No Snivelling

Here's another business that I'd like to see become a reality.  Since I've been on Tim Ferris' Four Hour Body diet, I've found myself eating salads all the time (oh, and I've gotten my weight down to 175 and kept it there for a few months... down from 210 pounds of fatness at my peak of rotundness!).  The salad procurement works great when I'm at work (Amazon has great salad bars, at fantastic prices... small salad with fresh salmon only $6.55!), or in Santa Monica (California Monster Salads), but it's pretty hard to find a great salad when you've worked late and are driving home.  Usually I have to settle for grocery store salads (smashed into plastic containers, made hours ago), or go without.

I know it's hard-to-believe that a salad fast food store could make it -- our country just doesn't seem to want that to happen.  But, when I'm in the salad making line at one of the above, it just doesn't seem like a person is really needed to throw the stuff into the bowl and mix it up.  Rather, I could pick my salad, make ingredient modifications (at the store, or via web/app), and have the container'd salad ready for me on arrival (or even better, in an Amazon Locker-like pickup system, where it's kept cold and instantly available). 

The salad store would only need an employee to keep the ingredient machines full, and clean, etc.  And to handle the payment collection (or locker loading/ordering).  Seems like the cost structure could be quite different than other fast food stores, and would really drive an almost always available healthy food option.

That's it.  Someone, please go make it happen.

A few weeks ago, I found myself nagging Karen (my wife) about spending money, and allowed it to escalate into a pretty big issue over the course of several weeks. Once it reached a head, it resolved itself pretty quickly (more on that in another post, about the need for partnership in relatonships... that realization has made a big impact recently). Along the way, though, I realized that I've been the one generating some of the really big outflows (investments in TeachStreet, buying and selling fun cars, etc) while she spend money on smaller things (clothing, shoes, etc). The point is that I could have just as easily pointed the finger at myself, and by criticizing her, I was really doing just that. I thought about that in two other contexts lately.

First, there was the article about "Are homophobes gay?" that made the rounds on the web. It seems increasingly common that those who are the most critical of other groups end up being members of those groups in some way. We've seen it with Ted Haggard and others. Anytime I see someone far out on the extremes, I wonder about their motivation? And, on a larger scale, I've often discussed with Karen, why do some people care so strongly about topics such as allowing gay people to marry? It truly doesn't impact them in any way. It just makes other people happy.

On a much smaller scale, I've been a member of many online and offline groups over the years. With online groups, inevitably rules crop up about who can post what, and how often. The other day, someone posted something self-promotional, and several people loudly popped up to shut down the atrocity. Then, a few days later, one of those people did exactly the same thing. When challenged, the answer was along the lines of 'turnabout is fair play'.

Seems like some consistent themes. That those who try to impose the rules want to be above the same rules. Or something like that. So, stop criticizing yourself, Dave.

I was at an event last night and the entertainment was really good. Someone mentioned that they'd like to buy their music. But many of these acts are still selling physical CD's. It would be awesome if bands could make their music available on Foursquare at locations where they perform. Could make instant purchasing and sharing a reality, and make all of the venues music sellers.

Someone go make that happen please.

Today we are happy to announce that we're joining the AmazonLocal team. Sadly, this means that we will be closing TeachStreet. When we opened our doors on April 21, 2008 we had grand aspirations, to create a place to help lifelong learners find great classes and teachers, empower teachers with robust tools to manage their teaching businesses, and enable schools to more effectively generate leads for their classes. Over the last few years we have succeeded in creating what we think is the world's largest selection of classes and courses, and one of the richest marketing toolsets for teachers and schools, big and small.

To our valued teachers, thank you for your support and being elemental in making TeachStreet something we can all be proud of. To our investors, thank you. You put your faith in us. We wish we had accomplished more, but know that we sincerely gave it our best. And your investment helped us grow as people, and as a team. We're forever grateful, and will strive to pay it forward. To our current and past employees, thank you. The last few years have been challenging, but so rewarding for having gotten to know, and grow with, one another. We hope you'll all look back on your TeachStreet days with some fond memories (and that the beer will help erase the other recollections).

And so it goes.

Onward!

