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2011-10-05T19:53:00.001-07:00

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My Experience w/ Virgin America

2011-03-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

Now I have done my fair share of traveling for both business and pleasure. There's nothing like a trendy branded airline with comfortable seats, well thought out decor, in-flight wifi, top notch flight attendants, prompt scheduling, and an eye-catching credit card with no annual fee earning frequent flyer miles. I think you all know what airline I am talking about: Virgin America. :)

I have always been a fan since day one even though I didn't become a customer until recently. I also as an entrepreneur know how to really appreciate why Virgin America is a success. However, no business is without growing pains. I am a prime example of a customer that experienced just that. Granted, in all fairness, it's partly due to my own carelessness but what business doesn't have to model around human error? As a technologist, I also understand that some times technical issues can't be avoided from time to time. With that in mind, here's what I called a "nightmare" in an earlier tweet which I think was quite over-exaggerated. I admit I was over-reacting and I apologize if I gave anyone the wrong impression. Nonetheless, I was a bit annoyed.

Anyhow, let's start with some background. So I received a phone call from my cousin one day telling me that she's graduating from her MBA in June and that I would be disowned if I didn't attend her graduation. ;) I was super excited to hear the good news and just within days later, I decided to look for flights on virginamerica.com to San Francisco. I also noticed that I had more than enough points for a one way there but not both ways. So I decided to start by purchasing a one way flight from Seattle to SF w/ my elevate points which threw the following error:

So I followed the instructions and called the number listed above. Given Virgin's high energy and friendly culture, to my surprise, and maybe I just had too high expectations, I got the opposite of what I expected. That part was ok though cause after all, who doesn't get a little cranky once in a while sitting at a call center dealing with stupid customers like me. So I happily moved on with describing my issue with the website. The customer service rep was not very receptive at first but I finally fought my way into getting the both of us on the same page.

To illustrate the issue, I am going use some fictitious numbers. First off, I described to the rep what I was trying to do and what error I was receiving to give context to the issue. After some back and forths to clear the facts, the reaction of the customer service rep was, "Oh thats why... you don't have enough points." When this was said, I was looking at my screen seeing that my profile had 9000 points and I even did a refresh to make sure I was getting the latest numbers which it still remained 9000 after the refresh. So I thought to myself, "the flight only costed 5200 points. What is he talking about?" Then the rep continued on and said, "I show that you only have 3800 points." So I thought, "hum, interesting... it looks like they deducted my points for the flight but didn't book my flight." So I communicated that to the rep and he responded by telling me that there's no one from Elevate that's in at that time so he asked me to send a screenshot to an e-mail and someone will get back to me during the normal hours. Ok, fine, I understand. It was 3 or 4am. So agreed and asked the representative if he can hold the seat/flight for me until the issue has been resolved and stayed on the line to let the representative do what he needed to do before we ended the call. After waiting for a little while, he had apparently forgotten my request and asked me multiple times if there's anything else he can do for me and I just kept asking about the holding of the seat/flight. Finally, he said he did it and the flight will be held for 24 hours. By then, I also already sent the e-mail of my screenshot and booked my return flight with my credit card so we ended the call.

By the next evening, I still have not received any forms of communication so I took it upon myself to try again. Well this time, I was able to purchase the flight with my points! Yay, right? So I happily went on with the other work that I had to accomplish for the evening but it didn't end there. At about 11pm/midnight-ish, it dawned on me! I had accidentally purchased another return flight with my points instead of a flight to SFO! So I scrambled through the site looking under "Manage Travel" --> "Change" in hopes to change the flight but I didn't see the booking at all! So I did a bit of research and revisiting through my experiences with the site before and realized that newly booked flights don't show up right away. So I tired changing the return fligtht that I had originally purchased into a flight to SFO instead since I was able to navigate to it and it was gonna let me change it but the quirk... it was going to charge me $75! By that time, I was pretty frustrated and tired so I just thought I would sleep on it and call during regular hours to resolve the issue.

The next day, I called and got the same tone of voice. I think again, I was expecting a little more energy because this time around is not graveyard shift. Then I thought to myself, oh well, as long as they can help me solve my problem, who cares right? So I went on describing my situation and that I would like to change one of my flights to a SEA to SFO flight. I maybe over sensitive but I felt like I was getting no's left and right and that I was going to be charged $75 no matter what. Of course, being me, I kept on thinking of alternatives and asked if we can do certain things a little differently to derive desirable results. After a few back and forths, we decided on cancelling the flight that I just booked with my points but here's the gotcha: "No one at Elevate is in right now so you will have to wait 72 hours before your points are returned to you..." So I thought to myself, one, there seems to be a bit of inefficiency and disconnect between VA & Elevate and 2, oh great, now I will either risk the price raising on me or the flight gets fully booked before I get my points back. Luckily, I am going to LA in July so I just sucked it up and paid for the flight to SFO and decided to save my points for the LA trip.

72 hours later, the flight I purchased with my points finally disappeared and my points are returned back to my profile. I can finally officially declare this adventure over.

I must say, it was a bit discouraging because it was my first time wanting to use my points after having done my time as a Virgin America customer. But I guess this might just be a one-off type of deal or at least I hope. Of course, I have been working in a client facing role for pretty much all of my career so I'll admit that I am a bit of a fanatic when it comes to customer service and I understand that even the best processes can sometimes let certain unexpected incidents slip. So I may have just set the bar too high. With that said, this is still an area that can improve to make Virgin America even more successful than it already is.

20 "Must Have" Mac Apps

2009-09-23T01:34:00.000-07:00

Seems like every geek has done a post like this and although I am a bit late to the game, I thought I might share with you all what I thought was my top 20. So here it is in no particular order of importance:

1. Quicksilver - Free

Do you ever find yourself searching for an app that you don't always use in the Applications folder for too long? Do you feel like your dock is getting cluttered up with too many apps to find and launch easily? More importantly, do you feel like the unnecessary switching of your hand to the mouse from the keyboard is unproductive? Here's your solution! This is always one of the first apps I install after installing OS X. it lets you launch any application you have installed in just a few keystrokes. It's every Mac user's essential companion.

2. Adium - Free

This is a multi-protocol IM client. It's essentially pidgin with a cocoa frontend. It's the best multi-protocol chat client out there with a sexy look to it. It however does not currently support video chat and some of the other nonsense features that I personally never use just yet. For video conferencing, Skype does the trick for me.

