Working at Akoha could easily be a life changing experience. Aside from the fact that they’re going after a huge ass dream and tackling an enormous and incredibly fast growing industry, I can almost guarantee you’ll learn more there than anywhere else.

And Akoha is hiring.

Specifically, they’re looking for a Community Manager.

Here’s Austin’s take on it:

We are currently trying to meet a great Community Manager who can help us build, market and promote our new web game that is going to be launching in the coming months.

The ideal person LOVES all things Web, has experience with Internet marketing, PR and social media. Most of all they should bring a TON of passion, enthusiasm and ability get stuff done to the role.

This is a critical role for our company. If there is anyone you would recommend please have them contact me directly, or apply through out http://jobs.akoha.org website.

Feel free to forward this to anyone you feel might be a good fit for this role.

For someone that loves the Web, understands and lives in social media and wants to change the world, this is the perfect job for you. Having spoken to Austin about it on numerous occasions, I can tell you that you’ll have tons of opportunity to think big, execute on your ideas, and truly make a difference. You’ll need to be an operational genius, a Get Things Done master, but also a high-level thinker, dreamer and believer.

If this sounds like the right opportunity for you, I’d encourage you to apply, but don’t just send them your typical resume. Stand out and show ‘em that you’ve got what it takes. Think of the application process like an audition. Do something funky, fun, crazy and smart.

You can now follow people on RefactorMyCode.com. Wow it’s like FaceBook + code snippets! Better get your mom an account!

You’ll then have a page with all stuff posted by your new friends and even an Atom feed.

To follow someone, simply go to their profile page and click on “Follow this user”.

Hope you like it!

require "rubygems";require "thin";require"markaby"; class Invisible
HTTP_METHODS =[:get,:post,:head,:put,:delete];attr_reader :request,
:response, :params; def initialize(&block); @actions =[]; @with=[];
@layouts={};@views={};@helpers=Module.new;@app=self; instance_eval(
&block) if block end; def action(method, route, &block); @actions<<
[method.to_s, build_route(@with*"/"+route),block] end;HTTP_METHODS.
each{|m|class_eval "def #{m}(r='/',&b); action('#{m}', r, &b) end"}
def with(route); @with.push(route);yield;@with.pop end; def render(
*args,&block);options=args.last.is_a?(Hash)?args.pop: {};@response.
status=options.delete(:status)||200;layout=@layouts[options.delete(
:layout)||:default];assigns={:request=>request,:response=>response,
:params=>params,:session=>session};content=args.last.is_a?(String)?
args.last : Markaby::Builder.new(assigns,@helpers, &(block||@views[
args.last] )).to_s ; content = Markaby::Builder.new( assigns.merge(
:content => content), @helpers, &layout).to_s if layout; @response.
headers.merge!(options);@response.body=content end;def layout(name=
:default, &block); @layouts[name]=block end; def view(name,&block);
@views[name]=block end; def helpers(&block);@helpers.instance_eval(
&block ) ; instance_eval(&block) end; def session; @request.env[
"rack.session"]end; def use(middleware, *args);@app=middleware.new(
@app,*args) end; def run(*args);Thin::Server.start(@app, *args) end
def call(env); @request = Rack::Request.new(env); @response =Rack::
Response.new; @params = @request.params; if action = recognize(env[
"PATH_INFO"], @params["_method"] ||env["REQUEST_METHOD"]); @params.
merge!(@path_params);action.last.call;@response.finish; else; [404,
{}, "Not found"]; end; end; def self.run(*args,&block);new(&block).
run(*args) end; def self.app;@app||=self.new end;def self.call(env)
@app.call(env) end; private; def build_route(route);pattern= route.
split("/").inject('\/*') { |r, s| r << (s[0] == ?: ? '(\w+)' : s) +
'\/*' } + '\/*';[/^#{pattern}$/i,route.scan(/\:(\w+)/).flatten] end
def recognize(url, method); method =method.to_s.downcase; @actions.
detect do |m,(pattern,keys),_| method==m&&@path_params=match_route(
pattern,keys,url)end;end;def match_route(pattern,keys,url);matches,
params=(url.match(pattern)||return)[1..-1],{};keys.each_with_index{
|key,i| params[key]=matches[i]};params;end;end; def method_missing(
method, *args, &block); ; if Invisible.app .respond_to?(method) ;
Invisible.app. send( method, *args, &block); else; super; end; end

No!

Nick Sieger though us about Jazz, Giles Bowkett got a standing ovation, Zed Shaw sang “Matz can’t patch” and “Don’t fuck Chad’s community”, Geoffrey Grosenbach was wearing a kilt, Hampton Catlin presented Haml for Javascript, Damien Katz made me cry and Tom Preston-Werner is my new hero.

Better reviews

• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/20/rubyfringe-day-1-notes-part-1/
• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/20/rubyfringe-day-1-notes-part-2/
• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/21/rubyfringe-day-2-notes-part-1/
• http://www.seanr.ca/tech/?p=27
• http://www.seanr.ca/tech/?p=30

1. Jevon MacDonald talks about how startups can save venture capital (in Canada). He includes a great presentation that he’s given in a few places about how startup communities can work more effectively to get great startups off the ground.

