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Experimenting with New Ideas – TeamChatThing

I’ve been toying with a few ideas on the side these days. They’ve been all over the place including even speaking with Emory University’s Department of Technology Transfers. Hey, I’m an opportunist! I go after opportunities that I can bring to fruition and that sound exciting. I don’t always have experience in these areas. However, I’m betting on myself to figure it out as I go.
One recent idea has been in the SMS chatbot world. Specifically, how managers organize teams in preparation for the next game. Typically, this is done via mass email threads or annoying group texts. Then, players delay and delay responding. Oftentimes, the emails are buried. Then, managers must find subs should not enough people say they can make the game.
I immediately thought about using text messages as the delivery mechanism. SMS, specifically, might get faster responses minus the group messages (MMS). I’ve run into the problems of being a manager plenty of times in the past. I did not do the Mom Test. Instead, my friend and I just start digging into leveraging Twilio.
The problem is not overly complicated. The problem isn’t a big world problem. I don’t know how well to monetize. All this tells me I should not pursue the idea. However, I’m pushing on.
I’m pursuing this idea called TeamChatThing as a testbed to learn more about the SMS world and what’s available. What I like about SMS (short-messaging service, or text) is that aside from emails, phone, and face-to-face interactions, SMS is the next ubiquitous communication channel. SMS is something most people are so familiar with. There’s no need to push new users to download apps.
Team management aspect is a test. I want to test people’s responses and response times. I want to test the complications of RSVP’ing – specific use case. I want to dig into what’s possible to automatically respond and record responses.
Leveraging SMS for a chatbot is challenging. SMS is a stream of linear messages. It’s near difficult to create threads, let alone a simple response-question association. (Think about when two questions are asked on SMS and a single response comes in. Which question(s) is the response to?) SMS does not have much meta-data, either. SMS provides:
  • Phone numbers involved
  • Date & time
  • Message body
  • That’s it.

Complexity builds as players, in this case, are connected to different teams. Understand which team the player is responding to is tough.
It’s a fascinating problem. I’m eager to continue digging into what’s possible and the deeper challenges with SMS.
                                                                           
Yes, the way service is dubbed TeamChatThing. J

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Creativity is Everywhere You’re Not Used To Thinking

I’m surprised by how many people believe creativity is reserved to the arts or perhaps marketing. In reality, there’s so much more creativity happening in the everyday whether that be in writing, in coding, or in sales.
When I do code, I love how there are so many ways to accomplish a task. It’s up to me how I implement that code and find a solution. Some ways are more elegant than others. Sometimes, it’s about creatively hacking a solution so you can survive the week. So yes, developers/ engineers are a creative bunch.
Sales is one of those areas where I love to see creativity, too. I remember hearing a story of how a sales professional finally got in front of a VP he’d been chasing for a while by literally sending the VP his shoe. The message was about walking in “his shoes”. Or a story how to get someone to read a cold email by bidding on a pair of shoes and an apartment.
There’s a lot of creativity happening around us. Creativity is just finding a solution to a problem in some unconventional way. It happens all the time and all around us. It’s not just reserved to pretty plates of food or catchy songs on the radio. It happens when we’re left to our own devices… and stepping out from our own seeming “limitations”.
This is art… I don’t know what it is, but it’s art, right? Kind of like when someone non-technical looks at code… beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Photo from the Atlanta Beltline.
To be fair, too, creativity doesn’t mean it’s never been done before. Sometimes, creativity happens when we’ve just never done it this way. We have our vision, and we make that approach in our way. If someone else did it similarly, that’s okay. What counts is that we did something different, and the more we do that, the more creative we become.
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Asking for Help Sooner Could’ve Saved a Month of Startup Paralysis