3. Tweetie - Free w/ Ad's

Hands down the best Twitter client I have used. It's nice and compact and built with usability in mind. Tweetdeck is probably the only other app that is better for certain users but I find that Tweetdeck seems to be only optimized when it takes up too much space on your monitor.

4. iStat Menus - Free

Keep track of your CPU and RAM usage at a glance!

5. Cyberduck - Free

GUI Based File Transferring Software. FTP, SFTP, and Many more! I love using the command line personally but there are certain tasks that helps to have a GUI to work with.

6. Parallels + MS Office Professional - $99.99 + $499 / $60~if you have a friend that works at MS.

Let's face it. As much as I love Macs and love Linux, MS has a huge place in the market. That and there are just certain areas that MS still dominates in features and performance. When you are collaborating with and/or supporting MS Windows users, you just need to have Windows and MS Office handy. Rebooting doesn't cut it. Virtualization is your answer.

7. Dropbox - Free for up to 2GB of Storage

Want a seamless way to share files with friends and co-workers? Or even just a way to work on the same files between your computers no matter where you go? Dropbox is the ultimate solution. Best of all, it supports Windows, Linux, and Mac.

8. OmniGraffle - $99.95 (Standard)

An award winning diagraming program. This is my bread and butter. I have to be able to communicate with my clients visually.

9. The Gimp - Free

Can't justify the cost of photoshop because you are not a professional graphic designer? This is the perfect alternative to Photoshop.

10. MS Office for Mac - $399 / $50~if you have a friend that works at MS.

I am old school and like my e-mail, calendaring, and contacts all in one window. I can't wait for Outlook for mac to come out. Until then, Entourage and a set of native office programs are essential to my day-to-day work life.

11. Colloquy - Free

A free IRC program. Believe it or not, IRC still has a lot to offer. This is where I get help and advice when I encounter issues that my IM friends can't fix. ;)

12. Skype - Free (Prepaid Long-Distance and Local Calling to Regular Phones w/ Low Rates)

This is how I keep in contact with my disparate teams around the world at the lowest cost possible.

13. TextWrangler - Free

Whenever I am not using VIM, this is what I use to take a quick look at code, edit config files, or make notes with.

14 Navicat Lite - Free

Need a gui to display your DB queries in an organized manner that supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Oracle? This is it!

15. Firefox - Free

I have been a Mozilla fan since the beginning and even though 3.5 has been a little slow, my browser usage habits are so tied to Firefox, I find myself still preferring it over faster alternatives such as Safari and Camino. It just feels natural for me to be using Firefox and I think a lot of my friends that might not have as much of an extensive background with Mozilla would agree with me too.

16. SSHFS - Free

This is a utility that allows you to mount a remote file system via SSH. A must have if you work with Linux servers as much as I do. It's also a secure alternative to windows file sharing.

17. TrueCrypt - Free

This utility allows you to create encrypted images to store files that are confidential.

18. Cocoa Packet Analyzer - Free

An alternative packet sniffer to Wireshark for Mac users. Very useful when you are analyzing a network and its traffic.

19. TunnelBlick - Free

GUI utlity for OpenVPN; one of the best VPN solutions I have ever used.

20. Remote Desktop Connection - Free

Need to remotely login to Windows servers? There's a native app for mac! =)

So there you have it! My 20 "must have" apps. It really was hard to narrow down to 20 because there are a lot of other Mac apps that I love and use all the time. Regardless, I had a lot of fun putting this list together. =) Hope this blog entry was useful to you all and I would love to hear your comments.

Fisher Plaza Fire & Disaster Recovery for Web-Based Companies

2009-07-05T19:33:00.000-07:00

An interested article by John Cook (@johnhcook) on his venture blog:

How one CTO avoided a Web site disaster after data center fire

The recent fire at the Fisher plaza has caused quite a bit of pain and agony for the IT folks that work for companies hosting their infrastructure at this colo facility and more importantly cost the companies a lot of revenue from being unexpectedly down for extended periods of time. Perhaps, the CEO of Redfin should be applauded for his support of the extra cost the CTO incurs by having redundancy to be prepared for such an uncommon disaster. Then again, they have been burned before which takes a bit of the impressiveness away but still, at least they learned because some will never learn and it was made apparent by this recent fire at Fisher.

Seattle 2.0 Awards

2009-05-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

I should have done this post a long time ago but haven't had time due to the new cross bordering project I have been working on as of late. Anyway, Seattle 2.0 Awards was great! Kudos to @calbucci for putting on such a great event! Congrats to @kabir and his team @ Appature on the "Best Boot-strapped Startup" nomination, John Cook at TechFlash on winning the "Best Blog from/about Startup" award, and a huge round of applause to @picnik and its CEO, Jonathan Sposato (whom I finally got to meet) on sweeping up the floor with awards left and right. It's definitely well deserved!

I was also happy to see the evidence of Cheddrmedia gaining quite a bit of visibility in the startups world with the recent launch of twishitter.com, a site powered by their platform. =D You all should check it out... Too funny...

Ignite Seattle! 6

2009-04-30T00:59:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of last week, I promised my biz dev manager that I would start attending more local startup/tech events so we finalized a list of upcoming events that we thought would be interesting and Ignite Seattle 6 ended up being on it. I have been meaning to check out Ignite for many years so with some background knowledge of what it is all about to begin with, I was pretty psyched to finally attend for the first time. It was hosted @ the King Cat theater this time which is supposedly a much bigger venue than where it was hosted before. The organizers must have been glad because the turnout was great! At first most of the titles of tonight's talks didn't really strike me as anything to write home about but to my pleasant surprise, I was pretty engaged at least 80% if the time. I guess I am still a geek at heart huhn? Anyway, here's a good piece of news for you all that thought you missed out on a once a year event: They are going to start doing these quarterly from now on! So it will be sooner than later before you can experience Ignite Seattle too! ;) I am definitely interested in attending again.

Seattle Social Media Tweetup + Meet Chirstine Lu

2009-04-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

This is definitely another testimony to @chrispirillo's ability to rally a great turnout. On Friday night, Chris organized a tweetup at Pyrimid Alehouse in SODO for some social media folks local to Seattle. We all had interesting conversations over great beer and also had the pleasure to meet our special guest, @christinelu, founder of China Business Network who happened to be in town with @cfnoble.

