People’s Software Company

Hop! (Cropped)

Originally uploaded by lisa.williams

When people ask me what TechStars was like, I’ve got a line — because I’ve always got one. I say, “It was like sticking my head in an active washing machine — again, and again, and again.”

So as long as the drive from Boulder to Boston was, I was glad for it. (Okay, I could have lost the last 500 of those 1,982 miles). I was glad because creativity isn’t an industrial process; making software isn’t an industrial process; teambuilding isn’t an industrial process; growing a community isn’t an industrial process.

My lesson about all of these is that you can go fast — but you can’t go fast with all of them all of the time. At a recent coffee with a friend, I said that trying to rush teambuilding was a bit like watering a plant three times as much while yelling “Go FASTER!!”

I sat in my car, going point to point from Boulder to North Platte, Nebraska; from North Platte to Davenport, Iowa; from Davenport, Iowa, to Erie, PA; from Erie at last to Watertown, MA, the Boston suburb where I live with my husband and two kids.

And I’m proud to say I didn’t have a single idea the whole time.

Well, okay, I’m fronting a little. A lot. It bothers me to have an empty head like that. It’s not normal — it just feels, well, wrong. It feels wrong even though I know it is normal — because it’s part of the normal process of Making Stuff.

I am an irrepressible Maker of Stuff. I left my old (beloved) job at Yankee Group, where I ran a division of analysts who wrote, talked, and studied the enterprise software market to slow down when I had my two sons.

About five days later, of course, I was bored (yes, you can love your children and be bored. Don’t look at me like that). I had…projects. Hobbies! Yes, let’s call them hobbies…until two of them turned into startups (okay, that look, I deserve it).

The think about the process of Making Stuff is that it’s not a nice even ramp where you start out with an idea and progress smoothly towards your goal in a state where you’ve spent ten percent of the time you’ve got and you’re ten percent complete.

Instead, I find that there are three phases of the cycle, and it’s a wheel I turn over any number of times while I’m engaged in a given project. They are:

1. Invention
2. Production
3. Rest

Invention is the most magical period of the cycle — it’s when I have so many ideas I can’t write them down fast enough. It’s the part where some fundamental insight strikes me, and then the fun part is rolling that out, elaborating it, seeing where it could go and what it could do.
Production is figuring out HOW to get those ideas into reality. In its own way, it’s just as creative as invention, because ideas don’t generally come with a neat how-to laying out simple, easy to follow steps. Often the quality of an idea is determined not by its beauty or scope but because it comes with an entry point — something simple but effective to do to get started, and an iterative strategy for inventing what the next steps are when it’s not clear, exactly, where to go. And then there’s the doing; ah, the blissful doing. (Except when it’s your turn to shave the yak).
Then, at some point, the progress slows. I put more effort in, and less comes out — or the whole process suffers some sort of unforseen crash and it’s not clear how (or sometimes if) I can get it started again. Then comes the part I like least: Rest.

I hate resting. I’m allergic to it. I think it literally makes me itchy. I’m not proud of that. It’s just that I want to keep going, and the real world, unlike the creative process, is a smooth linear machine — one hour later is one hour that’s gone. From the outside, it just looks like you’re slacking off, or that you’re a complete flake. But that’s the way it is — it would be nice to have new things appear as regularly as widgets drop off an assembly line — but that’s just not how it works.

I’m always the most impatient with the rest cycle, but in my experience it takes as long as it takes. It worried me a little bit when I arrived in Boston with my head still feeling like a goldfish bowl without any residents, but looking back on it, I shouldn’t have been surprised. In general, the longer or more intensive a production phase is, the deeper the rest cycle is.

