Author Archives: Susan Coelius Keplinger

Facebook OWNS my Friendships!

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Ed was erased from Facebook! Really, he is gone, kaput, vanished, no more! My fun hilarious friend is vapor! His classic wall posts are no more, his crazy pictures missing, and most important, my only way to contact him is no more!

Last fall, I was at Punta San Carlos, Baja Mexico kitesurfing and I stayed at this very rad place called Solo Sports. Pretty much it was us and these English guys, the coolest of whom was Ed. Ed is rad. Sitting in the middle of a desert in Mexico, (satillite internet wireless is cool!) Ed and I became Facebook Besties.  And of course I showed him  pictures of one of the craziest adventures on earth, Burning Man. He was in, totally stoked! So every month I logged on to Facebook and wrote on his wall, reminding him that he better not abandon his promise to come play because the Black Rock Yacht Club is waiting for him. This month, when I went on Facebook to write my monthly wall memo, ED was GONE. Vanished. All evidence that Ed existed was ERASED. It was as if someone fell off the face of the planet! Here I had met this rad guy, become friends with him, joked, chatted, messaged and a corporation took it all away!

Of course, I kick myself for never getting his phone number, his e-mail, his anything?! But writing on his wall was so fun!  And e-mail? I had Facebook Messaging!  Who gets erased from Facebook anyway!

Looking at my Facebook account I have heaps of friends like this. From kids I went to high school with, to my debaucherous adventures around the world, and even just across town. When my phone goes bust, I login to Facebook to fill the gaps in the phone numbers, and e-mails.   New friend? Facebook provides the foundation.  And it works!   Well, usually.

The fate of hundreds of friendships lies in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg. Now that is FREAKY.

Or maybe its more freaky that I was able to hunt Ed down using his digital footprint and Google using the tiny tidbits of information I did have. I knew he windsurfed, was from the UK, was into renovating old VW bugs, and owned a ‘tent company’. Turns out he lives in Surrey, England, his Marquee company is called Academy Marquee, and he owns two Spaniels. And with that information, Ed received an email from me this morning. Now I just need to hope that email is not defunct…hmmm

UPDATE:  My stalking was a success!    Got my friend back!  Woot!

A New Tide

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Tomorrow, Barack Obama will be sworn in as our nations 44th President.

Fall, 2004. Evanston, Illinois. Political signs are staring to pop up everywhere, tis the season. A classmate tries to convince me to go hear Barack Obama during a Senatorial Debate at our University. I respond “Barack who?”, I had an Ice Hockey Game anyway. Over the course of that fall missing that debate became a huge regret as I quickly learned who this elusive Barack Obama was.

November 4, 2008. 10:15pm. San Francisco. The streets are clogged, horns are honking and lightpoles rattling. Young people everywere are dancing, dancing in the streets. Barack Obama, the 47 year old junior Senator from Chicago has just been elected President of the United States.

In 2001 Robert Putnum, leading political scientist at Harvard University published the book Bowling Alone. Putnam suggested catastrophic declines in social capital were happening across the US. These declines were leading to all time low levels of civic engagement, and especially steep declines in voter turnout, most marked among young people, voters aged 18-29. Among other things, Putnam lamented that since voting was habitual, the longer it took young people to start voting, the less likely they would ever be to vote.

In 2002 I co-founded (with Zach) a non-profit, Votes For Students, premised on the idea that my generation lacked not social capital, social know-how. Especially when it came to politics. VFS suggested that with increased information, and forms of engagement tailored to our needs, namely bringing politics online, young people would engage and participate in large numbers. VFS isn’t around anymore, but I am thrilled to see that eight years after the publicans of Putnams book, young people have proved its premise wrong by not only voting (turnout was 11% higher then in 2000), but by participating in the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain and Hilary Clinton in record numbers.

When Barack Obama is sworn in tomorrow, I will stand most proud of my generation for clearly demonstrating that we aren’t apathetic, we don’t lack social capital, we just needed politics to go digital.

Churchill Club

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I was on a panel earlier this week at the Churchill Club that I never quite caught the time to write about.   First, I want to thank Guy Kawasaki for inviting me on, it truly was a fantastic time.   It was a fantastic audience, that included Douglas Engelbart, so it was quite an honor to be invited to speak before such a prestigious group.   Check out the video below (I think you have to fast forward a bit to get to the actual speaking…)

I’m always torn at such functions if its better to be brutally honest about experiences as a  young entrepreneur, or instead to create a thin wall, a façade that separates reality from the utopian existence we all claim to reside.

At the Churchill Club I chose honesty, telling a story about Zach sitting in the back of the infamous Ritual Roasters Coffee House , Ruby on Rails 101 opened on his lap,  convinced he/we could learn the complex programming skills necessary to get Triggit built.  Oh what fools we were.  Luckily we quickly realized there are a few more levels to programming then ‘Rails’ and moved beyond our stupidity,  somehow convincing Ryan it was in his best interest to come work with Triggit.  (That is another story entirely!)