It was refreshing for me to re-emerge into the local community in Seattle after having been in Asia for more than a month. I got to meet a lot of likeminded entrepreneurs who gave amazing insight like @caffeinatedSEO and his business partners.

Now that I am back in Seattle for a little while and all the big projects are pretty much over with, I plan to become more active again; both on and offline. Special thanks to @frenzzy, and Carl [who really needs a twitter account... ;)] for coming along with me. It was great times! =)

Speaking of interesting events, Hong Kong Forum is going to be early December this year. This is going to be the first year I am attending. Even though it's so far away still, I am super excited already!

A Good but Slow way to get a logo designed for your company...

2009-01-19T18:57:00.000-08:00

Recently, a friend asked me to pick my favorites out of a sample set of logos made for his company. It turns out he was using crowdSPRING.com, an online marketplace for creative services. How it works is you post your need for a creative project and a community of creative professionals will see your post and the ones that are interested will submit their work/samples. I have heard of crowdSPRING (cS) before but never had a chance to really take a look closely but this time around, I had a reason to actually use it.

My first reaction was that the site was slow and unresponsive. The usability wasn't top notch either. However, at the end of the day, it still got the job done. I think the people at cS have come up with a great idea but their engineering / IT team has a ways to go to to make this a product that I will actually enjoy using.

There's one other thing that I am a bit puzzled about and it could be because I haven't had the time to dig deeper. That is what if I don't find something that I like out of all the submits for my posted project? Am I still required to pick one and pay? What governs the quality assurance aspect of this marketplace?

BBC News: Windows Worm Numbers "Skyrocket"

2009-01-19T18:21:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, I received an abnormal amount of calls from friends about not being able to boot their computers. Turns out that most of them have caught malicious worms that have recently been flying around via e-mails and live messenger. Some of them might also derive from users that seem to use a lot of BT. Here's the pattern that identifies the similarities between all the victims I have spoken to over the weekend: All of them didn't have proper anti-virus protection installed on their computers and that most of them at the same time also use their computers for important business functions along side personal usage. Mean while, this article popped up on BBC:

With the rising number of malicious viruses and worms out there, here's my 2 cents:

Go get a copy of AVG. It takes care of both viruses and spyware while being low on resource consumption. Keep that up-to-date religiously, and also keep your windows updates coming. This is a simple solution that has worked very well for most of my clients and friends that take my advice. *knock on wood* ;) That said, nothing is full proof but security practices are all about reducing risk rather than attempting the impossible; complete elimination. Even so, you will loose quite a few less gray hairs as long as you do your due diligence on reducing risk.

Soonr: Powerful cloud services platform

2009-01-05T17:12:00.000-08:00

It has been a while now and I have heard numerous times, "You never update your blog anymore!" So I am going to try to pop my head back up out of the water. Since I last updated, I decided to give in and purchased an iPhone because my Samsung Blackjack II was starting to act up after being dropped in the washer... I know... don't ask... =P I must say though, I am pretty impressed with the iPhone and am generally very happy with it. I also got used to the soft keyboard pretty quickly just like everyone told me I would. However, there are still 3 grips that I have about the iPhone which has probably been written all over the web already:

1. No MMS support...
2. Lack of bluetooth capabilities
3. No video recorder unless you hack the hell out of your iPhone (subjective)

In any case, back to the main topic. I recently ran across Soonr, a "desktop to cloud to iPhone" technology/service via Venture Beat.

I finally gave it a try today and thought that it works amazingly well. This is definitely something that can prove to be useful in a collaborative environment especially since a lot of my co-workers and friends all have iPhones as well. I also have a few documents that I constantly update like my billable hours that I some times would like a quick glimpse of w/o having to open up my laptop while I am on the road which I can now do with Soonr. Best of all, the service is free! Now I just hope that they come out w/ some simple document editing features so I can also do last minute edits and such on the fly. Give it a try and let me know what you all think! =)

GetHundos Launched!

2008-07-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a crazy month and things will continue to be crazy until mid August when I wrap up some of my heavy engagements which means I will continue to be bad at updating this blog. I apologize in advance for that. On that note, here's something that I felt was important enough to squeeze in amidst my crazy schedule:

After months of hard work by my good friends Leo, Adam, and their team plus a round of diligent alpha testing by their close friends and investors, gethundos.com beta has finally launched! =) I am very excited for them and the site has already gained quite a bit of traction with their first target audiences at the University of Washington. For now, only users with a u.washington.edu e-mail address can register through their site or any other .edu address if you are invited by a Washington friend. However, if any of you who don't have a .edu address and would still like to give this site a run for its money, just give me a shout and I'll hook you up with an account! ;)

So what's this site all about? Well, looks like someone has already beat me to announcing their launch and did a very good job of describing the site so here it is:

GetHundos Targets UW Students With Themed Contests

Congrats to the GetHundos team! Keep up the good work! =)

Update [10-12-2009]: GetHundos has evolved into Cheddr Media about half a year or so ago. You can also find them on Twitter: @cheddrmedia =)

Why I won't buy an iPhone 3G anymore...

2008-07-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

A lot of publications have been covering the iPhone 3G's new terms with AT&T so I won't keep you long on what's already covered. Here are the bullet points on why I won't get an iPhone 3G anymore:

1. increase in data plan price by $10/mo and technically $20/mo for corporate use
2. No text messaging included with the data plan
3. I am currently an AT&T customer that's not yet eligible for an upgrade so it won't be just $199 for me.
4. No usb cable to charge while syncing

Here's a more in depth article about the iPhone 3G and its terms with AT&T from Venture Beat.

A Seattle Stealth Mode Startup Closing on Launch

2008-06-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-06-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-06-12T11:14:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

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? ;)

“20 Ideas To Relentlessly Self Promote You and Your Business”

2008-05-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

An older but great blog post that summarized Ann Tardy's “Driving Revenue in 2008 with Asking + Relentless Self-Promotion” presentation @ SF's chapter of Women in Consulting.

What great guidelines to follow for those who want to bring their business ideas to life or just simply drive additional revenue for their existing company.

As a side note, this is what led me to the above blog post: From Incoherent to High Concept Pitch

Yet another good read courtesy of Joey Lo. @Aronado referred to this blog post as a "A Gift from the Startup Gods..." I must say though, I wasn't entirely impressed w/ the "Facebook for Brands" tagline.

Earthlink Followup & Qwest's FTTN...

