Hippoland: where you'll find me

The customers we serve at LaunchBit are entrepreneurs, so they tend to be pretty creative in getting what they want.  I thought I’d share some of the ways they’ve taught me to be a more effective customer.  

1) Just show up.  At LaunchBit, we often speak in public, and almost all of our events sell out quickly.  When all our tickets are gone, we often get a barrage of requests asking if there are extra tickets.  Unfortunately, the answer is almost always no.  However, most events, even paid-ones such as ours, have a no-show rate of 5-10%.  So for the 1-5 entrepreneurs who just show up to our events on a whim hoping to get a ticket at the door, we always let them in.  How can I say no?  I can’t say no to someone who tells me they’ve just battled traffic for 30 min dying to see me talk.  For free events, your chances are even better, because the no-show rates I’ve seen in a prior life have been upwards to 40%.  I now use this trick all the time — don’t ask if you can attend, because the answer is no — just show up.   

2) Ask how, not if.  Speaking of asks, if you do have to ask for something, ask how, not if, something can be done.  Some of our entrepreneurs ask for all kinds of things.  I’m opening the floodgates here…but for example, “How can I get the early bird rate?” (even though it’s past the deadline)  And again, how can I say no to someone who says he/she really would love to take my class but can’t afford the higher price?  I’ve even heard an account of someone who asked the founder of Balsamiq for a free copy of Balsamiq software.  The asker mentioned he/she couldn’t afford it but had heard so many great things about the software and wanted to write a raving review on his blog.  The Balsamiq founder, of course,  sent him a free copy — how could he say no to that?  Most rules that companies set up to structure price are arbitrary and are meant to be asked how they can be changed.  Obviously, not all asks will work with all companies — you probably can’t write to Bill Gates asking for the newest copy of MSFT Office.  But, can you ask for other things of large companies?  Most certainly.  For example, every time I have a bad experience with a product, I always write to the company asking how I can get a replacement or ask what the company can do about the situation.  It doesn’t matter if the product is past warranty or whatnot.  The key is to explain how much you love(d) the company and either convey that you want to see how they can help you tell all your friends about their product or convey just how disappointed you were that they had let you down.  Obviously, this has to be genuine, so it’s not like you can use this all the time.  But, more often than not, people don’t do this when they really should — most companies want to keep you happy, so just ask how they can help you.  This is how I’ve received things like hundreds of dollars in travel vouchers, a new cheese grater, a new blender, a new cast iron skillet, a new non-stick frying pan, and all kinds of fees waived or reversed across multiple services in the last two years.  

3) Make questions/critiques public.  If you are having trouble getting in contact with a company, in this day and age, there are multiple ways to escalate your complaint publicly.  Recently, I had an issue with Comcast — after sending them multiple letters/communications over the course of months without any response, I dropped one quick email to the Massachusetts Consumer Complaints department, and that week, I received a phone call from the executive office at Comcast, which took care of the problem right away.  Consumer Complaints really works — it took just 10-20 min to write the email, and in a 20 min phone call with Comcast (who called me), everything got resolved.  Contrast this with the hours I had spent on-hold with Comcast’s customer service and writing letters and emails to their customer service department.  Taking your problem to a 3rd party can expedite issues.  An even less time consuming way to do this is to tweet on Twitter.  After getting the run around from Sprint for a while, I decided to tweet at Sprint’s Twitter handle to publicly air my issues.  Needless to say, they responded within seconds.  On the flip side, when people tweet us questions/feedback to our LaunchBit handle, we also respond immediately, because it’s so important for us to be transparent.  Every company wants to make sure they look good to the public, so they are much more responsive to these public questions/comments.

I wasn’t at the talk yesterday that spurred on so much ire.  So, I’m not going to speak to it.  But, I can say this: as the rare entrepreneur who moves from the Silicon Valley to Boston, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the reverse-move and wonder what other web entrepreneurs are thinking when they move to the Valley?

Admittedly, I was skeptical in moving here.  We moved to Boston for my husband’s career.  Having grown up the in Valley for most of my life, I’d been indoctrinated with the belief that there is no where else in the world so nice and wonderful — both personally and professionally.  So, I thought that moving to Boston would be a step-down for my career and my startup, LaunchBit.

