Come for the Ride…

I’ve read a multitude of blogs out there in the last day about how people were incredibly disappointed in what was actually shown at the 2008 WWDC yesterday. Whereas I can understand the disappointment for things like dual cameras for conferencing on the phone, I also understand that most wireless networks do not yet have the infrastructure to handle this sort of bandwidth. Let’s say you start selling 5-10MM more iPhones around the world and these people start to take advantage of this feature on a daily basis, whereas in the US we might be able to ramp up the necessary bandwidth, I hardly believe Denmark, Malta, Peru or Madagascar could handle this out of the box. Out of the box, everything works is Apple’s bread and butter. They understand that people will suffer with a few less features for a user experience not plagued with slow of buggy features (the Windows Mobile Task Manager is a perfect example of the sort of hack Apple has a knack for avoiding).

With all that said, what was shown was absolutely mind blowing. The developers who demoed their products simply blew me out of the water. I recall developing games in Microsoft’s MFC development environment in high school and simply being stonewalled at the obscurity and limiting nature of a development environment. I then look at a combination of what’s in the SDK (I downloaded it shortly after watching the Keynote video) and what was shown and I’m almost ready to delve into trying to create an iPhone app TODAY. The 3D game shown was nothing short of astonishing. The music app, Band, sold me when they got to the “Blues Music Keyboard” and seeing all the Modality Apps made me want to become a doctor. It may sound dumb to you, but this device is more than Apple’s next big money making scheme, this device really can enable the dreams of others (to quote Randy Pausch) by allowing greater flexibility in their day to day life. From presenting information never available to the public in such a rich manner (again, Modality apps) to keeping track of all your information in a centralized location with no fear of losing the data (MobileMe) to sharing your life  and everyday adventures with the easy of taking pictures and blogging through the iPhone 3G, I’m floored and almost ready to be one of the idiots in line on day one for these phones.

This phone is right now for the bleeding edge customer. The power user. We know what we’re doing and we use all features of the iPhone on a daily basis. However, the average user like my Mom, my Dad, my Fiancee and my Brother are simply going to be overwhelmed by a phone with many more features than it has. Apple is slowly allowing people to test and try the iPhone and get used to a PDA that works for the average person. Society as a whole is still getting used to the mobile enabled citizen and if they’re going to release a product that lives up to what we expect from Apple (ie. Perfection), they’re going to need more time to ensure that both the product works flawlessly and people are able to use this in such a way that their cited 90% satisfaction rate isn’t tarnished.

But that’s just my take on it, and though I always want more, I also want time to learn some of these features from a developer’s perspective before some more of these great jumps in mobile awesomeness.

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you’d probably remember my experience at the Atlanta Startup Weekend where a group of Atlanta entrepreneurs created Skribit in 54 hours.  The experience was really rewarding and it opened up my personal network within the local community.  Not only did I meet a number of like-minded individuals, I still keep in touch with a number of them today.

Well, Startup Weekend is now looking to hop to more cities and they are allowing you to cast your vote to show your interest.  If you’d like to get the same awesome experience in your current location, go and vote!

Entrepreneurs in Atlanta, make sure you cast your vote for Startup Weekend 2!

This past Monday I attended Startup Riot as an observer. We had originally signed up to pitch but I dropped out last minute due to us not really needing anything. We’re still refining our business to try and rise above the noise so whatever we had wanted to pitch weeks ago would have been outdated by the time the event started.

Overall, the event was great. The venue was easy to find, it was clear to navigate inside and it had a really nice, modern feel to it. I did manage to do some networking and passed some cards out but probably not as much as I would have liked being that I didn’t present.

Being that so many people already wrote nice things about the event, I figured I’ll chime in with some suggestions for next year’s event.

1. Plugs/Sockets! - I know it’s rude to want to play on your laptop and pass notes via backnoise in the background while presenters are speaking, but if both of the above are allowed, then there really should have been more sockets and extension cords on the sides to help make it easy for laptop owners.

2. More Booths - The sponsors got some great exposure from demoing their services at the booths. For the startups that presented, it would have been nice if there were some room carved out for them on the side of the ballroom where they can go stand, demo their product and help answer questions after the pitch. A lot of presenters told the audience they could find them after the presentation to chat - but it was hard to find them all at times. (Maybe startups who wants an elaborate booth could pay for it.)