2008-05-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

So Earthlink promised a trial for me but never came through. There goes my high hopes. =P

On another note, I found out from Leo today that Qwest is offering fiber optic 12mbps high speed internet in Newcastle, WA?! Time to investigate them instead. Maybe they will offer it in my area too. =)

Though I must say, their prices seem a bit higher than what Verizon is offering the areas that they cover. Without much of a choice though, Qwest's fiber services seems like the best deal in town. Here's more about it.

Good bye Earthlink!

All about funding...

2008-05-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple more short articles recommended by Joey Lo that I really liked myself as well.

Angel Financing

When to Raise Money

Of course, I am absolutely not saying that you will learn everything about funding through these two articles but they are nonetheless very informative sources that summarize what I had to learn "the hard way" from working with startups and pitching for funding over time.

China rising: If you know Mandarin and management, you're in

2008-05-19T20:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my friend Dave for this great article. It really points out an incredible opportunity for those of us who are bi-lingual or intend to become bi-lingual. I have always been an advocate for seeing the world and leaving a trail across all 7 continents. So how about China as your next stop? =)

5 Quick Tips on Pitching Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists

2008-05-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Great short article on simple/obvious things to keep in mind when pitching your idea to potential investors courtesy of Joey Lo. I think I should write a script to auto repost all her links on Twitter. She comes up with the best articles. =)

Google Docs Sharing Security

2008-05-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are fans of Google Docs or use it to collaborate in your startup environment, here's a very useful article to read before you go start sharing all your docs left and right on it. ;)

Why Microsoft buying Facebook is not as silly as you think...

2008-05-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

Joey Lo pointed out this Alley Insider article on Twitter approximately 5 hours ago. Very interesting bullet points on why it makes sense for MS to really buy FB contrary to some of the other critics' believe.

The tech geek side of me is wondering if MS does end up successfully acquire Facebook, will Facebook have to port all its code to .NET? ;) That would be an interesting migration project.

New Alternative DSL/Phone Service in Seattle

2008-04-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

"Atlanta, April 15, 2008 – Seattle has been selected as the market for the re-introduction of EarthLink’s (Nasdaq: ELNK) DSL and Home Phone Service, which combines convenient, low-cost telephone service and ultra-fast high-speed Internet access all on one bill."

- Earthlink Official Press Release

I am going to give it a try and see how well it works. If it covers all my needs like my current setup does, it may mean cost savings for a lot of small businesses in the area like mine without compromising quality of service. I have high hopes. =)

Here are their prices:

"With a basic plan starting at $49.95 a month, including 500 minutes of long-distance and local calling, DSL and Home Phone Service offers deep savings over most competitors. The premium plan, at $69.95 a month, offers unlimited long-distance and local calling and the fastest DSL Internet access in the Seattle area."

Find out more here.

I will keep everyone posted once I have had a chance to see this service in action!

Facebook Chat Part 2

2008-04-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Looks like Facebook has fully launched chat and I have been hearing a lot of feedback from FB users around me. Although a lot of them were negative like I suspected, there were still some good feedback and I personally thought that the new bar that chat sits in is pretty nice. I can now check the latest notifications through this little AJAX bar without having to navigate away from the homepage. That's something that I think is a good improvement in FB's usability. I am also not as opposed to having chat around anymore since it's not obtrusive at all. All in all, I think it's nicely done. However, with all that said, I am still skeptical on how successful this feature will be. I guess we'll just have to let time do its magic.

I would love to hear more on what everyone thinks of this new feature. =)

A True International Traveler's Phone?

2008-04-23T14:34:00.001-07:00

There has been a lot of noise coming from my Asia contacts lately about a new Skype based phone that will allow a fixed cost plan for making and receiving calls from anywhere in the world. This means that roaming charges may no longer apply or so I was told anyway. I am thinking this might be it?

It sounds like a very interesting solution for international businesses or even the retired who's traveling all over the world. With that said, I have a few questions about this new phone if any of my HK readers are familiar with this product in an attempt to clear up some confusion:

1. Besides the "3 Skype phone," are there any other similar products in HK right now that fits the description?

2. Does this phone's creator or carrier have contracts with carriers in each country they don't have coverage in so that there won't be any extra charges for roaming on their data networks when used outside of the country it was purchased from and hence making it a true international mobile phone solution? Or is this stuck to only certain areas that the carrier has coverage in as most of the news coverage I have read suggested?

3. How does it perform compared to the traditional cell phones? (speed of msg delivery, voice quality, video functionality?, etc)

I am personally quite excited about this product even though it might not meet all of my requirements. The reason why I say this is because this product is a sign of progression towards a product that I will most likely eventually love. I think what would even kick it up yet another notch is if you can get up to 3 Skype-in numbers from the countries that you visit most as part of the package. Maybe I am too idealistic though. Here's a TechCrunch article about the Skype phone which makes me think that we are far from a truly international low/fixed-cost mobile solution as I had initially hoped for after briefly hearing about it from my contacts. With all that said, the looks of the "3 Skype Phone" is not all that impressive either which is kind of disappointing. =/ Regardless, I will definitely follow up on this later.

Startup Recruitment

2008-04-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

My friend Leo recently wrote a pretty good post on recruitment and gave a few tips that I thought was valuable to share. My favorite tip was "Don’t stop recruiting until you have someone on board." That is such good piece of advice in my opinion because it's often too easy for hiring managers to get excited too early on and loose sight of potential fall-outs and better fitting candidates that might be out there. Like the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins suggests, you always want the best of the best on the bus and should never settle for just good enough.

In any case, here are my additional thoughts that I left as a comment to his post:

START of QUOTE

One thing I would like to add is that prior to interviewing a candidate, it’s always a good idea to first formulate some relevant questions and then evaluate the questions’ alignment with what you want to find out about your candidates either on your own or if possible, with your team. Keep in mind that these questions will serve as a framework rather than something to read off to a candidate. The idea is to have high level questions that will facilitate a more focused free-flow conversation between the interviewer and the candidate during the interview.

I have in the past managed a good number of hiring managers that make the mistake of walking into interviews without any well thought out framework resulting in a hire based on a falsely positive feeling of the candidate. More often than not, they soon realize that he/she is not a good match only a few weeks to a month after the candidate was hired. What a costly mistake that is. When you think about it, between energy spent managing him/her, employee benefits, sign on paid vacation or bonus, and salary, you have just lost a good chunk of money over close to zero ROI.