Now that I’m here, I’ve been plesantly surprised by what I’ve found, and I had just been plain wrong.  Sure, the Valley is a wonderful place.  I personally love it because of my family and friends, and I certainly keep my loyalties there when I do things like keep my 650 phone number. But let’s be honest, there are some unspoken big big big problems that make it terrible for the Bay Area web startup community.

1) The traffic.  Oh do not even get me started.  You have to slog through traffic for 1-2 hours on 101 just to go 5 feet while giving everyone the finger at the same time.  Not to mention that as much as I hate MASSholes, California drivers plain and simply can’t drive — slow people always hog the left lane with their granny-styled driving.  I am so glad not to have to do any commuting anywhere anymore.  These days, I can get to meetings / meetups / work without having to do any of that.  I walk for just a few minutes or take the T for just a few minutes.  Most convenient thing ever.  Sorry BART and Caltrain — I’ve had a relationship with both of you at some point, and you just aren’t all that.  Losing hours of your day to traffic is the biggest waste of time ever that I can’t believe entrepreneurs (and other people) put up with. 

2) The entrepreneurial community.  I’m not sure what the Boston consumer web community was like before I got here.  But, there’s a lot of high energy these days that I didn’t realize existed. The consumer web community here is smaller  compared to the Bay Area, but it’s very friendly and ambitious as whole.  And, I like that.  In just the short two months that I’ve been here, I’ve gotten to know a lot of folks in this community and am starting to get to know them better.  Though I was quite connected in the Bay Area, the web startup community out there is so big, I never felt like I got to know anyone well whom I didn’t already know.  Everyone and their mother is starting a company in the Bay Area, making it less personal.  From a selfish perspective, I almost don’t want other entrepreneurs to make the same reverse-move that I did, because I enjoy how the Boston web startup community is today.  Because of the small size, there’s a lot greater attention to the camaraderie amongst entrepreneurs that simply isn’t possible in the Bay Area.  Entrepreneurs help each other — even people they don’t know — out here.  

Case in point: I went to the best entrepreneur-event ever in January.  Hands down, the best (and I’ve been to a lot).  It’s called the DART Family dinner, organized by Flybridge’s Victoria Song here in Boston and sponsored by a different company each time.  It’s a dinner event that happens monthly to bring entrepreneurs and investors together.

On the surface, the concept behind the dinner I attended wasn’t unique, but the execution was.  We were seated for dinner at tables of 4 people with a good mix of entrepreneurs and investors at each table.  This allowed us to really talk with everyone and build connections that lasted beyond 3 minute conversations. Before and after dinner, people mingled, and I was amazed by just how helpful people were.  According to DART co-founder Cort Johnson, the premise of DART is that everyone should leave the dinner having gotten to know almost everyone in the room.  And, it really showed — I had never been to a mingling event where everyone was so pro-active in making sure that everyone knew each other.  I’m sorry to say — although there are lots of private events in the Bay Area, tight-knit networking events (with the purpose of meeting and getting to know new entrepreneurs) just don’t happen in the Valley.  

2b) A central hub.  I think one last reason the Boston community has so much energy is that Greenhorn Connect brings it all together.  Just like anywhere else, there are always lots of fragmented entrepreneur events, job listings, and blogs.  You really need a hub to bring it all together, and Greenhorn, which is about a year old, does that for the Boston area.  Founded by Jason Evanish, Greenhorn is basically my way of finding out what is happening in the web startup community around town.  There isn’t anything like that in the Bay Area.  I used to find out about awesome events through word of mouth, through my friends.  And, I have to admit, while it was a bit awesome to learn about events in an underground manner, when you think about it, it really isn’t a great way to bring an entrepreneurial community together.  

So, as someone who has grown up and lived in the Bay Area off and on for about 25 years, I want to set the record straight for aspiring web entrepreneurs.  Yes, the Bay Area has tons of tech, entrepreneurs, and innovation.  Totally agree.  You will find great opportunities out there, but the flip-side is that it’s so huge — you can easily get lost/un-noticed amidst all the noise, and as a result, its web startup community is remiss in a number of areas where Boston has managed to excel.  So, if you’re web entrepreneur who loves a nearby, close-knit entrepreneurial community, Boston is definitely the place to be.

