David Cummings on Startups

Category: Tech

  • Ask the Right API Questions

    Api
    Image via Wikipedia

    In yesterday’s post on saying ‘no’ to most opportunities, I mentioned that API integrations, assuming no custom work, are fine. An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a way for two software programs to communicate with each other in an automated manner. The challenge with most startups is that they don’t have a robust API. Yes, they often have a primitive API, so as to check off a box in a features comparison matrix, but the reality is that early on most APIs aren’t very good.

    Of course, it is hard to know in advance how mature an API is as the documentation is usually also lacking. Here are some questions to ask when considering using a startup’s API:

    • What features in the product are NOT available via the API?
    • What are some limitations we should know about?
    • What percent of customers use the API?
    • Will you share the API documentation with us?

    What else? What other questions should you ask when evaluating a startup’s API?

  • Example Outsourced Website Advice

    Recently I was at the Caribou Coffee in Buckhead reading a business book and three people sat down at the table behind me. Naturally, I didn’t think anything of it until I heard them talking about building a website. They started getting into who would do what, what would go where, and how long it would take. At that point I had a hard time concentrating because I was curious about the conversation.

    It turns out that a married couple was meeting with the third person, a lady, who was a web developer so that she could build an ecommerce site for them to sell soccer jerseys online (think of “proper football” teams outside the U.S.). This is a great example of hiring a consultant that is happy to do what is asked without offering up best practices. Some of the choice quotes:

    • Client: Can we add music to the site?
      Developer: Yes, of course, and I won’t charge you for it!
    • Client: Are you a full-time web designer and developer?
      Developer: Yes, and I’m also a tattoo artist.
    • Client: How did you learn web development?
      Developer:  I bought a book five years ago and taught myself.
    • Client: What are your thoughts on social media?
      Developer: I’m not a fan of Tweeter but I like Facebook (yes, they both pronounced it Tweeter and not Twitter)

    There wasn’t a single minute spent on driving traffic to the site, measuring ROI, etc. Unfortunately, and in many cases, you don’t know what you don’t know. If you outsource the work without understanding it, you’ll get someone who is accustomed to saying “yes” over and over.

  • Day 2 With the iPad

    So I’ve gone over 24 hours without using my laptop, which, for me, is an incredibly long amount of time. My goal was to exclusively use the iPad for that period of time to better acquaint myself with it and provide more thoughts after yesterday’s initial impressions. Here are some additional thoughts:

    • Media consumption on the device is great — big, bright screen with clear sound
    • After using it for a day, it is still a good ways away from replacing my laptop due to the lack of multi-tasking support as I like to have Pandora playing, with Google Talk, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Thunderbird all open at the same time
    • I miss the Smart Folders feature of Mozilla Thunderbird that allows me to see my different email accounts in one inbox, while still organizing mail with account-specific IMAP folders
    • TweetDeck for the iPad is nice with the in-frame browser while in vertical display mode, but I can’t resize that browser window and clicking “View in Safari” doesn’t seem to work right now
    • Google Reader is mostly broken on the iPad right (can’t click through to an article, can’t load more entries, can’t mark as read, etc)
    • Pandora for iPad should add an in-frame browser to the app as a workaround until the iPad supports multi-tasking
    • My almost-three-year-old son absolutely loves the device and can do the drawing app and Red Fish app all day long (it’ll be great for him on long car rides!)
    • Battery life is excellent and more than doubles in usage length compared to any laptop I’ve had

    I still give the iPad a thumbs up but would say it is only a 50% replacement for a laptop at this time. It really excels as a content consumption device and lacks as a content creation device.

  • Quick Thoughts on the iPad

    So, like many of the other Mac Fan Boys, I ordered an iPad when the pre-orders opened up less than a month ago. My iPad came today and I must say I’m more impressed than expected. I’ve had an iPhone for two years now, during which time it has helped me be more productive compared to the Treos I had had for many years prior. With that said, here are my quick thoughts on the iPad:

    • Feels great in my hands and lighter than expected
    • Will replace my laptop for 80% of my computer usage at home
    • Still requires a computer, at least to get started (when you turn on the iPad it requires a connection to a computer with iTunes before you can do anything, which is annoying)
    • The Free Books app is great and has access to over 24,000 public domain books, like Alice in Wonderland, available for free in a nice format
    • The NY Times app is well done and is the perfect format for reading as part of my morning routine
    • Typing on the keyboard is sub-par, due to the fact that the screen and keyboard are on the same surface and there isn’t any tactile feedback, causing you to have to hunch over, unlike a laptop. With that said, I can still type fast enough to compose most emails I send.
    • Battery life is outstanding — I expect to only charge it a couple times per week

    For $499, the iPad is a great deal and I recommend it.

  • Recruiting a Technical Co-Founder

    I’ve talked previously about the importance of having a technical co-founder. A friend of mine asked me today if I had any tips or thoughts on recruiting a technical co-founder. Here are a few ideas on finding one:

    Now, once you’ve identified a couple candidates, recruiting the person is even harder. Here are some recruiting ideas:

    • Offer a contractor period of one to three months to try out working together
    • Compensate with significant equity (e.g. 5 – 20%), but have it vest over four years (so that there’s incentive to stay) and include a one year cliff (meaning if it doesn’t work out in the first year, no equity is granted)
    • Try recruiting two engineers that want to work together since they already trust each other

    Finding and recruiting a technical co-founder is tough. Good luck!

