The Stanford Technology Ventures Program (The Educators Corner )has a nice Podcast with Cofounder/Brother Jeff & Bobby Beaver of Zazzle. They talk about starting Zazzle from scratch and how bootstrapping worked for them. CLICK HERE for the Pod cast.
technorati tags: zazzle, stanford, t-shirts, printing
For the last month or so, I’ve been shopping a couple versions of my resume around Austin. My wish is is to get a contract position or even a full-time position with a company that I feel strong about, and will help continue my growth, both personally and professionally. I haven’t had a whole lot of luck, but have had a few interviews, and as of last Monday, a job offer.
The job offer was with a young dotcom for full time, in a position that really didn’t utilize my talents. However, because I feel the need to get back out there and also the need to supplement my NON-income. I told the sales manger that I would sleep on it, and let him know with in 24 hours. I thought long and hard about it and decided to accept the position. Well, I called the sales manager to let him know my decision and also let him know of a couple of dates that I had prior commitments for. I got his voice mail and left him a message stating my decision. I didn’t receive a response on the first message, so I waited until close of business, that day, and called again, and left another voice mail. On Wednesday I was hoping to hear back from them, but nothing. So I called again, voice mail again. I even sent a email to the HR person to find out if the SM was out of the office. No response, no response. Finally yesterday I called and got straight through to the SM, but he told me he was in a meeting and would call me right back. No response again. Today, I called and left a message again with the SM and also the President/CEO. No call, no email, nothing.
Do you suppose they don’t want to hire me now?
If I don’t hear anything by COB today, I might just pull a page from Seinfeld’s character, Kramer and show up to work on Monday, and act as if I belong there. That might be kind of fun. It would seem to me that if you offer someone a position with your company, you would have the professionalism to respond to said person in a timely manner. I understand, people change their minds or whatever. Shit happens. I understand this. But, there is a definite need here for communication. What does this say about their company? Do you suppose they treat their customers like this, as well? They won’t be in business much longer, if they do. I’ve always had the philosophy that if you treat your employees well, they in turn, will treat your customers well. Also,one never know who your customer might be.
If you or someone you know is looking for a great addition to your Marketing or Product Management team, let me know. I have almost six years experience as a CEO of a niche E-Commerce/ Community startup. I was the originator of the idea, put the founding team together, was instrumental in raising the capital and ran day-to-day operations. I am great at Marketing as well as Product Management. I would relish the opportunity to help a start-up or a bootstrapping entrepreneur with their web product. Drop me note (ping me) if you know of anything. And click here to take a look at my resume . Additionally, I welcome any constructive feedback.
Disclosure: I won’t be able to accept any position that requires a Non Compete in the Social Community space, because, I am currently working on a business plan for a project in this category.
technorati tags: austin, chris mullins, marketing, texas, ceo, management, ecommerce
In the latest issue of Business 2.0 (January/February 2006) , John Heilemann writes a great feature about Deli.icio.us and Joshua Schachter.
Yahoo understood my vision, and they didn’t argue with it. They led with ‘We want you to come here and tell us where to go’
Wired magazine also had some good stuff to talk about in its latest issue (February 2006). In the “trackback†section they featured a quote from Evan Williams’ “Ten Rules For Web Startupsâ€. I did a post about that one as well, back in December. It still amazes me, how much attention you can bring to your site with just one posting. Wired also had a nice article written by Chris Anderson about the “new boom†in Silicon Valley. Which is being led by Google. Additionally they had an article “Would You Buy a Used Dotcom From This Man†by Josh McHugh. It was about Allen Morgan and the Mayfield fund. It made mention of their $8.5 million investment in Pluck.com (does anyone use Pluck?). All in all, very good stuff. If you don’t subscribe to Business 2.0 or Wired then I would highly recommend you do so.
technorati tags: wired, business2.0, odeo, pluck, del.icio.us
Guy Kawasaki has a excellent post about Bootstrapping. Go Check it out.
technorati tags: ceo, guy+kawaski, bootstrap
Techcrunch added a cool directory to their site of the weekend. Now, from one page, you can get a snap shot of all of the companies profiled at Techcrunch. It makes a very cool reference tool. Go check it out.
technorati tags: techcrunch, web2.0, reference
Check out my MeasureMap stats from Sunday January 22, 2006. I guess I had so much traffic that they couldn’t even “measureâ€.
I like MeasureMap for it’s simplicity and Blog specific stats. And, I know it’s free and in Beta. But I’m always having some issues with it. The biggest problem is that it’s very slow, most of the time. I hope the quirkiness will be fixed soon.
technorati tags: analytics, measure+map, stats
I was never a huge Star Trek fan, or at least the kind of fan that learned Klingon. I have, however, seen my fair share of the original series and The Next Generation.
It’s funny that back in 1966 the creators of the original Star Trek , and their props people, invented the first Nextel Walkie-Talkie phone and GPS.
A portable transceiver device in use by Starfleet crews since at least the 2240s.
Earlier versions were designed as a hand-held device with a hardware control interface and a flip-up antennae grid/activator, but by the 2340s the communicator functions had been built into the metallic uniform insignia “combadge” worn on the left breast, activated by touch or voice.
Among many uses, communicators serve as locator IDs for gaining a transporter lock on personnel.
