Don’t fire your team after reading this, but do consider how to get to a better place.  Growing (with) your team is as important as building your product.

Investors and Entrepreneurs

When investors look at startups, they discuss the idea and the market, but ultimately they’re betting on the team.  An idea is a sheet of paper and a market is a spreadsheet–only a team can create a product that serves its customers.

We entrepreneurs somewhat grasp this—we accept that our assumptions about product and market could be wrong.  We talk of concepts like prototype and beta to describe the product, and we try out our early visions on different size customers from varying industries, conducting interviews throughout the process.  But what about our team—what words do we use to describe the hodge-podge, ever-evolving group we’ve assembled to become the next Google?

If you look yourself in the mirror you get yourself, flaws and all.  We have the team that we have, and if we think carefully about it we know that there are weaknesses.  Maybe it’s experience, maybe it’s personality, maybe it’s motivation… but whatever the case, both skills and chemistry don’t just magically come together.  Much like the product we build, a team starts with a prototype and comes to maturity in different shapes and sizes throughout the product lifecycle.

But we don’t usually act on this knowledge, we just focus on shipping on testing.  The extent that we think about team is to look out for the connected cofounder and then the ninja UX guy, hoping that more skills and horsepower will come together like puzzle pieces.  But people are raw materials, not pre-fabricated components, and there will be holes in our company beyond just technical skills.  The puzzle will start to take shape but it won’t be the shape we pitched to investors (or ourselves) once upon a time.

Teams Change

People change.  People work together differently.  People leave.  These are all options for our businesses.  We all get caught up in “lean startup” hype, but all the processes we’re attempting to put in place are carried out by a team.  And maybe the changes you need are deeper than development processes.

Maybe.

The Reality of a Team, of my Team

I’ve run several organizations and worked for all sorts of managers, but I don’t always know what’s best for my team.  Even when I do know, I can’t (or don’t) always follow through.  I try to do what’s right with the circumstances and resources.

That means listening to issues with technology, process, and communication.  That means working together on quality control, personality conflicts, and personal matters.  And one by one my team has worked together to address these issues, reassign roles, and sometimes let people go.

My Team Came Out of Beta

Think about Google for a second.  We place them on a pedestal for their engineering culture, quality of life, small teams.  Whether or not that’s the case, it’s how many perceive them.

I’ve had my share of issues in my companies for the past 8 years.  Sometimes my team didn’t deliver or it took way too much “management”; sometimes I could’ve done better.  There were a lot of reasons for that.  My biggest mistake was probably being too patient, leaving people in roles they weren’t ready for.

But working together with my present AwayFind team, who’s been growing steadily since June of last year from 2 to 3, to eventually 6 full time people…our most recent release was a beautiful thing.  We worked smarter, relied on each other, and gelled.  Every product role that we need today is met, and I feel pretty damn good about things.

Right about now a giant thank you is in order—you guys seriously rocked.  And what you did had little to do with me.  I don’t what I’d want for a better group.  Thank you.

My Team is about to Enter Another Beta

But it’s not over.  As Tony Wright articulated in Startup Founder Evolution, the role of product and business development have to shift as a product company evolves.  So, very soon, we’ll hire and change a little.

We as founders with small teams should recognize that as our companies change we need more engineers, more business people, and we need to let some people go.  We need to pay attention to issues with development process, keeping people happy, and making everyone feel a part of things.  I’ll be very up front and say that the team building AwayFind today is very different than what it was when I began it as a side project at SET Consulting.

I’m proud of how we’ve evolved, and look forward to what’s ahead.  Keep your eyes open and be ready for these changes, because with the right team you really can be something great.

Sometimes you have to pause to examine both your position and your velocity.  It’s time for three important questions.

What does your vision/company(/family) need most?*

This is a matter of identifying your critical path.  But if you haven’t asked yourself this in several months, you may find that your path has changed.  It’s important to recognize.