Happy to chat more in person in either location.  I work on LaunchBit at the Cambridge Innovation Center and will be in San Francisco this month speaking at Web 2.0 Expo.  

Ok, let’s be honest, I’m a lousy cook.  Not only is my food terrible, but I also don’t enjoy cooking — I would prefer to spend my time doing other things.  Case in point: before people come over for dinner, they want to know if I’m cooking or if my husband is cooking.  And if the former, people suggest going out to eat.  For the longest time, I thought the solution was just to work harder at my cooking even though I didn’t enjoy it or enjoy the progress I was making.

But, since I’ve started bootstrapping my internet business with my friend Jennifer, I now think about the world entirely differently.  As a bootstrapper, life is about getting the most value out of your limited time.  Contrary to what we’re taught as children (or even as adults), life is *not* about hard work.  It’s about only doing the things that people will appreciate the most and deliberately deciding *not* to do anything else.  (Note: people who work for other people can follow this philosophy at their own risk.  :) ) (Double note: this is not to say that bootstrappers should be lazy.  They should certainly work hard at running experiments to figure out what valuable activities they should be doing.  They just should not be pouring their time into activities that have little to no value.  But that’s a whole different blog post.) So, when it comes to cooking, instead of working more or harder at getting better at cooking, I came to realize I was thinking about this all wrong — I should spend *less* time.  

In an ideal world, I should spend zero time, since I don’t enjoy anything about cooking.  In an ideal world, I would make Curt cook all the time, or order out, or buy frozen dinners, or go out to eat.  But Curt can’t cook all the time, and the other meals are just too unhealthy and bad in other ways to be a solution most of the time.  So, I had to figure out how to run experiments to hack together meals.  These meals would need to 1) Take no more than 20-30 min of my time to make (i.e. if a meal required letting the oven spend 1 hour cooking it, that’s fine, as long as I can leave it be) 2) be healthy, 3) be good enough to serve to other people (i.e. not just cereal out of a box, though too much cereal for dinner might violate #2), and 4) needed to be super simple to make (that’s a technical term).  

Most of the time, the things that I find as clever discoveries in life directly pertain to my venture, so it absolutely pains me that I can’t share my “cleverness” with anyone. (not that most normal people find online affiliate arbitrage exciting at all)  But, today I can share with you my clever cooking experiments — 2 awesome recipes that fit the above.

1) Roasted asparagus in < 10 min inclusive of prep and cooking time.  Yep, this takes less time than baking a frozen pizza, faster than making crappy spaghetti with pre-made sauce from a jar, and faster than running through any Google cafeteria to get food.  And, it will taste more awesome than any asparagus you’ve ever had even at a top notch restaurant.  (It’s not my recipe — I don’t take the credit — it’s a hodge podge of recipes from the internet that I mixed together)

Things you’ll need:

Get a bunch of asparagus (or more), olive oil, salt, pepper, 1 lemon.  

Steps:

1) Pre-heat oven to broil on HIGH or some high heat like 400 degrees.  2) Chop off bottom hard ends of asparagus. 3) Lay asparagus flat on a foiled baking sheet.  4) Pour a nice heaping of good olive oil all over the asparagus.  Make sure all pieces are coated.  5) Pinch salt over them.  6) Grind pepper over them.  7) Cut 1/8 - 1/6 of lemon and squeeze juice on.  8) Optional: if you have an extra 30s, take a knife and scrape some lemon zest on top of the asparagus.  Doesn’t matter if it’s sloppy and not on every piece — it’s a great touch that’s the key to making this taste better than any other asparagus dish.  

Ok, the oven should be pre-heated by now.  This all should’ve taken you < 3 min.  Remember, just be sloppy about throwing all these ingredients on the asparagus — no biggie — it will turn out just fine.  Put asparagus in the oven.  In 7 minutes, it’s done — look for crispy, slightly charred tips to make sure.