My advice for Makers of Stuff reading this is as follows: Use your Rest Cycle to clean up your mess. Yeah, you know, those parking tickets you let pile up, those un-returned (and perhaps not listened to) voice mails, those connections you let slide. Do your laundry. Slay the recycling monster. Yes, you really should visit the dentist once a year, now’s a great time to make all those appointments. Take a look in your wallet. Oops, did you forget to renew your drivers’ license? Ummmmm….maybe time to do it is now, ‘mkay? A little friends and family maintenance is probably in order, too.

So now, my house is clean, I’ve had my cholesterol checked (very good, thank you for all the healthy food, Boulder) my children have school clothes, I’ve actually unpacked.

Hey…wait a minute…I have an idea! Okay, gotta go — talk to you later! (Don’t take it personally if I don’t get back right away, ‘k? See you around Twitter!)

So, it’s finally starting to seem real that TechStars is over.

It was an amazing summer, with so many great people to work beside and learn from. The mentors and sponsors involved with the program are impressive, and many of them spend time and effort to help us understand specific issues and/or to coach us and provide guidance on our path. In addition, Boulder has a large tech community that is just amazing–so many great people, starting with David and Brad and David B and Jared and going on from there,

So many of the other TechStars 08 teams were inspiring–people I hope we see again–and who I know we will hear from. Shout outs to Devver, Occipital, Gyminee, App-X, TravelFli, Ignighter, Foodzie, BuyPlayWin, and Sam and Co at The Highway Girl. Meeting and talking with folks from last years’ teams also helped alot–Ari from Filtrbox, Rob and Josh from EventVue, and the Brian DeWitt with Socialthing had words of wisdom to share that helped us.

Finally, we want to thank some of the mentors–both in Boulder and outside–that provided guidance, and sometimes, a calming influence….thanks again and always to David Cohen, David Brown, Lisa Rutherford, Sue Kunz, Lisa Stone, Howard Lindzon and Andrew Currie.

And our homegirls Amy Gahran, Meg Spohn and Jemma Sundragon for friendship, love and chances to hang out.

Kudos to everyone who made this summer @TechStars such a powerful experience. I can’t wait to see my fellow TSers in real life, and I feel privileged to have gotten such great learning and support.

And if anyone wondered about it, Andrew Hyde is the world’s coolest and nicest community manager. And David Cohen is the bomb.

Day 3, Davenport, IA > Erie, PA.  610 mi.

8:30 AM, elaborate gas station mini-mart, Geneseo, IL:

Me: “Do you have any creamer for the coffee that came from an actual cow?”

Clerk: “No.”

NPR.  Joe Biden’s speech. Lots of talking heads talking.

2:30 PM, rest station 40 miles east of Toledo, OH:

I see a group of Mennonite women — with their long black dresses and gauzy bonnets covering their hair enter the rest stop.  Mennonites, unlike the Amish, accept some aspects of modern technologies, and these folks have a white Ford van.

Near the ladies’ room I see them encounter another group of women in saris.  It seems to me they give each other a knowing look, these women looking out at each other from their traditional cultures.

I’m taller than all of them by a head, and I’m wearing a sleevless t-shirt from my web startup, standing next to a lady with two children and a sleeve of tattoos.

God bless America.

6PM, somewhere on Route 80 through Ohio:

lisawilliams: o hai Cleveland kthxbai

Today, Erie, PA > Watertown, MA, 533 miles.  Home!   Ahhhh.

So Demo Day was great, more on that in the next post. This one is about the acute homing instinct that–despite many very tempting reasons to stay longer in boulder–from great new friends to dgcohen’s post Investor Day BBQ to tubing and finally having more fun with my fellow TechStars08 people who were staying around–and led me to pack my car, snap my dog into the backseat (doggie seatbelt), throw the clothes in the trunk (with the 2 gallons of water and the desert survival gear) and hit the road to California. I love Boulder, but it just ain’t home, and the lure of the Bay area–after three months away–was just too strong.

