http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
The first law of thermodynamics observes that the internal energy of an isolated system obeys the principle of conservation of energy, which states that energy can be transformed (changed from one form to another), but cannot be created or destroyed.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_3
image by Adrian Sommeling
What is the thing that you love doing?
The thing that you are amazingly good at and no one else seems to get? The thing you know you could do better if you just got more time to spend on it? The thing you want to be or do when you grow up? The thing you will do for others, for free, at a moments notice? The thing that relaxes you? The thing you sleep perfectly, calmly and beautifully after spending all day on? The place you feel at peace?
And, why aren’t you doing it every day?
Why is it not your startup? Or your day job? Why aren’t you trying to make your thing everyone’s thing? Or at least make it easier for everyone else? Why haven’t you hired people to do everything else so you can focus on your thing?
There was a time when most of your startup, and most of what you did were the things that you loved. What happened? What changed?
Founders get distracted
It happens. Most of the time were pretty good. We are relentless. Focused. Gritty. But every once and a while we slip. We get tired, lose sight of the end game, hit a road bump, and forget why we care about the problem were solving. We help other founders with their startups. Give advice that we don’t listen to ourselves. Go to too many dinners, too many networking events, too much air war and not enough ground war.
It happens
And its ok. But why aren’t you doing the thing you love? The thing that you’re good at? The thing that comes effortlessly? If you got to do more of what you loved would you be more focused? More gritty? Would the schleps get easier?
Image by Takk B
I am currently in the midst of my once a quarter travelling-startup-CEO mega trip. This trip is by far the longest in a while and its got me thinking about the ways we’ve architected Upverter to reduce our aggregate disruption at the expense of massive disruption to my life.
Back Story
A really long time ago we decided the best place in the whole world for us to build Upverter was in Toronto. We relocated the company for the 3rd time, found a space, set roots, and hired a team. It was probably the single best decision we ever made.
But
So why pick Toronto then? Because we aren’t a flashy consumer web social coupon startup, we aren’t yet well positioned to fight a talent war, and we are building a giant and extremely technical product that needs a ton of R&D spend. Toronto has a surplus of amazing talent, magical employee retention, and the government helps pay about 60% of our R&D spend.
Long story short Toronto is amazing at satisfying the needs that our startup has, with the painful limitation that our financing, market, and support network are all somewhere else.
So I travel.
Lean
We have worked very hard to stay lean over the past two years at Upverter - and this leanness extends whole-scale to my approach towards business travel. I try almost religiously to avoid hotels, couch surf, share meals, eat at Safeway, beg, borrow and steal. There are a lot of side-perks of these hacks, but primarily they simply cut down on spending.
And in an almost circular way it all goes back to disruption - the lower the cost of my trips, the less disruptive they are to the rest of the company.
I’m not sure if I’d feel any differently about the disruption if I travelled in “style”, but it doesn’t really matter. It would be the wrong optimization at our company’s stage unless it mitigated the effects almost entirely.
Math
I firmly believe in the following formulae:
Travel = Disruption
▲Disruption ≈ ▼Productivity
Grit > Disruption (for sufficiently small disruptions)
Disruption ≈ Fatigue (for sufficiently large or frequent disruptions)
Hacks
So what does it all mean? These are my hacks - and the things we’ve done at Upverter to try and build the absolute least disrupted company we can - despite the limitations of our geography.
First, avoid travel if at all possible. Skype works great. It’s impossible to reduce travel to zero - but any travel you can avoid translates almost directly into increased productivity.
Second, when travel/disruption is unavoidable disrupt the grittiest person. Someone should be the traveller. They should be the least susceptible to the disruption travel causes. It would also be great if they were the CEO or face of the company.
Third, disrupt a single person. There is a big difference between everyone travelling a little bit and suffering a little bit of disruption, and one person being thrown fully under the bus, so that everyone else can operate at peak productivity.