   My take, without turning this into a blog post of its own, is that the early, but growing startup communities across Canada need to do a much better job of policing their own and touting their own. This is something that I have yet to see addressed effectively by anyone. Somehow, as a community, we need to be able to get together, vet ideas, provide honest feedback and bring new teams together with new ideas, where old teams and old ideas have failed. If we don’t take a hard look at our own “house” (i.e. the collection of startups we’re launching), and be honest with each other when things aren’t working (and celebrate that failure), then we do ourselves a disservice. Once we - as a startup community - are truly creating great startups, pumping out great teams with great ideas, mashing up people and ideas in new ways, and proving that we can raise the bar on the quality of the community, I guarantee you the funding will follow quite aggressively.

2. Roger Ehrenberg writes a very detailed and honest post-mortem on Monitor110, a startup he was involved with from an early stage. They raised around $20M dollars, but couldn’t get where they needed to go. What’s most important about Roger’s thoughts is the fact that he’s completely honest and open. He includes a list of critical mistakes he made, many of which we’ve all seen from within our own startups. You can be sure that Roger has taken those mistakes to heart and significantly improved his outcomes in other businesses he’s involved with.

   Post-mortems like this are hard to do. It reminds me of Phil Chrun’s own deconstruction of his failed startup, MyCarpoolStation. It was open, raw and real. If you can’t learn from Roger’s mistakes and Phil’s mistakes, you’re in big trouble, cause you’re not learning at all.

Startup communities work when they’re honest and mature. We shouldn’t go around publicly bashing one another, there’s no value in that, but privately we have to be able to look at things with an honest eye. I don’t like the thought of negatively impacting a young team of entrepreneurs by providing real criticism - the worry is that they abandon their goals of being startup entrepreneurs - but if we can’t provide that criticism, step up with our own honest stories of failure, and then find active solutions to building great startups with the pool of people and ideas we have, we can’t succeed as a startup community.

At this point, you really can’t question the power of blogging. It works. There are examples of blogging working across different industries, for different reasons. It’s great for customer service. It’s great for building up a following (that you can then leverage into all kinds of different businesses.) Blogging might not be for everyone, but you can’t deny it’s value. Even when some people are supposedly quitting…

After all, look at what happened to yours truly recently — I was quoted in The New York Times (free registration required).

Truth be told, I didn’t even know the author, Paul B. Brown, was going to quote me. I’d never heard of him until a reader emailed me to congratulate me. My guess is that Mr. Brown used Google to search for relevant content related to his article and came across my blog. Unless he’s been a faithful reader for some time, but the article he quoted was from April 2007.

In Mr. Brown’s article, Being Serious About Your Own Money, he’s taking about how entrepreneurs often forget to manage their personal finances, because they’re so focused on their businesses. Often, entrepreneurs put their personal finances at huge risk to accommodate and support their business ventures.

The article he quoted that I had written way back when was on that very subject — Entrepreneurs Should Plan Their Finances And Invest Wisely. I re-read my post and it’s certainly true; it’s easy to forget your own finances, let things slip (even paying bills, or paying yourself!) and get overwhelmed in an avalanche of financial trouble…

It was cool to be quoted in The New York Times. It was great that one of my readers pointed me to the article. I really do owe Mr. Brown a thank you…

And one of the areas where companies (startups and non-startups) continue to fall flat on their faces is customer service and support. It’s amazing to me that so few companies do a great job when it comes to treating customers well and responding to them in a timely and professional manner. To me, that’s basic. It should be a given. But it’s not.

You should look at those continued missteps in customer support as a huge opportunity.

Every company needs to differentiate itself in a crowded market — and one way of doing that is through great customer service.

I’ve always been a huge believer in providing the best possible service you can. And even in our infancy at Standout Jobs it’s paying off. Here’s a couple testimonials from customers:

Honestly, this level of service is really excellent, unexpected, and
of course very welcome. So far, in the 20 minutes since I signed up, I have had a great
experience with Standout Jobs and I’ve told 2 people. Well done!

Standout Jobs is great for our recruiting needs. The team’s customer service is second to none. From the outset, everyone has been there for us to make our site and job postings better. I’m most thankful for their continued support. I get more support from Standout Jobs than I ever will from another job site that I’ve already paid thousands of dollars to be on. Thanks for everything, and please don’t ever change who you are!

A few thoughts about leveraging customer service as a differentiator:

