Posted on

Taking My Medicine

Talking to the fabulously intriguing Mr. Nathan Rohm this evening, I found myself referring to my previous venture, Spek, as “a vaccination against quitting.” The more I think about it, the more I believe that is the most simple and accurate description I could give of the experience.

For those not in the know, Spek was the Xbox Live Arcade video game company that some friends and I started to start a little more than a year ago. It began in a flash. Within a week of having the idea to start the company, I had teamed up with two hard-working and dedicated friends to fill the roles of designer and artist. Within another week we had our programmer, and away we went.

By the time the ride came to an end, we had worked on it about six months and had the trappings of a working prototype, complete with an engine and a decent amount of the art assets. We had the game fully designed, and had entered serious talks with Microsoft about publishing the game on XBLA. I believe that, had we not been derailed, we stood at least a 50% chance of getting the game published, and from there, taking the company in whatever direction we wanted.

But we didn’t. Ostensibly, this was due to NCA provisions in my current employment contract (i.e., my lawyer said we could justifiably be sued and our company taken), but at the same time, I was tired by the time the party came to an end. Here’s what I learned:

1. One person can not be the business planner, project manager, and lead programmer while working 40+ hours a week at their day job.
2. Any attempts by one person to be all of the above roles will swallow you whole and make you suck at everything you do, which will in turn kill motivation.
3. Starting a business is learning to embrace ebb and flow. On one day you might win a client. On the next day you can lose a partner. On the day after you can be admired. On the day after that you can be forced to revise the whole business plan.
4. Once you commit to a particular idea, many other good opportunities will present themselves. In the case of Spek, it was the opportunity to be the lead developer on the title that was going to be the highest-budget project our studio had ever taken on. By a factor of two.
5. And despite all of this, your commitment must be absolutely unwavering.

Though I’ve avoided reliving lessons number 1 and 2 with Bonanzle (where I’ve yet to do a lick of programming (I miss it, but Bonanzle’s success to this point would have been completely unattainable any other way)), lessons 3, 4 and 5 have been just as applicable to this project as they had been to Spek. The difference is, this time I saw it coming. The longer I can prove to myself that I have that unwavering focus on what the end result is, the more fortified becomes my ability to lead any type of business, or really, realize any type of goal. What is it that Thomas Edison says on a notecard tacked to my wall?

“The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; and third, common sense.”

I knew the words, but now I know the depth of their truth.

Posted on

800 Steps to… Becoming a Farmer?

Talk of the “long tail” phenomenon is all the rage these days amongst web sites in general, but especially amongst consumer/retail sites. I hadn’t quite figured out why, so I decided to take a look at what queries had led searchers to 800 Steps.

It’s an amusingly random list. Topping the list of queries, as you might expect, were people searching for more info about the person behind this blog. Yes, people of the web want to know more about Karrie Kohlhaas. Here’s lookin’ at you, Karrie! She might not write the blog, but she did initially inspire it, and as far as Google is concerned, that’s apparently “close enough.”

Some other notable search hits: “steps in getting an active investor into my business,” “manifest investor who is like minded,” “realitivity,” “william harding press release,” “paul allen,” “write the four steps in creative entrepreneurial problem solving cycle,” “marcus latham pickles,” and my personal favorite, “steps to becoming a farmer.”

Posted on

Viva la Bill

Every day I spend with my nose to the grindstone, it keeps sneaking up on me. It started as “maybe someday,” and eventually progressed to “hopefully soon,” “maybe four months,” “about two months,” and now, three wee-little weeks: my (partial) liberation from the man as I transition to working a half-time shift!

I’m (partially) ecstatic. I don’t yet know exactly how calling my own shots will effect my day-to-day life, but it sure sounds terrific. Currently, I’m squeezing 25-30 hours a week between late weeknights and long weekend days. Time to meet with people is limited. Time to develop the site myself is non-existent. For all the time I’ve spent looking for someone else to give the executive branch of this project a shot in the arm, I’m now betting that in three weeks, I’ll be infusing the project with about as good a boost as could be hoped for at this point. For progress and morale alike.

