In general, I like to think that technically savvy people are reasonably smart.  But I am always amazed at how blindly devotional many of us are.

At the recent Startup Weekend, the dev team’s choice was Ruby on Rails.  The question of whether I am a "Ruby Hater" of some kind has already come up a couple of times.  For the record I’m not.  I really don’t care.  What I care about is the end result.

But polarizing everything into haters versus fanatics is very common in the tech world.  PHP guys denounce Ruby and Java.  Ruby guys denounce everybody else.  Mac users think PC users are idiots.  Vi lovers spurn Emacs users.  Pick your toolset or platform and I guarantee there will be factions that pronounce you worthy or mentally challenged based on your choice.

When I ran an animation studio, it was the same thing.  We need Maya. 3D Studio sucks.  Lightwave just can’t be used for whatever.  On and on and on.

But the point is this: the whole haters vs fanatics thing is crap.  Sure, in the early days of something new, some functionality will be lacking and key features will be missing.  But once a new tool reaches a base level of functionality the differences between new and existing tools become largely irrelevant. 

However, thanks to our collective devotional tendencies, tool choices often become a matter of personal religion, not an assessment based on facts.  And that can’t be good.

For example, in the case of our recent Startup Weekend adventures, I personally would not have chosen Ruby on Rails for three reasons:

1. There was a RubyCon in Charlotte on the same weekend, so presumably we were a little light on highly experienced Ruby dev guys.
2. While the idea was simple, there was still a lot to be done in a weekend.  By virtue of it’s age, PHP has a far greater library of available code that could have been used to get things done.
3. We were integrating with a number of external systems (Google maps and a payment system).  This has been done more and debugged more with other languages.

Note that these reasons have nothing to do with architecture, scalability or any other serious technical concerns.  My reasons have everything to do with the constraints of the situation (available time, resources etc).

While you can always argue over the finer points of something, you ignore reality at your peril.  And if reality conflicts with your current "religion" you either bury your head in the sand or you act like a rational being.

I for one prefer rational behavior.  That’s what guides my decisions, and that’s the way I like it.

Categories: Old Posts
1034 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2007/11/12/what-kind-of-hater-are-you/What+kind+of+Hater+are+you%3F%3F%3F2007-11-12+23%3A36%3A00NickN

In previous posts I’ve talked about about what I’d like to see happen here.  I strongly believe that RTP is a great area with a ton of potential  The recent Startup Weekend in Chapel Hill confirmed my opinions about the depth and range of talent here.  And that’s not the only indicator…

I had lunch with an undergrad student today.  He’s already started one company and is anxious to do many more.  He also wants to create a focal point for students interested in entrepreneurship.  When I was his age, I think I was mostly focused on how my bar tab was getting paid.  So (a) I feel old, (b) I’m wondering where I wasted so much time, and (c) I’m impressed.

Back to my point.  What can you do?  A lot!

It just takes a few disruptive folks to band together with a purpose and things can be changed for the better.  Sure, we can all sit around and bitch about early stage funding, but that doesn’t help.  Building a community that attracts attention might.  So I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: if you want to connect, reach out. 

While on that topic, does anyone want to start an Open Coffee Club?

Categories: Old Posts
1022 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2007/11/08/what-can-you-do/What+can+you+do%3F2007-11-09+04%3A34%3A18NickN

This one’s been brewing for a while, and Startup Weekend was a catalyst to get it written. 

I am generally not a fan of carefully constructed analogies that are a bit of a stretch, but I’ll make an exception this time.

Here’s my pitch:  an ideal company is like an airplane crew. 

I can feel you cringing already.

Let’s start with the pilot.  He may not do everything, but s/he’s the person everyone sees as the leader in charge.  You want a pilot with an air of confidence and professionalism who knows what they are doing.  They should look and act the part.  You want to meet the pilot when you board the plane, and you want to see that the rest of the crew respect the Pilot and enjoy working with her/him.  When things go wrong, you want the pilot to take responsibility, not duck and cover and pass the buck.

Then there’s the co-pilot.  A good co-pilot can do pretty much everything the pilot does, but they’re not the actual pilot.  If your pilot gets into trouble, needs a break, or takes a vacation, your co-pilot can keep everything running just fine.  They understand how the plane is supposed to fly, where it’s going and how to get there.  They can make decisions and execute them, as and when they need to.

You probably have a navigator.  Without the navigator, you’ve got two folks that can fly a plane and nowhere to go.  Flying without a destination doesn’t help a whole lot.  The navigator isn’t a pilot, and probably can’t fly the plane (although they might be able to work the auto-pilot for a little while) but without them, you’re going nowhere.  The navigator might be your CTO, or maybe you have some other kind of visionary on-board who’s not the CEO…

The flight crew take the lead from the pilot and co-pilot.  They work with the passengers and do a hundred things that the pilot doesn’t even think about, without which nothing would work.  But they look to the pilot for overall direction and guidance.  They interact with the co-pilot too.  They know who the navigator is, and what the navigator does. 