I met a couple entrepreneurs recently through a mutual friend who are building an iOS app. They’ve outsourced development, and have very little knowledge of coding despite being a technology company. (“Uh oh,” comes to mind.)
They were very enthusiastic about meeting, and before entering, I thought we’d talk about their project and what I’m doing… general first-date talk. But instead, it quickly became a “please help fix this bug!” session.
After ~30 minutes of studying the code, I was able to solve their issue. They were so excited because they had been stuck for over a month!
A few details about this that made me shocked…
  • They have an office at Atlanta Tech Village. In a startup co-working space with the tagline “Engineered Serendipity”, entrepreneurs are surrounded by lots of technical talent. Finding help shouldn’t be hard.
  • Of course, you need to ask for help. As entrepreneurs, we have egos; so doing things ourselves can be the preferred route. However, we’re obviously not good at EVERYTHING, and it’s well worth our time (speed is key in startups!) to ask help from the experts.
  • If you’re starting a technology company, know technology; or at the minimum, have a technical team member.Substituting your team with outside, paid resources in lieu of long-term technical talent is a big risk – especially should he/ she leave, like the situation here.
  • Help comes from everywhere, not just the startup world. I met our mutual friend from Starbucks, and she, aside from us, does not have connections to the tech startup community here. Yet, she knew her friends needed help, so introduced us.
Entrepreneurs and others alike would do well to ask for help more often and build up a diverse support network to augment their “shortcomings”.

Where have you received help from someone you didn’t expect? What did you do to get connected with others to either give help or receive help?
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9 Lessons Learned Through My First Months of Learning to Code

Dilbert comic by Scott Adams
I talked earlier about how and why I started to program in “These 3 Questions Led Me to Stop Waiting and Start Programming” back in December. I used the idea of Dee Duper – an online marketplace connecting parents in communities to buy and sell gently used kids goods.
The most popular “I wish” statement I hear from others today when I talk about what I do is: “I wish I had a good idea to start a company”. However, these days, a close second is “I wish I knew how to program”. It’s not just about entrepreneurship but companies big and small are looking for resources who not only understand business, but who have a technical capacity to do some coding, too.
There’s an inherent and subtle level of creativity with coding as well as layers of analytics involved. With the Internet of Thingsand the explosion of Big Data and mobile, I wouldn’t be surprised if some level of programming is introduced as part of core classes in high school and colleges soon.
So I don’t get carried away with paragraph after paragraph of… stuff, I’m going to share a quick list of what I’ve learned from getting started on iOS and building out Dee Duper. As always, I’m being specific about my experience, but any of these take-aways can be ported to any other programming – macros in Excel, SQL for databases, Ruby on Rails for web apps, etc.
Hopefully, these will help you stop waiting and empowering yourself to learn and put yourself ahead of the curve.

Keep programming day in, day out to keep your skills sharp.

The hardest part of programming isn’t getting started. In fact, getting started is the second hardest. The award for Hardest goes to… programming consistently. Like I said before, I had programmed in the past, but programming, like most skills, is perishable knowledge. It’s important to keep the skills fresh with continued practice.

Be prepared to delete and adapt when adopting new technology.

I decided to plunge into Apple’s new language Swift vs. Objective-C because Swift will be the programming language Apple preaches going forward, and I liked its clean syntax. However, when I started, Swift wasn’t officially released… having spent many months/ years in development, I had to do a lot of code refactoring when Swift was actuallyreleased at Apple’s event in September (2014). I had a bunch of code that needed to be updated because functions and classes were already obsolete/ deprecated.
Note: Refactoring is the process of “cleaning up” code via restructuring code, implementing more efficient syntax, etc. while keeping the behavior the same. The benefits happen behind the scenes beyond efficiency.

Big features may represent 90% of the tech, but the remaining 10% will take up 90% of your effort.

I actually got a TON done of the Dee Duper app in the first week surprisingly. However, it was all the fine-tuning and dealing with Constraints that had me incredibly frustrated and head buried in my hands at the desk.
This wasn’t so much of a big deal before when Apple had really just one size (iPhone 5s and earlier all had the same width), but once screen sizes change, you need to set limits and constraints right so your app doesn’t look ridiculous on the various screen width sizes. Then, you’ve gotta handle the exceptions of “well, what happens if a user selects this first before that?”
Rules are easy to plan for… exceptions are what crashes your app and aren’t explicitly planned for.
Note: Constraints are what dictate the size of images, labels, etc. to fit different sizes of screens.

Dealing with Apple’s Developer processes will infuriate everyone – account for this time if you want to launch by XYZ date.