• Our first $100k angel investor came from a friend's intro; the investor met me one time, and called me a few days later with the news of his investment. Upon hanging up the phone, I actually screamed out loud.
• Almost all of my angel investors were originally soft-pitched over coffee, as were many non-investors; more often than not, the non-investors helped with other introductions, ideas or questions
• I originally met Daryn (our CTO, and the person I consider my TeachStreet partner) via a random networking meeting, where I met he and David Geller, as they were working on EyeJot. And, I'd bet that more than 75% of our employees were introduced, or met, over coffee and/or network introductions.
• I met Joe Heitzeberg, over coffee at Macrina, to discuss a role he had open at Snapvine; by the time of the meeting, I had already decided on TeachStreet, but it's a relationship that's grown since 2007.  Oh, and he introduced me to our accountant, who's just awesome.  
• The idea for TeachStreet crystallized over a coffee discussion with Jason Kilar, while we were discussing a pre-Hulu startup-idea that he was starting to accelerate toward
• While not a coffee meeting, we ended up licensing our software to a company in Australia; they found us because of a video presentation I gave at a Seattle Tech Startups event -- they caught the piece of the video where I said that "we'd be open to licensing our software", and reached out (note -- I also fielded ~30 of these international outreaches from others, that all went nowhere...)
• I met Dave McClure years before any startup notions -- he was on the Board of Unitus (a microfinance organization, where I was the guy responsible for marketing); as fast as he could spew ideas, I was sitting on the fringes of the meetings implementing/testing them.  That relationship took off quickly :-)  Dave turned into a great friend, one of my earliest investors, and biggest advocates (and out of that grew uncountable press/blogger introductions for me, and referrals of Seattle-initiated-startups, by me, to 500Startups) 
• Out of a coffee-request overload, we created Hops and Chops, as a way to consolidate many of these conversations, and enable even greater early-entrepreneur interactions.  Entire startups have been assembled there, and numerous friendships have deepened.
• We recently got one of our first exclusive-lead bus-dev deals done, in days (after multiple attempts with the company), after a coffee meeting where I helped them with some candidate sourcing
• Finally, one of my very first startup inspirations/enablers was Andy Sacks' Open Coffee, that he's been running, at Louisa's on Eastlake for 4-5 years, without fail.  And, as I look back, that's where I met Tony Wright for the first time!

• Both Sides of the Table, by Mark Suster -- it's awesome, because he has repeat success as an entrepreneur, and is now an active and accessible investor.  As an added bonus, he isn't based in Silicon Valley, so he knows that talent can be found anywhere.  Reading his blog is very much like a daily peek into the questions in my head, and fears in my soul :-)
• Ben's blog, by Ben Horowitz - like Mark, Ben writes with the perspective of a seasoned (and massively successful) entrepreneur.  He's also a fantastic writer.  He doesn't write often, so he's gentle on your feed reader, but when he does, it's worth grabbing a drink and settling in.
• Essays, by Paul Graham - he's just a genius, and similar to Ben in terms of writing quality & depth.  Also, like Ben, everything he writes is worthy of a sitdown and repeat-read.
• As an added bonus, the YCombinator Library is an AWESOME collection of the best startup posts ever written
• GapingVoid, by Hugh MacLeod - Art and Life - his back-of-business-card drawings (and larger artwork), along with minimally expanded explanations, do a great job of visually displaying the noise in my (our) heads
• The Monster in Your Head, by Jerry Colonna - another infrequent poster.  Jerry's a past-successful VC, and now entrepreneur career/professional coach.  See the name of his blog - 'nuff said.
• AVC, by Fred Wilson - he's the best. Great mix of broad-internet goings-on, personal stories, musical passion, entrepreneur education, and more.  For me (and many other entrepreneurs), Fred was/is the original VC blogger, and he continues to rock it.

