Category Archives: Personal

Geek Stars Shine Bright at Annual Geekwire Awards

Posted by Andy in Achievement, Entrepreneurism, Seattle, Startups, Technology

There was more Polo than Prada. More Ralph than Lauren. And Levi’s outnumbered Louboutin’s about 5 to 1. But there was enough revelry, camaraderie and fun at Geekwire’s “Oscars of Seattle Startups” last night at EMP that you expected Ellen to organize a group selfie.

You can get the full results of the 13 Geek Awards over at Geekwire.com. But maybe more importantly than the awards themselves is the annual chance to catch up with what every startup in town is up to.

The startup world is a fluid one. Some people who were 100% confident in one project last year have a new passion this year. And some folks working out of their garage a year ago now have a staff of 26. But thanks to Geekwire, we get this annual opportunity to check in with one another.

It’s hard to know where this community would be without Geekwire’s involvement the last few years. Would the Seattle Times and Puget Sound Business Journal have been able to whip 800 entrepreneurial and tech enthusiasts into a kind of extended family who cooperate more than compete with each other? Would we all know the brand names of a few companies poised to be the next Zulily? I think not.

And in an industry still made up of more men than women, it was fantastic to see Julie Sandler and Jane Park given two of the top individual awards – for Geek of the Year and CEO of the Year respectively. In addition to her day job at Madrona, Julie has pushed tirelessly to encourage more young girls to pursue tech careers. And Jane is running one of the fastest growing non-tech businesses in the region.

I don’t think any more people could fit into EMP, and I don’t know how long you’d have to make the event in order to chat with everyone you know there. But it’s nice that in an environment that delivers more struggles than solutions, you know there’s a community rooting for each other. And that’s really what the Geekwire Awards are all about – a place to recognize the ones who made it, and be inspired to follow them on stage next year.

Andy vs the Woodpeckers

Posted by Andy in Creative Writing, Favorites, Personal

Round 1:
Sometimes in the beginning of a war, only the protagonist knows that the war has started. In the saga of Andy vs the Woodpeckers, this was the case.

The evil Woodpecker staged a sneak attack one morning with a small series of annoying, but not overly damaging, pings on the side of the house. It wasn’t constant, it wasn’t overly obnoxious; it was just a few taps on the Northeast corner of my house. All I needed to do was tap back at the wall and he would flee. It seemed innocent enough.
Round 1 Winner: Draw
Woodpecker-2

Round 2:
Little did I know that this was the beginning of an invasion, and the WP’s were staking their claim. After about a week, it became clear that the enemy had entrenched itself. The tapping became constant. And it was more than a single woodpecker. It was a whole platoon. They were taking shifts. My tapping back was no longer a deterrent. They had gathered enough intelligence to know nothing was coming through that wall.
Round 2 Winner: Woodpeckers

Round 3:
Thus I had to regroup. I said to myself, “This will be easy. Surely, the internet has dealt with woodpeckers before. I will ask my friend Google for advice.” And Google did not fail me. There were lots of easy tips for deterring woodpeckers. I could attach tin foil to my wall. I could put a fake owl on my gutter. The list of ways to deter a woodpecker was nearly endless. And so, I walked to the northeast corner of my house, unfurled my 12 foot ladder, scaled as high as felt reasonably safe and realized I was still a good 15 feet away from where the deviants were pecking. I looked to my right and saw the nearest window that could be opened was about 50 feet away. Barring the unlikely event that I would learn to fly, there was going to be no easy way to attach tin foil to my wall 25 feet above the ground and 50 feet from a window.
Round 3 Winner: Woodpeckers

Round 4:
“Woodpeckers are probably easily scared,” I naively said to myself. “All I need to do is frighten the woodpecker. When he pecks on the wall, I will hurl a penny with my left hand from 50 feet away. I will scare him off and he’ll know not to mess with me.” And so, when one of my winged attackers attached himself to my abode, I took a penny and chucked it at him from 50 feet away.

Needless to say, I did not hit him.

I did make some noise with my toss and he flew away. First it took him about 20 minutes to come back, so I threw another penny and he flew away again. This time it took him 10 minutes to return. I threw another penny and 5 minutes later he was back. We danced to this song a few more times until he realized he only needed to fly away for 15 seconds or so to get me to leave the window.