2) Baked Tilapia in < 18 min inclusive of prep and cooking time.  

Things you’ll need:

Get Tilapia filets — as many as you want to eat/cook. Butter, salt, pepper, 1 lemon.  

Steps:

1) Pre-heat oven on bake to 400 degrees.   2) Lay all your Tilapia pieces flat in some pyrex rectangular container thingy.  3) Cut 1/3 lemon and squeeze juice over about 3 pieces of Tilapia.  4) Put a bit of butter in the microwave for about 30s to melt it.  5) Meanwhile, pinch salt over the Tilapia.  6) Grind pepper over the Tilapia.  7) Butter should be melted — pour over Tilapia.  All pieces should be coated with butter.

This should take you < 3 min.  Oven should be preheated now.  Throw in oven for 15 min.  Pull out and eat.  

Ok, here’s the other thing about bootstrapping.  The strategy is to find something that works in generating value quickly, take advantage of it, and then try to use that same skill or technique in other areas.  You’ll notice the recipe for this Tilapia is nearly identical to the asparagus (i.e. salt, pepper, lemon, and some fat), because we already know that flavor combo works.  Guess what — this combo works for a whole ton of other foods as well. :)  

Have fun not spending time cooking!

Before we moved out of Berkeley office, we had a large sign on our wall that read “What would a frat boy do?”  People who came by would always ask about it, and I never really knew how to explain it.  But, today I saw an excellent video of a TED talk by Sheryl Sandberg that really sums up this sign.  Sandberg’s talk really hit home, because I could relate so well to her points on assertiveness: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_leaders.html

I love her example of how she gave a talk at Facebook on this exact topic and told everyone she would only take 2 more questions.  But after the two questions, while all the women put their hands down, several men continued to raise their hands.  It’s this kind of assertiveness that is so key to getting ahead in business but yet so unnatural to people/women like me who are taught to “play by the rules”.  It’s this same assertiveness that turned a startup called Google into a major company, when then VP of sales Tim Armstrong lead his team to camp out at AOL’s headquarters for an entire week until AOL finally agreed to do an Ads deal with them.  It’s this same assertiveness (for 21 days) that enabled startup Excite do a deal with Netscape even after Netscape told them no.  

This kind of assertiveness doesn’t come naturally, because I was raised to be nice, play by the rules, not be obnoxious, and not annoy people.  But, oftentimes when you’re running your own company, you have you break all those rules if you want to be successful.  You have to annoy people (in a nice way and sometimes not in a nice way).  You have to invite yourself to things when you’re not invited.  You have to call or email people a thousand and one times to get attention — all the things my mom taught me not to do.  (I suppose my mom never taught me how to use email.) Meanwhile, over the years, both my co-founder and I have noticed that a number of frat boys (not to generalize all frat boys) have shown they’re really good at doing all of those things.  So, when it comes to thinking about whether to call XYZ person for the 100th time and it feels like an annoying thing to do, we always check the sign before picking up the phone.  

I usually don’t like to post about super personal issues on my blog, but I’m curious if anyone else has bad upper back pains / repetitive stress issues like I do and what you’ve done about it?  

Since post-college, I’ve had *terrible* shoulder/upper back pain, on occasion so bad that it would hurt to get out of bed.  Some days that pain shoots through my right arm making it hurt terribly to type.  Other days it’s just simply manageable but still there.  Not to mention that without a good keyboard, there is just no way I could function in my line of work.  It pains me to think that I’m only in my 20s, and I have worse back pain than my parents do.  Does anyone else have this problem?  

I’d seen a couple of doctors and have done some of their back stretches/exercises, but nothing really seemed to work.  After struggling with this for 5+ years, I decided I needed to take more drastic action.  I decided that I would force myself to go to a gym and pump iron every day until the problem went away (or until I had other pains to distract me :P).  Well in just two days, amazingly it’s gone.  I don’t want to jinx it, because I’m sure it will come back and be terrible again on some days, but just tons of repetitions of the weight-rowing machines has amazing results!  I’m convinced that lifting weights (or rather the result of muscle strengthening) is a great cure to lots of aches and pains.  Would love to hear ppl’s thoughts.