Startup Weekend Santa Barbara: Hopes

It is 30 minutes till the first Startup Weekend in Santa Barbara (SWSB). I have been told that the weekend is close to 100 people showing up, meaning that this is going to be a pretty busy event.

Why am I here?

Julian the head organizer of Startup Weekend San Diego is the facilitator for SWSB and he invited the SD organizers to come.  I figure I needed a break from SD and this would be a good excuse to visit a friend in SB who was leaving for Taiwan.  Of course, I am also here to hear product pitches from Santa Barbara's best and brightest.

What I hope to see:

There's been a lot of talk about monetizing mobile lately in the wake of the Facebook IPO.  The fact is that the current mobile ads are ugly, intrusive and worst of all have much lower ROI than traditional banner ads.  It would be amazing to see someone pitch an idea that solved this huge problem.  Perhaps a new type of ad network for mobile apps or an app that somehow monetizes in a way that does not use banner ads?

What I will most likely see:

Event discovery apps seem to be all the rage these days, there were a couple that even showed up in SWTJ.  This is a huge market and so far nobody has gotten it right.  I reckon that there are going to be more than one pitch about a new way to discover events near you that is going to be local, mobile, social + some other startup cliche.

3 Questions To Ask When Deciding Between Multiple Internship Offers @InternMatch

Once again, I am writing for the InternMatch blog! Only this time as an official member of the team, which hilariously also means I get paid less per post but it's worth it to work with such an amazing group of people

This summer, I was fortunate enough to receive two internship offers, one of which was from InternMatch. Learn about the decision making process led me to realizing that working at InternMatch was the better fit for me. See the rationale and answers to my three questions:

1) What's my end game?
2) Will I learn something new?
3) Does the workplace culture fit me?

Read The Whole Post @InternMatch

Paying it Forward

There is a strong tradition of paying it forward in the startup community and it is one of the main reasons why I love the space so much.  A couple of weeks ago, I was able to partake in this tradition with great success. 

My friend Sean just recently started a fashion blog similar to thesartorialist.com.  Every day, he rides his bike around campus and looks for students who are wearing interesting fashions.  He then asks to take a picture of them and then breaks down who they are and what they are wearing on showmeucsd.com. 

When I first heard about his idea, I really liked it and secretly wanted to help him out.  However, outside of some basic blog and camera advice, I did not have much to offer.  A week later, while doing some research on the Guardian (UCSD newspaper) for an InternMatch project, I was reading through the feature section, which is where they write about notable students and faculty.  My immediate thought was “Why isn’t Sean in here?”  So I tracked down the email to the features editor and with a devil may care attitude, drafter up this email:

Hi Mina, 

I just wanted to point you in the direction of my friend Sean Couey who is starting a fashion blog focusing on UCSD students.  Every day, Sean wanders around campus and looks for students who sport some interesting fashions, he then politely asks to take their picture and put it up on his blog http://showmeucsd.com/ where he also breaks down the specific pieces they are wearing. 

It's a great story about a UCSD student who is doing something unique with his passion and I hope you look into it. 

Best,
Jonathan Lau

Next thing I know, the features editor responded asking when Sean would be available for an interview.  A week later, I am looking at a full page article on showmeucsd.com in the Guardian (God knows why there isn't a picture of Sean there though!).  Since the article ran Sean has seen a nice bump in traffic, though seeing his site in a newspaper was probably way more satisfying than any number of unique visitors. 

As for me, I was just really glad that I was able to help.  It shocks me to think of the chain of events that my one casual email started.  Honestly, when I hit that send button I was not expecting a response, much less one in an hour.  It has really gotten me wondering about other small ways I could help out my friends.

A Walkthrough of Startup Weekend Tijuana Teams

On the second day of SWTJ, I had the chance to talk to all of the teams about their products.  Keep in mind that the products described below do not necessarily reflect the final product that was presented on Sunday. 

Bacheo/Wachabump

Bacheo/Wachabump is a smartphone and web app that allows users to report potholes to the government.  Pictures of the potholes along with GPS or other locating information can be uploaded by users and this data would be accessible to all. There were ideas of making a pothole density map from the data, which could be used to show where the worst roads were.  The end goal of the app is to pressure the government into fixing the roads.