Triggit didn’t start from some singular brilliant idea, sketched out to perfection from the beginning.  We didn’t release a magical application that instantly hit hockey stick growth, became profitable, went public and pours billions into the coffers of its stock holders to this day.  But then again, that reality is the fairy tale.   Even the most amazing products frequently struggle to truly succeed, especially financially.  Google went through 6 known iterations of its business plan, from licensing its search technology to the roaring success of Adwords. And Facebook sure can grab users, and claim high valuations, but they are far from turning a profit.

Reality for the majority of start-ups is that it takes a long time to build something that has real value, especially for first time entrepreneurs.   In the early days of building Triggit, without an established network in the Valley, and when we were first trying to figure out exactly how this all worked, we would just call people.  Anyone who would listen to us, who was in some related field (usually just anyone in tech) was liable to get a phone call from us. We rooted through our Alumni directories looking for ANYONE who would take our calls.  Looking back I just laugh at how serious we took this whole endeavor, but it was a step in getting us to where we are today.   Because the more phone calls we made, the more we vetted out ideas, and the more clear our eventual target became.

We went (and still go) to as many networking events as possible, just to talk about Triggit, see how people react, and come back to the office to iterate.  Then there are the days you just stare at your computer screen, trying to figure out exactly what it is you are supposed to be doing.  Bobby spent months trying to sell a product, before we actually had a product.  And then there are nights you wake up at 3am convinced you suddenly have it all figured out.   In every case, most time is dedicated attempting to execute a series of realities that most often fall flat on their faces. Failures sometimes bruise egos, loose money, and waste valuable time, but they also move us ever closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.   They also make the rollercoaster of a start-up one hell of a ride!    And the ideas that stick, that make it through the guantlet,  well, those are the really good ideas.   A few years after  jumping on a plane from beaches of Brazil to join Zach in pursuit of this crazy start-up, we may just have one of those really good ideas, and a truly fantastic product.

I hope I can always feel the freedom to write truthfully about my company and our crazy experiences; about the paths we should never have gone down, the silly moments wasted chasing elusive prestige.   But more importantly, the great times.  Like the time Zach rivetted an audience at the Web 2.0 Expo, making them full commited to the cause, and convinced that we can and will succeed.   And most importantly, the internal moments, not just becoming really good at foosball together, or getting drunk at Zeitgeist and inventing religions, but when we come together as a team, to execute on an idea, and watch it start to succeed.   Damn its a fun ride!

Take a look at the Churchill panel if you are interested (or just fast-forward to all the fascinating parts where I speak!).    And let me know what you think, I have learned a lot about myself in watching that clip, and I can’t wait to keep learning more!

The thrilling evolution of computers. And the Iphone. Obviously.

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iphoneI have no self-restraint.  After admiring Bobby and Ryan’s iphones for all of 3 days, I capitulated and bought mine today.  Of course, they are sold out at almost all locations, so I have to sit and wait for 7-10 days for its arrival.

The iphone truly is extraordinary though, and in so many ways just has me shaking my head in disbelief.   In the upgrade to the 3G network, the phone has become a personal mini-computer that is connected to the internet almost constantly.

As someone who came of age during the rise of the personal computer (I have a picture of me playing on my first computer at the age of 3), it has been an unreal ride.  In the early days when we were kids we had what we thought was a pretty sweet DOS machine.  My older brother James was a whiz at it.  I figured out enough commands to play tetris, command and conquer, and power up Q & A to write my elementary school papers.    Every week Zach and I would rollerblade down to the local college to pick up a copy of Computer World so we could get the updated list of phone numbers for the BBS’s so we could dial-up and play Risk ‘online’.   Then came windows, and AOL and Prodigy.  I got really good at scamming as many free discs as possible and was right constantly canceling accounts and opening new ones as to take advantage of all the free minutes.

My family’s first laptop was this big white brick made by a company that doesn’t exist anymore.   Windows sort of worked on it, but man did it take ages to load.  I think I did a demo for science class on it once though, I thought I was pretty cool.

And now I’m getting an iphone.  I suppose it’s a cell phone (which is a different discussion then above for sure, as my family had an early car phone that I think was as big as my head.)    But truly it’s a computer that is infinitely more amazing then that old white clunker of a laptop.   I’m a bit terrified of becoming even more connected then I am now, but more then anything I am thrilled for my new toy.  And of course, I am super excited for it to become obsolete and surpassed with something even more rad in the hopefully very near future.

The Challenges of Small Scale Outsourcing.

