Holiday Pause on Yard Sale Interviews
This week's observation: getting interviews with folks is tough.
I'm not sure what the exact take away is from this observation yet, but I have three hypothesis. Here there are, and how I'll test them:
- It may be a "holiday season" thing.
To test this, I'll postpone the search for new interview candidates until after Jan 10 when normal business is expected to resume.
. - I haven't found the right channel yet.
To test this, when I resume interviewing in January I'll go beyond my immediate circle of personal and professional contacts. My gut is telling me I haven't been looking in the right places... like (duh) at garage sales.
. - Perhaps there's no market.
Test by process of elimination. If removing the above two variables, I'm still not getting interest, this may simply not be a good opportunity.
Even after the holidays, I'm still going to run into seasonality issues. Let's face it, the volume of garage sales is significantly lower during the winter.
All said, I still believe there's a lot of room for improvement out there in the fragmented, hyper-local long tail of the used goods market. There's got to be an opportunity burried in there somewhere - the kind of funky treasure that folks like ebay and Amazon are just to big to grab a hold of... and finding it is going to be as much fun as rummaging through the penny bin. Let the hunt begin!
Do We Have a Problem? I Sure Hope So
I already have a company, with some very important and exciting challenges. But a girl needs to have some fun too! So here goes.
Since I believe we have the ability to make our own luck AND I'd like to have some fun AND I've recently had to furnish an entire house, here's a problem I'd like to solve.... [drum roll]...
Yard Sales
You have to work too hard - and get lucky - to get the good deals.
And how exactly does one go about changing the luck of the bazillion bargain hunters nationwide, get everyone the deal of their dreams and make a buck (2 for a dollar!) while your at it? There are a few ideas buzzing around my brain. But frankly it doesn't matter much at this stage.
Right now I just want to see if the problem actually exists and resonates with people other than me. Does it resonate with you?
Let's Talk
Like it? Hate it? Intrigued? Think I'm a dimwit? Great! If you go to yard sales, for any reason on earth, I'd love to talk to you.
If you do not go to yard sales, please ask the first four people you meet today if they go to yard sales. If they do - send them here.
What To Expect From Our Chat
I'm aiming to chat for about 30 minutes - phone calls or in person, whichever works best. And since it's not yard sale season right now, I know you have some free time on Saturday to spare [smile].
Here's what to expect of our chat:
- I'll tell you in 4 minutes what I'd like to do.
- I'll ask you some simple questions, like "when was the last time you went to a yard sale? what was the best part? the worst part?" Then you talk, and I listen.
- Rinse and repeat for about 30 minutes.
That's it. Easy peasy right?
Thank you! I can't wait to hear what you all have to say. Here's that contact form again.
Blog Take 3: Learning Lean
I find writing posts downright painful. Result? I've restarted this blog 2-3 times now, each time faltering shortly thereafter. So this time I'm taking a new approach. Inspired by Eric Ries's Startup Lessons Learned, I'm using it as my diary as I learn to apply Customer Development to company building.
For the past year and a half, I've been learning about Customer Development, and more generally lean startups. This learning started off with a subscription to the Lean Startup Circle list, and culminated in the extreme privileged of auditing part of Steve Blank's MBA course at Berkley.
As part of that MBA course, a group of students ran a case study on my company. The number 1 take-away from that study is that we did everything backwards :) Ouch. That's ok, we've now made our way through to market/product fit (yup that's product/market fit done backwards), and things are looking up. But I certainly want to learn from my mistakes and avoid struggling through the same ones in the future.
So Let's Pour On the Learnin'!
I've banded together with a group of 14 other entrepreneurs (first-timers and repeat offenders alike). We're each going to each be fleshing out a new startup idea by following the syllabus for Steve Blank's ENGR 245: The Lean Launch Pad (thanks for sharing Steve!)
Here's the deal:
- We're doing this as a group of Italian, or Italian-kinda-sorta, entreprenuers.
- We'll be following Steve's course plan as closely as possible, but there's no professor, just us following along, digging in and getting it done.
- We're using a Google Group as our glue, plus weekly conference calls.
- Each entrepreneur will recruit her own founding team members and lean mentors (step up if you'd like to be one or the other!)
- We'll each be keeping a diary as we go. This blog is now mine.
10 Weeks, Starting Jan 10, 2011
In the meantime, I'll need to decide which of my two ideas to move forward with. In my next post, I'll give a brief description of each and then we'll take it from there.