So, it was me and my GPS and Route 70, and then Route 80. Went from Boulder to Wendover UT the first night, so tired I went out for a sandwich and came back trying to get into a room in the wrong motel. Next day, Wendover right to Napa, Ca where I am crashing with a friend for a bit (gave up my apt to go to Colorado, next play ready mid September).

Playing music on an open road when your GPS sais “Turn right in 500 miles” is a great way to get thinking done. And I did. I thought about TechStars, and about Peoples Software and about my speech at Investor Day (which I kept reciting over and over, like a calming Zen koan). I thought about all the things we accomplished, and the long list of things I wished we’d been able to do before Investor Day and especially, and most of all, all the things we have to do next, next probably being defined as this Sunday night or Monday.

After two days of driving (and a brief sleep Thursday night), I made it to my friend’s house and have spent today mega local, noodling on my computer, chatting with Lisa who still has 600+ miles to go (she got a later start), and just enjoying being in one place.

From the igniter fellas:

” If TechStars is officially over, why are we still working in the Bunker on Saturday evening?!”

–via twitter

It’s the day after TechStars and I’m in North Platte, Nebraska, with only 1,704 miles to go to my hometown of Watertown, MA. Over the summer I suspended H2otown, the community site I run for residents of the town, which was terrible for me and the people who missed it. In retrospect, I should have trusted the community more and let them run it while I was away, but it seemed like an imposition on them. Now that it’s up again, I’ve been writing the community that hangs out there letters on my trip home, and what I did over the summer.

Thursday, huh? Feels like Saturday to me. Maybe that’s because today is the first day after TechStars, the startup incubator program a friend and I participated in over the summer. We started a company called People’s Software, and we are making really awesome calendar software.

So how was it?

Well, it was like sticking my head in an active washing machine again, and again, and again.

Yesterday, all ten companies presented their stuff to an audience of around 400 people at the Boulder Theater, a 30’s deco theater that’s mainly used as a music venue. After working in the same room with the nine other TechStars teams for three months, I got to know many of them well, and I was very proud of all of them. Some of the teams had companies that were two years old on Investor Day, while others, like ours, were only twelve weeks old. I was proud because I think everyone did very well for the stage that they were in, us included. Don Dodge, a Boston-area startup veteran who came to Investor Day, contributed some reporting about it on the popular TechCrunch website. (Thanks, Don!)

[Read more →]

Today we’re presenting WhozAround? the application we built, at TechStars Investor Day.  WhozAround? works off your contact list, whether it’s your social network or an email list, finds out where people are, and lets you message them across a range of delivery channels, then takes the data for these personal events and puts it into a nice, clear portable feed–turn by turn directions for your day, a GPS for getting things done. The Facebook app is live now, and will be moving into the FB directory and out of alpha, which means everyone can easily get it and start playing with it.

We’re building for other platforms as well, with the idea it’s essential for you to be able to set your preferences at the edge and send and receive data–and manage your personal schedule–in whatever network and platform you want to.

A good way to think about WhozAround (note: this is the live link to the alpha, we’ll post the beta as soon as we point it), if you’re trying to get what we’re building, is to to think about this as a set of helper apps that make both your ability to connect with people and your ability to maintain a calendar–ie remember and log what you’re committing to, or might decide to do–work a whole lot better.

We’ll post a beta notice and invite people as soon as we repoint the app to the main site; we will be iterating on it over the next few weeks, adding more features and tools both things we’ve planned and things from people using it), so watch this space..we’re eager to get everyone who wants to play right in there.

(And this is a good moment to thank David Cohen and Brad Feld and David Brown and Jared Polis whose TechStars incubator was the perfect place for Lisa and I to come together and start building something we hope will have real value and utility for the social web, and for everyone who, like me, is a chronic double-booker.)

Some of the TechStars 2008 companies are amazing. All of them are interesting. Because we’re almost at the end of the TechStars program, we’ve been talking a lot about what we’ve gotten out of it, what we learned, and where we fell short or would have done things differently if there was a do-over. We’ve also had a chance to really see what the other companies accomplished this summer and how their ideas have played out.