I’m sure a lot of other people have made this correlation before, but, I’m just a little slow. The basic concept of the Communicator on Star Trek was that you could communicate with other crew members and do GPS location. It’s funny because the communicator srated as a “Flip Phone†on the original Star Trek and as morphed to the BlueTooth device that is in use today.
I wonder what “Science Fact†devices are being used now, in TV and cinema, that will be available to us in the future?
Motorola i850
technorati tags: communicator, star+trek, nextel, klingon, phone
I just read some great tips on makeing a perfect pitch to a VC. Go check out “10 tips for a perfect pitch” over at the Fleck/blog.
Tip 7: Don’t bluff, lie or try to be a smart-ass!
What you shouldn’t say: We don’t really need money right now (THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE?), that your exit is going to be an IPO or acquisition by Google (YOUR INVESTORS KNOW THAT), that this is a sure thing (NO SUCH THINGS AS…), that you don’t have any competitors (YOU ARE LYING, DIDN’T DO YOUR RESEARCH OR YOUR PRODUCT SUCKS), that you aren’t going to do it yourself (MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR IDEA, MONEY AND TIMING IS THE ENTREPRENEUR. IF YOU DON’T DO IT THAN NOBODY ELSE WILL) and don’t tell them they should decide quickly because you have other investors waiting unless it is true!
technorati tags: fleck, startup, Entrepreneur, VC, ceo
I’m sure that most of you know already that Guy Kawasaki has a new(er) blog. If you don’t know who Guy Kawasaki is then you should check out “The Art of The Start†or “Garage.com†or his Wikipedia entry.
Anyway, Guy started blogging a few weeks ago and has churned out more useful Entrepreneurial content, than any one I’ve seen. Does this “Guy†have a huge back-log of content? Or, is he just that good that he can churn this stuff out on a daily basis, on top of his normal daily work load? I think he’s just that good. I also think he’s might be addicted to his web traffic. With every list that he puts out, it shoots straight to the top of Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us etc and then is referenced by other blogs all of the world. I think, maybe, once you get that kind of spike in traffic it’s hard not to try and better your previous post. No matter, I just hope he keeps churning it out.
The following are links to my favorite Guy Kawasaki posts so far:
technorati tags: guy+kawaskai, powerpoint, Entrepreneur, digg, ceo
With Myspace getting so much press lately I thought it’s time to check out their competition. By the way, Myspace has over 46million users now. Anyway, I had signed for a Tagworld account a few weeks back after reading about them over at Techcrunch. At first glance, Tagworld seems to be a Myspace killer; well, at least as far as cool features go. If you’re not familiar with Tagworld,
“TagWorld combines the power of people, photos, blogs, tagging and storage in a single, free and easy-to-use online service, complete with powerful web 2.0 tools!â€
TagWorld is a place to “socialize†if you’re in to music and have the time and patience to set-up your personal page. They have a rich set of social features that no other social community currently has. A few of the features that caught my eye were their Bookmarking, File Storage and Music Storage options;
They have a del.icio.us type bookmark function that includes the “Add to TagWorld†and “My TagWorld†buttons that you can add to your browser bar. When you add a bookmark you can chose a private or public setting so that you can either share or not share your bookmark with the community. Of course, just like Del.icio.us you can tag your bookmarks. However, in my opinion, you’re better off sticking with Del.icio.us for your standard bookmarks and only using the TagWold bookmarks for stuff that you want to share with the community.
The File Storage function is pretty cool, It appears that you can upload, tag and share just about any kind of file. I can see how this could be a cool social feature for sharing with members in your network. I’m not sure what the storage limit is (the have a bad help section or lack there of) but I think I heard it was 1gb. Also, it apears that they don’t have any kind of batch upload. Hopefully soon they will.
The music storage and player feature is, I think, suppose to be TagWorld’s big differentiator. It will be. However, as of yesterday I couldn’t get that shit to work. First of all, the only kind of music files you can upload are MP3 files. Which is not that bad except I have a lot of music in AAC format. Secondly, you can only upload one file at a time. Who has that much time to upload one song at a time? I would hope that they’ll incorporate a batch upload sometime soon. However, that’s all for naught if you don’t have a music player that works. I uploaded a few songs to play on my account but could never get them to play. I’m sure this is one of the problems that you have when you’re a rapidly growing site. The music player is also used to listen to music that’s on the Band/artist page. They have a cool function that allows you to add a song or all songs to your player in one click. If they can get this function worked out then I can see a bunch of user leaving Myspace.
One thing that I didn’t get to check out on TagWorld was their Band/Artist page functions. But accroding to Techcrunch;
“Bands can upload a GB of music and have a number of DRM options to control distribution. “
It also looked like from the picture on the Techcrunch post that Bands had access to some stats as well. This could be a great thing for Band promotions. If anyone out there has a band page set-up on Tagworld, then let me know what kind of features you have.
Over all, I like TagWorld, I think they still have some kinks to work out but that will come in time. I’m sure I missed a lot of the functions and features but since they don’t have a noticeable help section or any tutorials, I had to discover everything on my own. It looks like they have a strong management team and are out of the gates with over 470k members. Not to shabby. I’ll continue to check in on them to see how everything’s going. If they can the kinks worked out I’ll get all of my MySpace friends to sign-up and i’m sure others will also.
Take a look at my Tagworld page, and request to be a friend.
technorati tags: tagworld, myspace, community, social+network, music