If you are into the daily deals and coupons space, have an exceptional ability to sell ice to Eskimos OR are a psycho-awesome developer, AND are interested in maybe-maybe being part of the team, contact me. I'm in Mountain View, CA.
(no I don't want to build a Groupon clone)
Superman Gets a Website (Wonky Redhead & Doberman Not Included)
How to Get Funding for an Idea?
Be a tall, athletic Stanford-graduate male.
Otherwise, you'll need more than an idea - you'll need product/market fit.
I'm a short, geeky female with a degree from an east-coast art school. Looks like I'll have to build a highly valuable company in order to get some VC love :) I'm up for the challenge, how about you?
Actually, I really do look a lot like Velma, and my favorite colors are orange and red. Long live girl geeks!
Touchpoints When Preparing a Release
Ok, so you've written the code. You've tested, retested, run the beta, rewritten and retested again and again. It's as perfect as it's going to get so you're ready for production. Right?
Wrong.
Let's take yesterday's release over at Passpack for example. It was mostly a bundle of fixes and couple of minor features - nothing milestone. Yet that release produced about 20 hours of non-programming work that needed to be accomplished before it went into production. Plus there's at least another 8-12 hours of work to be accomplished post-release.
In general it's best to get as much accomplished pre-release as possible, because the additional hours post-release will be highly diluted by a spike in customer support, sales inquiries, press relations and the inevitable bug fixing. Oh - and a big fat nap.
Channels, Touchpoints, Tasks & Scope
I'm taking the liberty of expanding the typical use of touchpoint to include "materials I much touch". These materials are spread out across the channels I manage on a regular basis:
- Help (aka: Customer Support)
- Marketing (including PR & Media)
In addition, these two are regularly managed by Francesco, but in the event of a release, it's my job to manage certain touchpoints for a release:
- Corporate (anyone else abhor this word?)
- Application (the software itself)
Touchpoints are the materials to manage, organized by channel. And each touchpoint will have any number of tasks. The scope of tasks may be once for an entire release, others must be iterated on each item in the release (ex. every new, updated or removed thing-a-majig). Sometimes the scope is for milestone releases only.
My Touchpoint Grid
This is not a task-list per se, rather a guide to what we've got going on where. I've excluded channels I don't have to personally deal with, like IT and Accounting. Most touchpoints have completely different materials, even if they may seem similar at task level (ex. images, videos). Some touchpoints even have the same name (ex. Social Media) but are different because used differently by each channel.
| Channel | Touchpoint | Task | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Help | Knowledge base | find/update existing articles | item |
| find/update/upload existing images | item | ||
| delete irrelevant articles & redirect | item | ||
| create new articles | item | ||
| create/upload new images | item | ||
| Support admin | find/update existing canned replies | item | |
| find/update links to knowledge base changes | item | ||
| delete irrelevant replies | item | ||
| create new replies | item | ||
| update categories & automation rules | item | ||
| User follow-up | prepare replies for any affected open tickets | item | |
| prepare social media replies (twitter, fb, etc) | item | ||
| Social Media | create new videos | item | |
| upload new videos to youtube channel | item | ||
| upload new images to flickr channel | item | ||
| Marketing | Downloads | update/upload Admin getting started guide (PDF) | item |
| update/upload User getting started guide (PDF) | item | ||
| update technology white paper (PDF) | item | ||
| Website | update all pages involved | item | |
| update all images involved | item | ||
| update timeline in About page | milestone | ||
| Press | update/upload media kit (ZIP) | item | |
| create press release | milestone | ||
| upload press release to media center | milestone | ||
| distribute press release online | milestone | ||
| research/compile short list journalists | milestone | ||
| pitch & send press release to short list | milestone | ||
| research/compile short list bloggers | release | ||
| pitch, pitch, pitch! | release | ||
| Social Media | write/publish company blog post | release | |
| tweet/retweet blog post | release | ||
| notify news on company twitter account | release | ||
| notify company friends in facebook | release | ||
| create/upload images to flickr | release | ||
| create/upload video to youtube channel | release | ||
| Application | News | news alert in the application home tab | release |
| news alert in the application login screen | release | ||
| Inline Help | recompile with knowledge base updates | item | |
| update all on-screen instructions | item | ||
| Corporate | G&A | check/update tac/ua/privacy/copyright | item |
| check/update credits | item | ||
| update internal features/release schedule | item | ||
| update internal competitive analysis docs | item | ||
| Stakeholders | update timeline & deliveries documents | release | |
| prepare/email summary of status (PDF) | release | ||
| call to brag :) | milestone |
Tally It Up
Back to our example release, here's how it all panned out.