1. Great Customer Support = More Referrals. Happy customers won’t spread the word as much as angry customers, but they still do a great job as your army of sales people. And for a startup (which typically won’t have many, if any, sales people) a wee army of happy customers is a very powerful thing.
2. Great Customer Support = More Testimonials. Testimonials and case studies are important for startups, especially those in the B2B SaaS space that need to quickly establish a reputation and level of professionalism that gives prospects a high degree of comfort and increases trust. Companies often think to themselves (of B2B startups), “Are these guys for real? Can they last?” Testimonials, client success stories, etc. help to assuage those concerns.
3. Set a Precedent Early. The best time to implement great customer support is when you first start the company. Make it a policy. Make it standard. Make it part of your culture. It will bleed into everything you and your team does, which is going to lead to better results all around. And once killer customer support is baked into your startup’s DNA, it’s hard to strip out. If you don’t do it early, it’s also much harder to get going later on.
4. Sell Your Customer Service. It’s not always easy to sell customer service to customers. Customers tend to be wary of promises in this area, but if great customer support is part of your company’s DNA then find a way to sell it as a value proposition to customers. Make sure your messaging and brand are representative of how important customer service is to your company. Reflect it in everything you do, so that customers don’t feel like you’re simply paying lip service to customer service in order to get their credit card numbers.
5. Be Faster Than Everyone Else. The simplest way to master great customer support is to be fast. You don’t need an army of customer support people to be fast, you need an efficient system with multiple channels for handling inquiries. If you’re doing a B2B Software-as-a-Service startup, I’d recommend that your phone number go right on your site (and prominently.) Setup forums. Use Twitter. Leveraging multiple channels ensures that you’re “everywhere, all the time” communicating with customers the way they want to be communicated with; and you’re doing it at lightening speed. In many cases, being right (i.e. having the perfect answer to a customer’s inquiry) is less important than the speed with which you deliver the response…
6. Think of Customer Support as a Profit Center. Too many companies think of customer support as a cost center. (Not dissimilar to HR, but that’s a story for another day!) Done poorly, customer support is absolutely a money sucker. It can very easily be a black hole of crap. And that’s exactly what it is for so many companies. But you can turn it into a profit center by recognizing all the value it brings. And beyond the ancillary value (referrals, leads, testimonials, etc.) you can start to generate direct revenue too. Create enough of a positive vibe with customer support and suddenly it becomes much easier to upsell customers. And think about the dollars that might exist in extended training options you offer customers (especially for B2B companies.)
7. Build Momentum. You can build momentum with customer service. It has a way of snowballing into more and more success, by increasing referrals, testimonials, goodwill, etc. The momentum can be external and internal. You can have as much buzz about your amazing customer support as you can for your product - that’s totally fine, and a great way of differentiating your startup from the competition!

Startups that launch with no strategy for providing the best customer support possible will find themselves in trouble very quickly.

It’s not expensive or complicated to provide great customer service. But because so few companies do it right, there’s a goldmine of opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

Don Dodge just posted a reprint of an article he wrote a few years ago: First Mover vs. Fast Follower - Who Wins?

The article is just as relevant today (if not more so). Startups are launching faster than ever and require less capital than they used to — at least in the Web 2.0 world — and that means more opportunity for first movers, but even more opportunity for fast followers. And I think we’ll look at the next 5 years or so in the Web 2.0 world as the “me too” years; when fast followers took over from the first movers in a whole bunch of areas.

The benefit for “me too” companies, or “copycats” is that they get to learn from the mistakes made by the first movers. First movers tend to have trouble innovating as quickly - they’re dealing with problems, customers, etc. They’re burning through more money than the copycats. So fast followers can simply move more quickly, and benefit from the first mover’s lessons.

This doesn’t mean I want to see a million more “me too” companies. In fact, I typically yawn when I see new stuff come out that looks so similar to its predecessors — and therein lies the problem for copycats. Learning from other companies’ mistakes isn’t enough. Copying almost exactly what others have done isn’t enough. Even “just a little twist” on something old won’t sustain you for long, although it might get you some good press, and early adopter uptake. Followers can only succeed if they’re innovative. That’s easier said than done — especially if you’re focused almost entirely on comparing yourself to the first mover startup — and you lose sight of what makes you unique, and you lose your ability (if you had it at all) to innovate.

Followers can correct the mistakes of leaders because they already know what to watch out for. In Don Dodge’s article he uses a number of examples of first movers that failed versus fast followers, and attributes the failure, in part, to bad management decisions made by the original companies. Copycat startups have the opportunity to implement better management and make better choices. But Dodge also points to the fact that his example fast followers were also innovators:

They have continued to innovate far beyond the original idea or feature set and have maintained market leadership. If you look closely at these companies they have a mix of technical visionaries and business management leaders.

For copycat startups, it’s critical to have more well-rounded businesses - combining innovative technology and good business management. First movers can capture the hearts and minds of an audience with their technology alone - they’re first in the space, defining it and grabbing bucketloads of attention - but followers need to think more seriously about how to tackle the market, leveraging marketing, PR, social media, etc. alongside their technology.

Ultimately, whether you’re first or not doesn’t seem to determine your chances of success. If anything, you may have more chance of success if you’re not the first mover, so don’t focus on rushing out foolishly. And don’t throw in the towel if you’re not first to market … there’s plenty of room to hit a home run.

Today’s TechCrunch article, Think Before You Voicemail, struck a nerve with me. I’ve very often felt the same way for the exact same reasons Michael outlined:

It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.

The big problem with voicemail is that it takes a context switch out of your normal workflow in order to dial into the system, figure out how to fast-forward/delete messages, transcribe messages, etc. This might sound minor but it really takes its toll when you’ve already got a ton of things on your plate to deal with on a daily basis.

Other minor problems with voicemail include long distance charges to dial into my voicemail when I’m traveling, and the delay caused by my tendency to not notice that I have a voicemail until the next time I make a telephone call.

So today I’ve taken a big step toward escaping voicemail. I’ve set up my cell phone such that voicemails are transcribed automatically into text messages and sent to my email (and optionally SMS’d to me). How did I do this? It was not straightforward so I am repeating the steps here for anyone who’d like to do the same.