My company’s product vision has changed a bit due to the responses from our users, newly available distribution methods, and various opportunities that have come to the surface.

And yet, it’s still about growing an active (and paying) community.

*These may be three separate questions, and depending on where you are in life, it may very well be.  For me, my vision and my company’s are aligned, and there’s not yet a (new) family to speak of.

Do you want to spend your day differently?

Without asking the first question, you can’t answer this effectively.  As much as you’d like to spend your time “at the beach” you need to factor in your critical path.

I think my responsibilities will soon have to shift.  I’ve been doing a lot of long-term, very specific business development, and have moved on from blogging and my online relationships.  In short, I’d passed along the marketing torch and focused on product/team.

My team is growing a lot this month, and we’ll need to ensure that norms and processes are in place to address this growth…but after that I need to move back to marketing—both by writing here and by tactically engaging and growing AwayFind’s community through both content and conversion tactics.

In short, I’ve needed to tend to a lot of company stuff, but the critical path is still customer acquisition.  Unless I find someone else to focus on this, I need to spend more of my day on that path.

What’s changed that you have to accept, and what must change that you’ll have to sacrifice to get there?

There’s a reason we’re not spending our days doing the things we want to do.  For me, I can blame lots of good reasons.  But I’ll be cutting a bit from my life and making some hard (and some awesome) changes in the next three months.  I’m both excited and a little sad.

I wish I could list everything out here, but suffice it to say when trying to get from point A to point B, one has to be realistic about what led them to their present state and what absolutely must change to arrive at their destination.  I’ve taken a separate sheet of paper and made a list, you should, too.

I’m not proud that I haven’t written much lately.  I’ve still got some to resolve before I write too much more, but I think you’ll see more of me in Q3.  More from the blog, more from me, and more from AwayFind.

Still, I needed to pause here.  Hopefully that’ll help you, too.

Flickr photo credit: Erin Finkle

This year is a similar theme, but it comes from a very different basis—the word is swim.  I’ll explain after the jump…

IOU in 2011

Last year I tested a lot of things, and I gave back a great deal to my community.  I’d like to believe I figured out a formula for pulling through with my company, and I know I was able to contribute to the DC startup and arts scenes in positive ways.

But as I mentioned recently, AwayFind is in a sprint right now.  We’re building something pretty-frickin’-amazing, but we’re not charging yet / earning revenue.  When the livelihood of both you and your team are on the line, and when you don’t have much time to prove that your application has a market, that’s where you need to focus.

So, unfortunately, that means that in 2010 I may ask for things from you to help me get through this year and be able to give back more.  I’ll still be running Bootstrap Maryland and Ignite DC, but if things go well this year then next year I’ll be able to do so much for you all in 2011.  So, while this isn’t my theme for 2011, I want to thank you in advance because I’m betting the farm and could use your help.  More on that in future blog posts…

Back to the Theme: Sink or Swim?  I choose the latter.

I remember when I bought a house in 2005.  Turns out that wasn’t the best time to buy, and I ended up having a combination of respectable debt (mortgage) and less-good debt (home equity line + money owed to my family).  Within 12 months I paid off all the less-good debt and my business was kickin’ ass.  I was a little worried though.

Right now I’m in a sink or swim stage with AwayFind.  Sure, there’s no reason why the product would disappear, but the next six months will predict whether it’s a viable business in its current form.  As such, my team and I will be doing everything we can to put ourselves on the map and grow our userbase.

If you’ve ever had employees, you know that there’s no greater feeling than being able to support them in exchange for their hard work.  Even when times have been tough in the past (it’s been almost 8 years now), I’ve never withheld payroll.  And I don’t want to.  I want to hire and grow and make an impact on the world

I know what metrics I need to reach.  I believe I know what’s best this time.  And I’ve got a grasp of how to push things forward that one can only have when they’re at this stage in the game.  So, with every decision I make in 2010, I’ll be asking, how will this push us forward on our critical path to gaining more paying users–how will this help us to swim.