I can still clearly remember the first morning I woke up in my own apartment after arriving in Seattle. The apartment was a complete disaster: cheap, run down, and littered with leftover food and partially emptied boxes. I woke up at about 8 in the morning after just a few hours sleep. Though I had thrown off my blanket when dusk broke a few hours earlier, I was still drenched in sweat from the sun shining through my window, baking me on my futon. I looked out my clear, sunny window onto the neighbor’s cluttered porch and an already bustling 15th Avenue. I deeply inhaled the pale smell of cigarette and newly washed dingy carpets, and pasted a grin on my face that lasted the rest of the week.

The independence was intoxicating, unlike anything I had felt in my life to that point. Every trip to the deathbed Safeway on 50th Street was a field trip where anything was possible. I couldn’t give a damn about yielding at crosswalk signals, paying bus fare, or doing the dishes.

girl_jump.jpgEven today, many of my favorite moments are those where I shun convention in favor of the freewheeling ethos that personified that time in my life. Given that, it is something of a wonder that I managed to do the 9-5 routine even for the three-plus years I’ve been at it. From what I have read and what I can sense, making the leap away from security and into a self-directed challenge that will engage me daily promises to hold the same clear air of possibility that blew by me as I baked on that futon almost 10 years ago today.

Posted on

Troublemaker

For better or worse, I think I am probably perceived by some at my day job to be a “troublemaker.” I like to consider myself the good kind of troublemaker who makes trouble that leads to meaningful improvements. Because I do bring about a number of those. But trouble is trouble. Given that causing positive trouble has probably cost me far more in effort and energy than it has netted me in recognition and praise, I think one could reasonably ask why I persist in doing it.

I remembered the answer today, when I stayed a couple hours late to write a Perl script that would track the cumulative time that myself and our team of 15 people spend building our project every day. I’ve been wired to derive a feeling of exhilaration from finding solvable problems and figuring out the steps to get those problems solved. So when the day comes in a couple weeks that I can assemble 15 people worth of build data and present my interpretation of what the cost of those times is, it won’t matter to me what kind of trouble I’m causing, because ultimately, a problem will be one big step closer to being solved.

The shareable observation to make here is that, though the pleasure I took from writing this script was tremendous, there were still a few days that I prioritized it lower than my everyday tasks, because technically, it was optional. But once I finished it this evening, I realized that this is what makes me really happy. If you’ve got something that sounds like a good idea to you but is going to take a couple hours to get done, listen to how you feel once you finish that thing. If it is “good” or “great”, hopefully you will join me and be smarter about what gets precedence next time you’re prioritizing standard responsibilities, distractions, and whatever makes you feel like a champ.

The other point is that every company needs some quality troublemakers.

Posted on

Noonhat and Immotion

I am such a naughty networker. Yet again tonight, I spent a few hours at a Biznik networking event, and yet again, I talked to all of about three people over that time.

In my defense, the folks I did manage to talk with had some of the best ideas/services of the many Bizniks I’ve met so far.

Best idea of the night/week/month (this is my blog, so best idea of the year will unsurprisingly be awarded to me) goes to Brian Dorsey. Brian is the creator of one of the least interesting personal web sites and most interesting utility web sites I’ve known. In a few weeks he will be releasing Noonhat, a service that connects people in the same geographic area to completely random lunch partners. The site is currently slated to be dirt-simple: just login and be matched to someone nearby that is interested in having lunch today. Looking in my crystal ball, I can already predict the first (second, third and fourth) request he is going to hear will be to create a Web 2.0-ey profiling mechanism to the site so people can match themselves up with those of similar interests. But Brian has astutely realized that what makes this idea so offbeat is precisely that you don’t know who you’ll be eating with when you sign up. It might be a new business partner, it might be the next great axe murderer, or it might be your grandma. I love this idea and hope that I’ll be able to help him usher it into existence with the imaginary time that I don’t currently and never will have.

