chris ennis

5 Reminders for Anyone Pursuing a Startup

In the past decade and a half, I’ve had the great pleasure of founding companies, helping early stage companies grow and starting new ventures from within an existing enterprise.  In 1996, it took audacity, gumption and a bit of blind ignorance to get into the startup game.  In 2011, with the price of starting a web technology venture greatly reduce (to almost nothing when compared with the costs of 1996), it seems like everyone is going after the startup dream.  

Regardless of whether its your first time in a startup or your 100th, its important to remember the following:

1. An idea does not make a startup
   Your vision, your value proposition, your product is the result of a series of ideas and revisions to these ideas, that over time mature and survive tests from your end users and the market as a whole.  Too often, I am approached by people looking to start a venture and they believe that they have a “can’t miss idea”.  There is no such thing.  Facebook didn’t get to be where it is because it was a can’t miss idea.  The fact is, the idea was very good, but what followed the initial idea was a series of ideas at various stages of the company’s maturation.
2. Don’t succumb to the feature creature
   Most web products don’t need to be perfect to launch.  If you don’t know what will work in your chosen market because you’re not following an existing product by replicating it and improving on it, then don’t sweat the details.  Choose one feature that your end user needs and build it.  If you build 10 features before you release, you’re just increasing the odds that you’ll fail.  The feature creature is what I call it when you create more features than you should/could support.  Its easy to go down this road.  Trust me, I’ve been there.  Focus is key, keep it simple.  You can always tack on new features later, and you’re users will love you.
3. Connect with your users early
   Its too easy to start developing a product and get into the mindset that you can’t actually build a user population until you have a finished product for users to use. This is completely false.  You can build a collection of simple html conversion pages and make users feel like they are getting in on something that is exclusive. The best community/product builders that I know take small budgets on Google AdWords and Facebook Ads and run campaigns to a series of conversion pages strategically targeting user interests.  This gives you insight into what will motivate your audience.
4. Master the art of processing critical feedback
   Feedback is important.  If you feel that you aren’t getting much of it, you need to stop reading this right now and create a list of 20 people that you’d appreciate feedback from and ask them for it.  An important take away for me from TechStars was that feedback can come from all directions.  Most people will give you advise that makes sense and is in the ballpark with your ideas.  But on occasion, someone will throw you a curveball and make you think about your idea differently.  Maybe it is really negative, hyper-critical or advise that has very little to do with how you perceive your vision playing out.  With so many opinions coming your way, its important to become a master of picking out the gold from this collection of ideas, and store the rest in reserve.  If you don’t, you’ll run the risk of entering a state of analysis paralysis, which is the Bermuda Triangle of product development.  You can lose weeks, sometimes months once you enter this state.  To avoid this, don’t be afraid to plant your flag and say this is where we are setting up camp (for now).
5. Primary Objective:  Not be a Startup
   It kills me when people refer to being in a startup the same way that kids used to refer to being in a rock band.  It’s not sexy, it’s not glamourous and for God sake, its not something to strive for.  The goal of a startup is to not raise an A-round, contrary to what every TechCrunch article about Company X raising $5 million would lead you to believe.  The primary objective of a startup is to find a relevant and successful business model.  This is a startup, working everyday to discover what works.  This process ends with either success, failure or a pivot (which starts the cycle all over again).  If you can prove your business model without your company ever being the subject of one of those TechCrunch articles, thus achieving self-sustainability, then you win.  And the win is considerably bigger than if you had to take the additional support of investors.  As a veteran of startups, I always find it inspiring when a startup raises a small round because its priorities are in order and it is not trying to exceed its means at that time. 

I could probably list a hundred reminders, but I’ll leave it here, with the first five that come to mind.  If you’re struggling to find your legs as a startup, remember to not over-think things and to put your best foot forward.  Most, if not all, of your business tactics will suck early on.  Your marketing and your product will definitely need work, but that’s ok.  Get it out there and learn what will make a great product, then act quickly to address your needs.