Without further ado, here’s how I set up PhoneTag with my iPhone running on the Fido network.

Step 1

The first step is to subscribe to a voicemail transcribing service. The service I ended up subscribing to is PhoneTag. There are several other services, including YouMail and SpinVox, but nearly all suffer from one big flaw — they do not work with Canadian numbers. (Don’t even get me started on how we always get shafted on technology in Canada…)

Fortunately PhoneTag does work in Canada, so they get my dollars. (Not much actually, only 35 cents per transcribed message; other plans available too.)

Step 2

Once you’ve set up your PhoneTag account, you have to instruct your carrier to use PhoneTag’s voicemail box when you don’t answer your phone. This is accomplished via Conditional Call Forwarding. In layman’s terms, you have to ask your carrier to forward a caller to voicemail when you 1) don’t answer, 2) are unreachable, or 3) already on the phone.

When you get a phone from Fido, it’s already pre-programmed to forward calls to the Fido voicemail. In this case, we want to switch to PhoneTag’s voicemail. Here’s where things get complicated a bit; I am using an unlocked iPhone on the Fido network, and unfortunately, I could not find a way to set Conditional Call Forwarding inside the iPhone’s interface. However, we can get around this by directly programming appropriate GSM Commands into the phone!

The GSM Commands I used were the following:

1. Call Forwarding if No Answer: *61*[dest]#
2. Call Forwarding if Unreachable: *62*[dest]#
3. Call Forwarding if Busy: *67*[dest]#

where [dest] is the destination of the call forwarding, i.e. the phone number of PhoneTag’s mailbox. So as an example, if your mailbox’s number is 514-123-4567, then the appropriate sequence to program Call Forwarding if No Answer would be *61*5141234567#.

So, I opened up Keypad of the iPhone, typed in and called each one of the above mentioned codes, and voila; my callers are now directed to PhoneTag’s voicemail. (You’ll know you did it right if you see some status messages.)

Now voicemails are automatically transcribed into text and sent to my email, where I will see it the next time I return to my workstation.

Step 3

For completeness’ sake, rewire the Voicemail button on the iPhone to point to your new mailbox by issuing the following command:

*5005*86*yourvoicemailphonenumber#

In PhoneTag’s case, yourvoicemailphonenumber is 18007840457.

But of course we’ll never use that button again, right?

Step 4

Finally call Fido Customer Service at 611, and cancel your voicemail option, saving you a few bucks per month.

There you have it, escape from voicemail.

Now if only I could escape from email too, then life would be heaven!

The cufflinks I purchased were meant to be gifts so I didn’t want to spoil the surprise by publishing this story then, but since the gifts are already on their way I don’t think I could sit on this story for much longer.

Back in mid-March 2008, I purchased 3 pairs of cufflinks from Cufflinks.com and received the shipment about a week later. Unfortunately, things weren’t right as I explain to them in an email:

I had received an order I placed (#119029) on March 12 and was surprised to find that each and every single one of the cufflinks had perceivable damage on them. Upon even closer inspection, the polish of one of the cufflinks did not even match the others!

Attached to this email you’ll find an archive containing photos of the various imperfections I mentioned. They’re also available online at the following links:

[ images available here ]

I’m disappointed by the amount of damage found on these supposedly new cufflinks. Are these items not inspected before they’re shipped to customers? 4 of the cufflinks were damaged right out of their case. 2 of the cufflinks were found just floating around outside their case along side the packing peanuts! How they managed to find their way out of their case is beyond me.

I’m also disappointed because I paid over $400 dollars (including customs) for these cufflinks that were meant to be gifts for my groomsmen upon my wedding in May. I definitely don’t want the occasion to be marred by my groomsmen getting cufflinks that look like they were involved in a catfight.

Lastly, I’m disappointed in myself for having prematurely recommended Cufflinks.com to my friends. I hope I won’t have to retract that recommendation.

Now I’ll be returning these cufflinks first thing tomorrow via UPS using the instructions provided in the back of the packing slip.

I’m waiting for you to make this right. I expect an exchange or a full refund.

Over a week later, I receive the following reply from Paul:

Thank you for shopping with us at Cufflinks.com and please accept our utmost apologies for the issues you had with your order. In looking at your returned items, I can certainly see why you were upset with the delivery. In the returned package, 2 pairs were outside of their boxes as well. This is something we are speaking with the manufacturer about in regards to packing them in a sleeve or some other cautionary device. Upon further research, our entire inventory on this item from Simon Carter have blemishes in one area or another. This is not common at all for this designer and we apologize for the inconvenience. I have gone ahead and issued a full credit back to you in the amount of $360.00. Again, please accept our utmost apologies for this and I assure you that this is not normally how our company ships product out. I hope we can regain your trust and for your next order with us, please use this coupon for 10% off your entire next order with us - wu10.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Dissatisfied with their response, I write back:

Thanks for trying, but I’m not yet ready to accept Cufflinks.com’s apologies. The fact remains that despite the $360 credit, I have already taken a loss of around $120 from this single transaction. The 10% coupon doesn’t barely cover this loss, let alone the inconvenience of finding new cufflinks before the May wedding.