  • Social Media Value

    In the last week I’ve heard two different successful entrepreneurs say they don’t get Twitter, thinking it is just a vacuum of trite platitudes. Of course, I beg to differ. There’s a chicken and egg problem with new users of platforms like Twitter whereby a good bit of value comes once you have a decent number of followers to converse with. Here are a few examples of value from social media:

    • Seeking recommendations (e.g. a friend wanted to get a hard-to-find item quickly, called several stores with no luck, and posted it online and had an answer in 10 minutes)
    • Monitoring conversations about competing or complementary product names and chiming in with value, including that your product should be evaluated (this is looking for leads — it works)
    • Learning more about people before you meet them (e.g. for a networking lunch) so that you can develop a stronger relationship and have a better conversation faster

    My recommendation is to start using social media and join the conversation. There’s a good bit of value, but it doesn’t happen without effort.

  • Internal vs Outsourced Software Development

    One of the core challenges with building a web-based company is developing the software. Naturally, there are many debates between developing the software with an internal engineering team vs outsourcing the development to a firm, onshore or offshore. Let’s look at a few issues to consider:

    • Is the product central to the company’s success or is good enough OK?
    • Do the founders or CTO have experience managing an internal or outsourced development team? An outsourced team is generally considered more difficult to manage and management intensive.
    • What type of financial resources are available in the near term and longer term? One-time projects might be more cost effective when outsourced if scope is sufficiently defined and the platform is a known technology (e.g. writing a simple iPhone app).
    • How fast and iterative are the product changes? I’ve generally found internal teams faster at iterating when compared to an outsourced firm that is juggling multiple projects.
    • How accessible is local software development talent? The size of the city and quality of nearby engineering schools can be a factor in finding good internal software engineers.

    In my experience, I’ve had the most luck with internal software development teams as our product is our core competency. I have heard stories of software companies having success with completely outsourced software development, even offshore work, but the number of failures I’ve heard about significantly outweighs the wins. My advice is to seriously consider an internal team, even if on the surface it appears more expensive.

  • Software is More Powerful than Hardware

    Fred Wilson, one of the most prominent VC bloggers who blogs at AVC.com, had a post up talking how his desire to get a mouse and keyboard to control a Mac connected to a TV was futile. Instead, he downloaded a little app, Mobile Air Mouse Pro, for his iPhone/iPod Touch and solved his desire to have full control of a Mac connected to a TV, through his existing portable device. Software for an existing device proved more powerful than purchasing new, special purpose hardware to interact remotely with the Mac.

    Software is more powerful than hardware.

    Of course, for software to be more powerful, the hardware needs to have a modicum of speed, storage, standard protocols, and more. Great software won’t do too much to help useless hardware. When hardware has a baseline of power, much as it has in the desktop and laptop world for several years now, the improvements have been incremental at best. The real advancements over the past few years has been from software for programs like games, web applications, and utilities. Look for the future breakthroughs to continue to come from software.

  • The Trouble With Yahoo! Mail Forwarding

    As commonly happens, I’m called in to help with IT challenges at my dad’s house over the holidays. I’m happy to help and am always curious about what new issues have arisen. Yesterday, the goal was to help him configure email on his new iPhone 3GS. He had just purchased it the day before due to the battery dying on his first generation iPhone, and it being unusually expensive to replace.

    With a clean slate on his iPhone, I recommended he go with Gmail instead of Yahoo due to the superior web-based interface, no text ads in the emails, and the better integration with other Google services like Google Calendar. Of course, he’d been using Yahoo! Mail for seven years, so he was reluctant to switch. Here’s the trouble with Yahoo! Mail we had to go through to make forwarding work:

    1. Sign into Yahoo! Mail to forward email to the new Gmail account only to find you can’t forward mail unless you pay $20/year for the Yahoo! Mail Plus (we’re now annoyed at Yahoo! and they have a message that the $20/year will auto-renew and there’s no way to not have that take place without canceling the email forwarding)
    2. Go to the Yahoo! Mail Plus forwarding interface and find that it is the static, non-ajax interface with a cheesy apology that they haven’t gotten around to updating the interface
    3. Pay $20 and wait for a confirmation email to the Gmail address required by Yahoo! to forward mail
    4. Click refresh several times in Gmail, looking for the confirmation email, only to eventually think to look in the spam folder — there’s the Yahoo! email
    5. The Yahoo! email doesn’t have a clickable link and there’s a code that has to be copied and pasted into the Yahoo! interface (yes, we’re just trying to get mail forwarded)
    6. The process is now complete after paying $20 and jumping through a bunch of hoops

    This trouble with Yahoo! Mail, actively making it difficult and cumbersome to forward email, shows they are on the defensive, protecting with they have, and not doing the right things to grow. Companies make lots of little choices that all add up to a strategy — Yahoo!’s strategy is to play defense.

  • App Store Top Downloads

    Building on my previous post about the frictionless Apple App Store, another key benefit of the App Store is the top downloads section. The user interface is divided into paid and free apps, making it easy to browse popular applications and try them out (the free ones). Here are some benefits of this strategy:

    • Empower users to consistently find new applications
    • Enable the most popular apps to rise to the top
    • Encourage the iPhone eco-system to help both users and vendors

    I recommend thinking of how a similar approach could be beneficial to your startup.