The senior crew members interact directly with the pilot and manage their teams.  Ideally, they operate autonomously within the general guidelines laid out by the pilot, and exercise good judgment on when to bring something to the pilot’s attention.  The passengers are catered to by a competent and courteous crew who are generally concerned about their wellbeing.

That’s how it should be in a perfect world.  But as anyone who’s flown lately knows that’s a far cry from how most flights operate.  And it’s the same with many businesses.

There’s the pilot that’s just doing it until they can retire. The pilot that treats everyone badly because they are the pilot. 

Or the co-pilot that’s still pissed about not being chosen as the pilot.  The one that knows they can do a better job than the pilot.

Or the navigator that became a navigator because they failed some vision or physical test… they’re good at their job, but miserable and convinced they really should be a pilot. 

There’s the crew member that signed up to meet a wealthy spouse and cash out quick.  The crew member that hates their job but won’t go find a new one and subsequently spends their whole day venting their anger on passengers through shitty service…  Or the ones that hide in the back of the plane and avoid the passenger call lights. 

You have crew that delight in enforcing every stupid little rule, some of which they make up.  The seatbelt enforcer that wakes a passenger up just to make sure their seatbelt is on (even though there’s no turbulence or other reason for it).  The soda nazi that gives everyone two ice cubes and one-half of the can of soda.  The ones that won’t clean the bathroom because it’s gross/not my job/they did it last time.

You’ve got crew members from other flights or airlines that are getting a free ride on your flight.  They just can’t help but demand a little more attention, or make a few suggestions, or insist you deal with their extra luggage, hold up the plane etc etc etc.

There are crew that got reassigned and just can’t stand that they were going to Milan and are now going to Akron, OH.  And others who already worked a long day and got pushed in to the front lines again. 

At the end of the day, a lot rests on the pilot.  But if you have a great pilot and a crappy crew, the passengers will still be unhappy.  And if the passengers aren’t happy, what’s the point?

If the pilot is crappy, it’s worse.  What crew is going to continue to work with a crappy pilot?  And if your navigator is plotting a route to Tahiti but you’re supposed to go to L.A., there’s a whole different set of problems to deal with.

When you look at your company, do you know who the pilot is?  Do you trust them?  Who’s the navigator?  Do you know where you’re going?  Are the crew’s roles well defined? 

And above all, are the passengers happy?

Categories: Old Posts
1011 Comment »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2007/11/07/a-company-is-like-a/A+company+is+like+a...2007-11-07+20%3A16%3A42NickN

It’s done.  I’ve had some sleep.  Now it’s time for a review…

For those of you that weren’t following the weekend, we voted to build Workperch, a service that matches people or groups that need temporary space with businesses that have space available. 

A lot of folks have an occasional need for a conference room, office or other venue; but they only need it for an hour or two and aren’t ready to commit to leasing a full office.  We fill the space between a coffee shop and an executive suite.  In the future, we could see getting in to other kinds of spaces, like church halls and other venues.

The business model was simple:  we charge a referral fee to customers (Workperchers) when they book a space, we take a slice off the top and the rest goes to the person offering the space (the Host).  They are nominally inviting the Workpercher into their space as a guest, and accepting a small fee to cover their
administrative costs i.e. they are not sub-leasing or renting the space itself.

So if I need a real office for 2 hours to take a meeting with my advisors, I’d book a space through Workperch for $20-40 or so.  If I had an office with a conference room that’s empty 3 days a week, I could generate a little revenue from referral fees.

It’s not a $B-number business, but it can be a tidy profit maker.  It also does a lot to help out the local small business community.  Last, but not least, part of our mandate was to put some of our profits back into sponsoring local business community events, like Open Coffee Clubs, Noonhat, BarCamp etc.

On with the review.

The Good

A big shout out to Andrew Hyde.  He’s been running Startup Weekends pretty much non-stop since the first one.  His management style is informal but effective and he has a good nose for trouble and how to resolve it.  Any kind of short intense project is always brutal and Andrew handles it well.  I’d be more than happy to work with him again in the future.

I’m too lazy to go through a long list of individual shout-outs, but hopefully the folks that impressed me know who they are. 

I do think some highlights are in order just to give you an idea of how willing some people were to just get on and do something they had never done before.  In no particular order, here are some examples:

_____Day Job________________At Startup Weekend I worked on…_____

Motherboard designer………….User experience, biz dev and market research
Soon-to-be-Attorney……………Biz Dev, copy writer & tag line guru
Java Engineer………………….Ruby on Rails server setup genius
Network Engineer………………User experience and PR guy
Web/technology consultant…….SEO keyword man, biz dev and market research
CTO…………………………….All round GSD — like GTD, but different

Emily deserves a shout-out too — she would have been in the list above, but I don’t remember what her day job encompasses…  And last but not least, thanks to the folks that voted for other ideas but jumped all over this one anyway.  Nice work.