So as you can understand, I’m still immensely dissatisfied. And unless Cufflinks.com tries much harder, I’ll be taking my business elsewhere.

Of course, I haven’t heard from them since.

And it doesn’t have to be this way.

Call me naive, but I really expected more from Cufflinks.com. After Zappo’s well-publicized understanding of the Cluetrain Manifesto (my favourite story), I would have expected online merchants to really beef up their customer’s shopping experience. And with sites like The Consumerist, I don’t think they can afford not to for much longer.

Many people will tell you the best way to launch a product is to do so early and iterate constantly. I’ve said the same thing, and generally agree with that sentiment. You don’t want to spend a year building a product without any serious customer feedback, without putting your feet to the fire in the wilds of the marketplace.

But one of the downfalls of iterating and releasing constantly is that you lose the opportunity to package a launch into a more full-blown marketing and press campaign. Releasing new features every few weeks doesn’t necessarily allow for the time and energy to be put into marketing and selling those features effectively. That doesn’t mean you should abandon the iterative process and the “release often” mantra, but think about building towards more major releases while doing so:

1. Quick product launch to start
2. Iterate & release
3. Iterate & release
4. Iterate & release
5. Release Version 2

So while you’re iterating and releasing updates, patches, fixes and new features, think about how you can package all of that and additional things into a new version of your product. This gives you the chance to align marketing, PR and business development initiatives simultaneously.

Standout Jobs launched in late January. Since then we’ve released a bunch of new features, fixed a bunch of issues and overall improved the system. For awhile we were releasing every 2 days to fine tune a bunch of things, and once things “calmed down” we got into a weekly or bi-weekly release schedule. But at the same time, we’ve been working towards “version two” of the product. It’s taking the combined effort of what we’ve done to-date, adding significant new functionality into the mix (based a great deal on customer and marketplace feedback), and giving us the chance to reset the marker for moving forward. In some ways it will be the “going out of Beta” stage for us … which many software companies experience.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a few things we’re learning and preparing as we move towards a new version of our product (and here’s where the “Big Bang Theory” comes in, although it’s hardly a theory, more a string of ideas mashed together…)

1. Don’t Get Lost in Development: It’s not about disappearing for 6 months and suddenly releasing a completely new product. We’re doing more than adding a couple of enhancements, but the development cycle isn’t more than a few months. So keep the development cycle as short as possible, even when contemplating a “big new release.”
2. Align Your Brand: Now’s the time to get your brand message and corporate brand in order. Take a look at your website. Take a look at the messaging you use to sell / promote your product. Is it all aligned and making sense with what you’ll be releasing in the next version? If you are going to change those things - i.e. the design of your website, or the brand messaging - then it’s the perfect time to do it, because you can release all of that simultaneously with the new product version.
3. Fine Tune Your Business Model: Many companies release quickly (often with a free product) and look to implement a business model after the fact. Iterative releases aren’t ideal for launching business models, because the sum total of the changes made may not be enough to justify charging people. But when you release a “new version” and package it properly, you give yourself the chance to also introduce a good business model that layers on top of the previous success you’ve had with your free product.
4. Prep the Marketing and Public Relations Machines: If you’re launching a new version of your product, launch it big, and make as much noise as possible. That’s my take. When you’re iterating and releasing constantly, you’re building momentum, you’re maintaining touch points with customers, prospects, etc. But when you’re launching a new version, it’s time to bring out the trumpets and blast ‘em. So have a marketing plan and PR campaign ready to go. You want plenty of news going out about the release, you want lots of chatter and then you want to maintain that momentum going forward.
5. Build Momentum Before Launching: Ideally, you’re making a ton of noise and building up lots of momentum right before you launch the new version of your product. There’s no reason for the launch to come out of left field and surprise people. Get people talking about it. Let clients know what’s coming. Generate as much buzz as you can, to improve your chances of a successful launch.
6. Don’t Forget Your Customers: Your existing customers (whether using a free version of your product or not) are your best friends. Treat them well during the launch process. Get some of them up and running beforehand as beta testers. Leverage your happy customers for testimonials and case studies that you can use to promote the launch.
7. Try Something New: As crazy as things are in your preparation towards the big launch, now is the time to try things out in a different way. Or maybe you’ve had some things you wanted to do for awhile and never got around to in the process of constant iteration. I’ve had a few “backburner ideas” sitting around that I’ll try to implement in conjunction with our new release. It’s good timing to package those things up, and experiment a little.
8. Clear Your Schedule: Don’t overload yourself immediately after a big product launch. You’ll be in crazy-iterative-fix-it mode for awhile, so leave plenty of time for that. And make sure you have of development plan ready to go once you can see past the trees, so you’re not caught asleep at the wheel.
9. Timing is Everything: The biggest challenge with a “big launch” is timing. You’ve got developers coding like mad, business people implementing new plans, marketers and PR folks greasing the wheels and everything has to happen at the same time in perfect synchronicity. Guess what? It’s damn hard to do, and chances are some things will go wrong. As long as nothing catastrophic happens, any minor slip-ups will go unnoticed by most people. So don’t panic. Mitigate your risk as much as possible with great planning. Don’t overstep your abilities. It’s better to have a smaller, successful launch than having it all explode in your face.