Best up-and-coming business of the night goes to Kei Wakabayashi. Kei is looking for ways to grow his web design company, Immotion to the point of perpetual profitability. I predict he will succeed in doing this; his site’s aesthetic and portfolio, though sparse, is some of the better looking stuff I’ve seen amongst my web-wide travels. Kei had a number of great questions about starting a business, and between his curiosity and web talent, I wish I would have run into him earlier. I’m looking forward to watching his wildest entrepreneurial dreams come true.

Posted on

Jump!

Myself and a bunch of friends are going to jump from a plane in a couple weeks. I have mixed feelings about how much I’ll enjoy it. The safety statistics don’t concern me much, nor does the thought of jumping from the plane particularly make me sweat. The part of the trip I am most dreading is the many hours that we will have to sit around the wherever-you-sit-at-a-skydiving-joint and think Think think about all the tiny logistics of what we’re about to do. The same unending stream of thoughts that makes my brain so very useful for discovering creative solutions/solving deep-rooted problems isn’t discriminating about what it will analyze; therefore I’m probably destined for some miserable hours. It is one thing to go from hanging out and drinking beers to jumping 14,000 feet. It’s another to sit around with little diversion for hours and ponder how someone could hit the wing.

Two Dentists Offices, Stolen from Creating Passionate UsersI’m thinking the skydiving experience will most likely prove to be another everyday example of preventable customer discomfort. I believe that these discomforts exist in large part because, often times, customers do not even realize their discomfort is preventable. The example on Creating Passionate Users of two potential dentists’ offices comes to mind. One dentist office looks more or less like every dentist office I have ever been to: dry, clinical, and, um, black & white. The other one is dressed in warm colors, “smells like cookies,” and has a wine bar. Every time I have gone to my dentists’ since seeing this graphic, I think to myself, “Where’s the damn wine?” Every time I sit in the seat, stare toward the ceiling, and listen to the sweet lullabys of the dental drill, I think, “Where’s the plasma TV with ESPN or Xbox 360 or anything?”

Simply put, service providers have a tremendous opportunity to see past conventions and create an experience that makes the customer happy from the moment they enter to the moment they leave. The service itself is but one aspect of the experience. In many cases, the service itself might take only a small portion of the overall time for the experience (how many times have I sat 20 minutes or more in an empty patient room at a doctor’s office, waiting for a doctor that spent five minutes with me before rendering their verdict?). And the service is frequently not what’s on the customer’s mind during most of the experience.

It is the experience that I remember, and it is the experience that I think about when considering whether I’d go back.

Posted on

Synergy: Beyond the Buzzword

“Synergy.” It’s one of those words that resides alongside “Web 2.0” as business jargon whose power is diluted from misuse and overuse. But, linguistic connotation notwithstanding, I think it is a critical component of sites that are going places in the 2000’s. Don’t buy it? Observe:

Etsy. A site that, at its core, is doing the same thing as eBay: selling crafts between users. Given, they have done it with a better interface, but a blind decapitated monkey could create a better UI than eBay. Most sites have. What has made Etsy so much more successful than nice-looking sites like MightyBids.com is the synergy it generates between items and artists. The preponderance of well-photographed (and thus visually attractive) items on the site exist because artists tend to be better photographers than the average user. Many of Etsy’s most unique and successful features “work” because the site is designed for abstract-minded individuals. Their “time machine” is a perfect example of this. The “time machine” is a flash application on Etsy that scrolls items of decreasing newness toward you through space. This feature succeeds resoundingly because of the synergies wherein A) people expect artsy features on an artsy site and B) art-related items are much more arbitrarily chosen than eBay items, so it is relevant to see random pieces presented. If eBay tried to do the same, you would get toasters and broken laptops and Nigerian get-rich-quick scams flying toward you. And it would not help you shop more effectively.