Lastly, I want to point out that although it’s important to have a pitch. It’s even more important that it’s short and concise. The last thing you want to do is sit in an interview and end up blabbing away about your business the entire time which then looses focus on the real reason behind the interview. It sounds silly but a lot of hiring managers make the very same mistake.

END of QUOTE

Recruitment often seems like such an easy thing but in fact, it's really a science and an art in and of itself.

The End of Microsoft?

2008-04-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

According to Venture Beat, Gartner did a presentation recently on "why they think Microsoft’s Windows operating system is on the verge of dying." If they are right, it will be an interesting day to see when a bunch of regular non-techie users are running around with OS X and Linux regardless of the purpose of usage. ;) Unfortunately, I don't think it will be that easy. I have a hard time believing that the Redmond software giant hasn't already put their brightest minds on strategically digging themselves out of this Vista hole that they are currently in. On top of that, there's MS Office and Exchange that most businesses cannot live with out. I mean, even though I am an opensource enthusiast, I still wouldn't replace Exchange in a corporate environment as exciting as some of the opensource alternatives are out there. Nonetheless, I think Gartner has an interesting theory and I am definitely not denying the possibility of that things will eventually go the way they predict. After all, what goes up, must go down right?

Facebook Chat Limited Launch

2008-04-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

Tech Crunch says Facebook Chat Launches, For Some. What does that mean for Digsby?

Personally, I think Facebook doesn't need anymore extra features to clutter it up more than it already is but that's just me.

Google App Engine VS Amazon Web Services

2008-04-08T15:48:00.000-07:00

Last night, the search engine giant, Google announced its App Engine product which is a rival service of Amazon's Web Services. Here's more coverage on it at Venture Beat. It's too early to say how much of a threat they are to Amazon based on unknown pricing factors and the duration of the lack of support in other languages besides Python. However, I must say that my knees would be a little shaky at this point if I was Amazon.

It seems that a lot of startups now-a-days are leaning towards running their apps on Amazon's, and now also Google's infrastructure for just a fraction of the cost of dedicated hosting or co-location. Easy and cost effective scaling is also a reason why these services are so popular. All in all, from a pure business perspective, I really don't see much of a compelling reason to not go with them especially when it also dramatically reduces infrastructure maintenance costs. However, it goes without to say that there are yet also some cons to this type of hosting. What I see as cons or more specifically, barriers would be that you are subject to their security practices, downtimes, and customization policies. Now, what I would really like to do is to be able to give these services a whirl on my own to see how it feels. My extent of experience in this area has really only been Amazon's S3 which I don't even play much with because where my engagements use S3, someone else is in-charge of the management of it. The other thing that I am really interested in is to hear the personal opinions and reactions to this new hosting paradigm from authorities that are in the colo/DH business.

With all that said though, something inside of me still prefers to run my own servers and manage my own infrastructure probably largely due to my IT and security background. The ability to customize my system architecture and retain data on dedicated locations has always been a perk that I valued more than anything else. I am also concerned about the compliance related implications to using something like AWS and GAE. I would even go as far as to argue that the extra cost of hosting your own infrastructure ends up being a worth while investment in the long run. We'll have to see if I will change my mind though as AWS and GAE matures over time.

Couple Sues Google for Invasion of Privacy

2008-04-04T13:45:00.000-07:00

Since my Google Street View post was such a popular one, here's yet another interesting ValleyWag story on it not too long after I replied to a reader about how it would probably be a privacy issue if Google Street View actually gave live views to our streets. ;)

Couple sues Google over Street View pics of their house

Likeminded Local

2008-04-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

Growing up in the suburbs in rainy Seattle during my teenage years always made me feel like I was the odd one out unlike say a place like LA. My peers around me always seemed a bit too laid back and with not enough career ambition. Of course, there are always exceptions like anything else. But even so, it always seemed like it was hard for me to find likeminded individuals with similar life experiences. With that said, interestingly enough, I ran into a blog today with some posts that I can really identify with like this one. It reminds me of the time when I finally left Vigilos after having spent 4 crazy years with them which I enjoyed more than any other time in my career before.

It turns out that the author lives in Seattle and has some very similar attributes as me. Furthermore, I seem to be able to identify with most of the content he writes about. This doesn't really happen a lot. It actually makes me want to reach out and meet the guy.

VoIP Bridging for Non-3G / Wifi Capable Phones

2008-04-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty cool idea but sounds all too complex to use. Sure they are trying to iron out the inconveniences but I am perfectly fine with my 3G enabled smartphone running Skype natively. ;) After all, the perk of running Skype on a phone for me is so that I can get in touch with my international clients when I am on the run and possibly without my laptop. Of course, I am probably not the general user as they put it. However, I would think that most people that are aware of such technologies would already be unable to live life without a phone hooked up on a nice data plan which would mean they would run Skype natively as well?

Top 10 Legal Mistakes made by Entrepreneurs

2008-04-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine sent me this HBS article earlier this morning and told me that he would have loved to have had the chance to read this prior to some of his previous partnership fallouts. It definitely is a must read for all of you out there that are trying to do your first startup. You will definitely feel the importance of it if anything ever goes wrong which happens more often than most people expect. In my opinion, these precautions should always be taken into consideration and in most cases, as standard practices no matter how much you trust your partners and others.

Entrepreneurs vs. Arm Chair Quarterbacks

2008-03-28T16:14:00.001-07:00

I have in my life taken a much different route compared to most of my peers. Startups and entrepreneurship have always been part of me since the very early stages of my life. I vividly remember the experience of leaving my cushy IS Manager job at a medium size corp when I was 16 years old to start an import car accessories and stereo consulting/installation company for the first time. Sure, it wasn't a glamorously successful venture but I made my lunch money and had lots of fun while doing it. From that point on, I knew that entrepreneurship was what fits me best. However, startups are not for everyone. I think many would agree with me. With that said, the thing that I can't stand is exactly what Kelly Smith from Curious Office beautifully describes in his blog entry, Entrepreneurs vs. arm chair quarterbacks. Arm chair quarterbacks criticizing startups can be pretty annoying. It's like if EnGadget were to do product reviews without ever even touching the physical thing... Doesn't make a lot of sense does it?