I’m a big fan of iterative development and releasing often. But there’s also a place for the “big bang” release, which I feel is often overlooked by many startups. You should consider big product launches as a way of drawing a new line in the sand for business and moving forward.

1. Your Pitch Sucks. Patrick Lor lays it on the line very succinctly with his post about bad VC pitches. He must have seem some really awful pitches, cause he’s normally quite a “nice guy” blogger. Regardless, every point he makes is correct; they’re not easy lessons to learn necessarily, but he’s right. For some further advice on pitching VCs, I’ve written a couple posts: 5 Quick Tips on Pitching Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists and 5 Lessons Learned from Pitching VCs.
2. Does Revenue Matter? Mark MacLeod asks this question in one of his recent posts at StartupCFO, and if you’re running a startup, or thinking about it, you should absolutely read this. Every startup struggles with issues of revenue, and many startups (especially in the consumer Web 2.0 space) don’t focus nearly enough on it. Mark makes some key points about the difficulty of raising capital without a credible business model or revenue traction. But equally, he describes the fact that most acquisitions aren’t made based simply on a multiple of revenue. So how important is revenue? And how quickly should you focus on generating revenue, and then scaling it from there? Great questions…
3. What Not To Do. Here’s a list of 17 mistakes commonly made by startups (written originally by John Osher). The first two mistakes listed are “Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it’s viable” and “Miscalculating market size, timing, ease of entry and potential market share”. I would argue that in the Web 2.0 startup world, most startups barely make any attempt to figure out if their idea is viable and then look at the market size. Web 2.0 startups are moving and launching too quickly for that, right? I don’t think we need to bring back the era of 40-page business plans, but completely ignoring these kinds of issues before jumping into your startup is just asking for it.

Re-reading these posts, it’s clear they definitely have a negative bent to them (at least the first and third), but that’s in no way representative of how I’m feeling. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile to be the recipient of some straight, honest talk from time to time and really learn from the experience and failings of others.

Short answer: My kids. And more specifically, my younger son, Quinn Alexander Yoskovitz, who recently turned 1 year old. He’s been a bit under the weather, teething like a werewolf and grumpy like a seriously-constipated old man (and if you’ve ever met one of those, you know what I’m talking about!) This all translates into a complete lack of sleep. For the past year I’ve lived on about 4-5 hours of sleep per night. Some nights are better. Some are worse. A couple nights ago I got a grand total of 2 hours of sleep! The night ended (and the day started) with me driving Quinn around the city so he’d sleep in the car. A large coffee, bagel, triple shot cappuccino and chocolate biscotti later, I dragged my ass home, exhausted (having driven around for 1.5 hours), with a vicious stomach ache. That was some day!

On a positive note, look how freaking cute he is…

(That’s Quinn’s older brother Sam in the right picture.) But enough about those darn kids…what else keeps me awake at night?

Well, there’s this little thing called Standout Jobs that keeps me fairly occupied during the day. And running a startup will keep the most easygoing of us awake at night.

All of that combined helps explain why I haven’t posted here as much as I’d like. But this isn’t about making excuses, I really do what to get some things off my chest (and hopefully these thoughts prove useful too!) So here are a few other things that keep me awake at night…

4 More Things That Keep Me Awake at Night

1. The Difference Between Quick and Rash Decisions. CEOs and startup founders are forced to make a lot of decisions. It comes with the territory. And if you’re not a veteran entrepreneur you won’t have a lot of past experience to rely on. And you have to make the decisions quickly. Like … right now. Hurry up. Come on! Slow startups fail. You know it, and it means you have to make a ton of critical decisions constantly & very quickly. But are you making rash decisions? Quick and rash go hand-in-hand, but you don’t want to make rash decisions, because they’ll usually be the wrong ones. I don’t have a solid answer at the moment, and I think this is a subject I could explore in a lot more detail later on.
2. Hiring Great People. If you’re not worried about hiring great people and making the right personnel decisions you’re doing something wrong. Seriously. And for a startup like Standout Jobs which is right at the threshold of evolving from a technology company to a sales/marketing company those hiring decisions become even harder. We know how to hire great technical talent…but hiring outside our comfort zone is another story.
3. Puzzles. I think of startups like puzzles - at least the kind that have multiple ways of reaching the same conclusion. There’s no one absolute answer to a successful startup, but there are still a million pieces that all have to fit together properly at some point. A lot of this comes down to managing the day-to-day operations effectively. That’s something I have a good handle on, but as you start to think about longer term strategic initiatives, future product development, sales strategies, etc. … the puzzle keeps my head buzzing.
4. My Health. Startup founders can’t balance everything all the time. It’s impossible. Something has to give. It’s not that you can’t achieve some amount of balance (and truth be told, you have to keep laughing about things otherwise you’re doomed!) but from time to time things will suffer. In my case that’s my eating habits. You’re in a rush, you eat crap. You’re tired, you eat more crap. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

So why do it?

The answer is simple: This is what I love to do. It’s what I was meant to do. No one said it’d be easy, but you don’t ask a professional hockey player why he suffers through all the aches, pains, injuries, ups and downs, etc. to play hockey at the highest level, right? They’re trying to be the best. They’re trying to win. They’re trying to make tons of money. And they love what they do.