3. More Job Seekers - I spotted a ton of entrepreneurs, co-founding members and investors. However, besides for Paul who dressed the part, I really couldn’t tell who else was a student or a job seeker. Maybe they could wear a different color name tag?

4. Group the Presentations by Common Elements - 55 companies is a lot of pitches to go through. Even though there were ample breaks in between each group, you could tell by the increasingly harsh comments in the back channel that some people stopped paying attention near the end of the day. If the pitches were grouped by some common element, investors or job seekers would only need to really focus on certain groupings and relax and network during the others.

5. Company Name on Name Labels - While there was probably a great reason why this was omitted, presenting companies should at least have them on their name tag.

With that said, I’m looking forward to next year’s event. Atlanta needs more events like this.

Startup Weekend is now taking votes on which cities they should help build entrepreneurial communities for in 2008. The reason I’m saying that is because they did one heck of a job for Atlanta.

Before Startup Weekend, I had a hard time finding like-minded people around here. Even though we were probably all reading the same RSS feeds, keeping up with the same news and doing the same routine, there really weren’t any events that brought us together. (It was pretty lonely being a entrepreneur in Atlanta.) Let’s face it… entrepreneurs work till our last package of Ramen runs out and even then we’d choose working over self nourishment. Yeah… it’s pretty hard to get us off the computers unless there’s a great reason.

Luckily, Startup Weekend is that reason.

You know what they say: girls build their bond by sharing stories and guys build their bond by battling (working) together. With 60+ people and only 3 days, I didn’t personally get to meet everyone and learned what they do. However, by seeing where various people excelled and who stuck through the 3 day ordeal, the event has helped me establish a local network of peers that I can trust and go to for advice.

So if you missed out last year cause the event wasn’t near you, go vote for your city this year. Who knows, you may just meet your startup’s next co-founder there.

We’re still scouring the web and networking events looking for awesome entrepreneurs to join our startup. As we’re checking out various areas on the web and seeing what other people are writing and asking about, there seems to be a common theme among the newbies which is: how much equity or options should I give away to attract raw talent?

Well, I’m sure the answer differs for everyone, every industry and especially for people who think their ideas MAKE the business and everything else is secondary. However, my experience has taught me that it’s much better to share. Think about it… would you rather have a 40% stake in a King Monster sized Twix or would you rather have a complete piece of a fun size Twix? If you opted for 100% of the smaller piece, you are definitely not seeing the BIGGER picture.

So what is a fair split in equity? 33% across the board would be fair on paper for a three person company, but that seems a bit too simple and well… not fair in practice. I’m not sure if there is a magic formula for this question but I can tell you what we’re doing.

My original plan and the one we’re using for now is 40% (me) ideas / 30% developer / 30% marketing. This split is of course, pre-funding and pre-slicing the pie for other roles in the company. My thinking is, the business would not exist without the idea, at the same time, without programming and without marketing, the business would also not exist. So because I’m in need of all three key positions to sustain the project, I’m happy to give away large pieces of the pie (or Twix) for those that would work towards the shared vision.

However, ownership percentage aside, the above split is also how I envision the work to be split. Many, MANY startups focus on 98% programming and nothing else. I’ve been there, it doesn’t work. You can’t sit in a bubble and code all day and expect your product to meet some demand and suddenly gain interest if you never get any feedback or market it. We all should know by now: If you build it, they won’t come unless they have a reason to. Therefore, just as I believe my CTO should get 30% of the company for months of hard work, my VP of business development/marketing should also do about 30% of the overall work and get 30% of the equity.

In the end, hopefully all the hours will add up and something nice, possibly a monster Twix will await us on the flip side.

Speaking of marketing and networking… while Randall has been busy hammering away at the technical stuff, I’ve been out in the field talking to people and avoiding sitting in front of a computer. Though I must admit, after just a couple of weeks of these events, I’m a bit networked out…

Wednesday night was an AiMA meeting where I met some marketers and learned about Business Lead Gen. (Great stuff!)

Tonight was the Atlanta Deck Party which was also a pretty cool networking event. Surprisingly, the crowd was a lot older than I thought since I expected half to be GaTech students.

I did make Randall come out for this one cause I figured it’s probably more his crowd than mine. Also, I see a common theme between all my programmer friends which is: they don’t network enough. In any case, it’s great to see such a huge turnout for the Atlanta area… Maybe I don’t have to move to Silicon Valley for awhile after all!