China Content Filtering

2008-03-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

One of the things I found annoying when I was in Beijing at the end of last year was that I was unable to blog because Blogger, Livejournal, wordpress, and most any large blogging sites were blocked by the government's filters. This is not new to me since it's pretty much a widely known fact but it's one of those "I knew that" type things that didn't really sink in on me until I actually experienced the block first hand.

This experience made me think of a crazy idea. I started by thinking that if I ever moved to China, I would make sure I had a VPN server hosted in the US so that I can route all my traffic through the US to by-pass the filters (I am sure other techies have thought of this before and probably already do it). Then I thought hey, there are probably quite a bit of US/UK/CA entrepreneurs and English teachers that would enjoy the same technology. What if I made a business out of this by providing a service available to foreigners visiting or living in China? That way, the online freedom we have always enjoyed can travel with us regardless of what country we visit. Of course, that's given that the Chinese government only cares about filtering the content that the Chinese nationals see and hear but not foreigners as well. However, even with that aside, it may still be an unrealistic idea after all. This is because I am concerned about two factors:

1. Political implications
2. Demand for this type of service to make it a viable business

As you can probably tell, this is probably something I won't pursue myself but if anyone is gutsy enough, has a good business model, and has enough connections with the Chinese government to get their support for it based on economic growth implications, I would love to see it happen!

Stress Relief / Team Building Facilitator

2008-03-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest things about working at Imagekind is that everyday between 3pm - 7pm, you will from time to time hear this "tick, tack, tick" sound coming from near by our front door at the office. This is not a clock ticking like you might have guessed but rather the sound of pairs of our employees taking short 10 min breaks to get their ping pong game on. =)

Some times startups get so entrenched into their work because of limited resources, they forget that proper team building and stress relief also needs to take place to keep a healthy company culture. It also puts an interesting mix into a work day which allows employees to look forward to not only taking down their work related challenges each day but also an intense 21 point ping pong madness.

You might wonder, "What about productivity?" Let's just say, with or without ping pong, people should always step away from their monitor for 10-15min which will one, give their eyes a break that they need, and 2, give a short down time for the employees to rejuvenate their mind so they can attack their challenges again when they come back to their desks. With that said, what a better use of time than to play some ping pong and loosen up your entire body and hence, getting some real rejuvenating rest?

For you readers out there, what do you do for stress relief at work? What's your facilitator? I would love to hear more ideas.

Ideas, People, and Execution

2008-03-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

I am sure by now, most everyone has read one article or another that says, "it's not the idea, it's the people." I like to take one step further and point out that, aside from the ideas and the people, what's even more important is "execution." I am not the first one to say this as this idea has been published by well established entrepreneurs like Ryan P. Allis before. Here's an example.

With that said, this is not to say that I am undermining the importance of good ideas and great people but on a scale of comparison, execution is what I see as the primary factor for why many startups fail which ties in very closely with my last post because execution summarizes exactly what many former fortune 500 executives running their first startup fail in.

Ideas need to be refined to create a sound business model but as Allis pointed out in the above linked article, unless you are a PHD doing research at a top university, chances are, someone else has probably thought of your idea. On the other hand, giving "people" credit for a successful business seems flawed in that although the people is the source of effective execution, at the end of the day, "execution" is the underlying factor on why a business is successful.

I want to illustrate what I mean by "execution": For example, even if you have the greatest product in the world but your deployment staff is poorly trained or communicated to, no customer is ever going to be happy with you. Another example would be, if your employee's morale is low, the outcome of their work will never be optimize even if it's acceptable. Perhaps an even better example would be, if you don't properly foster a healthy environment for employees to step up and take charge of their area of expertise, you are wasting money and producing poor results.

The point to all of this boils down to one thing. When starting a business or reevaluating why your business may not be optimized, pay very close attention to the execution portion of your business and the answers to your questions will become much more clear.

Common Problem of Many Startups

2008-02-22T15:44:00.000-08:00

Over the last 10 years, I have heard over 50 entrepreneurs pitch to me about how a niche of their startup is that their management staff consists of former big shots of so and so fortune 500 company. Little do they know that it's a red flag for me when I hear a pitch like that.

This is why:

1. They over reference how things were done at the fortune 500 they were working for (ie. At Microsoft, this was how it was done..." 10 times a day! Get over it... you are not at that company anymore and this startup is nothing like it!

2. They have no idea how a small business should be managed. Their team building skills in startup environments is particularly weak. They also want everyone to do things the "big company" way even when it doesn't make sense to do so.

3. They carry over bad and illogical habits from their fortune 500 experience. ie. being overly political about everything that just doesn't need to be.

4. Their bandwidth for managing multi-facets of the business is usually very low because they are used to the blinders that they have to put on when working at a fortune 500 or otherwise spoiled by having other departments to take care of some of the responsibilities of a manager in a startup. ie. What? I have to worry about chasing after my employee's benefits paperwork? Or what? We need another IT guy for 20 extra hires?

5. Communication is not fostered by them. ie. Let's keep the information to ONLY the people that ABSOLUTELY have to know. Well, news flash buddy, a lot of other people need that information too if you just put yourself in others' shoes to analyze overall information needs and distribution. For example, I once worked with a startup that fired people and didn't announce it hoping that it would just blow over... Imagine that. They apparently didn't understand that this method of terminating employees only leaves others feeling like they don't know when they will be let go of too for whatever unreasonable conspiracy. Former fortune 500 managers also often forget that because the company is so small, even employees from other dept also feel near and dear about why another employee at another dept is fired unlike a large corporation where segregation makes it none of their business. The result is that, when you asked the employees what they thought of the manager who did the firing, 80% of them used the word "shady" to describe the manager. The issue then was that there was no more trust within the organization and morale for the company as a whole became extremely low.

These are just some of the reasons why I am not a big fan of most former fortune 500 executives running their first startup. I say the word "most" obviously because not all of them are the way I describe them to be. However, I bring this up because this has been responsible for too many growth stunnings of startups from what I have seen. Of course, even with all that said, there are also many other counter factors that can make a startup successful even with such management personnel but I will leave that for another post.

Thoughts on Venture Capital & the Current Market

2008-02-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to write something about this topic for a while and finally decided it's time. I think the kicker was definitely from reading this blog entry.

