Come for the Ride…

Here are some info on the blog widgets we use on this blog. Some of the info may be useful, others (like the widgets them-self), not so much.

Skribit finally launched into private beta (part 2). The website has been updated and a few bloggers outside of the founding team have been invited to test the widget out. I can see on some of the blogs testing the widget that the suggestions have been pretty useful. We definitely need some more suggestions on here — feel free to ask us to write about anything on the right. No logins required! If you currently have a blog and gets about 6000 or less RSS subscribers, let me know and maybe we can sign you up with a test account.

Another widget we’ve installed on here is the MyBlogLog widget. There seems to be a few variations of this widget out there with different presentations on the blog side but I’ve found the system to be a bit buggy such that images and profile info I’ve submitted have mysteriously disappeared time after time. I’m not sure if this is a common bug in the system but you’d figured with Yahoo! backing this thing, that the widget would be less buggy than Skribit, but I guess not.

With MyBlogLog, I have found that if you have a blog and like to surf others, this platform is great for cross linking your blog and getting other users to view yours. You would think that people who visit your blog would have similar interest therefore clicking on those users may show similar blogs. For the most part, you’d be right! Though I have found that some people can game the system based on what profile picture they provide. (Things that make you go hrmm….)

Finally, in another attempt to get more users for this blog, we’ve signed up with BlogRush as a recommendation from Bryan. So far, I can’t say I’ve been impressed. I’ve noticed no noticeable increase to our traffic nor have I seen any extremely related recommendations shown in there. The widget presentation is also a bit commercial-like which may make itself an automatic blind spot for users. I’ll leave it on for a full month to see if it changes its behavior but so far, even with manual approvals to get in the network, the service seems to be lacking.

I would equate this to be the same as the old MSN bCentral banner network. You get a credit for each impression you show and in turn your RSS title gets shown elsewhere. Except with this system, you’re really just helping the rich get richer and not really helping the blog newbies at all.

Just in case the content on here is SOOOOO good that you don’t even think about looking at the right column… The Skribit Widget is available for testing on this blog and it’s posted on the right.

If there are any topics you’d like to see covered here whether it’d be about Startup Weekend, Skribit or even the status / lesson learned from my own EasyAutoSales startup, feel free to drop us a comment and let us know.

Again, the goal of this blog is to let you know where we suceeded and where we failed so that you can learn from our experience (and maybe put us in your e-book.)

=)

For the people who have been following this blog, we posted a video of Truemors a couple of months ago where Guy Kawasaki talked about how he started a web based business with $12k and a few weeks of time. Well, after this past weekend, Guy posted a truemor about the Atlanta Startup Project, Skribit and how we were able to start a web business with $0 financing.

Well $0 is of course a stretch, there were SOME costs… but what does $0 really mean? Well, here’s the dirty dirty truth based on my observations.

$50 in domain names - I don’t have the hard numbers but in registering our name and in registering a few more variations to protect the brand, we’re looking at least $50 in expenses.

$1,000 in legal, misc fees. I admit, I completely ignored this part of the project, on purpose. I can’t wrap my head around it.

$2,400 in food - we were fed; a lot… I can’t say they were all great or healthy food, but we were well fed. There was also a ton of beers and drinks and so forth. If we didn’t have this, people wouldn’t stay.

$5,000 in office space - I’m not sure of the actual costs but I’ll throw in $5,000 as an estimate for renting the entire floor of where we needed to be. In addition to the main room, the various groups worked out of several different, smaller conference rooms which was necessary or we’d probably end up with nothing.

$96,000 in laptops/equipment - If the 64 people who showed up came with just pen and paper, we probably wouldn’t have accomplished too much in the 54 hour period. If you estimated the avg. laptop cost to be $1,500, then there would be close to $100,000 in equipment alone.

$185,000 in free labor - We worked about 36 actual hours… So if our average comes out to be $80 in consulting fees x 64 people, then that’s how much work we’ve put in in that time.

Priceless - Things we got for free due to networking. Things we will get for free as a result of this weekend’s networking. We got a few freebies from this weekend. A few months of web hosting… a few connections into the blogger world, connections to VC’s in the event this project takes off. All great and amazing things if you’re a struggling startup.

Even MORE Priceless, internal networking - You know how hard it is to find people who don’t make excuses, have a variety of talents, hop over any and all obstacles and apply that determination to businesses? Close to impossible. I’m really glad I was able to experience it cause… without seeing it for myself, it would have been hard to believe.

So is free really free? No, not really. Even though I worked about a week’s worth of hours in 2.5 days, I guess the difference is that we all think this project may turnout to be greater than the $290,000 of Monopoly money (and effort) we invested.

All I’ve gotta say is… if it’s possible to get $300,000 to start a company, find a group of smart business “snipers” who come in, do what’s needed and hop out, I would be all over it. After all, in the web world speed and execution is way more valuable than the alternative.

It’s been a long, hard, smelly but rewarding weekend. I seriously had planned on going home at about 3PM today to get some much needed sleep. However, working with a dynamic team of talented people that churned out stuff every few minutes; it was hard to pull away.

It was seriously like listening to the morning radio talk show on the way to work. Every time you think you are ready to pull away, they tease you with the next iteration, the next release or the next meal to make you stay just that much longer. In the end, I stayed for pretty much the whole event, but I really had to pull away at the 11th hour since I still have a day job tomorrow that I can’t sleep through.

While the event was tiring… the hard work paid off! Before the weekend even ended, we’d already got some press for our efforts.

“Duuuude! Pull up TechCrunch right now… we were just featured.” Seriously? No, you’re lying. We made TechCrunch?!

While I’m not sure what will ultimately become of this venture other than producing a cool and useful widget, it was at least great to have worked in an incubator environment that simulated a successful startup. I am definitely going keep in touch with a number of my peers from this weekend. It was a blast!

I must admit, it was hard getting up this morning after feeling a little bit defeated in the whole “ideas” thing. The clear business opportunity was out voted and instead, our group is working on a blog widget.

However, if there’s one thing I love, it’s a challenge. I’ve always prided myself in monetizing ideas and after a night of minor tossing and turning, I think I finally came up with something late last night.

It’s a shame that these pictures aren’t sexy and don’t offer much else besides a bunch of guys pointing at a bunch of words. However, after spending a whole day locked inside the atdc, my one word to describe day 2 would be: surreal.

What impressed me the most is how everyone, and I mean EVERYONE took what they did best and bulldozed the sh*t through it. (This includes Lance taking out the trash on multiple occasions!) While there were definitely varying ideas about the product and of course arguments; in the end, what we designed came out pretty awesome.

Let’s face it, when you group a bunch of type A people who want to be heard cause they care, there will be arguments. In the end, it’s just business and we’re doing what’s best for the company. I was impressed by the speed in which we took a brand and then claimed everything we could claim off the name. Within a 15 minute period, everything Skribit was setup. Twitter, Facebook products, Wikipedia, various blogs, MySpace, etc. Also, I saw some pretty amazing prototypes done in just 12 hours of code. Hrmm, I also think I did a power point this morning; I vaguely remember someone calling me the “powerpoint ninja.” Wow, 12 hours seemed like a lifetime ago. If I had a whole team of these people that GOT IT for all my ideas, imagine the possibilities…

Anyway, tomorrow will be the final day. As much as I love the product and the group, I’m really hoping everything can be done by 3pm. At this point, I really could use some sleep.