About a hundred yards way, I could see a collection of woodpeckers congregating in a tree. I think one may have been taking tickets. I’m pretty sure they were all laughing at me.

Round 4 Winner: Woodpeckers

Round 5:
“I’m a reasonably intelligent human. I’ve seen McGyver. There is a way to get this tin foil on the wall,” I said to the amusement of the fates. On a piece of paper, I had drawn the perfect solution.

  • I would attach a nail just under my window and tie a 75 yard string to it.
  • Then I’d drop the ball of string to the ground, walk it over to a tree near the edge of the house and throw the string over the tree branch.
  • I would then bring the ball of string back towards the window, and hurl it 20 feet into the air, through the open window.
  • I could then tie the 2nd end of the string tight and create a “laundry line” which would pass directly by where the woodpeckers were doing their damage.
  • I would then use clips and attach a nice long strip of tin foil, and attach a long string to the tin foil that would reach the ground.
  • I could then pull the tin foil along the string until I reached the place I wanted to leave it. Easy.

Foil Plan 2

I attached the nail, dropped the string to the ground and began bringing the string across. That’s when I noticed the other trees on the side of my house and the branches that were making it difficult (read: impossible) to get the string through. After a few minutes, I managed to get the string to the target tree, got it over the branch and headed back. Now the branches really grabbed hold of the string. I pulled my way through and prepared to launch the ball through the 3rd floor window.

Foil Plan 3

My first attempt was close, but not successful. My 2nd attempt less so, to the point that the ball of string came back to earth through the tree branches. Attempts 3 thru 10 were similar in nature. Finally – SUCCESS! The ball of string made it through my window. I excitedly bound up stairs and got ready to revel in my win. I grabbed the string and started to coil it in so that I could have my taut laundry line in which to slide my tin foil across.

First there was a slight tug as the string caught a tree branch. I pulled it through. Then there were more tugs, as the tree opened all its fingers and grasped on to any bit of string it could find. The string was not coming up any further. I would not have a taut laundry line, all I would have was a tree full of string.
Round 5 winner: Woodpeckers

Round 6:
That was the end of one day of suffering and I decided to sleep on it and look for more solutions in the morning. So Monday, I headed over to Fred Meyer and asked the nice lady in the Garden Center if they had a Woodpecker Removal kit. When she said, “No, but I think we have some things for rodents or bugs,” my confidence waned. I was going to have to create a solution. 1st stop – some sort of garden sprayer so that I could poison the whole area where these evil creatures were burrowing. 2nd stop – the toy section and the purchase of a high powered Nerf gun.
I tried the poison first, spraying the side of my house high enough that no insect will ever return. This did not phase the woodpecker in the slightest. He was asking – no begging – to be shot with the Nerf gun.

Nerf Gun

This thing can shoot 75 feet, so my target would be well within the range from my window next time he came over. It was almost too easy.

It wasn’t long before I heard his return. He sat himself on the wall and started banging. I leaned myself out the window took aim. If he saw me, he didn’t show it. This was one cool cat. I lined up the shot, calculating for wind, distance and the unknown variable – how much velocity does a Nerf bullet actually bring to the equation.

I had him in my sights. He was all lined up. For a brief moment, I felt bad about what I was about to do.

That moment passed. I pulled the trigger.

The missile sailed a good foot over his head, as I was surprised by how much speed the missile had. The surprised woodpecker noticed immediately how lucky he was to be alive and fled. Surely, almost being shot would keep him from coming back.

10 minutes later, he was back. Once again, I shot and missed, and he fled. He came back. I shot and missed, and he fled. He came back. I shot and missed, and he fled.

We did this another 10 times or so, me firing from different angles and spots around the perimeter. This plan may work eventually, but I did not have the patience to keep it up.
Round 6 Winner: Woodpeckers

Round 7:
Google couldn’t solve my problem, so I crowd-sourced an answer on Facebook. The obvious solution was raised for me – Helium Balloons!

Just my luck, it’s the day after Easter and QFC was stuck with a ton of Mylar “Happy Easter” Balloons that the florist said he’d sell me for $.99. And he threw in 30 feet of ribbon for fun (or because he just wanted me to leave.) I wasn’t sure how many balloons was the proper amount for Woodpecker removal, but 3 seemed like the right number.
balloons

I tied 12 feet of ribbon to the 2 feet already attached. With my ladder still perched against the wall, I climbed to the 12th foot and tied the balloon to its anchor. The balloon swayed back and forth, never going more than about 10 feet from the Woodpecker’s target, but always returning home.