If you scroll down towards the readers' comments after reading the blog entry, you will see an individual commenting on the fact that NWVA is failing because of its investment strategy. I am not dismissing that there's the possibility of that being a partial cause of failure but I am more supportive of Simpson's explanation. Here's why:

The market is saturated and full of failing ideas because:
1. There are too many individuals with great ideas "playing business" when they are blatantly not ready and haven't the slightest idea about what they are getting into.
2. Most of these same individuals described above are extremely outspoken and can easily manipulate investors even though they have no viable execution plan.
3. Simpson is right in that, there are too many "me too" companies. Everyone seems to think "I can do better." Face it, it's not that easy.

This is largely fostered by an influx of venture capitalists as described by Simpson who are just throwing money left and right. When the supply of funding became greater, the natural market reaction was that the minimum quality of what investors demand decreased by a mile. I think most of you would agree with me that some of the business ideas that were funded in the recent years are just absolutely ridiculous.

In my opinion, everything is interrelated. There's always a cause for every effect. In this case, I would say the current business trend caused by many of the factors mentioned above has created a broken down economy. The only reviving chance is if more realistic and experienced entrepreneurs step up to supply us with some breakthrough businesses to stimulate our downward curving economy.

By break through, I mean business ideas that are less trend aligned. I have never really been a big believer of business ideas that are heavily aligned with the latest hype such as a good number of the web 2.0 businesses out there. Sure, they make money and I am definitely not denying the success of trend catchers. However, I truly believe that a great business idea is something that's timeless. Of course, maybe this is most likely derived from the fact that I am more or less a traditional and conservative businessman.

Back from Asia...

2007-12-31T13:40:00.000-08:00

What can be more of a perfect way to fight jet lag than to keep my blog up-to-date? ;) So I just came back from a combination of Taipei, Beijing, and Hong Kong. This trip was half business and half pleasure. The business purpose is to explore my future opportunities in Asia while catching up on some oversees work for Metacentrix. As for pleasure, well, I just haven't had a vacation in ages. So I did the usual Taipei night market, Great Wall visit, LKF parties and such.

Although I didn't have my camera with me for the most part of this trip, I managed to still take a few pictures here and there:

Out of all three places, the most outstanding experience must have been Beijing. While I was there, I ran into my friend, Francis randomly and finally got to catch up with him a little bit. It turns out that he's now working as a program manager at IceBreaker, Inc. What a perfect job I must say. He works half the time in Seattle and the other half in Beijing. It's almost my perfect scenario. The only difference would be that in an ideal world, I would replace Beijing with Hong Kong. Of course, that's only a fantasy especially when Beijing is developing at such rapid speeds. Any entrepreneur with the right mind would hit Beijing over Hong Kong any day.

To give you an idea how fast Beijing is developing, on my first night there, right downstairs from my friend's apartment, there was a barebone empty leased space with construction tools all over which was apparent that they hadn't even started renovating the place yet. However, the next night as I walked by the same place, this same exact space became a restaurant already and was in business with lots of customers inside. That's something that you won't see in the US or even Hong Kong for that matter of fact. Now I only wonder if this speed of development will sustain after the 2008 Olympics. After all, the Olympics is what really prompted the recent rapid development efforts. After seeing Beijing, I am even more excited to see what Shanghai is like. I can't wait. I am just not sure when the next time I have enough vacation will be given my upcoming family reunions.

Lastly, the other worth while event I attended was the Info Expo in Taipei. You have to see it to know what I am talking about. They effectively bring street market tactics into a high tech environment. ;) See pictures in link provided above.

Happy New Year everyone!

Apple scores again on my scale... or maybe not?

2007-11-18T22:33:00.000-08:00

I was browsing around the Apple store in Bellevue square yesterday with a friend that wanted to buy a Mac Mini and ran into this:

It was love at first sight. It's too bad that I already very recently bought a Plantronics discovery 655 or I would have picked one up on the spot.

Though I am thinking it's probably a good thing I didn't pick one up considering the reviews I have been reading about them. It appears that the functionality of this slick bluetooth headset is not as impressive as its design.

The almost perfect car dealership...

2007-11-10T16:58:00.000-08:00

As some of you know already, my car was slightly scratched up by one of the valet guys in a garage located in downtown Seattle recently. Fortunately, they were perfectly honest with me and told me right away. The manager also offered to take my car to Lexus of Bellevue where he worked in the evenings to get my car buffed out and fully detailed at no charge. So after a few back and forths, I decided that I was going to take him up on his offer but I would take the car in myself.

When I got there, I was thoroughly impressed. They had moved to a brand new location down the street since July. Basically, think of a multi-level elegant building with views of downtown Bellevue all around. They also have all the amenities you can ever think of. There's a showroom, surround sound theater, gift shop, cafe, TV area with fire place, a beautiful fish tank, LCD screens in multiple locations, children's play room w/ video games, work area, and most notably, a mini golf course!

Problem? yes... while I almost had a perfect experience waiting for my car to be finished, I hopped on their guest wireless to get some work done. My first impression was, "hum, decent speeds..." then I found a significant problem. I was unable to connect to any of my e-mail accounts via IMAPs or remote into the office with VPN or SSH. After some investigating, it seems that their IT dept. decided to block all outgoing ports except for 80 and 443 which make their guests only able to browse the web. You would think that a dealership for cars of such prestige would be more sensitive towards business usage when it comes to their IT amenities. Unfortunately, that's not the case. It's one thing to be security conscious but it's another thing to be unaware of customer needs.

Well, maybe I am just too critical.

The IPhone is out...

2007-07-01T23:08:00.000-07:00

Quick summary of this hot new item -

Pros:

* Stylish
* Compelling UI
* Fully capable of E-Mail, Browsing, and Searching Google Maps
* Apple Compatible (Sync with Macbook, etc)

Cons:

* No keyboard (Just Soft Keybaord)
* No stylus (Hard to type on soft keyboard with fingers)
* Lacking corporate integration & support
* Still too expensive for someone like me to want to buy one

WiFi Funded To Hotspot Your Digital Camera

2007-06-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty interesting idea. We all have friends that always take pictures of the group and swear up and down that they will send it to you later but it never happens. Now if only I can make them all use this technology. ;)

The WebOS Paradigm???

2007-05-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

There's a new web-based desktop product out there called DesktopTwo in beta stage that seems like a pretty cool idea. I took about 10 minutes to sign up and play with it a little myself and it seems like that it would be pretty useful for people on the go and always using different computers. However, I suspect that "people" will most likely equal to "students" because the applications available are pretty opensource heavy and you know non-techy corporate users swear by their Outlook and MS Office. As for other non-corporate users, mobility for personal use is just not important enough "to learn yet another thing." That aside, it does provide quite a bit of features and services such as your own e-mail address @desktoptwo.com as well as your own blog off of their server.

