Entrepreneur In Training

Enterprise RSS thoughts

Doing my morning Google Reader/Twitter scan I came across this news bit passed by @chieftech. A company called KnowNow is shutting down after trying to provide RSS services to the enterprise. They had raised about $50 million over 7 years but evidently have failed to garner the business necessary to continue. RSS means “Really Simple Syndication”. The technology to deliver RSS isn’t too terribly difficult yet the justification for all of that capital was to allow “building products for companies requiring robust, secure software”. To me this is the problem. I work for BigCo (the enterprise)…people don’t care about the technology. They don’t care about the “product”. They want to know very clearly and very quickly why what is being sold will allow them to either

a) do things more quickly and efficiently

b) make more money

If your product isn’t doing that then they don’t care. And if you can’t explain it in 10 minutes or less then they aren’t listening. RSS does A. No doubt about it. But I don’t think the case has been made well enough, to enough people for RSS to sink in at this point. I’m trying to do it at work. There are lots of people that are trying to explain how RSS can make your work day easier. Common Craft does a decent job explaining RSS, but as soon as you say the words “code” and “paste”, these “do” words make people think more work. You’ve lost them.

News Gator is a company that I think is closer to getting it, but hasn’t quite cracked the nut. I use News Gator Inbox for my behind the firewall reading and its easy - for me. If I try to get some executive in my group or even most of my peers to set up News Gator Inbox, I hear the same thing - no time, didn’t work so I gave up, etc. The problem is that most people don’t understand that by investigating 30 minutes to get a basic understanding and setup done that you will save hours and hours shortly their after. Its a hard sell for some reason.

I’m going to have to do that at some point for Supplier View and I have to do it at work today for one of the projects I’m working on. I’m prepping for the blank stares and the multi-tasking while I’m talking about setting up feed readers and configuring Outlook plug-ins.

That $50 million should have been spent on a world class change management process to make people more easily understand and embrace the value of RSS. 

Posted in Enterprise 2.0 | No Comments »

My hippie kid

No matter what I do I can’t get this kid to get a hair cut! I love him though!

Andrew

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Supplier View update

I’ve been pretty quiet the last couple of weeks due to a lot of time away from home. Now that my traveling is done for the near future expect more updates. Just because I have been gone doesn’t mean anything has slowed down on Supplier View. Cody and Aaron have been busy on both design and code for the last couple of weeks. We will meet early in the week to make sure everybody is on the same page and set the course for the next couple of weeks. I’m looking at having something out there for Alpha users in mid-June.

One of my stops while gone was Las Vegas for Ariba Live. I was representing HP but the time spent further validated that what I am doing with Supplier View is needed and not being addressed. There is a huge gap in the so called 360 degree supplier view that the industry is not addressing right now. I’m more excited then ever about Supplier View and getting in front of companies to explain the benefits. The opportunities that are in front of Mucho Salsa are tremendous right now. On the flight back the phrase “Enterprise tools without the Enterprise cost” popped into my head. Make no doubt about I’m in this to make a healthy profit, but I’m also going to make this an easy choice for those considering the cost.

Another exciting development from my time in Vegas was getting to talk for a few minutes with Jason Busch. Jason writes one of the top blogs for the Spend Management community. Spend Matters covers many topics of interest to procurement professionals but one of the areas I think is covered extremely well is technology trends. I gave Jason a brief over of Supplier View and promised to give him one of the first demos. I’m looking forward to his candid feedback.

There is a lot going on but I’ll keep it short. Look for more updates in the near future and make sure to hit that subscribe button!

Posted in Enterprise 2.0, Entrepreneurship | No Comments »

Change is in the air

I am writing this post while on a flight from Salt Lake City to Houston. I’m wrapping up a week of vacation in which I got a lot of sun, ate and drank just about anything I wanted and spent a wonderful couple of days in a great Salt Lake City hotel. To top it off I’m sitting in first class thanks to cashing in a couple of years worth of frequent flyer miles. First thing in the morning tomorrow I head to Las Vegas for a week of Ariba activities. I enjoy the luxuries I experienced over the last week and what I’m sure I’ll see in Vegas next week, but that stuff doesn’t drive me. And that’s why I feel like this week and next are almost a type of last hurrah.

Supplier View is going to happen. I just spent the last hour putting more effort into better articulating the vision I have for what this application is going to be. I have documented milestones from the group handling the development of Phase 1. In June, I expect to have a Beta version out ready for real live users. I’m anxious to talk with some of the people that have shown interest in what I’m doing, I’m still looking for that person that will be the Chief Technology person and a true ’skin in the game’ Supplier View partner.

The leather first class seats, margaritas on the beach and visits to the 40/40 Club are all great but I’m going to give that up for the opportunity to work on something that I feel will be a game changer or a curve jumper as Guy put it. If things go well maybe I’ll be sitting back up in first class again in a couple of years but until then I’ll happily sit wherever I need to to get this idea turned into reality.

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Wrap up the week by doing some good

Did you scream at someone unnecessarily this week? Forgot to feed the dog before you went to bed? Ran a red light? If you need something to tilt karma in your favor this week then take a look at this story. The quick version is that Steve & Lyndsay are working hard to have a baby and will have to take some expensive routes to make it happen. The future baby daddy has an artist for a Mom and the future grandmother is putting her artwork on magnets and selling them for $2.50 each. That includes shipping. Here are a couple of samples from her collection

You can make your purchase at this web site: http://www.jawlfineart.com/Magnets.html

I just bought 4 and might go back later. I feel better already. 