3 hours later, the balloon is still up and the Woodpeckers have not returned. This isn’t a long term solution, but we can put this day in the books.

Round 7 Winner: Andy

Deciphering the Online Ticket Broker Algorithm

Posted by Andy in Marketing, Personal, Sports

Online ticket brokers such as StubHub.com have been around long enough that they are a standard ticket buying or selling experience for many fans.

Can’t make a game – stick the tix on StubHub. Need tix for a game – grab them off StubHub.

The model is brilliant. They charge the seller 15% commission, and then they charge the buyer a 15% tax as well. Say you post 2 tickets for $50 ea, so $100 total. The buyer sees a price of $57.50 each and pays $115, with StubHub taking the extra $15. Then StubHub sends you a check for $85, keeping the extra $15. That’s a 30% commission on 2 tickets changing hands. But the program is still the easiest marketplace around.

But there’s an interesting next level to this marketplace. How do the sellers decide when to post and how much to offer?

This Thursday and Saturday, the NCAA West Regional will be in Anaheim, CA. Two of the participants, San Diego St and Arizona have large alumni bases within driving distance. The Arena holds 14,000 people and is officially sold out. On Monday morning, the lowest ticket price on StubHub was about $225 and there were about 790 tickets.

Since then, the number of available tickets has fallen to between 450-500, but never lower. Meanwhile, the price has dipped into the $150’s. So while theoretically the supply is falling, so is the price.

So who is keeping the supply set at around 500? How many tickets are actually being moved? It looks like StubHub is automatically dropping the prices by a certain % every few hours. Then when old tickets get purchased, new ones are getting posted by the brokers. That way there’s never a listed supply that encourages people to keep waiting. The incentive is to jump on the listed price before the supply dwindles more.

So I wonder if it’s StubHub limiting supply, or the brokers themselves. Based on its 15% x 2 commission model, StubHub certainly has the incentive to keep prices as high as possible. But it also has incentive to make sure all the tickets get sold. So somewhere is a Pareto optimal equation for StubHub that isn’t necessarily optimal for buyers and sellers.

I assume they don’t open up their API’s, otherwise someone would have built the “Farecast for StubHub” by now. Until they do, all you can do is keep an eye on it yourself.

The Importance of Your Talents vs Your Resume

Posted by Andy in Achievement, Seattle

I’ve been doing more thinking recently about the role a resume (or LinkedIn Profile) plays in your job search. What is the perfect blend of connections, qualifications, overall talent and past experience?

Coincidentally, today Forbes released its annual 30 under 30 lists. Highlighted in the Marketing list is Seattle’s own Andrew Dumont.  This inclusion did not surprise me in the least.  It’s a great honor and well deserved.

Andrew_Dumont_ForbesIt reminded me of the time I first met Andrew. I was a Principal at another social media agency at the time, and no less than 3 members of the team said, “You have to meet this guy. Super bright.” I was curious why his resume never made it to my desk despite everyone having such great things to say about him, so I inquired.

Our Office Manager was the gate keeper for incoming resumes. This person had certain skills and an ability to color inside the lines, but little ability to do any creative or lateral thinking, and sometimes even struggled if forced to make a decision on which crayon to choose. It turns out a hard and fast mandate had been implemented, “No college degree, no interview.” So despite Andrew’s entrepreneurial successes and social media prowess, our gate keeper would not allow us to talk to him.

But too many people told me I had to meet Andrew, so I chose a day when the gate keeper was on a holiday and invited the 20 year old in.  It became clear within 30 seconds that we couldn’t hire him – we’d just never be able to afford him.  I knew what we paid our junior team members and he was worth 2-3x that. I knew we’d never be able to make the numbers work, but I was really glad my colleagues had made the introduction.

Years later, I’m an old guy who pays attention to Andrew’s successes and tries to learn from him. It doesn’t matter if I have more experience – he’s the one wearing X-ray glasses that cut through the clutter and can see the future. But not only that, he makes time to support the Seattle start-up community. I’ve been able to interview him for a couple of panels, and he’s supported my class at the UW whenever I’ve asked.