Apple’s products are [usually] pretty great quality because the ecosystem is so tightly regulated. I never appreciated this so much till I started developing. I had to buy a MacBook to even program iOS in the first place. Then, there’s a ton of headache involved with just being ALLOWED to program. There are things like certification, provisioning profiles, etc. that you have to constantly share keys and authorize devices to even test, authorize people to be able to test your app, etc. It’s mind-numbing.
If someone makes this process easier (a few clicks maybe?!), he/ she can make a ton of money. The frustrations through these processes are MANY for newbies like me and even experienced pros, I’ve found.
If you want to launch on a particular day, you need to be wary of how long it may take for Apple to approve the app (or if it gets restricted).
Don’t forget that if you leverage other tech, you may also need to get approval from them, too, like Facebook.

When you’re down in the dumps of coding disarray, Google is your best friend.

I probably run a hundred searches a day for problems I have or for ways to build Dee Duper out better – probably because I’m that green. Some of the features I was trying to build have been attempted/ successfully implemented by other developers. So, there’s a high likelihood there are other developers who have had similar problems and solutions. Being able to Google these situations is great, but you have to get the search terms right or you get flooded with irrelevant content. Google will likely steer you to personal blogs and Stack Overflow posts to help. The development community is alive and strong. Though with new tech like Swift, the community is much, much smaller, and can be a bit more difficult to find help with.

Integrations to platforms can be stupidly easy.

Credit goes to the great startups today who have developed such great platforms that can be easily tapped into.
For Dee Duper, I leverage Facebook’s API (application programming interface) so users can sign up and log in easily. With it, too, I can show mutual connections/ friends. Facebook’s documentation is decent, and can really help get you started.
I also use Parse(acquired by Facebook in 2013) as my back-end – stores the data model, content, etc. so I don’t have to build one from scratch. It’s so simple to get started and running. Creating tables and running queries is a cinch. I also use Parse to send Push notifications. This is useful when Dee Duper users send messages to one another critical for buyer-seller interactions. Push notifications are great, too, for Saved Searches (like if you’re looking for a particular items with key search terms, you can save the search, and be alerted whenever someone posts a listing that matches your search).
These large platform integrations just makes building apps that much easier and faster.

It’s so easy to keep building, and going overboard, but you need to stay simple.

Plugging in my earbuds and sliding my hoodie over my head, it’s easy to just get cranking and keep going.
“Oh, that can be a cool feature to implement… hmm, I’ll do that!” And the next thing you know it, you’ve blown past your MVP (minimum viable product).
It’s easy to just keep going, and thus, spinning your wheels and delaying your launch. As much customer discovery as I’ve done, I need to get the product in people’s hands to test hypotheses like features, layouts, etc. If I keep building, I’ll never get this good insight.
I have a couple lists in my notebook and on my whiteboard at home with clear objectives of what the MVP is… everything else can come later after some testing and learning.

Building is easier than selling (in my view).

I like to sell. I like to work with people face-to-face to find how I can help them through my product/ service. However, building things like an app is way easier, I think. You can do it from anywhere pretty much and at any time. Except for some quirks, the computer and code is pretty unbiased towards you with not so many personality “differences”. Thus, it’s easy to get validation when things work or why things don’t work.
In sales or working with people, there’s so much more you’re not necessarily privy to because there’s a person on the other side with a mindset, an attitude, a life, etc. However, I still like the people interaction, so would rather hand over the technical reins when the timing is right.

It’s really easy to take your time or delay.

Dee Duper was approved for the Apple App Store on Monday, December 1, 2014. (First try – sweet!) However, it took me a while to publish it officially because I was scared about how it’d be perceived by others.
Fast forward to February 2015, and since its launch, I really haven’t marketed it at all. I think I was excited about Dee Duper as an idea and as a project to learn coding with. However, since then, I’ve developed a couple other apps. As a solo-preneur, I dictate what gets my attention and what doesn’t. My schedule is completely of my own choosing, and sadly, that could mean I focus on building so many different things without the focus of only one thing even after launching it recently.
I need to do some marketing, though, so that I can get feedback on the apps that I’ve built. At least this way, I can really work in the Lean Startup mindset of iterating and collecting feedback. 
Another Dilbert comic by Scott Adams… because they’re great.
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Spinning Wheels on the Next Move, but Finding Traction with a Serial Entrepreneur