This product reminded me strongly of DIYDemocracy, a company that operates out of AnsirInnovation Center.  I like all ideas that improve government accountability and am excited about Wachabump, my only concern is that the idea in its current form is not too accessible to the average Mexican.  The number of Mexicans who can afford smartphones is low and the number of who have data plans is even lower.  Basic internet access cannot be said to be a given.  I imagine that the communities who would benefit the most from this app would also be the most impoverished, so I suggested that they think about a SMS reporting system as well.

Indueducation

This team pivoted a bunch of times, but the pitch that I got made me think of an eHow.com for university teachers.  The problem today is that university professors do not know what to teach in regards to industry software, so before planning a course, the professor would log on to the Indueducation website and see what kind of software was being used in a particular industry.  In addition to industry information, Indueducation would also provide tutorials and guides for the software.

I was not much of a fan when I heard this idea as two very big problems came to mind.  First, I questioned whether or not professors had that much control over their own courses. Second, how were they going to get these detailed and dense guides?  One problem, the team has no control over and the other seems like it would cost a lot of money to solve. 

HbD2.me

HbD2.me is a site where venues can register and approach users on their birthdays with promotions.  There would also be a recommendation engine for users looking to plan a party that would steer them towards appropriate promotions.  Users can also upload existing promotions as well, such as if they knew of a restaurant that offered a free meal on your birthday. 

There was some concern that for birthday parties the team was targeting the wrong person, since usually the person having the birthday does not plan their own party.  The team explained that it was not just for restaurants but other businesses as well such as. 

The targeting might need some a little tweaking, but overall I thought this was an awesome idea and HbD2 gets extra points for doing something that I have not seen yet.  Their model  could definitely be applied to other celebrations as well.

I suggested they Photoshop a screenshot of the site as a minimum viable product and publicize it on Facebook in order to get validation on the idea as well as feedback on what features to include or take out.

Cruzas

Cruzas is a real time traffic app for the US border crossing.  Currently, the info services on border traffic such as calling the border guards are inaccurate to the point of being useless. Cruzas aims to solve this problem by crowd sourcing and aggregating all current info sources.  There was also talk of a Waze like app that actively tracked the position and speed of the user’s car and shared it with other users as well as allowed drivers to ping each other.  In the final product, users would be able to see a heat map of the fastest lanes. 

Cruzas seemed like a product with an extremely small market, namely people who cross the US-Mexican border regularly.  For frequent border crossers, there is already the Sentri pass that gives them dedicated lanes sort of like Fast Trak.  Where could Cruzas fit in all of this?  That was my thought until I heard the overwhelmingly positive reactions from the frequent border crossers at the event.  Apparently there are two border crossings in California, and choosing the right one could save you two to three hours one way, even with the Sentri pass.  With over a million people who cross the border every year, Cruzas could very well become a decent passive income product if they used a subscription based revenue model.  

Eventum

Eventum is a user generated public events calendar.  Any user can create a public event and it will integrate with social media sites. Users will be able to buy tickets to the events straight from the Eventum site. The site’s focus will be on local businesses and each event page will have their own QR code.

The event discovery space is rife with competition, but nobody seems to be able to do it right.  I showed the team the Roamz app, which is the best (but still terrible) event discovery app I have used to date.  Eventum is a bit too similar to Eventbrite for my liking, despite the team leader’s insistence that it is different because it focuses on local businesses and event discovery.    

Congresoplon

In Mexico there a lot of problems with government transparency and Congresoplon which roughly translates to "Congress Snitch" aims to change that.  Currently, public information such as attendance and voting records are available to the public but not very accessible.  Congresoplon is a website that would put all of that public info about representatives in an easy to understand format.  Congresoplon would give representatives a grade on how well their voting record reflects the will of their constituents.  They will be targeting the federal government first.  The ultimate goal is to get representatives to be more accountable and connected to their constituents.

I am always enthusiastic about things that make government more accountable, so immediately I was drawn to Congresoplon.  There are a couple of sites like Congresoplon in the US and and if Mexico doesn't have any equivalents already, it really should.  One of the mentors suggested they look for a grant from the Carter Institute, which promotes government transparency and that seemed like a brilliant idea to get funded and still remain neutral.  Out of all the teams at SWTJ, Congresoplon was the only team that I could see having an effect on the average Mexican citizen.   