Micrsoft Surface

2007-05-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

A Microsoft secret project that's no longer a secret.

New computing paradigm? This is just like the movie, Minority Report except for it's not a projected user interface but rather it is in the form of a tangible surface.

Google's "Street View"

2007-05-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

Google has launched what they call "Street View." What it does is it allows users to see an interactive 3D image of the street which is pretty cool but it's in too early of a stage to be useful. since it is currently only available for certain areas. With that all said, I am a little disappointed that this is not a live view of the actual street. I guess that's not supposed to be the point?

"Good is the Enemy of Great"

2007-05-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

I was just having a drink with an old friend in Belltown near my place and pleasantly met someone in upper management at MS that also happened to be a passionate entrepreneur. He swore up and down to me that "Good to Great" by Jim Collins is a "must-read" for entrepreneurs and corporate executives. So I am giving it a try. So-far, I haven't been disappointed but I will judge it only when I have finished it.

13 Year Old CEO

2007-05-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

It was not long ago that the only entrepreneurs were men in their 30's or older. Society has changed and entrepreneurs are becoming younger and younger. Elementeo for example has a 13 year old founder and CEO. Check this VentureBeat.com story:

Craigslist's Craig & Interviewing Logic

2007-05-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

Craigslist's Ongoing Success Linked from The Alarm:Clock.

Picture cut from The Alarm:Clock

"Of course, this startup that passed on Craig is now out of business while Craiglist is a top 10 Internet property. It reminds us that sticking to it is the best business model on the Net and that people who do not interview well should not be taken lightly." - The Alarm:Clock

I tend to disagree with the statement of Craig "not interviewing well." The startup that turned Craig down didn't do so because he was technically incapable but rather because he was "weird." I hardly consider that as not interviewing well. The "turn down" was just a result of the interviewer not understanding what were truly the important attributes of his/her hire which is a common mistake made by hiring managers in businesses of all sizes.

Hiring is an art. The biggest mistake that particular start-up made was not turning Craig away. It was hiring the head of engineering who turned Craig down which proved to be the real mistake.

Apple IQ PDA - Imagination Contest

2007-05-09T19:02:00.000-07:00

I wonder if Apple will choose this concept from the contest:

If this product came true, I would be the first one to buy it!

Business Ideas

2007-05-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

I am one that's pretty excited about almost all business opportunities and given that I have owned a couple of companies of my own too, I tend to be the target for advice with my friends who are considering about starting a business.

The conversation usually starts with, "which idea should I go with?" or "What do you think about this, this, and that..." I think it's become quite apparent that for the former question, I have become accustomed to answering with, "pick what's the simplest..." and the latter, my answer is usually based on "whether or not an idea is simple enough." So why do I stress that?

I stress simplicity because almost all complex products are slow money makers and often times have much greater risk and more barriers to conquer before the company can even start attaining a small amount of positive cash flow. Therefore, unless you are already a fortune 500 company CEO and have all the network and funding you will ever need, a simple idea is what anyone should bank on to "make their first million." Look at the million dollar homepages out there! Look at your 25 year old next door neighbor that does "paid by the click" internet marketing and generates about $3-4 million each year. They all respectively bank on a simple idea.

Furthermore, a simple idea is a pitch that will spread quicker. The faster your customer base can understand your pitch, the faster and easier it is for you to make the sale. In fact, it may even come in handy when it comes to looking for funding. I just caught a WSJ article from my business partner and friend in LA with a quote that really caught my eyes:

"If it takes us more than five minutes to understand what the product is, we are not going to fund it," George Zachary, Partner | Charles River Ventures

A "Must Have?" to Invest in the Stock Market

2007-05-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

A while back, one of my long time friends that was quite a talented stock investor decided that he was done with serving his time at a fortune 100 software company and started his own Web2.0 deal. At first, honestly, it was a rough one... but then, over time, it has become quite polished and now, It might even be something that every stock market investor should consider looking into:

I think the coolest thing about this site is that it contains all the tools an average investor will ever need all in one site with trade simulations and the whole nine yards. More importantly, it fosters a community effort in trading which empowers traders to gain a much more insightful way of approaching the stock market. Of course, talk is cheap so you should go check it out for yourself!

After you have had a chance to play with it a bit, feel free to leave your comments here and I will make sure I pass the word along. ;) Otherwise, you can always leave them on TippingMonkey.com directly!

VC Ratings

2007-05-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are planning on a big idea that needs lots of funding, here's a site that you might want to keep checking back on for your background research:

Courtesy of VentureBeat.com from TheFunded, the site for VC hatchet jobs

So yeah... from that article, you can probably tell that you can only trust so much of the ratings from "The Funded" but hey, it doesn't hurt to get just one more perspective on VCs that you are about to deal with right? ;)

Common Frustrations of the Business-Centric IT Executive

2007-05-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

Interesting article that illustrates the frustrations with those of us who consider ourselves businessmen with technology know-how rather than "just tech geeks." Though I am not sure if abandoning tech research and updates all together like the author suggests is neccessary at all. In fact, I tend to think that if you get too disconnected with IT, you loose your value & niche . Of course, striking a balance and being diligent about not becoming your CEO's desktop support person on the weekend is important as well as one of the readers' suggestion of one should make it known that he/she is capable of taking on a business role.

A Brand New View...

2007-05-06T21:14:00.000-07:00

For many years, I have kept a livejournal that covered my personal theories, encounters, rants, business views, technology reviews, and career development topics all in one place. I find that it's distractive to my audience who are after only a concentrated few (most prominently career/business related) of the above mentioned topics of my blog. Therefore, I am now attempting to detach some of these topics away from my personal blog. "Seattle Ventures," the blog you are reading right now is my attempt to focus on creating an aggregate view of my personal thoughts on entrepreneurial, business, career development, real estate, and current events topics so that my business-centric audience will have a one shot, non-distractive place to go. Of course, the end goal on the other hand is to use this as a way to foster my own professional growth and to hopefully provide an environment for discussion of the latest and greatest within the society we live in. So please feel free to drop me comments anytime via e-mail or in this blog so that I can improve on the effectiveness of this piece to accomplish my envisioned goal.

Thanks!