It Ain’t Glamorous

I’ve been thinking a lot about Tom’s Shoes business model—every pair of shoes you buy, they donate a pair to someone who needs it.  There are ways to give back creatively, and I want to explore that.  If 2010 is a successful year then 2011 will be an opportunity to try out some of these business models and to give back so much.

It ain’t glamorous to defer wonderful dreams solely for the sake of the mundane “stay in the black” concept, but that’s what I’ve got to do.  Reading Chris Brogan or Seth Godin or Tim Ferriss and their many acts of good and ambitions, it’s nice to learn about what we can do when our business is higher up Maslow’s hierarchy.  But that’s not the focus right now.

What’s your theme?

Since I wrote this article last week I have been thinking more and more about Chris Brogan’s concept of three words and about how I defined a more idyllic theme for last year.  And I think I stumbled upon something pretty big with regard to using themes to guide our decisions—perhaps even my own raison d’être.  More on that soon.  I am excited for 2010, even if I have to concentrate a bit on my own business.

I hope you have a pretty awesome year in store for you.  That you can grow your business and give back.  What’s your theme going to be?  Is there anything I can help with now?

Flickr Photo Credit: zen, Yafut

There is a time to sprint, and not just because you want to work harder.  Consider this:

An Exercise in Human Resources

Assuming 9 months of work to create a product, which would be the best hiring strategy?

1. 1 developer working for 9 months
2. 3 developers working for 3 months
3. 5 developers working for (just under) 2 months
4. 9 developers working for 1 month

I’d bet most people would go with the middle options, but why?

• Their gut would tell them to dismiss the first option: 9 months seems too long to wait, maybe the market will have changed, perhaps having only one developer would put them at risk
• They’d probably dismiss the last option: 9 developers is probably really expensive, and it’d likely be difficult to catch a big mistake and alter it without spending too much on rework

The last option is a bit extreme, and for all but the most experienced of project managers with the most firm and well-thought specifications it’s likely unreasonable.   Chances are the middle two are the best options.  Both for the reasons above (which you likely considered) and also for a set of reasons that I want to stress below.

But I will also come back to this…as I’d be willing to bet most people (who aren’t answering this as a purely intellectual exercise) have actually chosen option 1 (solo entrepreneurs who build your own product, this is especially true for you).  Now let’s talk about all the reasons this is a bad decision, and in what cases the last option might even be the best one.

A Month Costs A Lot of Money

If you don’t know your monthly burn (the monthly expenses for your company) then, well, figure them out.  Depending on the size of your company, you might want to include your personal expenses in these numbers as well.  Anyhow, hold onto this number.

If you’re like most companies, you’ll find that a lot of this number comprises money that just seems to disappear every month—most of it may be salaries, but a lot of it is fixed/variable expenses you wish didn’t exist (insurance, office space, transportation, food, infrastructure, etc).  Maybe it’s just 2,000, maybe it’s 6,000, maybe it’s 12,000…but whatever it is, it’s significant.

Nevermind interest fees.  Or the fact that it’s a month of your life.

And of course there’s the the frustrating fact that you can’t put your head down and focus for too long (1 month?  2 months?  4 months?) without allowing the real world to haunt you with its responsibilities, risks, and bills.

Consider this: if you could cut three months of (non-payroll) expenses out of your project by making the project three months faster, how much more would you have available for developers?  How much sooner would your project be ready?

Solos: if you have $60,000 to work with, and gave yourself a year to build your product, consider how much faster and more relevant your product would be with other people on your team…and how much sooner you’d realize whether you were going down the right path and…

Time Flies By…and So Does Your Competition

If you’re in a competitive or quickly changing industry (like, say, web applications) then time matters.  I’ve learned of dozens of companies that have “validated” our market since I started working on AwayFind.  If I decide to slow down for a while, many of our core features would no longer be novel, let alone remarkable.

Cutting edge is no longer a quaint thought.  Every 6 months there’s a metamorphosis in which technologies are available (and which businesses are making money of them to do what you want to do).