Fourth, when the disruption is going to be large scale, or the travel extended, expect massive fatigue. Build a schedule that gets gentler as the trip goes on. Book the nicest couch late in the trip, when you’re going to need it, not on the first night.
Lastly, friends and family seem to help reduce the effects of the fatigue. If you don’t have any friends in the city you’re travelling to - make some. Go out for dinner with real people. Use GrubTonight or any other service to find a dinner with real people. Don’t hide in your airbnb room alone. If you do it right it won’t even cost any more money.
Edit: See here for some great hacks and details I glossed over.
Good Luck
If you have end up living the life of the travelling CEO, running a startup that puts you on a plane, or regularly disrupted in a similar way, you have my respects. And if you’ve got any hacks I’ve missed please add them in the comments.
I spent a bit of time on Monday sitting on a lean startup panel at mars with my good friend David Crow. Sacha Chua was doing sketches of the talks and I found it kind of neat to see what someone else got out of what I had to say - a sort of peak inside my own brain. Kinda neat.
Anyways, this is what she came up with!
We design through lenses.
For a while the best lens we had was mechanical. Divinci invented some pretty incredible devices through this lens - things like helicopters that we only much later realized were helicopters.
We also have a tendancy to use the newest or most familiar lens.
We have advanced to the point that we now have many, many lenses availible. But despite their availibility lately I’ve noticed that most of the engineers I interact with see the world and its problems through only the lens of software. And so they try to solve everything through software, including many things that have much easier solutions if looked at through a mechanical, social, political, or electrical lens. As an engineer try to remember that you have a toolbox full of lenses, not just one or two.
The following is a list, in no specific order, of problems I think will get solved. Some are very close to being solved already, and others are much further away. But in comon, I think all of them are best solved through the lens of hardware engineering.
Hot Topics / The Next Big Thing
These are all devices that fall into hot or up and coming markets. They are the biggest and furthest out there.
1. Bio Tools / Home diagnosis equipment (MRI, X-ray, etc)
PG Talked a bit about this here. Find a way to diagnose me 10 times a day, everyday when I walk into my bathroom. Have my doctor call me for a checkup, instead of everyone just waiting until I’m really sick. See BioMEMs. Why don’t cellphones have carbon monoxide sensors in them?
2. The Next Apple
ie. The next great consumer electronics company. Apple will probably fail (#5), none of the existing players will fill the void and a startup will probably become the next great consumer electronics company. Start by building a consumer product for visionary users, and continue to scale it into the majority (like Apple did). Pre-sell on kickstarter. Maket socially.
3. Battery technology
We need a 10-100x in batteries. That company will be worth 100BN easy. Think Tesla Motors, Electric Cars, Electric Planes, the increase in portable consumer electronics and the growing gap between expensive peak power and cheap (almost free) non-peak power. Don’t tackle it head on… Think nuclear batteries. Think grid power usage stabilization. Think usage patterns instead of chemical engineering.
4. Non-lethal weapons
Build a way to win a war without killing anyone. Think about non-lethal police forces, non-lethal big game hunting, mid-western americans with non-lethal purse guns. Note: I’m not advocating the morallity in any of this - just that someone, somewhere will build a huge business on this tech.
Things That Need Replacing
These are all old tech solutions to daily problems that need an update. Think cheaper, better, faster, and more connected.
5. Replace Fixed Phones, IP Phones And “Home Phone” Style Routers
How many phones do people need? Or businesses? Why aren’t we able to run our cellphones off the highly distributed, underused copper network, instead of the massively oversubscribed cell network? Especially when everyone in the office already has a phone or two in their pockets.
6. Replace Paper Notebooks
I fucking love my Blueline notebook, but it is painfully offline. There is isn’t an online version of working with pen and paper that has the same user experience (ie you don’t even need to be better!). iPad got 20% of the way there, but its just not distributed or availible enough yet.
