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Learning to Make Door Desks

August 14, 2007 by DaveSchappell

You’ve all heard about the legend of Amazon door desks, right? The idea is that startups that haven’t yet made a profit shouldn’t waste their money on things that don’t matter to customers. Thus, Amazon pioneered the use of “Door Desks” — that is, using a door, 4 wooden legs, and a few metal brackets to create a functional and solid desk. We share the belief that frugality is a great thing, especially since we’re investing our own money, and that of our families, in making TeachStreet a reality! Plus, we’re always up for learning new life and home skills. So, we thought we’d share what it really takes to construct a Door Desk — we headed to our neighborhood Lowe’s and picked up the necessary materials:

  • Doors – ~$20
  • 4×4 Legs, which we sawed down to size – $10
  • Brackets, per desk – ~$15
  • Screws, per desk – ~5

TOTAL COST = ~$50 per desk, not counting the blood, sweat and tears that went into construction, and the cost of the U-Haul rental. I’m not sure if it was worth it, when you consider that you can pop onto Craigslist and pick up a fairly inexpensive collapsible table, but maybe we should just think of it as a team-building exercise! And, not only is it useful, but that’s one handsome desk!  Below is a video of our newest employee, and some door desk leg cutting!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVxtGF1IvBU

Filed Under: TeachStreet

Learning about Startup Metrics

August 10, 2007 by DaveSchappell

We wandered over to Ignite Seattle on Wednesday evening for a flurry (12+) of five-minute presentations — interesting talks ranging from ‘How to play Werewolf’ to ‘Introduction to VC Term Sheets’ (loved this talk!). Some things I love about Ignite events:

  • the audience is so supportive of speakers, especially for those that are suffering from a bit of stage fright — it’s a great reminder that we’re all growing and learning, and that we love to root for those taking chances
  • the fact that many of the presentations have nothing to do with technology (the presentation on ‘Hacking Chocolate / How to Make Truffles’ was especially tasty!)

I’m biased, but my favorite learning event of the night came from Master of 500 Hats, Dave McClure (full disclosure — Dave’s a TeachStreet Board Member and investor — he and I met via shared microfinance interests and involvement) His talk was titled “Product Marketing Metrics for Pirates: AARRR!!! (Startup Metrics for Internet Marketing & Product Management)” It was a fantastic 5 minutes — none of the material was new, but it was a great reminder about what all marketers and business need to keep their eyes on:

  • Acquisition
  • Activation
  • Retention
  • Referral
  • Revenue

In a nutshell, establish your key metrics for each of these, and then spend 80% of your time on existing feature optimization and 20% on new feature development — this is the inverse of what most product folks, and CEOs tend to do — focus is measure, weblab, optimize, rinse, lather and repeat. If you’d like to enjoy the presentation, I recommend catching Dave live at a conference sometime soon (subscribe to his blog… he’s got a few coming up… ) — or, check out his Product Marketing Metrics for Pirates presentation.

Filed Under: TeachStreet Tagged With: dave mcclure

TeachStreet v0.1 has Launched!

August 9, 2007 by DaveSchappell

No, there’s not much “there there” yet, but we finally established a firm home for TeachStreet. We’ve made a tremendous amount of additional progress in the last few weeks (CTO on board, financing nearly finished, office set up and most of the painful administrative efforts completed, more new hires on the way… now we get to finally start building the site!).

If you’re interested in what we’re up to, visit the new website and sign up for updates, and subscribe to the TeachStreet blog.

Filed Under: TeachStreet

New company name is ooGooRoo

May 29, 2007 by DaveSchappell

teachstreet is oogooroo

Photo Credit – Scott Erickson
Without sharing many details, I wanted to let folks know that the placeholder name for my new startup company is ooGooRoo. Yes, I know that just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

Our mantra will be — “Connecting Inquiry With Enlightenment”. So, with all that background information, if you have any improved naming ideas, please send them my way.

Of course, the real reason I’m making this post is to get some links pointing to that site to get the Google Juice going — I mean, a link from No Snivelling is apt to send so much traffic there that I’m already increasing my net wealth exponentially — you have to love this Web 2.0 world!

—

Observation of the Day – I have an all-new appreciation for the value of time and the importance of setting goals and deadlines – now that my own project gets delayed every time I do something that isn’t helping me achieve my goals, I have no one to blame but myself (and my poor choice of activity prioritization). So, this week, I’m really going to get v1 of my Business Plan done — in fact, I’m going to get that version done tonight and out to my Product Marketing GooRoo (yes, employee #2 at ooGooRoo is officially on the payroll in less than two weeks!) and my prospective Technical GooRoo (employee #3 is in the wings!).

So, back to the salt mines…

Filed Under: TeachStreet

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