Time Commitments Take Time

If you’re still chipping away at the same problem a year from now would you feel good about it?  If your team members also lacked that sense of completion, would they still be there?

When time goes by, there’s a chance you’re going to wander off.  There’s a VERY good chance someone in your team will move on.  So it’s in your interest to get as much done as possible while you have them.

But What About Slow Growth and Learning?

My team worked on AwayFind for a very long time, not putting many hours into it in the beginning.  These are our actual hours (Y axis) over 2 years (X axis):

This shape represents a company that wasn’t so sure how much time it wanted to put into its product, particularly when there was another (i.e., a real ;-) source of income (our consulting business).  It also shows a company that incubated a lot of information before realizing how to respond to customers and try again.

Let’s just assume that I didn’t have another business.  If I were paying 5,000 per month in fixed expenses then that would’ve been $5,000 x25 = $125,000.  If we had moved faster, I could have had access to some of that money.

I will admit that I learned a lot about building a web application and grew many relationships over this two year period.  While the purpose of AwayFind hasn’t changed (escape interruptions while still being responsive), its technology and experience are the difference between MS-DOS 2.11 and Windows 7.

But there are periods on this graph where we could’ve and should’ve moved faster.

So When Do You Sprint?

If you look closely at that graph, you’ll see the last dip before the hours went pretty-much straight up (the dip was May 09).  From that point onward we’ve mostly been chipping away in product development.   Leading up to the first launch we also could’ve beefed up our product development, much more than you see here—it would’ve saved us months and probably $15-25k.

In the last few months I’ve hired 2 full time developers, a Director of Communications, and worked with several consultants.

I couldn’t have just tossed those people in at any time, but as soon as it became clear that there were multiple months of work for a new person, I’ve added that person.

Right now we’re sprinting.  We need to improve the UX on a number of areas, we need to better connect to certain email providers, we need to finish our marketing site.

I see very clearly what needs to happen on the product side, so I just want to move as quickly as possible to get there.

Back to the Exercise from Before…and the Right Answer

The more crystal clear your specifications and needs become, the better in a position you are to divide the tasks amongst multiple people and move as quickly as possible.

Of course, this assumes that you can find the right people for the right price, and that you know how to manage them.  All those things are easier said than done.  But those are relationships and skills that every entrepreneur can benefit from.

We all have a fundamental understanding of how to “control costs.”  But we don’t always know how to “control time,” particularly in relation to how time affects costs and our position in the market.  Next time you’re ready to sprint, do it–you’ll save a lot of money, hit your market, and have a better chance for success.

Flickr Photo Credit: johnthescone

The following is a video of me from WordCamp Mid-Atlantic talking about both productivity at work and balance in life.  Though the presentation was initially geared toward blogging, there are 13 minutes I’ve highlighted that I hope you’ll enjoy.

Below the video I’ve listed out the timestamps to skip to, as well as some articles that cover the concepts in greater, actionable detail.  And below that, the slides.  Enjoy!

First off, I hate that I look like Steve Ballmer’s monkey dance at the beginning, but otherwise I was pretty happy with this (huge thank you to Joe Corbett of iStrategyLabs for filming this!).  Here are the hotlinks:

Blogging Tips: 4:45 – 24:20.  I talk about things like using visual text editors, applications like Texter and Q10, etc.  If you write a lot (even it’s not on a blog), there should be some useful tips in there.

The meat of the presentation about BALANCE starts around 24:40 / slide 17 and goes to about 37 minutes:

• Purge your mind: 24:40 / slide 17: how to make a big ass list
• Masturbatory statistics 25:20 /  slide 18-19
• 50:10 Time management 27:25 / slide 20
• Social media fame vs. real life 29:00 / slide 21: avoiding online popularity
• Unplugging 29:50 (and some talk about SF vs. Barcelona) / slide 23
• In the stream, how to deal with Twitter, etc. 31:15 / slide 22
• Batching email and a cone of silence 32:00 / slide 24: AwayFind
• Identifying your critical path 33:45
• Circadian Rhythms – scheduling around your energy 34:50 / slide 26
• When you’re done with work, go home 35:50 / slide 27

I hope you enjoyed the video : ).  If you have any tips on balance, feel free to share.