The last several months for me have been… interesting. Since Body Boss became a zombie, I’ve been poking and prodding and brainstorming and wandering what the Next Move is. I’ve helped out a startup with business development, but decided it wasn’t a good long-term fit. Though, I still have demos and conversations just to practice. It would appear at times that I’m spinning my wheels.
I’ve been putting myself in various positions whether that be working with startups, interviews of restaurateurs, and of course, good ole reconnects with friends and otherwise. A couple weeks ago, I was staring down from a new nadir… unable to sleep, I got up and wrote a Proclamation of sorts to my close friends and family about continued support and to push me and hold me accountable to what I’m trying to achieve. Needless to say, it was a dash of poignant revelations and a whole lot of “I think I can, I think I can”. It’s good to know I have some very good family and friends who push me and are supportive…
Aside from knowing who’s got my back, I was able to connect with a serial entrepreneur out in San Francisco who’s a friend of my older brother. I didn’t ask if I could use his name, so I’ll call him “Wayne”. Wayne has been an entrepreneur since his days in high school. He’s founded companies whilst at Georgia Tech, and had a great idea go bigger when he joined YCombinator (YC) a few years ago. If you don’t know Y Combinator, think of it as the Harvard Business School of technology accelerators with notable alums including Dropbox, Reddit, Airbnb, and so many more incredible companies. Since then, though, he’s founded another startup that is reaching crazy great levels of recruiting with specific roles, companies, and even select cities. It’s how he maintains some version of what Paul Graham describes as “wells” – target companies/ pains/ niches and go deep vs. going after a larger audience with limited depth of services or otherwise.
So, Mr. Wayne… I explained to him my position, and inquired about his experience and sought his advice. Here are some take-aways from our conversation:
  • If you want to be on the business side, know your numbers. I shared with Wayne an idea I’m currently incubating, and he had some great questions regarding the business model. In effect, he was testing the economic feasibility of the idea as well as my wit. Sadly, I didn’t quite respond as well as I wanted. His advice was to practice mental/ back-of-the-napkin math for ideas. That should at least help early on determine if there’s a viable business idea.
  • Early on, it’s about the product rather than the team. This was an interesting viewpoint. For… ever, I heard how VCs, entrepreneurs, etc. invest in the team behind the startup. Wayne’s point was that if the idea (i.e. product, service) is good, then the market will pull you up. From there, you’ll find money both from your customers and want-to-be investors. Also, the team will quickly learn and get the experience. Wayne cited this as a key learning from watching company after company go through YC.
  • Build a pain pill, not a vitamin. Okay, that phrase is actually pulled from David Cummings, but it’s apparent in what Wayne was prescribing (see what I did there?). From the preceding bullet, the underlying take-away is to find an idea that addresses pain points for markets. If you find a real pain killer, customers will come to you. Of course, marketing will help, too.
  • If you’re not a programmer, don’t bother. On Saturday, I bit the bullet and bought a MacBook to learn how to program in iOS for this new idea I’m incubating. Since then, I’ve churned through hours and hours of iOS programming tutorials (for Swift) through 4 courses. Wayne cited that if I wanted to stick to the business-side of things, get better at that. Many good programmers have been programming for a long time, and there are 18 year-olds who would smoke me. It’s always going to be catch-up. I should focus on what my experience has given me, and hone those skills.
  • Notion of “Liquidity” – 3 tenets: proximity of the sale, right product and right customer, and timing. At least for my current incubating idea, I must deal with these three sides of liquidity that will challenge my success vis-à-vis if I can EASILYaddress these three tenets to facilitate the marketplace.
  • It’ll take 2-3 years to reach any level of success. Obviously, that’s not applicable to every startup, but from his experience, that where he’s found the greatest success in his startups. He also cites that San Francisco could be a great place for entrepreneurs, but with the added cost-of-living considerations, there are significant downsides. At the end of the day, be good at where you are.