The same holds true for startup entrepreneurs. Why go through it all? You better damn well love it…

And on that note, what keeps you awake at night? Please share!

Code is at http://github.com/macournoyer/meshu

It will take on average 4-6 months to raise money, so when you raise an early seed round (say in the $250k-$500k range) it won’t last long. That means the minute you cash that check, you’re out there again, raising more.

I’ve written about pitching investors before. And I’ve also posted some common questions investors will ask during the investment process. The points I made in both posts remain true, but here are some additional insights I’ve learned over the last few months of pitching, pitching and more pitching:

1. Tell Your Story Quick. When pitching investors you have a captive audience. But they won’t stay captive for long unless you can hook them. And to-date I’ve seen two things that keep investors’ early attention on you versus their Blackberrys:
   1. An entertaining story on the problem you’re solving
   2. An entertaining story on the founders and how the company came together

   Both of these points are about putting some context and relevancy on the upcoming pitch and discussion. If you make the problem feel real and explain it in an entertaining way it’s going to resonate much more strongly with investors. The same holds true with the history of the company. They want to hear about each founder’s strengths, background and how you were drawn together to create this new business. That has to be done in a relaxed, entertaining way.

   Here are 3 slides I used recently in the beginning of a presentation from CIX where Standout Jobs was named one of Canada’s Hottest 20 Startups.

   

   

   

   You don’t get all the context without hearing me go through the presentation, but the key is that I was illustrating very simply - at a high level - the problem we’re trying to address.

2. Change the Pace Throughout. Whether a presentation is 5 minutes or 50 minutes (or anywhere in between), you need to change the pace throughout. Speed up when telling high level stories, which also allows you to go through more rapid slide changes to keep people’s attention. Slow down when you’re getting into the meat & potatoes, so people can digest the details. When I first started pitching I know that I did so with a very monotone pace. Everything was well timed, but there wasn’t enough variation.
3. Sexy Slides Work. I know you’re not selling vaporware or snake oil, so I have no problem promoting slick presentations. You’re not trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes with “style over substance” but you need to make things look good. I’ve seen too many presentations where the slides were simply painful to look at; and you can watch people in the room tuning out almost instantly. No matter what you’re pitching - from cool consumer apps to ultra-complex B2B technology - find a way to make your slides sing.

   Here’s an example of a slide I’ve used which I think works well. It’s nice looking, bold and has a few key points on it:

   

   Side note: Don’t be afraid to play around with font sizes, colors and typefaces for things like slide titles. Everything shouldn’t be absolutely uniform.

4. Don’t Over Emphasize the Product. Unless your product is dead simple, you won’t be able to go through all of its great features and benefits in a short investor presentation. Don’t even try. You want to highlight the key elements of the product, but ultimately investors are buying into the team (i.e. the founders), the passion, and the belief that you can execute on what you claim you can execute on. They love to see barriers to entry, intellectual property, etc. but they don’t want to become experts in your product after one pitch.
5. End Strong. Most presentations leave the detailed financials to the end. Of course, investors want to know about your financial situation and projections, but ending just on that is pretty dry. Plus, they’ll be assuming that most of your projections are wrong anyway, especially if you’re at a very early stage. So find a way to end as strong as you can. In the last pitch I did, I listed out 4 key points I wanted the investors to remember. It was my, “If you leave here remembering only a couple things…here’s what you need to know…”

   And recently, I got some interesting advice, which was to make sure the audience is drawn back to you at the end of the presentation and not focusing on the slides. You want them looking at you, making eye contact, and really getting a feel for your confidence and passion. I was told that the last slide should be as minimalistic as possible; even down to just showing your company’s logo. No matter what you do, end strong by highlighting the few critical things you want investors walking away with in their heads.

Pitching investors is hard.

I’ve met very few people who are really comfortable with it, and fewer still that enjoy it. I did not enjoy the process early on. But the more I pitch (and present in front of larger audiences), and the more I hone my Powerpoint skills and realize that I’m really just telling a story, the more comfortable and effective I become. And you do get better with practice. Good luck!

Here are the details:

• Tuesday, May 13th @ 9am
• Location: Bistro, Etc. - 1291 Avenue du Mont-Royal, E.
• Facebook Event Listing: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=13095875628
• Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5502019497

We run the breakfast on the 2nd Tuesday of every month.

Anyone involved in technology + entrepreneurship (developers, startup entrepreneurs, curious people, angel investors, VCs, etc.) are welcome.

I’m not the only administrator of the Montreal DragonFly site. So to keep things simple, one of the things I decided was that the content for the site’s media gallery was going to live elsewhere. That in itself presented a few challenges in terms of how the gallery’s master page will be displayed. Now I’m going to share how I turned WordPress posts into a gallery.

Extracting the Essentials

The gallery page is a is basically an archive index using the wp_get_archives function to display Images- and Videos-related posts. However, the only difference is that the entry is stripped of all its contents except for a single image.

For Images-related posts, that can be done easily by parsing the the_content tag like so:

<?php if (in_category('3')) { ?> <?php $image_string = get_the_content(); $image_string = stristr($image_string, '<img'); $image_string_length = stripos($image_string, '>') + 1; $image_string = substr($image_string, 0, $image_string_length); echo $image_string; ?>
<?php } ?>

The above code says something like, “if the entry is an Images-related post, return the first image tag you find.”