7. Replace Whiteboards
Kinda like #6. Find a way to take brainstorming and get it online without changing user behaviour (ie. its still going to happen with markers in front of a whiteboard). Think intellegent displays & interactive spaces. Think smart phones, markers and walls working in harmony. “Share this image on the west wall”, or “Save this wall as a png”.
8. Replace Art / Displays Everywhere
Art exists for 2 reasons - bad ass wall coverings, and the vanity of ownership. Im talking about solving the first problem. Why can’t I get a big color e-ink wall canvas that updates before I get bored of the picture? See this. Maybe this is an extension on #7? TV’s very quickly fall into this problem / solution.
9. Replace Power Cords & Audio Cables
Plugging stuff in was soooo the 20th century. This could mean wireless power, more nuclear power, or maybe its just #3. And don’t stop at power cords - I want all cables to die. See this, and this.
10. Replace HID
Think mind control. Think keyboards that don’t suck. Think useful iPads. This gets incredibly important if 3D continues to take off. See this.
Hardware That Enables An API For Something Previously Untouchable
This is probably my favourite category. There is a huge opportunity in taking the “offline” and getting it online and accessible. Im not talking about the programatic APIs themselves but instead adding the capabilities to the devices such that an API could exist. Sandvine did it to aggregate internet traffic (analytics & billing). Meraki did it to wireless (replacing IT). Square did it to credit card stripes (replacing credit cards). And Lockitron is doing it with door locks (replacing keys).
11. An API For The Lights In My House / Office
Think smarter buildings and greener spaces. It would enable managing light based on occupancy, based on power prices, based on time of day, etc.
12. An API For Garage Doors
Lockitron for my garage. Why do we still have RF transceivers to open and close it? Why can’t I loan my garage to my neighbour without giving her a clicker or a key?
13. An API For Appliances
This is admittedly very internet of thingsy (adding a better UI/ UX/ Input/ Output to dumb appliances). But like the TV API I think you open up a tremendous, and mostly unknown set of apps when you put the worlds appliances online and build an API to control them. Dont do this. Do do this.
14. An API For My Environment
Think Nest and EcoBee which are both trying to do this by building better thermostats and the apps to control them. This ties into #1, #11 and #12.
15. An API For My Car
Cars have all kinds of cool sensors and micro-controllers in them… Why the hell aren’t they more accessible?
16. An API For My Pets
I can drive a robot dog from my cellphone, but when my real one runs away I have to wonder the streets yelling its name?!?! Where is the $50 collar and a $7 a month maintenance plan? How many pets are there worldwide - like a billion? Start by building super cheap M2M tech.
17. An API For My Friends
Not so much for control… Im thinking some sensors, GPS, 4G, etc. Maybe its a square like device for my phone? Think wearables, Google glass, and Pebble.
18. An API For My Cabinets / Bathroom / Fridge
Sensors rock. Why aren’t they everywhere? Why do I run out of drugs, food, toilet paper, etc, etc. This is the sense side of #11 and #12.
19. An API For My Health / Blood / Weight / Fitness / Heart
Think real-time health diagnostics. This is probably version 1 of idea #1. Think about a Square-like sensor for blood for non-diabetics. Think about embedable sensors. Think about a tricorder. This is a mashup of #1 and #17 / wearables.
20. An API For Human Memory
This one is probably a little further out there. But, we are already doing cool things with mind controlled devices. I want to see it get pushed from write-only (active control based on brain waves) to read-write (query the brain, active & passive control). You need to look at this.
Misc
These are ideas that didn’t really fit anywhere else…
21. iRobot For _______
Why is the coolest and most advanced robot I can buy a really, really dumb vacuum cleaner? I want more robots! I want them to solve more of my problems! Maybe the first step is just building things & spaces that are more accessible to our mechanical overlords?
22. Totally Low Tech Heated / Cooled Jackets / Clothes
Its cold here! But the worst part is that in the same day it can be 5C (cold) and 25C (warm). How do you dress for that? Why do I have to carry extra clothes? Can’t we solve this problem with tech? This is a 5W resistor and a LiPolly battery.