Flickr photo credit: SashaW

Below I’ve indicated the timestamps for when AwayFind, email productivity, and Bootstrap Maryland are discussed…so you can dive right in.  After the videos are also some recent links, like being in Gartner’s 2009 Cool Vendor Report : ).

Robert Scoble Interview on Scobleizer TV

• 00:30: Continuous Partial Interruptions
• 1:31: Difference between AwayFind and the Vaynerchuk/Ferriss approach
• 5:30: What I’m working on for the future—understanding different channels
• 6:55: What sucks about Twitter and lack of chat, being used for support, etc
• 11:17 Bootstrap Maryland discussion

Note: After this interview, I was also on air for a longer discussion with Robert Scoble and Dave McClure.  It was an excellent discussion of the state of the venture market (mostly just Dave sharing, because Dave knows it better than anyone).  Robert’s blog post and video are here.

Greg Cangialosi Interview on Blue Sky Factory TV

• 11:30 My interview starts
• 16:20 How to better manage when we check email
• 21:00 I explain how I go through my day
• 30:45 Bootstrap Maryland discussion
• 48:15 My interview ends (stay on for email marketing tips)

AwayFind Around Town

• Gartner Research: Cool Vendors in Project and Program Management, 2009
• The Digital Marketer: Four Tools to Manage Your Calls
• Summit Daily News: Technology Solution of the Week: AwayFind
• Tokyo Beer & Blog Meetup with AwayFind
• San Francisco Meetup at House of Shields (Facebook)

Thank you to Robert, Greg, and the other folks who were kind enough to speak with me and review AwayFind.

–

We’ll soon be back with our regularly scheduled programming, like an upcoming post on “Action Tweeting” : ).  Cheers!

And I want to reiterate the point.

Have you ever gotten a call from someone asking you an important question, and while they’re explaining the problem to you, before you even get a word in, they solve it themselves?  If you had missed that phone call, it’s safe to say that without your involvement that person would have been just fine.

That kind of thing happens all the time when you’re available all the time.  It’s always more difficult and expensive to be on the bleeding edge, to stay current with the news, to solve problems before any of the dust has settled.

Seth Godin’s article today discusses this much more cogently, and one of his examples is email:

You can check your email twice a day pretty easily. Once every fifteen minutes has a disruption cost. Pinging it with your pocketphone every sixty seconds is an extremely expensive lifestyle/productivity choice.

I’d recommend you read his quick article and then think seriously what you decide to stay current with, and whether it would save you time, money, or energy if you waited a little longer for that information (or gadget, or software, etc).

The rest: an immediately practical, very readable, and quite beautiful 26-page guide that may not be available in 48 hours…

As I was working with beta testers of AwayFind, it became apparent to me that removing email interruptions and emptying our inboxes was not a technology problem.  It was one of education.  If you haven’t fully digested Getting Things Done or other time & email management systems, then it might be a challenge to really put AwayFind into practice.

Thus I wrote a guide to complement AwayFind’s technology…but the truth is that there are few mentions of AwayFind.  It’s an accessible summary of mine and many smarter people’s recommendations around email.  If you like what I write about here, this is the juiciest stuff, with pretty diagrams, too :-).

The catch?  It won’t be free after tomorrow (it may come back again, but not sure in what form…).  It’s downloadable as part of the Basic AwayFind setup process (the last step).  So if you want it, now’s your chance—just sign up for AwayFind here.

Along with getting the guide for free, the 30% discounts for being an early-adopter also end tomorrow.  So if you were considering the Professional version of AwayFind, now’s a good time to try it—after all, you won’t get charged for 30-days and can cancel anytime, so there’s nothing to lose.