The Video-related posts are a little more complicated because instead of containing images, they actually contain embedded YouTube videos. Because I use the WordPress Viddler plugin to embed YouTube videos, I can use the following:

<?php if (in_category('4')) { ?> <?php $image_string = get_the_content(); $image_string = stristr($image_string, '[youtube]‘); $image_string_length = stripos($image_string, ‘[/youtube]‘); $image_string = substr($image_string, 0, $image_string_length); $image_string = str_replace(”[youtube]“, “”, $image_string); echo ‘<img src=http://img.youtube.com/vi/’.$image_string.’/default.jpg>’; ?>
<?php } ?>

This bit of code says, “If the entry is a Videos-related post, locate the YouTube video ID (sandwiched between [youtube] tags) and return the thumbnail for that YouTube video. Getting a thumbnail for a YouTube video turned out to be easier than I thought.

CSS to the Rescue

Now that I’ve scrubbed and tweak the entries, this is what the HTML for each post looks like:

<div class="post"> <h2>[title]</h2> <div class=”entry”>[image]</div> <p class=”postmetadata”>[metadata]</p>
</div>

And for the CSS here are the basics:

.post { float: left; display: block; position: relative; width: 252px; height: 110px; margin: 0 15px 15px 0;
}
.post img { margin: 0; width: 75px; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0;
}
.post h2 { margin: 0 0 5px 93px;
}
.post .postmetadata { margin: 0 0 0 93px;
}

Every single post has fixed dimensions and tile from left to right with 15px of space between each post. Images are positioned relatively to the upper left of their respective posts. Titles and post metadata are aligned to the right of the image.

Final Words

So that’s it. Of course, this is by no means an absolutely robust and elegant way of doing things. It makes assumptions about the contents and markup of the post, and I’m sure using regular expressions would make the PHP code much more beautiful.

Raising angel financing in Canada has unique challenges that I’ve written about here before.   Part of what was most fun about raising this round was the number of incredible investors I was able to meet.   Many of them joined us in this round, but throughout the process I was impressed by the growing strength and sophistication of Canadian angel investors.

Completing a $1.9 million dollar round for a stealth project had its unique moments, but the confidence and support that our investors have shown for the project has been great.

I’d like to welcome all our investors to the Akoha project and thank them for their support.

Ben Yoskovitz, Fred Ngo and I are mentioned in the article.

Combine those two interests, and it???s easy to see why angels often want an active role in management and decision-making. Such a high level of engagement makes finding an angel who is aligned with your vision and business goals as crucial a task as perfecting your investment pitch. Austin Hill, a Montreal-based investor and serial entrepreneur, says the most common mistake business owners make is treating private-equity financing as a mere business transaction. ???I had one entrepreneur show up at my house on a Saturday morning, shove his product in my face and ask me if I was ready to invest,??? says Hill. ???Entrepreneurs need to understand it???s a relationship, something they should begin nurturing well before thinking of asking for money.???

For Benjamin Yoskovitz, CEO of Montreal-based Standout Jobs Inc., developing that relationship began with volunteer work for BarCamp Montreal, a conference for the city???s bustling technology-startup community. That exercise led to chance meetings with Fred Ngo, his eventual co-founder and chief technical officer, and Hill, who became one of his investors and chairman of Standout Jobs, which develops Web-based recruiting tools.

There are some additional quotes from both Ben and I where we discuss the importance of aligning common vision and having good communication with your investors.

Getting the right angel investors is one of the most critical decisions an early stage company can make.   It is one of the reasons I’ve criticized the speed dating approach of obtaining investors that is showcased on the CBC show Dragon’s Den. The show is good for entertainment - but it is still just TV.

While the market for angel investing in Canada still has a lot of maturing to do I am very optimistic about the organization of angel investors into funds, networks and the exchange of best practices that is beginning to occur.

On May 20th, I’ll be in Toronto presenting at meshU. Probably about climate change or Thin, haven’t decided yet.

From meshU site:

meshU is a one-day event of 12 focused workshops in three streams (design, development, management) given by those who have earned their stripes in the startup game; people who can talk knowledgeably about everything from interface design to using Amazon’s S3 distributed server network. We hope this addition to mesh will meet a growing need in Toronto: the need for practical, down-to-earth information about tools, knowledge and expertise for startups, web designers and developers of all kinds.

There will be some awesome and famous speakers: Daniel Burka and Leah Culver of Pounce, John Resign, creator of jQuery, Kevin Hale of Wufoo, Avi Bryant of Dabble DB, Jon Lax, Ryan Carson, Allistair Croll and Reg Braithwaite, it’s gonna be crazy-sexy-cool!

I hope to see you there!

Last summer my friend Patrick Lauzon and I spoke about the need to create a new type of networking event that would bring together founders of technology firms, angel investors and venture capitalists.

We held the first Founders & Founders dinner last November with a private group of 75 people.   With the help of our sponsors, iNovia Capital, Neotech Capital and Montreal Startup the event raised $1,000 for the Montreal Barcamp community.

The event was a great success, and was