23. Smarter Cars, Trains, & Planes
Why can I still drive into the back of the guy in front of me? Do we still really trust people to make the best decisions when driving 140Km/Hr? Similar to #15 but much more active. Planes can fly themselves. Cars can almost fly themselves. But there is much more that can be done here by just augmenting the people.
24. Elon’s 5th Mode Of Transportation
You need to see this. It sounds pretty awesome. Someone should build it.
25. Disposable Electronics
I mean both a solution for the fact that we all through out our phones every 18 months anyways, and that our landfills are seemingly uncontrollably filling up with an impossible amount of electronic waste (most of it containing trace amounts of both really bad stuff, and the worlds most valuable minerals). And the solution might not be to stop the throwing out…
Notes
When assembling this list I took a page our of PG’s book and tried to think of the things we’ll look silly for in the future. What will future races of humans think was ridiculous about our culture, practices, devices and lifestyles? This is my list:
Image by John Cavacas link
I’ve got bad news. And I don’t really know a better way to say it, so I’m just going to tear the bandaid off, one motion, no fucking around. Here goes…
Toronto is broken.
Ugly right? We’re the 4th most active startup ecosystem in the world. We’re the largest ecosystem in Canada. And were the best non-US city for funding.
But there are some very serious problems under the covers.
Toronto is a young startup ecosystem, largely because it wasn’t always possible to run a startup here. This has 2 effects as far as I can tell. The first is that most of the entrepreneurs here in Toronto are very young, the average age is definitely lower than the Startup Genome Project average of 33. And the second is that almost all of us aren’t tied to Toronto. We have all been somewhere else, worked somewhere else, and got money somewhere else.
Weak Founder Network
Being young & unconstrained means we don’t brag about or lean on our native networks in Toronto. We brag about our investors and mentors in the valley (like we all haven’t been), we try to impress our Toronto network instead of learning from them, and we don’t trust our peers here to help us succeed. Its ok. And its pretty normal from what I’ve seen in other fledgling startup communities.
BUT until we can trust and work with our peers here in Toronto the community will continue to flounder. We will continue to leave (not necessarily a bad thing). We will continue to NEED other networks. And getting together will continue to be about bragging instead of helping and learning.
Small Ideas
I’m not sure if this is because the ecosystem is so young. Or because our service providers think they run startups. Or because we’re a largely Canadian club. But our ideas on average aren’t world changing. We dream of things that already exist. We dream of parts of other company’s visions. We dream of features. We dream of being an Instagram for Instagram rather than Facebook, Go instead of Google, CRM instead of Salesforce.
This is a theme across the startup galaxy right now. But we aren’t helping. Why not be the place big ideas come from? Why not be known for dreaming bigger? Lets be frighteningly ambitious. Lets change something. Fuck the $25MM Google acquisition. Can we please do a little bit more than building another feature for Salesforce?
Crossing The Scale Gap
We have almost zero entrepreneurs and early employees experienced at scaling. It might even be the real reason for the pre-scale acquisitions lately. We can’t cross the gap. Who are you going to hire to scale your marketing? What about sales & bd? Or support? Or product management? Have they ever done it at a startup before? Better still, will they - without a question - give you an unfair advantage because of how awesome and repeatable they are at it? I doubt the list is any longer than a few names for each - and I bet most of them are running their own startups or have retired.
There is a huge void here that doesn’t exist in SF or even NYC. We have very, very few startups that have achieved scale, cycled, and produced experienced founders or employees that want to go back out and do it again. This is why so many of our startups open offices in San Francisco or Palo Alto. Will you? Does it bother you that you have to split up your team, or move? You need to move if thats how you win - but could we ever help each other to do it here at scale?
Mentorship
Its pretty weak in Toronto. Its a side effect of the same lack of experience. The same lack of cycling. And there just isn’t the same kind of culture of free giving that exists in the valley. We have this sort of East Coast I work to get paid mentality that doesn’t jive so well with mentorship. All that being said I can’t fix this. This is a huge problem that has cultural roots, a lack of raw material, and well all be dead (or at least our startups will be) by the time it gets fixed.