The Age of Coding is Upon Us

“Learn to code.”  It’s the phrase you’ll hear over and over again from so many who work in the world of internet technology.  Usually the question that garners this response is “How can I make it easier for myself to find a job?” or “What advise would you give a kid who wants to get into technology?”.  As a CTO and technology lead who has been responsible for hiring dozens of developers over the past few years, I can attest to the fact that demand for developers greatly outweighs the current supply.  While America struggles with high unemployment in many sectors, technology is practically unaffected.  So, it makes sense:  Learn to code.

For most of my career as a developer, the programming languages available for writing web applications were often rough around the edges, requiring a certain level of hacking and ingenuity for solving complex problems.  Today, most of the complex issues can be resolved by integrating modules or classes designed to solve the problem.  Programming languages and the concepts within have matured to the point that anyone can now spend a few hours watching introduction and tutorial videos on YouTube and then turn out a simple web application.

A person who wants to learn to code can spend an hour or two and have a development environment, complete with server, running on their computer.  This allows us to build test applications, burn them down, and then build other applications.  A software package like MAMP (Apache,MySQL, and PHP for Mac) makes it easy to get up and running with a local development environment.

I know its easy for me to sit here and attest to how easy it is to get started.  Compared to ten years ago, it is so easy now to start coding today.  If you’re a person who likes to follow examples, there is this wonderful site called GitHub.com that has thousand of publicly accessible web applications for you to view and download.  In the age of Open Source, GitHub is the center of the universe.  If you want to search for scripts that perform a particular task, just search for it on GitHub.  Another great resource is Stack Overflow.  If you have questions on how to do something, chances are very good that you can find the answer on Stack Overflow.  In almost every case, someone has already asked the question on SO and more experienced developers have answer the question.

So what are you waiting for?  Have an idea for a great app?  Get going and build it yourself.  Sitting around searching classifieds for job opportunities?  Make yourself a hot commodity and start coding today. 

Its Not You, It’s Me ~ Leaving Simple Energy

After much consideration, I’ve decided to step down from my role at Simple Energy.  My last day will be Thursday, December 8th.  It will be exactly one year to the day that I joined Simple Energy, and if you know anything about me, a most fitting time to part.

You might ask, why leave an up and coming TechStars company that just received funding and is bound to change the world?  In May 2006, I started SoberCircle and between then and now I have had a total of 12 days where I was not involved in an early stage startup.  The pace has been grueling and the fatigue is now affecting my contributions to Simple Energy.  As a founder of several startups, I recognize the strain this puts on the rest of my team.  What we do as the core team for a startup requires a tenacity that has to be relentless and persistent.  Right now, I’ve found that I can be one at any given time but not both.

The one priority that this recent stretch has brought front and center for me is Family First.  We can lose sight of this when “the shit hits the fan” and you have to spend a weekend cleaning up a mess that could set the startup back.  I certainly have at times, and now, I get the opportunity to recalibrate my life to reach a healthy balance before getting back at it.

So what’s next?  For me, its spending the holidays in full-on chill mode.  I’ll probably spend January setting up meetings with all the local tech people that I’ve been meaning to connect with, but have not had the chance to.  I might also take on some consulting work.  Then maybe I’ll saddle back up with something new in February.  If you know me, I always have something percolating in the back of my mind, so we’ll see what happens.

For Simple Energy, the show must go on and for those of you that don’t know, we’re on to something BIG.  I can’t wait to see what the team does with the market opportunity.  If you’re a developer extraordinaire and the idea of helping millions of people save energy interests you, check out SimpleEnergy.com for job opportunities.  You could have my job!

I want to thank Justin and Yoav for having me as their technology lead for the last year.  Thank you as well to David Cohen and Nicole Glaros at TechStars for giving us the opportunity to participate in an amazing program.  I’ve been doing this for over 15 years now and the exposure TechStars gives in beyond compare.

What is Facebook Timeline?

I’ve spent some time today after the announcement of Timeline at F8.  When I first saw it, I thought to myself, this is digital scrap booking.  I showed it to my wife earlier and she was amazed that we could go back and see all the posts and comments around the time our son was born.  For her, this was very exciting.  