Instapart

The tagline for Instapart was "find used parts for your car in under 90 seconds" and the team billed it as a twitter for junkyards.  Users visit the Instapart site and quickly type in what car part they need and for what car model, then Instapart blasts that query out to junkyards in the area and returns results in 90 seconds.  Results are sorted by distance, rating of the junkyard, and price.     

I was really impressed with the team when they told me that they called and even visited some junkyards in order to validate their product.  Alline, a mentor from San Diego, suggested they use try selling a part on Twitter as their minimum viable product and me being the one who is always trying to make the product as inclusive as possible, suggested they allow for SMS queries too.

Pimiento/Pepper 

Pimiento is a smartphone that lets you look up recipes by entering in what you have in your fridge.  I was really surprised that Pimiento received the most votes from the audience since the idea of searchingfor recipes by ingredients has been around for at least five years.  However, when I saw the mockups I became more enthusiastic about it. 

The biggest problem with Pimiento is that it is targeting the smartphone demographic, which is also the demographic that doesn't cook!  Even when I asked the team if they cooked, all of them said not really.  This team had some trouble thinking up a revenue model, and I suggested they follow the freemium model, where users will have access to a basic free app and then be prompted to buy premium features such as additional recipes.  

Takeaways from Startup Weekend Tijuana (SWTJ)

Coming to Tijuana for Startup Weekend was the first time I had ever set foot in Mexico, which now seems like a crime considering that I have lived less than an hour from the border for three years.  The people I met, talent I saw and food I ate has made me fall in love with the city, and has got me seriously considering if I want to live there for a bit sometime down the line.

Below are some takeaways I got from SWTJ

 

Wait what’s Startup Weekend (SW)?

SWTJ organizers and Wes, my boss from Ansir Innovation Center

Startup Weekend is a 54 hour competition, where attendees pitch a startup idea on Friday, form teams around the highest voted ideas and then build and hopefully launch that idea over the rest of the weekend.  Throughout the weekend, teams receive guidance from local entrepreneurs who volunteer their time.  On Sunday, the teams give a final pitch and are judged on what they have built.  Startup Weekend is a nonprofit organization that is funded by the Kaufman Foundation, which seeks to develop entrepreneurship around the world.  There have been SW events all over the world, from San Francisco to Shanghai and even Gaza.  Even more impressive, all the events have been organized by unpaid and overworked volunteers, so you know there is a lot of passion floating around every event.      

“Wow this looks like China!”

After crossing the border and seeing the shacks and rundown houses next to brand new glass office buildings and shopping malls, I was immediately reminded of China.  Tijuana (TJ) is no Shanghai, but with its cracks of modernity in an otherwise overwhelmingly developing city.  It looks like a 3^rd or 4^th tier city in the interior of China, maybe a Jingdezhen or Shangcai. 

In the blue house right next to the MindHub office lives a family that raises roosters for cockfighting.

With that in mind, I was really hoping to see Startup Weekend projects that would keep the average Mexican consumer in mind.  Talking to a few of the organizers and attendees before the initial pitches, I learned that broadband access is prohibitively expensive and furthermore very slow.  Someone told me that just 35% of Mexicans actually use the internet as compared to the US where it is around 60%.  In addition, smartphone penetration in Mexico is low and most smartphone owners did not have data plans, something which I noticed myself while interacting with the SW attendees.  I was also told that compared to most of Mexico, TJ was a bit ahead of the curve so internet usage and smartphone ownership was slightly above average. 

Differences between American SWs and SWTJ

Most of the mentors and organizers were in hardware or enterprise software, which is a huge difference from the US where I see mentors and organizers who are from predominantly consumer oriented web, mobile and local backgrounds.  In SWTJ, the large majority of attendees were developers and there was a huge shortage of business development talent, which is the complete opposite problem that I have witnessed in the US.  In addition, the SWTJ attendees seemed to be more one dimensional, only knowledgeable in their respective disciplines, than American SW attendees.    

Facebook is King

Jorge B., a social media marketer, said that social media in Mexico is dominated by Facebook and estimated that maybe 2% of Tijuanenses use Twitter.  Previously, Jorge’s marketing firm was located in San Diego and since moving to TJ he has noticed that there is big gap between US and Mexico in terms of talent and funding. 

