I have a long-held theory that you really don’t know what you’re making (and selling) until you release it into the wild. Once you put it in the hands of potential customers, it’s going to mutate and grow in ways you didn’t necessarily expect.
Now that the Unifyr beta is underway, we’re starting to see early signs of that evolution and it’s interesting stuff.
One area of strength of our "secret sauce" is its ability to generate and analyze meta-data. And one example of that analysis is a feature that our beta users are freaking out about (in a good way).
Internally, we call it our FindaYoda feature. In a nutshell, when you search with a keyword, we’ll show you data that matches your query AND we’ll show you which other users have data that matches your query. Simply put, each user’s data is private, but a representation of their expertise is not. When you do a search, you’re not just constrained to "files" that match your query, you’ll see people that match your query too.
Good meta-data can solve all kinds of problems, and FindaYoda is just scratching at the surface. But it’s good to know that (a) it works and (b) our users really like it.
Earlier this week we had a pitch that we’ve been looking forward to for a while. Unfortunately, as you might imagine from the title and picture, it didn’t go as planned.
The main reason this week’s posts have been slow is that I’ve been (a) working on bouncing back and (b) trying to decide how to blog about this.
Let’s start with an analogy… Picture the guy or girl that you had a crush on in High School. The one that “if only they knew you” would be your perfect date. Now imagine that one day you said “Hey” and they actually said “Hey” back. Next thing you know, you have a get-to-know-you date set up at a friend’s house.
It was that kind of meeting. And we were that kind of excited about it.
Sticking with the analogy, at the last minute the day and venue change. Now you’re meeting Mr/Ms Perfect with two of his/her friends somewhere you’ve never been before.
And so it begins.
Back to real life. We had a fireside-chat kind of thing set up at a local office. But due to circumstances beyond either party’s control the meeting had to be moved to a hotel some distance from here. Our date was very apologetic for the change and offered to do the meeting by phone or reschedule it. We took option #3 – driving down to the new location to take the meeting.
Note #1: There is a lot of truth in the proverb “Fools rush in”
Naturally, the change in venue causes some issues. Where will we meet? Is there a good network connection??? Oh, and as a result of the reschedule, we’re now meeting with our guy plus two of his co-workers.
Note #2: A meeting with 3 people is NEVER going to be the same as a meeting with 1 person.
As you may know, I’ve done a lot of pitches in my time, from this kind of fundraising pitch to tradeshows and product demos. I’ve logged hundreds of hours doing this, and generally have some clue as to what I’m doing and how things can go wrong.
So naturally, we had a backup plan to run the product locally on a laptop in the event that Wi-Fi failed us. But as I mentioned, the change was pretty last minute. Come to find out that we have more data in the system than can easily be downloaded in the time we have before the meeting.
So now we don’t have a good fallback if the network connection drops out. Not good.
Note #3: When you start to feel a breeze blowing on body parts that don’t appreciate that sort of thing, take notice.
But there’s a Starbucks with wi-fi down the road. Fine. We’ll just shuffle down there if we need to. But let’s get to the Hotel well in advance and make sure the wi-fi is good.
Meanwhile, we’ve been working on the “Grand Enchilada” view of what we’re up to and why. As I mentioned earlier, our date seems perfectly primed to get what we do and really wants to talk about the tech and the product, so this is not our usual funding presentation.
Fast-forward to the day of the date.
I’m not a believer in omens, but the day starts badly.
Now that I look at the pants I ever so carefully ironed last night, I can see that they have some kind of feeding-a-two-year-old related stain. Bugger. Need to iron another pair, but I’m back on track soon enough.
Time to get in the car and go. I put the key in and get a “Low Pressure” alert for one of the tires. The low pressure sensor is a nifty idea in principle. If a tire needs 36psi and a slow leak has taken that down to 25psi, it’s a good thing to have. Unfortunately, the thing also triggers if there’s a drop to 35.9999psi. You have no way of knowing what’s going on without reaching for a pressure gauge.
So I check the tires. Sure enough, one is pretty low. Break out the air-pump, connect it and off we go. Or not. I check the pressure and it’s lower. There’s a hole in the tube on the air-pump. Crap crappety crap crap. Off to the garage.
Finally Logan and I get on the road and we’re making good time.
We get to the hotel and I talk the restaurant into letting us camp out. The wi-fi signal is “strong like ox” and all is well. We test, retest and test again. Sweet.
All your base belong to us. We are prepared.
Note #4: It’s called a false sense of security for a reason…
Our guy arrives and we exchange pleasantries. The other two datees arrive to. We’re ready.
I jump in to our 100,000 ft overview presentation. As I go through the slides, I have that vague nagging feeling that I’m not bringing all the audience members with me.
We get to the demo. “Let me show you the basics”
Kzzt.
The wi-fi falls down dead. Shit. It comes back. But we’re in a hotel, so I have to re-login to their gateway before I can get back to Unifyr. In an effort to help, one of the other dates starts asking some questions. We try and answer those while getting back online.
We’re back online. Our guy asks another question, one so basic to what we do that we have been able to demonstrate it for MONTHS. Click click, here we go.
Kzzt.
WTF! It’s down again.
More interim questions, but now we’re off in three different directions at once.