And as many are writing about the emotional tie we have to our past, there is something else going on here.  I believe Facebook has been working on this about as long as they’ve known that Google is coming after them with Google+.  Timeline is Facebook’s step to weave our history into their fabric before Google+ can.  Its a brilliant move,  because Google is a company that has thrived on freshness, demoting history once it’s no longer relevant.  Just ask my fellow TechStars alums Mocavo, who have built an entire search business off the premise that Google does not like history and tosses it aside when it no longer drives traffic.

Furthermore, who throws away scrap books?  Not many people throw their history away, right?  And now that Facebook echos your life story, chances are you won’t throw it away either.  Robert Scoble talks about the Game of Games, and this is a big move in that game today by Facebook.  I can’t wait for you all to get Timeline and see how awesome it can be.

My BCN11 two cents

I have about 100 Nashvillians in my Twitter feed.  The vast majority of those have spent the last few days going on and on about BCN, specifically bitching or being bitched at about the format, the purpose, the process, etc…  And as one who always tried to stir the pot when I lived in Nashville (see:  http://chris.enn.is/post/1415442419/barcamp-nashville-inspired-rant  and   http://chris.enn.is/post/1421462669/bcn-inspired-rant-rehashed), I felt I needed to say this:

Shut the fuck up.

If you don’t have constructive criticism that can actually help make the event and the community as a whole better, then shut your hole.  If you can’t make these comments without hiding behind a cloak on anonymity, then shut your hole.  If you can’t take your opinions being heard then having everyone move on, most definitely shut your hole.

The truth is, BCN is what it is.  You can voice your opinion, but unless you’re going to suggest something that actually makes sense at this phase, being one month from showtime, then let it rest.  If you think you’ve got the cure for everything that is wrong with BCN, I have an idea for you:  Go out, start your own event, and do it the way you feel is right.

While I agree that BCN strays way off the path of a traditional BarCamp  (Its far off of the experience I’ve had at FooCamp, the event upon which BarCamp is based),  unless you are participating in the process of planning BarCamp, your bitching is akin to someone bitching about the job the President is doing but did not bother to vote in the presidential election.

Bottom line:  Nashville, BarCamp Nashville organizers, you are mature enough as a community to tell the people who want to bitch about this to reserve their opinions for a face to face meeting, and if that isn’t cool, then tell them to fuck off.  The fact that this whole thing warranted a story in the Nashville Scene is ridiculous.

Startup Visa Now!

So, today is the culmination of three months of rigorous work and preparation for what has been a great demo day for the startups here at TechStars Boulder.  One thing is really starting to irk me though.  A few members of the TechStars class are having to leave Boulder and their other co-founders to return to their native countries, all because of the expiration of a visa.  

I’ve never been that passionate about the startup visa issue, but I’ve seen how hard these people work, and the process that allows them to work their ass off here completely and totally sucks.

So, bureaucracy wins again…  We’re booting entrepreneurs, that in coming here, have committed to play a role in building enterprises in our country.  Makes a lot of sense doesn’t it?  

A developer’s confession

This should be a rule of the developer code, but there are certain things a developer does that constitutes a sin and thus should be confessed, like zero commenting on code and zero object orientation.  

I sinned yesterday.  And although I could make excuses, they are not allowed in development.  We deal with truth in our work and must deal with it when mistakes are made.  So, here it goes.  I merged one branch of a repos over another, which completely fucked up a repos.  I still haven’t unravelled the mess, but it totally messed up one of our devs.

So there it is, I sinned.  Hopefully I will be forgiven

The “My Allergies Will Hate Me” Spring Tour

So in case you haven’t heard, I will be spending some time in Nashville in mid-April.  I’ll be in town from 4/15 thru 4/24.  I’ve had some people reach out to me about meeting the next time I am in town, so if you want to meetup while I’m around, check out my schedule and reserve a time.

I’ve also been talking to some friends in town about organizing an event while I’m there.  Its was a regret I had when I moved away last year that I didn’t do more to organize an event of some sort in Nashville. (Read:  Dave Delaney is my hero)

One of the gatherings I participated in was an intimate gathering that Dave organized called Tool Talk.  It was a pretty cool concept.  It was controlled, and I really dig that.  So, I want to ask the question:  If you could pull eight people from Nashville into an intimate dinner session and get them talking about the ins and outs of technology in Nashville, who would you invite?