It’s great knowing a couple degrees of connections away is yet another successful serial entrepreneur. It’s incredibly inspiring. Though, I have to admit that it’s also incredibly daunting. You can tell Wayne’s got his $h!t together with how we speaks and his questions – no doubt through fine tutelage of YC and Paul Graham et al. I’ve taken a lot of his advice to heart, and I’ll be considering all of these take-aways and then some over my present and future (both short and long-term).
Though, I will say that I will still plug away at iOS. I don’t hope to become a CTO and CEO in a startup I found. Instead, I do want the ability to quickly build apps web or mobile and test out ideas. Wayne cited his earlier days in Berkley, CA where he was holed up in a house with two other co-founders, and they would build an idea a day. With that type of iterating, they were able to test ideas quickly. That’s where I want to be. I want to be able to test ideas quickly, and build something great like him.
Closing thoughts. Wayne suggested reading the following two Paul Graham essays:

What are your thoughts on my conversation with Wayne (or at least the take-aways)? How else would you recommend entrepreneurs building up for the Next Move?
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Winning Combination = Speed + Design + ???

I was scouring the web looking for some good posts about speed and agility as a startup’s advantage when I stumbled upon this: “Speed and Design: Key Differentiators for a Startup”.  It was written more than two years ago in December 2011 by a tech entrepreneur, but it’s still highly relevant today.  In fact, it’s spot on in what I was looking for.

One of the reasons why I was looking for speed and agility in a startup is the idea that so many great ideas are already out there.  However, the startups that are born and grow and survive are oftentimes the ones that standout especially in design. 
Today’s world has anyone and everyone programming.  There are great resources like Codecademy, One Month Rails, Lynda.com, and they go on and on.  There are utilities that help you build an app without ever touching real code!  Back in the day (early 2000’s and prior), programmers came at a premium.  The real good ones were always in San Francisco.  But now, people have so many tools out there to get programming experience, and launch quickly. 
The keys now to standout are a startup’s speed and design. Though, I will add one more to this list and make it lucky number 3 – service.  Here are some thoughts on why and how speed, design, and service:
  • Build, Launch, Adjust, Repeat.  There are niches and pain-points everywhere.  Applying a model from industry to industry can work, but fine adjustments are needed to really build and cater to a specific market.  The quicker you can implement and adjust (or pivot) the more likely you will win customers and win them fast over competitors.
  • Brains Are Rare Talent.  Those with creative minds have it made.  Creativity is like one of those attributes that many people aren’t born with.  Instead, it takes unique minds to sometimes come up with the most unique solutions.  Creativity is difficult to train.
  • Great Programmers Can Be Your Catalyst.  It’s true that with coding, there are almost infinite ways to implement a solution.  At the end of the day, programmers are builders where architects (the creatives) may provide the final plans.  If you get me to the future state, I don’t need to know what’s behind the curtain so much.  However, great programmers have the know-how and the experience to know how to deploy quickly and may know the reasons why NOT to employ a particular method or code due to some harsh learnt lessons from the past (i.e. polling can be a major server suck).
  • Keep it simple and sweet.  KISS has long been a phrase tossed around about anything and everything.  My dad actually said K.I.S.S. stood for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”  Whatever works, I suppose.  In the end, today’s culture is NOW NOW NOW.  And because of this, startups need to orient their products and services to help customers get set up quickly.  People aren’t going to make time to understand your product if there’s something out there that is both easier to set up and easier to use.  Set up, training, and transacting take time, and as you all know the other popular phrase… time is money.
  • Bring It All Together with Superior Service.  Tying everything above is service.  Or rather more specifically, customer service.  As a startup, you’re bound to run into problems and issues be they software bugs, product quality control, service issues, etc.  Your ability to provide personal customer service quickly will endear your customers.  If you fail to be upfront and honest and provide assistance timely, you’ll quickly become just another company that your customers feel can be replaced easily.  By being personal and providing timely service, you can reach customers on a more HUMAN level, and thus, play emotional ties.

So Rohit from techCEOprovided a good start in calling out speed and design as key differentiators.  However, I feel that adding service is a critical third differentiator.  As a startup, it’s important to maintain healthy and communicative feedback system with customers to know what to fine-tune, what to create, what to remove… Speed to deploy and iterate, design for simplicity and usability, and service to maintain and build relationships are the activities that really set startups apart, and should be parts of a sustainable business model.

What are your thoughts about key differentiators?  What’s another key differentiator that I may have missed?
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