So tying this back to the original topic: Talents vs Resume.  A good HR person is recruiting talent that can add value to the future of company. And the easiest scorecard or scouting report to read is a resume. But a resume is usually just a recap of the past. It is not necessarily a predictor of future events. The HR person wants to see what your talents are, and if those talents translate into something their team needs. So you had a job at big company X. That’s great. It shows you can get a job. But what talent did you bring to the team? How much did the team win? What else did you learn while you were there?

Some people have outstanding talents that have never been showcased in a professional environment for whatever reason – bad managers, shrinking industry, crisis management, etc… Some great strategists spend their early careers putting out fires instead of planning the company’s future. But you have a ton of non-resume opportunities to showcase the talents you can bring to a company. Writing, volunteering, starting side projects, mentoring, being mentored, etc…

In a nutshell… When I met Andrew he was clearly talented, and we had an Office Manager that discriminated against him for not having the right resume. I’m sure we weren’t the only ones. But then there were other companies that evaluated his potential, not his past. And now he’s in Forbes as a 30 under 30 winner.

Moral of the story: Managers – Look for the talent, not the resume. Job seekers – Showcase your talents and don’t let a resume hold you back. This equation adds up to the right HR people hiring the right young talent. And companies full of talent and potential are the ones you end up seeing on CNBC.

Why Life is Like Football

Posted by Andy in Entrepreneurism, Personal, Sports

I was talking to one of my young entrepreneurial friends today. It had been a while since we caught up so the conversation predictably started around, “How’s everything going?”

The funny thing about entrepreneurs is that nothing is ever going poorly. Setbacks are learning experiences. Unexpected hurdles are blockers for future competition. Lack of clarity in a mission is pause for contemplation.

People with jobs have a bad day. Entrepreneurs have a new challenge.

We ruminated on this awhile and came up with the analogy that entrepreneurship is like football. You build the best team you can, develop a system you think will work, scout out the competition, and take your game to the field. During the game you run your plays, knowing 11 people are trying to stop you. When you get the ball, you run into the defense, driving as hard and as long as you can go on each play.

Eventually you have to make strategic decisions. When you see something working, you ride it as long as you can. If the situation is hopeless, you punt and regroup. Somedays you have a great game plan and the right team. Somedays you have a great team and the wrong plan. And somedays, you just get blown out of the water by people more talented than you.

Anyway, I thought it was a fun conversation. Keep those legs driving forward….

The Joy of Trophies

Posted by Andy in Personal

I think kids today get robbed. By getting a trophy for just competing, they lose the chance to enjoy the novelty of WINNING a trophy. And don’t we all love winning?

Maybe winning is just a 1980’s concept that should be put to bed. But doesn’t it just FEEL good to win? Do you care about the actual trophy? No. But you care about how it FEELS to win that trophy.

Nowadays we cater to the kids and make sure we don’t let anyone feel bad for not getting a trophy. We tell the winners that it’s not that important to win, what’s more important is that no one actually lost. No matter what the score was, everyone gets a trophy just for trying.

But a trophy for trying doesn’t make you FEEL great. It doesn’t make you celebrate. Winning is a form of accomplishment, and when you accomplish something with a group, you develop a bond, a shared story, a memory that will last longer than the trophy itself. The trophy is simply a representation of what you earned, and what you felt when you achieved your shared goal.

When professionals win, reporters ask what it feels like. Winning doesn’t feel like anything else. It feels like winning. We all wish we had more moments in our life that felt like winning, not vice versa.

Winning is an emotion we have to earn. Every time we are deprived of a trophy that we see someone else get we say, “I can’t get that trophy unless I win, so I will try harder to win.” Consider that vs “I get a trophy no matter what, so who cares if I win.”

When the joy of having something is deprived from us, we try harder, we want it more, we feel more strongly about it.

Sure, losing stings. Losing hurts. Losing makes you mad and when you lose you think perhaps a trophy for participating would make that loss feel better. But all the hurt from losing is magnified 10 fold when you win.

And you will win. You will persevere and gut it out and battle until you get that win.

And that feeling is worth it.

Let’s not rob our kids of the joy of winning to spare them the pain of losing. The winning is worth it. No matter how young or old you are.