I’m sorry for making what’s quite clearly a pitch here…but I feel like I’d be doing a disservice to you if I didn’t share this guide.  I’ve never been so proud of something I’ve written…and I want you to have a chance to benefit from it.  However, I don’t feel comfortable leaving it up for free indefinitely since I’ve put so much work into it.

Thanks for reading and I hope the guide helps.  You can grab it on the fifth step of the wizard here.

In the next post I promise to rant about something completely unrelated :-)!

Today we launch AwayFind.  It’s time for a little retrospective…

The Short Version

AwayFind began as a side project inspired by The Four Hour Workweek, but it quickly morphed into the primary focus with my team.  Our goal has always been to help people to use technology as a vehicle rather than an obstacle for getting things done…and this was an opportunity to help so many more people at once.  If you haven’t heard me go on and on about it for hours, this 90 second clip explains it, and includes a quick tour:

The Retrospective

Needless to say, we’re pretty ecstatic to launch today.  I don’t like the word “blessed” but I’m damn lucky to work with the team I do…

David, it’s been fun to grow up together these last five years.  You now know more about browsers, Visual Basic, and a whole host of random Microsoft Office stuff than you ever wanted to, and you probably know every keyboard shortcut known to man.  Not to mention your crazy Wii skills…

Keith, your ability to transition your design to the web never ceases to amaze me.  That both the SET Consulting and new AwayFind homepage were designed in PowerPoint 2007 both shocks and inspires me.  If I could only have half of your methodical creativity…

Wayne, I’ve never before met someone who could walk through walls, but that’s what it’s like to watch you navigate code.  Your energy and discipline are unstoppable.

Okay, enough of the sap story.  But I should at least mention that some other people really stepped up to the plate at the last minute here: Scott Stead rocked the instructional video, Andre Pennycooke blasted thru the intro piece (above), and my favorite dancer/bookkeeper/marketing guru Emily S proved once again that she can do anything and everything.

Thank you, too, to Emily P for her design ideas, Kate for her disciplined writing, Clay for countless suggestions, and the dozens of others who helped out.

The Anticlimax

So this is the anticlimactic part where I realize I need an insane number of users if I ever want to make a difference (and/or pay for this).  If you want to spread the word, here’s how (and thank you in advance!!):

1. Sign up for AwayFind.  It’s free and you’ll love it.  Don’t want to use an auto responder?  Just place AwayFind’s link in your email signature.  Don’t have time for that today, the remaining are quick hits…
2. Help us look good—join our Facebook fan page and follow us on Twitter
3. Spread the word: tweet, blog, or send a link to your favorite journalist about AwayFind.   Don’t send them here, since this post says little about the product, instead mention the homepage and the coverage we’ve gotten with…

People Who Have Been Kind Enough to Write About Us Today

• ReadWriteWeb: Escape Your Email At Last (Really!) With AwayFind
• Lifehacker: AwayFind Gets Urgent Email Through When You’re Offline
• DidIGetThingsDone.com: AwayFind – Increase your Email Productivity
• Chris Brogan: AwayFind Launches Big
• East Coast Blogging: AwayFind, Take Back Control From Your Email.
• Stepcase Lifehack: An Interview with Jared Goralnick — Founder of AwayFind

(I’ll try to keep this up to date)

Above you’ll find a video from Jonny’s Partay, where I was interviewed on Wednesday, July 9 at 9pm.

There’s a bit of talk about AwayFind, some news about DC, and of course much of what I’ve been up to. From lifehacks to batching email to mobility and travel, hopefully this’ll keep you entertained.

This is a 60 minute show (my piece starts about ten minutes in), so you might want to hold onto this and watch later. If I can find a way to get a better player for this I’ll try to post it.

Thanks so much to so many of you for coming out to watch this live last night! And especially to Jonny Goldstein and Scott Stead for hosting me and putting this together.