1. Switch in currency, added free trials, updated refunds policy, added new premium package
Our product pricing centralized in a database and we have a policy to never quote a price directly but rather link to those sources. Thanks to these two factors, we breezed through the Marketing and Help touchpoints.
Most of the work fell was in the Corporate touchpoints, particularly "Billing & accounting" (pre-release) and "Investor" (post-release). Clearly out investors know a price change was in the works, but they also expect to be told when it actually happens. Welcome to "investor communications 101".
2. Website redesign
Very little impact on the release outside the design & development itself.
3. Three interface tweaks
Yikes. These were "itty bitty" changes to the interface, but with BIG consequences in terms of work produced. The key word is "interface". The interface is visual, which means not only are we adding and updating the text descriptions of of the features, but there are a lot of images and (sometimes) videos which are effected as well.
In this particular release, we had a lot of backend stuff we were in a hurry to roll out, so we opted to postpone about 80% of it post-release. All in all, the work done/to do is: all the tasks marked "item" in the grid x 3.
May the good winds fill my sails, I've got a long way to go!
4. Two non-interface tweaks, back-end stuff & bug fixes
Special attention needs to be paid to the "User follow-up" touchpoint (post-release). We had two pretty important patches in there, so I had quite a bit of follow-up to do in the help center with user that were awaiting a reply from me. I'm still wading through those as they generally require a personal reply.
Happy Side Effects
It's pretty easy to see how it things add up quickly, making the best reason to do your own grid better planning and productivity. But it's worth the exersize in anf of itself.
I've also found that the exercise of compiling a touchpoint grid in and of itself has its merits. Any redundancies will immediately come to the forefront. You may even identify ways to consolidate disparate systems or media in a way to save you time.
You'll also have a more intimately organized view of your company's real needs. Following the most recent release, we've decided to eliminate a number of redundant systems. In particular, I'm beta testing an awesome cross-channel customer support & social media service right now. Can't wait until that service is in production. It'll save me oodles of time.
Now, enough blatter. I've a lot of work to do. ;)
IgniteItalia: Destinazione Silicon Valley
I get tons of phone calls and emails from budding Italian entrepreneurs looking for some tips on their move to Silicon Valley. I love these calls - so keep them coming.
In the meantime, here's some of logistical tips (with price tags!) on planning your trip. It's just the tip of the iceberg, but should at least give you a starting point.
Ultraviolet Password Tattoos
Wow, I hope we don't have to start supporting tattoos as a password export option over at Passpack ;)
In the beginning of the monthNew England Journal of Medicinepublished an article detailing the security risk of wireless controlled implantable devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators. Researchers at Microsoft have proposed a possible solution that would allow doctors to still access the device if needed while the patient is unconscious: tattoo the password onto the patient with ultraviolet reactive ink. That way the password is only visible using a UV lamp, or if the patient walks into a really cool teenager's bedroom.
I grabbed this quote from here. And the Microsoft PDF paper is here.
Urban Antwoman
Sigh, I miss the days when I used to travel the city drawing and photographing people without a care in the world. Wait... no I don't! I do enjoy looking at what others have been sketching though.
The Antwoman, on the other hand, has never gone away. I started drawing her in the 10th grade and have never stopped. She's my alter ego - or maybe I'm hers. Sometimes I'm not so sure that it's me drawing her, or her making herself seen through my pen.
Either way, we haven't failed each other yet.
Wonderful Content for Entrepreneurs
Came across this incredible resource in my daily web travels: Kutztown Small Business Development Center. I haven't sampled any of the courses from this collection of free online learning programs yet, but looks like some good weekend reading.
On-Demand Online Learning Programs
We have over 90 Online Learning Programs. We are constantly adding more programs. This is one of the largest collection of free, on-demand entrepreneurial training resources available in the United States and is part of our "Success Network". We have Online Learning programs from the SBA, IRS, Small Biz U, Virtual Advisor and custom programs from the Pennsylvania SBDC Network.
Enjoy - and let me know if you get a chance to try one of these courses.