A Seattle Stealth Mode Startup Closing on Launch

According to insider information ;) , the alpha release of Leo Chen & Adam Schoenfeld's web application will launch within 2 weeks. Without violating my NDA with them, all I can reveal is that it will be a fun & competitive venue for consumers and an excellent marketing platform for businesses. By "excellent marketing platform," I mean it will have a truly viable marketing mechanism. (ie. not your avg target advertising BS =P) They are currently busy putting in finishing touches in preparation to give it a run for its money. I have been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of what the site looks like and I must say that I am excited to see it work its magic when it comes time. It definitely has a lot of potential.

I have known Leo personally since the early 90's and he has always been impressively intelligent. I don't remember one thing that he failed in given his whole hearted attempt. This will be yet another challenge that I am sure I will witness him conquer.

With that said, good luck to the whole team on the upcoming launch!

Firefox 3 Release Fumble

What an infrastructure bust! This is a prime example of why an awesome piece of software with great developers alone can't bring success to a product. Without proper attention to IT and operations, you loose market share and sometimes, customer confidence (not so much in this case for the latter).

For those who aren't aware of what I am talking about, here's a post by VentureBeat.com that describes today's mishap for Mozilla.

I am not saying it's easy to manage an infrastructure that is capable of facilitating a world wide simultaneous download nor do I necessarily think that a world wide simultaneous download is a good idea but if a company decides to hype up the world about it, it better follow through with diligent planning and implementation that will yield better results than what was seen by us today. I am personally a huge fan of Mozilla but this event was definitely a disappointment. If I was the director in-charge of delivering this release, I would think long and hard about how I ensure this never happens again.

On another note, Firefox 3.0 is great! I am seeing a lot of improvements and have been a happy FF3 user all morning. =) Good job on that Mozilla and volunteers! Keep up the good work! I am as always extremely appreciative of all your hard work! =)

Why I think Twitter is a must have in an Entrepreneur's tool box...

There has been a lot of noise going around about Twitter's downtime and such. Although it is annoying to be using an application that's sometimes unstable, I am going to focus on the positives of this product instead.

For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter, it is a micro-blogging web application that has social networking features built-in. Each entry has a limit of 140 characters. The contents of these entries are usually about what the author is doing at the moment or links of articles and blogs that he/she feels is worthy of sharing. You can also reply to authors and have short conversation through this micro-blogging scheme. Your feed consists of your own entries as well as other authors who you friend or in Twitter terms, "follow."

Or as Twitter's homepage puts it:

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

These are a few reasons why I think Twitter is important for me as an entrepreneur:

1. I meet interesting people that are experts in all different fields to fill in on what I lack in knowledge.
2. I get a feed of interesting reads that were filtered by people that I think highly of.
3. I get an aggregated view of my friend's and business contact's activities in a much more efficient way than to keep in constant contact with them individually.
4. It drives traffic to my blog. ;)

All in all, it's just a great way for information exchange which helps you stay on top of the latest and greatest; something that every entrepreneur should thrive for. So if you haven't given Twitter a chance yet, maybe you should. =)

The 2 most important yet neglected positions...

I was having a conversation with a co-worker earlier this morning and somehow, it led to me talking about my rule of always hiring a DBA and a IT guy at very early stages of a startup. Those two roles may not necessarily be worthy of FTE positions but the work is there regardless how much people mistakenly think it's unimportant or better yet, "not important enough yet." More often than not, developers are not the best sys admins nor are they good DBAs. Code can be re-written and deployed relatively easy but restructuring databases or IT infrastructures bring a lot of unnecessary downtime and headaches in even the medium-run. So why not start right from the beginning? Of course, you might be thinking, the answer is quite simple: "cost". That's only a common misconception though because the ROI is much greater than the cost of doing things right from the start. With that said, yes, it does cost money but it doesn't have to be a FT salary. It can be trusted outsourced entities that only charge by the hours of work they do. With just maybe a few hundred dollars a month, you can most likely notice a huge difference in the results delivered that will be felt through out your company's existence.

Here's the value it brings:

1. Expertise in product evaluation and purchases which saves on overall costs
2. Ensures a reliable IT infrastructure & optimized database
3. Lessens downtime and labor on problem solving
4. Optimizes scalability
5. Stabilizes expense patterns

Think about it... I am absolutely confident about my theory and stand behind it with all my heart. However, I would love to hear any opposing opinions to see why my theory might be flawed.

Start! ~ Let's start a company

A co-worker pointed out this conference to me today: Start!



It seems pretty interesting and the cost is very affordable. I am thinking about going myself to see what it's like and to find out how useful it might be for both people with great ideas that don't have a lot of experience and also for those who are seasoned veterans.

Anyone else interested? ;)