Back up. Logged in. Click click…works. But now the back end engine that has run for WEEKS without any glitches falls down dead. Stuff is no longer getting tagged.
WTDF!!!
And so the whole thing descends into chaos. I don’t think we made or demonstrated a single point clearly without a screw-up.
At the same time, we’re focused on a high level big picture. Really big (like this)… The stuff we never usually talk about for fear of scaring people. And there’s the rub – after early pitches we were told we weren’t broad enough. After this one, we were told we were too broad. Doh.
Note #5: Once you’ve been pitching for a few months, your pitch gets “polluted” with all the feedback you get. While feedback can be invaluable, the process of avoiding potential landmines can leave you with something so muddied that it offends no-one, but no-one buys it either…
So as you can gather from all of this, the pitch was a dud. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it was one of my worst… Ever…
Our dates were nice enough to be polite, but we knew we’d blown it and blown it good.
Looking back at things, there are a million things we’d like to have done differently. But I think #1 would have been to pass on the meeting face to face until we could control the environment.
In our eagerness to have our perfect date we left too many variables to chance. The result benefited no one, least of all us.
It’s all very well to get a date with "that girl" (or guy) but if it ends like this, you’re really no better off.
And with that thought (and sincere apologies to our dates), here’s an appropriate ending…
We’re not ready to start hiring yet, but we hope to be there soon. And thinking about the future other than the business plan and product development is a nice break. Plus, I’ve been on a rant week again, so why not end it on a strong note…
As a guy with a background in sales, marketing and biz dev, I’ve always known that hiring people for those positions would be hard. In the case of sales, I’ll expect a candidate to have a structured approach to sales (like this). Marketing folks had better avoid phrases like "get our name out there" and "go viral". And as for Biz Dev, they’ll need to walk on water and be able to convert it to wine while they’re at it for me to be a true believer.
But some recent experiences have reminded me that there is one position I may never be able to find a satisfactory candidate for: HR.
In my career, I’ve had nothing but terrible experiences working with HR professionals. I always felt that a Director of HR ought to represent the needs of the employees…or at the very least act as an unbiased intermediary between the employees and the management of the company. A product manager represents a product and the HR manager should represent the humans…
But in my experience, HR folks represent employees in the same way that strip mining represents coal.
My first run in was during my move to the USA. As part of my relocation package, the company hiring me retained an attorney to secure my visa. My new boss was very keen for me to start as soon as possible. So I put my house on the market, and of course it sold almost immediately. I put all my stuff in storage and was living on borrowed floors and in weekly rentals. I called the HR Director repeatedly and was told that "everything was being done" to move things ahead. After a month without news, I asked to speak to the attorney. The immigration "professional" advised me to just get on a plane and we’d "take care of it when I got there". Five minutes of fact checking revealed that this was (a) illegal and (b) likely to get me deported. When I pointed this out to HR person, her first response was to accuse me of meddling.
Attorney #2 was better acquainted with the actual visa process and things started ticking along. Then that guy went quiet. I called repeatedly and was finally told that my employer had not paid the retainer!
Guess who’s desk the authorization was sitting on???
I’ve also been through a bunch of restructuring & RIFs (reduction in force). The HR person is ALWAYS the one that wants to not tell the employees, because they’ll worry (or some other stupid reason) and then wants to offer the minimum severance and health benefits when the axe falls.
I’ve argued with HR people as to why we need to offer direct deposit ("but it’s so expensive"), why employees who’ve spent more than 8 years with a company should get more than two weeks severance, why the company should just cover the extra $20 per head increase in health insurance and why a head receptionist should actually be able to operate a phone system… And don’t even get me started on the damn corporate handbook’s they all seem to love so much.
I understand the need to operate within the law, but I see no reason to treat employees like challenged toddlers or act like Moses coming down from the mountain with a list of unalterable commandments. And that goes double in a small company.
Two recent events rekindled this particular flame. A friend of mine joined a well funded startup about 9 months ago. They promised 3 weeks of vacation and the chance to jump in and try new things. The salary wasn’t great, but the overall opportunity was good. Fast forward to last month and the company hires an HR dragon. My friend has now been told that the new company policies mean she is no longer a salaried employee (she’s now paid hourly). As a side effect, she lost two weeks of vacation and can no longer get health benefits for her family. Dragon goes on to tell her that if she waits until March and agrees to be moved into a dead-end role they may be able to make her salaried again.
Event #2 is one I’ve encountered many times — the spend $40 to save $20 mentality that is so prevalent in HR directors. Job candidates are being flown in for interviews. The company is paying for the flight, hotel, meals, schmoozing etc. HR organizes all of that, but won’t take care of transportation from the airport. "Just have one of the admins do it". The taxi ride would be about $17 each way. Probably $25-30 for a car service. But no, lets have a $25/hr employee do it instead. Of course, that’s $25 plus overhead and the cost of the Admin not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. And you can be sure that the HR person will frown if they submit an expense report for the mileage…
<sigh>
So if we’re ever hiring for that position and you’re a candidate, be warned: I expect you to actually give a damn about the people that make the company run. I’ll expect you to look at the big picture. And last but not least, I’ll expect you to treat everyone the same way.
Okay. All done. Next week’s posts will all be about happy little bunny rabbits and flowers.