As for me, I mostly stayed in/around biz dev, PR, marketing and the other seven levels of corporate damnation…  I even managed not to add to the feature creep list, and any engineer knows that biz dev guys are drawn to feature creep like moths to a flame…

To me, the point of Startup Weekend is to build a community (something I’ve talked about previously).  Unlike a BarCamp, there is more (and closer) interaction with a broad cross-section of people because you are trying to achieve a concrete goal.  Within that context, I think the weekend was great.

The Bad

We don’t have a finished product. 

Again, for me that wasn’t the real goal of the weekend, it was about the team.

In my misspent past, I ran a 3D animation studio.  There were more short and intense projects than I care to recall e.g. go from a standing start to deliver 19 minutes of animation in 6 weeks, with 19 more due every two weeks thereafter; or complete a sizzle piece for a major client from basically nothing in 24-48 hours (my former colleague Tony is unbelievably skilled at that).  I’ve also been actively involved in shipping 20+ products and a lot of small dev projects (internal tools etc).

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s simplify, simplify, simplify…  Projects always expand to fill the time and resources available.  This gets exponentially more true as the timeline gets shorter.

For a Startup Weekend to launch a product by Sunday night, the idea and execution needs to be simple and _something_ has to be ready for feedback by Saturday night. 

Let me be clear, I am not slamming the efforts of the dev team.  They worked their butts off.  But from my terribly-jaded-from-too-many-scars perspective, we should probably have relied a lot more on off-the-shelf code with a nice wrapper, rather than creating something wholly new.

I know that’s not as fun in some ways, and it’s a different kind of challenge.  But then many of us were effectively doing the same thing — building on the work of others or things we’d done previously.

And of course, with dev work there is always a _ton_ of foundational stuff that has to happen before you see anything pretty on the surface.  So what you see part way through is really not representative of all the work that’s been completed.

Moving on…  My other disappointment early on was that some folks simply didn’t want to work on (a) any of the ideas, or (b) the idea that was voted for.  To me, the point was to come together and do something, it didn’t matter what the "something" was.  While I was happy to defend my idea, I would have worked just as hard on any of the other ideas suggested if those had been chosen by the group.

However, the folks that weren’t happy were a very small minority, and some of them simply voted with their feet (which is fair enough).  For the most part, even the staunch defenders of other ideas jumped in and GSD’d with the best of them — Katie the Recipe Lady being a great example.

The Ugly

Well, right now the baby is pretty ugly.  We’ll see what the next few weeks bring. 

Most of us probably have minor cases of laptop thigh burn too.

And last, but not least, for me it was tough to see even less of my wife and daughter than usual.  Fortunately they sent me a steady stream of photos and text messages to keep me entertained…

Thoughts for other Startup Weekends…

If you’re thinking about setting up or attending a Startup Weekend near you, here’s my $0.02:

1. Respect the Hyde.  The Hyde is law
2. Come ready to work on anything
3. Defend your ideas, but be open to criticism
4. If you have an idea or concern, speak up.
5. When the group makes a decision, the decision has been made.  Move on.  No circling back.
6. Get a list of your top line deliverables as soon as possible
7. Try to give anyone a shot at a task, regardless of their experience.  They may surprise you.
8. Big buckets of sugary bubble gum are your friend.  Seriously.  I learned this from creative sessions at Hasbro.
9. Consider the potential repercussions of 34 people eating burritos when there’s only one bathroom (nothing bad happened, but the plumbing equivalent of Chernobyl was surely near at hand).
10. It’s about the experience far more than it is about the product.

And that, as they say, is that.  Workperchers of the world unite!

Categories: Old Posts
1001 Comment »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2007/11/05/chapel-hill-startup-weekend-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/Chapel+Hill+Startup+Weekend%3A+The+Good%2C+The+Bad+and+The+Ugly...2007-11-05+16%3A22%3A33NickN

I don’t swear that much, but like many Brits, I’m genetically pre-disposed to do it creatively.  However, my daughter is at the age where everything is recorded and repeated…  Recent examples include: "Daddy, you’re making me cross", "That smells NAAAASTY" and "faw, stinky!" (mostly applied to Logan, our trusty CTO). 

So needless to say, I’m on my best behavior whenever she’s around.

My wife and I had lunch together yesterday.  The recorder was at day-care so it was just the two of us (a rare event!).  I don’t recall what we were talking about — something that bugged me — and the conversation quickly descended into a light hearted cross between The Big Lebowski and my favorite musical of all time.

And boy did it feel gooooood.  Positively refreshing.

It’s been a long few weeks with many things going on.  We’re making some great progress on all fronts, but it’s not been without its challenges.  And like any good startup, there’s plenty of pressure.

If you’re in the same boat, I recommend letting loose for 10-15 minutes.  Get your rant on.  It’s invigorating!

Categories: Old Posts
99No Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2007/11/02/the-cathartic-effect-of-swearing/The+cathartic+effect+of+swearing...2007-11-02+19%3A47%3A00NickN