Trophy 13

Trophy 10

Lessons From Launching New Products

Posted by Andy in Achievement, Marketing, Social Media

We started toying around with the idea of Relaborate a little more than a year ago, in late 2011. In the beginning, we weren’t really sure what was going to happen with it, but everybody we talked to seemed to think it was a really cool idea.

These last months have been a great education in learning the differences between a “really cool idea” and “something that I immediately want to invest money in.”

There are a lot of hurdles to jump through to raise money. It’s not about the idea. It’s about being able to quantify an addressable market, convincing people your team is solid from top to bottom, and showing enough of the product that they can see the potential without criticizing the present MVP version.

It’s been a long and funny road, and I’m sure like any entrepreneurial organization, we’ve made some missteps along the way. But here we are in April 2013, with a brand new release of the product that we really think is starting to live up to the expectations we had when we first conceived it. And other people are saying nice things too.

So I guess my moral for this personal blog post is that it’s never just about the idea. Ideas are easy. People invest in execution. So if you have something that you’re sure will be a success, keep plugging away at it. Don’t expect to be rewarded for simply having an idea. The real effort is in taking that idea and making it something somebody else will understand and use.

They say there’s a very thin line between being an entrepreneur and simply being insane, and we probably straddled that line a few times in the recent months. After all, to start a new company you have to build something that no one else thinks is worth building, or they’d be doing it themselves. There’s something a little inherently nuts in that.

So if your reader of this blog, I expect you to run over to Relaborate.com and sign up for the trial of our new product. Read this blog and if you know me, I’m sure you’ll end up getting a discount (if you ask). Let your marketing people test it out, and if you end up bringing it in your organization, you know I’ll be the first one by you a round of drinks.

Relaborate Photo Search

Tossing 15 Things a Day

Posted by Andy in Achievement, Human Behavior

My friend Liz told me that she has a pact with herself. She throws away 15 things a day. It could be 15 pieces of paper, 15 paper clips or 5 shirts and 10 paper towels. It doesn’t matter. 15 things go into the trash (or charity bin).

She said it’s not that hard to do, and less painful than a whole day of spring cleaning.

By the end of the week, she’s tossed 105 things.
By the end of the month, 450.
By the end of the year, 5400.

Maybe I can’t do 15, maybe I can only start with 10. But I am going to start to do that today.

My Dumb Idea to Help with Homelessness

Posted by Andy in Charity, Uncategorized

If you were to line up all the causes I wish I could support more, Homelessness comes to the front.  It’s not that I think it is more or less worthy than others, but it feels like something we should be able to make more progress against.

Every time I go into my neighborhood QFC, I pass between 1 and 3 homeless people asking for money.  One man stands at the front of the store with a “Homeless Vet” sign, one woman sits across the street by the parking lot and occasionally there is a representative from “Real Change.” Clearly, we can do better than this as a society.

Now, there are a couple of problems that we all face.  If we write big checks to a charity that helps with homelessness, we don’t know where the money goes and if it is being used to help people get out of their situation or just make their situation more tolerable.  If you give money directly to a person, you don’t know if they’ll spend it down the street at 7-11 on a bottle of Boone’s.

So here’s my dumb idea that will likely offend a bunch of people.

I would like to try to focus some efforts on the homeless who are closest to climb their way out.  The  people who have cleaned themselves up, paid their debts to society or taken other steps to get back to a position where they can succeed.  There are plenty of people who just need that little burst of cash to get the first and last months rent, a nice set of clothes, a moped or bus pas, or whatever is keeping them just 1-2 degrees from that point.

So how do we do this? I’d like to propose a kind of combination of Anonymous LinkedIn and Kickstarter managed by some reputable organization.  In this system, i could look at the anonymous profiles of  everyone who is applying for personal donations and what they will be need the money for.  They set personal goals and achievements that they need to hit.  With each success, they get closer to collecting their donation from me and the others who are rooting / supporting them.  The reputable organization then makes the purchase of the apartment, clothes, car, whatever on behalf of the client.

So in a nutshell – the homeless person “earns” the money they need by achieving some set of goals and objectives, people like us get to choose the unnamed profiles we want to support based on our preference, and there is a group in between making sure everyone stays anonymous in the process.

I can already hear the 100 reasons this is unfair to a whole set of people and not a solution to a massive problem.  But I’m not trying to boil the entire ocean here.  I’m just trying to help a few people out.  Anyway, that’s my latest dumb idea.