My advice: Get a mentor in the valley, and figure out how to use skype.
Capital
Don’t waste your time raising in Toronto. If you can and do raise elsewhere Toronto will pay attention. If you can’t, they still wont. And the best part is you don’t need permission to be in Toronto anymore if this is the right place to run your business.
My advice: Raise the money where you can, run your business where you need to, and get the fuck back to work.
But…
There still are some pretty great things about Toronto. Hell, I haven’t left yet. The talent here is A+, the money goes further, the government helps, its one of the biggest economies in North America (ie. fuck loads of customers), and you can build a first class startup culture of first class talent that has worked at startups in the valley and abroad.
So lets fix the broken parts. I think its still worth it.
Too much words? In picture form!
Problems I’m trying to fix:
Things I’m NOT trying to fix:
About Me
Upverter is my 3rd startup. I dropped out of highschool, and then university, both times to run startups. I’ve worked in Ottawa, Waterloo, Stuttgart, Bangalore, and Mountain View. I have never lived in Toronto before, so it’s a first for me, but we’re here because it’s where our team wanted to be. And I’m not ok sitting back and letting this opportunity - to make Toronto kick more ass - pass me by.
Wanna join the cause?
Shoot me an email (zak@zakhomuth.com)
Image by Richard Findlay link
I aspire to be a great CEO. I want to be on list with Elon and Branson and Bezos and Jobs. And if I play my cards right this may kill two birds with one stone and get me into the running for “The Most Interesting Man In The World”.
Assuming I’m not there yet means I need to get better - so long story short, I went out for dinner the other night with one of my advisors to figure out how far away I was. I asked for feedback, something I am now convinced we should all be doing more of (this article was my inspiration) and Paul was nice enough to invite me over, cook me dinner and sit and talk with me about where I was, where I could be, and what I need to be doing better.
Essentially he gave me a no-bullshit scorecard based on what he could see. And it looked a little bit like this….
Not terrible… But there is some areas that definitely need improvement. For starters fuck marketing. I didn’t say fuck acquisition. And I don’t undervalue the need for growth, acquisition, or any of the activities that create inbound interest in your product. Its just not me. I’ve spent time with some of the best and worst web marketers ever to exist, and I can see what makes the great ones great. I just don’t love the analytics, the tweaking and the blind persistence that make it work. If I were an artist I’d probably paint with a power washer. So I/we need help…
[Plug] Upverter is actively hiring an incredible startup marketer / growth hacker. [/Plug]
Now, with that out of the way, I need to talk about Evangelism. A completely subjective 50 out of some undefined denominator (probably 90). Fuck. And he is probably right too. This is something I need to fix. If I do anything to elevate Upverter over the next 3 months, its going to be making damn sure engineers understand why we have been killing ourselves for the last 2 years. Its going to be talking about what hurts, why it hurts, and what we’ve learned about how to make it hurt less.
Talking with Paul about evangelism also made me realize that what I was doing in and around the Toronto startup ecosystem was a half-assed attempt at evangelizing Toronto startup founders. This is something I will need to write more about too, but there is much work that needs to be done here too.
Not really sure how to end this… get ready to give a shit.
Read some useful shit here: The Art of Evangelism (Guy Kawasaki)
I work with the most talented individuals I have ever had the honor of working with in my life. They are each remarkable, complimentary and individually the best at what they each do. I’d even go as far as to say they are one of the greatest teams ever assembled - certaintly the greatest ever assembled to do what we are doing.
Let me try to explain…
Do you ever wonder how the paypal team happened? I don’t mean how they met, or why they worked together. I’m not sure how to say what I mean, but they were a dreamteam. They have gone on to be some of the most influential startup personalities - ever. Hell they’re only partially jokingly considered a mafia.