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That felt good

I came home tonight and had a big envelope from DonorsChoose.org in the mail. I gave some money to an elementary school in my hometown to help pay for some math materials a few months ago through DonorsChoose. I figured it was some sort of promotional material or non-profit disclosure. I was very happy to see a collection of letters, cards and pictures from the kids at the school saying thanks for supplying some of the money that helped purchase the math kits. The letters all had “Mr. Heller” in them with the Thank Yous taking full advantage of the lower case dotted mid-line and the solid top line for capital letters. I had the biggest smile on my face. Those kids made my night.

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What Twitter has done for me

I was at a talk given by Guy Kawasaki tonight at the Houston Technology Center. He was great, it was free, and though there were no mind-altering revelations Guy did talk about things that I need to remember to do as I pursue my start-up dreams. One thing he talked about was how his latest venture alltop.com would not be possible without Twitter. He uses twitter to get ideas from the people that follow him as he builds out the top sources for new topics on alltop.

In the last few weeks Twitter has done quite a bit for me too. The first valuable connection I made was with the guys from Downtown Cartel. I had met Cody and Aaron at a Startup Houston event in January, exchanged cards, started following each other on Twitter and that was about it. As I was sorting through options of outsourcing development work and getting frustrated with the lack of interaction I saw the following from Cody late one night:

I responded back. told him what I was working on and it was on. We haven’t finalized the details but I think its going to be a good fit and we are both excited about the project.

The next connection I made on Twitter was with Peldi Guilizzoni. I was reading about a new method of pitching VCs with a twitpitch. Basically in 3 tweets you had to get this VCs attention. I searched on twitpitch and among many results I saw this one:

I clicked on the link to balsamiq and found exactly the tool I was looking for to better represent the idea I had so that Downtown Cartel could build it for me. Peldi has built a fabulous application called Balsamiq Mockups. I can’t speak highly enough about how useful and fun this tool is to use. You have to try it for yourself. Over the last week he and I have exchanged many emails and IMs about the product. Its the type of relationship I hope to build with my customers one day. Peldi and I have shared some thoughts about startups as well and I’m looking forward to continuing our conversations.

And finally I was reading some tweets from Jon Wheatley at IndieStartups.com. He had some logo work done that he was really happy with from a guy I only knew as @rsek. I contacted him and asked if he was interested in some more logo work and sent him some information on what I wanted. The first logo was off base but he quickly responded with something that was very close to what I wanted. About 4 iterations later I had what I wanted at a very good price. All of this took about 2 hours. I later found out a little bit more about @rsek. You can too by visiting his website and throwing him so logo and design work. Tom is a standup guy. I sent him a second logo I had to see if he had any ideas for improvement. He could have squeezed me for some money, but he told me he thought it was a solid logo. I love it when you find people that you would work without hesitation again and recommend to your friends. Tom is that guy. 

None of these relationships would have happened without Twitter. People can call it a waste of time or a distraction but I very much disagree. I think Guy would also. You will make connections, discover information and collaborate with people you never otherwise would have found. 

So up to now in my blog posts I have mentioned this mystery project. I have two actually but the one that has most of my attention is called Supplier View. I’ll be sharing more about this in the coming weeks but I’m pretty proud of the logo Tom did for me and wanted to share it now. It might give you a little indication of what Supplier View will become.

Posted in Entrepreneurship | 2 Comments »

Launch Silicon Valley 2008

I received an email from the Launch Silicon Valley 2008 team this evening. I’m not ready to present my projects yet as I won’t be launch-ready by June 10th, but some of you out there may be. Peldi?

The event has a solid set of sponsors including Garage Technology Ventures, and several angel groups. Last year had some interesting presenting companies like Kongregate (I finally broke my Desktop Tower Defense addiction, thank you) and Jaxtr.

This year’s keynote speakers are Tim Draper and Guy Kawasaki.

Good luck!

Posted in Entrepreneurship | 1 Comment »

Coinstar & Redbox

I’ve written about Redbox before and how I am a big fan. Last night I went by to pick up a movie and here was the scene.

I had to be a little careful taking the picture. With 10 people in a picture taken at Wal-Mart there are very good odds that at least one of them is on the run and doesn’t want his picture taken.

As someone wanting to get a movie that line is not good, but for a shareholder its outstanding! Every time I walk by a Redbox and see people in line I let out a little “Cha-Ching!”. Each month I’ve set it up to have a small amount of Coinstar stock purchased. In March I purchased 3.36 shares at $28.55. Today the stock (CSTR) is at $31.45. Obviously I’m not retiring on this but I see a healthy future for Coinstar. Their primary business is the coin machines you see in grocery stores. With this economy more and more people are going to be cashing in their piggy banks for gas and groceries. Coinstar also owns a 40% stake in Redbox together with McDonald’s. As people continue to tighten their belts and cancel their Netflix and Blockbuster subscriptions they will still be watching movies. Redbox at $1 a night is pretty enticing. Redbox recently signed agreements to expand coverage in Wal-Mart and Walgreens. Target, where you at? I don’t need guys like the one in the wife-beater chasing me down for taking his picture.

Posted in Other Stuff | 4 Comments »

Pretty Exciting Times

After talking to several developers and designers I’m close to finalizing the group of people that I’m going to work with to get at least one of my projects off the ground. I’m hoping to bring in at least one person as a partner and then the others will be doing work on a cash basis. I’m hoping to have a semi-functioning demo site by mid-May and then who knows maybe TechCrunch50? Think Big or Go Home!

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