Biznik. A site that takes one part business, one part indy, and seasons to taste with charm. As Etsy::Classifieds, Biznik::Networking — that is, the world doesn’t need another business networking site. But powerful synergies exist when you take friendly, benevolent, like-minded indy service providers, and mix them with users possessing business acumen. The result is monthly get-togethers like “Biznik Happy Hour” which is a networking event advertised as “Not a room of business card pushing suits,” and which, over the course of the last six months, has nearly tripled in size, to the point that the event has outgrown the otherwise-terrific Liberty Cocktail bar. Why does Biznik work so well? Because its users naturally want to talk to and help each other, and if you’re talking to and helping someone, you want to get to know them, and if you get to know them, you’ll more likely to want to help them. And every time this cycle happens, the site itself becomes better because more people join and more advice is posted. The bottom line is that Biznik fosters an environment that perpetuates helpfulness, and is led by founders who embody the generous, user-first indy spirit that is manifest in so many members of the site.

As I continue to gather data and start putting the words into Business Plan 2.0, it has become very clear to me that this type of synergy is exactly the reason that Bonanzle will work. The classified ads sector is saturated, and the online auction space is beyond saturated. For a new site to make any significant inroads in this environment, there must be a strong synergistic undercurrent that leads users to the site and the site to users and users to users and the site to other sites. Fortunately, that is precisely how the plan is working out.

Posted on

Bonanzle.com

Look ma, I’m making more web sites! It’s even CSS savvy, as marking up numerous pages in CSS for our site has drilled into me.

I have to believe it’s only going to be a matter of time until I create the site that chronicles Seattle’s Best and Worst Nachos. Alas, nachos, your time will someday come.

Posted on

The Pickle Plan

I went to a most excellent Pickle Party for The Pickle Plan this weekend. What you need to know about The Pickle Plan is that they stay up until 4 in the morning in a hot kitchen in Ballard creating delicious, spicy (and non-spicy, I suppose) pickles that are sure to delight. After puppies and piercings, I don’t know of a surer conversation starter than these flavorful, small-batch pickles. Buy them, share them with your friends, and be able to say you were eating these before they were nationally loved.

What’s more, the founder, Marcus Latham, is a gentleman of outstanding character who will probably go swimming in the dubious Juanita Bay again if he’s in a good mood, which he most likely will be if enough of you buy his packs of pickled…pickles.

Posted on

Back To Square One

After laboring over this site for the last five months, we’re finally back to step one: writing the business plan. This was the first step in Bonanzle’s infancy, and has again come to the forefront as our development process has reached the point of self-perpetuation. When I think about what the “best” first step to take would have been, I think “write up the business plan” is probably about as good of a guess as any: you are immediately forced to weigh yourself against competition and enumerate what it is that you think you’ll be providing. The catch is that, in all but the rarest cases, what you think your product will be in the first couple weeks is an educated guess at best.

So it was with Bonanzle. I started by noticing a problem in the way shopping worked, and identified a fix to that problem that could extend beyond solving the original problem. The more I analyzed it, the more apparent it became that this idea could in fact extend all the way to creating a new class of shopping experience. The next couple months I bounced between business planners, entrepreneurs, market savvy types, and all people in between, as the idea grew bigger and bigger in its potential.

Taking a notebook chock full of ideas, opinions, research and facts, I feverishly pieced together the plan that constituted Bonanzle’s best opportunity to make a significant impact on the online marketplace. The result? Our original idea.

It has become increasingly apparent through analyzing our competition and my further communications with the always wise Mr. Dalasta that it takes something either vertical or completely offbeat to tempt users away from a gorilla. Despite the pages of potential applications for this site that many well-versed web veterans have brought to my attention, it is my conviction that we need to start by solving one problem, and solving it superbly.3darrow.gif

What then have I gained from these months of analysis? Only everything that will go into the business plan. Even though the idea ended up the same as it started, it has only been through having the idea continuously scrutinized that I’ve been able to determine which combinations of words make eyebrows raise. Put all those raised-eyebrow answers together, sprinkle in the words “weave,” “synergy,” and “confluence,” then for good measure, toss in a couple 3d arrows and flowcharts to represent data, traffic or customers, and you can pretty much sit back and wait for the first couple mil to arrive in the bank. Am I right, investors?