Well, could you imagine organizing them today to do a startup? Imagine building a dreamteam from what they have become? Imagine if they all worked together on a project today - it would be incredible, it would be one of the greatest teams ever assembled… but once upon a time it actually happened. They were younger, greener, and more driven. But they actually used to work together. The dreamteam actually existed, and not for hours or days - but for years. Maybe I’m just late to the party but thats stunning to me.
The point is, someday someone is going to look at Upverter and have one of those moments that I just had. It will be unbelievable that there was ever any doubt. It will sound unfair. It will all make sense.
Right now its still too early… but, I can see the flickers of what is to come. Heres to my team. I couldn’t imagine it not being us. I couldn’t imagine better DNA. And I still can’t imagine youre not going to win it for all of us.
Heres to you.
Let me tell you a little bit about where I live… the townhouse we lovingly refer to as the Upverter Hacker House. But first, let me tell you why.
I have 5 biological sibilings that my parents have told me about ;) They are all younger than me, and they are all boys. Thats right, I have 5 younger brothers. My cofounder Mike likes to tease that its like looking at the evolution of me - you know that t-shirt showing the stages of a hunched over ape evolving into a walking human - its kindof like that.
Anyways I love my brothers dearly, and not to diminish their place in my life, but 2 years ago in my world they gained 2 older brothers - my co-founders Steve and Mike. We even all lived together for a little while when Upverter was still in my parents basement - all 8 of us. It was a little scary. But its really a pretty important part of my life and the start of this company.
Anyways, where I’m going with this, is we are kind of a big family. And for me were also an extension of my already pretty big family. And inline with being a family we have always lived together. Whether it was in my parents basement, or my Mike’s mom’s basement, or our student townhouse in Waterloo, or our living room in Mountain View, or our hacker house in Toronto. We definately blur the lines between family, work and fun. And so far it may be one of our biggest assets.
Needless to say when we moved back to Toronto from Mountain View we didn’t get 3 appartments and an office, or even just an office and a single apartment. Nope. We got a townhouse. One great big, open, and funky townhouse with enough bedrooms for sleeping and enough “office” (livingroom) space for working. And then we gave everyone we knew keys to come and work in our new house.
I’m sure at first glance it was be a little out there - but its been absolutely incredible. We all live, work and play together. All 8 of us. We have family style lunches and dinners. We go for beers on Friday afternoon. We all eat from the same fridge, share the same dishes, and have keys to the same house. We are kind of one big crazy family - and its magical.
Now, don’t get me wrong - this isn’t some kind of Peter Pan thing. We are all painfully aware that someday we will have to (growup?) get a real office and fill it with our particular charm. But at this stage I could not imagine a better environment for incubating the DNA of a transformational company.
These days were opening the house up a bit more too. We do a 6-month running invite-only startup cash poker game on the first Wednesday of the month (last time we had about 20 players and 2 tables going). And we just recently started a founders-only series of tech talks into the deep dark underworld of the hottest Toronto startups.
(If youre interested in coming to poker just shoot me an email)
Long story short - if youre starting/running a startup and youre on the fence about where to live (or if you just want to be successful) you should very seriously consider the hacker house model. I know a dozen or so Upverter current and alumni employees that would highly reccomend it.
We will always look and feel like Upverter because of the early days spent living and working together. Upverter will always be one big family. And I will always have a few more brothers than I started with.
Hardware store, Maca by Vincent Luo
I’m looking at the list of the largest software companies in the world, and there is something eerily similar about all of them, and it reminded me of an Alan Kay quote Steve Jobs brought up during the launch of the iPhone.
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
The similarity is they all build hardware. Lots of it. Hell, Valve is even getting into the hardware game these days.
User experiance is holistic. Its more than the design. More than the software. And more than the hardware. How much longer can you get away with only building a fraction of the user’s experiance? How much longer can you depend on Apple to build experiances worthy of you building on top of them?
The next consumer hardware giant isn’t going to be a transformed software company, nor will the next software giant get there without building hardware.