1. Don't try to read your Twitter feed!  Just keep track of your @replies (and respond if relevant) and DMreplies.  Then, dive in to the feed when you want a light distraction.  But, it's not your responsibility to read all the tweets in your stream.  That's one of the many things that's wonderful about Twitter, once you figure it out.
2. Twitter is an awesome way to casually spot hot stories, because if it's relevant to you, you'll probably see it sweep by you several times during the day.  Read it, or don't -- your life won't end if you miss a story or two.
3. Subscribe to Summify - it monitors your social feeds, and you can set how often you'd like to have it email you a summary of the popular stuff.  I have it send me an email one time each day, with 6 stories.  It's amazingly good at picking out the articles that got lots of tweets/retweets/likes/shares and more, from the people I care about. You can control all of the settings.  It's awesome (and, as an extra bonus, was created in Vancouver, BC!) 
4. I also like Trove -- but, it's still developing.  I'm not as big of a fan of services like News.me, Flipboard and others.  But, that's just me.  I find them more 'fun' to use, but lead to lots of time-wasting on my part.  So, I ignore them when I'm in the work-zone. 
5. In Seattle, I like GeekWire for my daily news summary (I prefer the daily email -- I scan it quickly, click thru to those that interest me, comment, and then dive back out) 

Begin Sappiness

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to Pay It Forward.  What's funny, though, is that I've never seen the movie itself, so I went and added it to my Netflix queue -- I expect that it'll be a sappy two hours, but sometimes that's just what I need.  But I digress...

Anyway, for the last several years, I've been trying to spend a little bit of time each week helping younger (or less experienced) entrepreneurs avoid some of the mistakes I've made, or at least be aware of the avalanche heading their way, as they start their own business.  Last week, I gave a talk at Seattle's TechStars For a Day that became pretty emotional for me -- the topic was "What a Business Person Does in a Startup", but it turned into a bit of a heartfelt talk about why it's so fantastic working in a startup, or in your own business. Yes, tears were involved.  I'm not sure why, really -- yes, the emotions got cranked up, but it could also have been impacted by several days of non-stop cross-country travel!

In the end, it's about giving it your all to create something new and wonderful.  And surrounding yourself with a great team, and participating in their growth as well.  And making mistakes.  And, hopefully, being able to participate in the success of the next wave of explorers.  I've found it very meaningful and enjoyable to give back, where I can, and I can't wait to have more time, someday, to do even more.

For now, I'm just trying to encourage experienced entrepreneurs to take a little bit of time each week to try to help somebody out -- it could be a quick conversation over coffee, an on-campus speech, or just attending an extra event every few weeks, to make yourself available to someone who has an eager question. And, reminding those I'm helping now (when they say thank you, and make me feel so great), that in a few months, or years, that I expect them to do the same.

Of course, I'm just Paying It Forward from folks who helped me along the way when my ideas were in nascent stages (and took my coffee, lunch and other brain-picking requests); folks like Andy Sack, Bill Bryant, Mike Mathieu, David Geller, Daryn Nakhuda, Todd Sawicki, Dave McClure, and many, many more (not to mention all the crazy angels who ponied up cash... those people are the TRUE psychos of the Pay It Forward Universe :-) )

Paying it Forward -- it really does feel good to help your friends and community.

End Sappiness

As part of the TechStars For a Day speaker series, I gave this talk about an oft-asked topic. We all (think we) know what the CTO or technical co-founder does, in the world of startups and internet wunderkinds. But, many wonder, "What does the non-value-add CEO/Product person DO?!?"

This master's thesis, years in the making, helps to illuminate all that is wonderful about the non-technical-member of the startup wonder twin pairing.

I'm a huge fan of Gaping Void -- really enjoyed this artwork/cartoon on Acceptance that he posted today:

THIS POST WAS WRITTEN BY SCOTT WINDSOR, ON THE TEACHSTREET BLOG -- BUT THAT WAS SHUT DOWN, SO I MOVED IT HERE, AS IT WAS POPULAR.