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 There is a lot of mundane shit in a start-up. How do you find alpha users that fit your target audience? If you have a start-up like Triggit, you search through Google, and Technorati, and blog directories, and any source for users. Then you have to find all their contact information, which is another pain in the ass. Here we sit, with all these really innovative ideas for development, and marketing, and design and we need to spend hours upon hours searching blog directories for users.

So what does a bright, ambitious, probably a little egotistical (we are after all entrepreneurs) company do to solve this problem? Obviously we find cheaper talent to do the shit work. We would not actually want to hire someone in the US, because that would require tax documents, or employment forms, or really just a lot more cash then our stingy and frugal lil start-up can deploy. We’ve got to keep the burn low! So we turn to Asia, and Outsourcing.

When I first started looking for outsourced talent, I was a true believer in the commoditization of a particular skill sets. I read all of the articles I could get my hands on about the subject, and they all endorsed the view that simple tasks could be simply outsourced. I scoured the various outsourcing sites: Rentacoder.com, getafreelancer, elance, odesk, freelancenow. I was thrilled! Look at all of this cheap talent! $3/hr, sweet!

Marcos lived in Corodoba, Argentina spoke great English, and only cost $6 and hr! We were stoked, he seemed to be able to code okay, so we set him up to do feed integration for us, a tedious task that is also profoundly precise. For a while we rationalized that his average work was worth the cheap price, but then users started to complain that the matching wasn’t great, clients begun to wonder what was taking us so long to get them into the system, and Marcos kept vanishing every couple of weeks to take vacations with his new fiancé. Marcos sure was cheap, but his price reflected his work.

We have since gone through a series of outsourcers for various projects. From lead generation to simple CSS alterations and basic pages. And the results have been uniformly the same. The talent is cheap, but the results are marginal at best, and reliability is non-existent. My favorite was when one of our better guys, Prem, wrote us an email saying “Sorry, Couldn’t work on your Project for the Past 2/3 days due to complete Power shutdown during Day time & also problems with Internet Connection.” Needless to say about half our projects fall flat on their face.

I no longer fear for the job security of quality engineers in the developed world anytime soon. The need for quality and reliability is a massively hard problem even when you have the talent sitting at the desk next to you. Outsourcers have little incentive to produce anything more then the minimum requirements as typically even the best individuals and firms are balancing multiple projects at once. Loyalty is almost impossible as each fights for better ‘feedback scores’ so they can obtain more, better paying work. But if you set your expectations low, and realize a lot of your projects might fail, outsourcing has the potential to be a great, if frustrating experience.

Women Entreprenuers?

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Wow, I have quite randomly appeared in Exec, an international website geared towards business executives, in an article entitled Women in Enterprise. The article uses me as an example of “steller female talent” from Silicon Valley to discuss the emergence of entrepreneurial women worldwide. I find this honor a bit silly as women like Nina Bianchini (CEO and co-founder of Ning) and 23andMe co-founders Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki, are really breaking ground and kicking ass in Silicon Valley.

The subject of Women Entrepreneurs always fun to explore.This Exec article suggests that more women are becoming entrepreneurs and challenging traditional boundaries. Over the last couple of decades the percentage of small businesses owned by women has climbed past 25%. But these numbers are deceiving as one look around the tech landscape demonstrates that women aren’t entering every entrepreneurial space in equal numbers. This was especially obvious at the Google I/O event last week as I think women were outnumbered 20-1.Women simply are not around starting companies in certain industries, usually around the math and sciences and related to tech, engineering and finance. The few women that do appear in the space are most frequently in PR or marketing.

One major thesis on this drought is because girls have not historically entered the maths and sciences at the level of boys. The leaders of the tech industries today were the ham radio gurus and computer hackers of yesterday. We need to encourage our young girls to build things, write code, be geeky! As a kid everyone always referred to me as a ‘tomboy’, I just thought sports, and woodwork, and playing war with elaborate forts to construct were the cool things to do. Its neat to be called ‘steller talent’ even on a random international site, but the Exec article is a bit ahead of its time. Women aren’t quite sprinting to call themselves entrepreneurs quite yet.

Sleep.

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Sleep is Queen. We all know this fact, but I frequently forget how miserable life gets when Queen Sleep gets mad at me and leaves me restless night after night.

Last week was brutal.   For four nights in a row I was rotten.   I would feel exhausted and fall asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, but there I was an hour or two later, wide awake, counting goats, rice kernals, anything! if only I could sleep!

After a few sleepless nights I finally gave in to this restlessness and popped my computer open at 2am. I worked until 6am and then passed out hard. I woke up actually feeling refreshed. Beat to shit, but refreshed.

During those 4 hours of late-night work, I did the one project I had been neglecting for the past week. The one that was just sitting staring at me with its sullen eyes. Daring me to forget, daring me to try to move on.

As an entrepreneur on a very small team there isn’t much direct transparency into my day-to-day activities. But there is always Queen Sleep. And she is always watching.