Many of them are both impressive and great people and I’ll write about their start ups in another set of posts–what this post is about is how seeing where we are, compared to some of our program mates, makes me think about horse racing.

You see, I think we’re the filly class (along with one other TC company). We’re the small bet that David and Brad and the TC team took on something completely new, with no product, no business plan, no revenue positive idea (not when we started in May 08). INMHO, we got in because a) we have an experienced team, and b) we wanted to solve problems in a category and sector that is pretty interesting and can be revenue positive (those parts of our idea haven ‘t changed).

There are a whole bunch of other TechStars companies I’d say were in the one-year old class-these were the teams that had worked together for six months to a year, had an executable idea, and clearly could go out into the market over the summer. The majority of my program mates fit in this category and it has been great to see the progress–they’re all launching by September, they have new business models to go out with, and everything has come together much more cohesively than when we all walked into The Bunker in May 08.

Finally, there are just a couple of companies I’d put in the two year old class. These companies have teams that have worked together for years, and they came in with fully functioning online businesses that needed an upgrade, better focus, or help in a particular area (besides raising money). Lisa and I look at these companies like they’re the start-up grown-ups, the prettiest girls at the dance, and they’re good lessons for us in how doing a successful startup means being persistent, stubborn and listening hard to both the market and your customers.

For two people as driven and competitive as we are, being in the filly class has been both a wonderful experience–we walked in as two new co-founders of nothing–and walked out with a real company with a problem to solve, a product roadmap, and plans for a market (and, finally, live code)–and a frustrating one (we want to be in the two year old class, tomorrow).

I’d say that two of the most valuable lessons for us, the fillies, have been a) speed can be a great accelerator (we definitely have gone so much farther, faster, than we would have w/o the problem and we learned so much more–useful stuff), and b) you can’t rush everything, everything takes time, and as hard as you can work (and we can work hard), some things have to cook–ie you have to give it time (and have the faith it’s worth the journey to get there.)

So, here we go.

I’ve been rushing all summer-rushing to build a team, rushing to get product, rushing to figure out what our core values to users was and what kind of market share we could hope for if we executed well. I spent a lot of time looking at the other TechStars companies, many of whom had been together for anywhere from eight months to more than a year before the program, and wondering how we could catch up.

Now, 10 days before the program ends, I’ve realized that what I actually should be doing isn’t trying to push us along, but embracing just how new we are. We will never be this new again, and that’s actually something to savor, as in fact,  as we go forward it’s just going to accelerate even more. For two people who didn’t have a company when they walked in on May 23rd (except on a piece of paper), we’ve crafted a product vision, the beginnings of a team and live code that will soon (finally) be releasing. As much as I’ve felt frustration and impatience as I’ve wished we could go faster, I now see we’ve built the start of something worth doing.

The next step, which is happening now, slowly, is to start getting our apps out into the market; we’ll learn alot from how people use them and what they tell us. Of course, this means we have to accept that we’re going to completely suck sometimes, and hopefully provide some great unique value other times. Isn’t this true of just about any small company at their inception?

TechStars has been a great experience, both as an accelerator of growth and a humbling reminder of all the things I don’t know, or learned the hard way (and had to do over). Being with so many energetic, passionate entrepreneurs and experienced and execs who want to help us has been wonderful–but this is the running start that leads, of course, to being completely only your own. And new. At least for the moment.

WhozAround is like Twitter for your calendar — it’s a fast, simple free way to make getting together easier. You don’t have to join YASNS (Yet Another Social Network Site) to get it, because it plugs into Facebook and Twitter to make what you’ve already got more fun and useful for you.

Eventually you’ll be able to get your own personal People’s Software Company calendar gnomes working away for you on your phone, in your inbox, your iCal, your Friendfeed…but today I’m going to show you WhozAround for Facebook.