about it.
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About
I am blogging with my real name at the top of each page. This means that I stand behind what I say. As an individual I am looking to engage in a conversation with you, the reader. What I hope for the future of this blog is that the comments become more valuable then the text I initially wrote.
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Email: contact@nulleiso-kant.com