It's been said before. Unicorn is awesome. Here at TeachStreet, we've had a pretty good web server setup since our launch 3 years ago, which is mongrel + nginx. When we first looked at the hosting options for rails, fastcgi was (thankfully) on it's way out, and mongrel seemed to have snatched up it's place as a solid webserver. But, there have been a few drawbacks. There isn't much communication between them, so each individual process needs to be nannied by something else. This also means if one mongrel dies, nginx doesn't know about it, so it keeps sending requests to it.  This is fine in a normally healthy case, but there are two that we care about: long running requests & deployments. Now enter 2011. There are a number of new webservers available for rails. The one that really caught our attention is Unicorn. It's based on mongrel (much like Thin & Event Machine), but it has some noticeable differences.  First, there is a central process that spins up and manages the rails instances. This means it knows when a process is running (or not) and if it's still serving a request (or not). In addition, Unicorn supports pre-forking. This essentially means that when properly configured, it can load up a new application instance, and when that instance is ready, let it serve requests, and kill off the old process.

This opens up a new world of support for two things: fast restarts and hot deployments. As a website, one of our biggest fustrations is downtime. And as a startup, we want to deploy all the time. We hate having to wait until later in the day when our traffic is low, and even then we're still disappointing customers (if only for a few minutes). With Unicorn's pre-forking, there's almost no need for downtime. You can push while people are using the site, and they won't even notice. The key setting this up is getting your signal handling correct in your app. Luckily, github blazed a trail for us, and we were able to adapt their config to our needs as well.  Here's what we came up with:   The only caveat here with our setup is that with capistrano, we flip the symlink, then begin restarting the app instances. This means that your assets (including images, external stylesheets and javascript) will get served ahead of your new application code. This should rarely cause an issue, but you should keep an eye out if it will. Same goes for database migrations - you migrations will run, then your apps will restart. So, if you are planning a destructive change (tables/columns getting removed), your application could have issues.  If these cases could affect you for a specific, you should take your site offline for the push. Here's a snippet from our capistrano config for unicorn:   And you're done! Since rolling this out we went from 1-2 deploys a day to 10 or more. All without having to serve our customers a "we're closed" page. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm horrible sorry.

Have you ever worked with a designer?  If so, you understand where I'm coming from.  They have a wonderful perspective on the world, as the put-upon world-weary souls who must deal with the soulless MBAs in their midst.  They get to take the holy ground of "more is not always better -- more is never better" and countless other eternal truisms.  They're the Siddhartha's in our midst.  Harrumphing their way through the morass of the world.

Some day, I wish to work for a designer, and have them pay me every two weeks for me to give them my opinion.

I imagine that their highly profitable website will look something like this, and that we'll all have 9 weeks of vacation and have to work about 3 hours per day.

For the last few months, I've been making a concerted effort to develop some healthier habits via a new service that I have a crush on called Health Month, including exercising very regularly (6 or more days per week), eating healthier (reducing red meat and pasta, and increasing vegetables and raw fruit intake), and the like.  And the results have been pretty amazing -- not only have I lost more than 15 pounds, but I've had more energy, felt more creative and have overall been much more positive about life.

A friend, new to the startup investment space, asked me today how to learn about all of the different terms, players/investors and approaches in startup investing.  I started to rattle off some of my favorites, and then thought about sending a follow up e-mail with links, etc.  Of course, a blog post is probably a better way to share these, so others can access them. Read these blogs (start 12+ months back, and read all of their posts) and follow their tweets:

• Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures
• Mark Suster of GRP Partners
• Brad Feld of Foundry Group
• Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital
• Ben Horowitz of Andreesen Horowitz and their AH Resource Library
• Paul Graham's essays are awesome
• Ask The VC (by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson)

• YCombinator and their amazing startup library
• TechStars (Seattle, Boulder, New York City, Boston, etc.)

• TechCrunch
• Mashable
• GigaOm
• Read Write Web
• TechFlash

• South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW)
• Web 2.0 / Expo

• Seattle 2.0 has everything you're looking for (much more comprehensive list of links than I'd ever assemble!)

I know this one's already circulated, but it's so funny and dead-on.  Thanks to @davidgeller for introducing it to me, and for the interweb and SEO bandits for it's creation :-)

I'm having a great time at the Founders Institute event tonight in Seattle. Really enjoyed this image that Dan Fine included in his presentation, of an advertisement that Ernest Shackleton posted for explorers for his ship. It read:

"Men wanted for hazardous journey.  Small wages.  Bitter Cold.  Long months of complete darkness.  Constant danger.  Safe return doubtful.  Honour and recognition in case of success."