My one criticism

Jorge
MindHub Co-founder

After the initial pitches and a late night snack of delicious street tacos, I expressed my disappointment about the lack of consideration for the average Mexican in nearly all of the ideas to Jorge, co-founder of MindHub which is the office which we were holding SWTJ at.  Jorge told me that he was not surprised since TJ is very different from the rest of Mexico due to its proximity to the border.  He explained the bicultural nature of the city and emphasized this by telling me that he “grew up watching Sesame Street.”  Jorge pointed to the relatively young age of the competitors combined with the biculturalism as the reason for the lack of connection to developing world problems. 

Tijuana is not dangerous

The only sign that there might be something going on.

Before and after coming to TJ, I was asked and warned about it being dangerous.  However, when I talked to Omar, one of the organizers, about it I was told that there has not been a cartel shooting in over a year.  Omar explained that the violence still persists in cities like Juarez and Monterey but in TJ the only sign that there is a battle against the drug cartels are the occasional trucks of soldiers on the street.  Tourism from the US has not recovered since the explosion of violence, which is a shame, because it is safe and there are plenty of European and Mexican tourists who have realized this.

I see a bright future

Presenter from the winning SWTJ team

On the last day of SWTJ, I asked a few of the organizers if they could name me one up and coming tech company in Mexico. No one could. After seeing the final pitches, I hope that will change because I was blown away by the results, especially in the design department. Perhaps, if San Diego and Tijuana pool their talents something amazing could happen sooner than later?

2nd place at Lean Startup Machine!

It's 12:30AM right now and I still cannot believe that I won second place at Lean Startup Machine (LSM). Just 24 hours before, I had resigned myself to just trying to finish the workshop.

Wait what’s LSM?
Lean Startup Machine is a Friday through Sunday crash course on Eric Ries’s Lean Startup principles. People come together at 6PM Friday and pitch their idea to the rest of the attendees. The only requirement of pitches is that idea must not have had any work done on them. Pitches are voted on and the top 9 are allowed to form teams. Some came with their startups and pre-existing teams but their restriction was that for the weekend they had to work on ideas and they could not recruit new team members.

After the teams were formed, we set forth to validate our idea for the rest of the weekend. Validation of an idea can come in many forms such as clicks on a buy button, signups for a notification once the product is launched, and the most coveted of all, actual money. Basically, teams had to show beyond a reasonable doubt that people wanted their idea and if no one wanted their original idea then they had to pivot (kill) or change the idea until somebody would.

Back to me…

My friend An (UX designer) and I came to LSM together with plans to work on the same team. We listened to the pitches and decided to join Dane, who had this idea for a check in app for pool boys. He explained that his friend runs a pool cleaning company and loses $20 thousand a year on disputed hours. An app that could prove when the pool boys arrived would solve his friend's problems. Two others joined our group and we set off brainstorming on how to validate.

In the middle of a workshop, I made the observation that it might be hard to reach pool businesses on a weekend to validate our idea. The rest of the group agreed and we switched the idea to Yelp for yoga instructors.

At the bar with the group I was dealing with doubts about the new idea. When I asked Dane his opinion about the idea, he suggested that we break off and switch back to the check in app. I agreed but while brainstorming for the check in app, we came upon the problem of where to find validation on a weekend. Dane suggested switching to yet another idea and at my wit’s end, I agreed.

We settled on the first idea that Dane had first pitched to the attendees, which was a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that lived in Facebook. It was an extremely niche product that was targeted at an industry which I was not too interested in. However, I went along with it anyway because we could reach realtors on the weekend and more importantly Dane was very experienced in the space as he was currently running four software businesses targeted at realtors.

Working through the process

Saturday morning, we started testing the assumptions we had made about why real estate agents would want to buy our product.  Dane and I start learning about the CRM solutions that real estate agents use. I suggested to Dane that he email his client lists and he shoots off an email to about 1000 real estate agents stating that he was looking to talk about contact database software this weekend and that this was a “one time offer.” Annoyingly, Dane put my phone number in the email.

Out of the 1000 we sent out, we got about 10 responses in a couple of hours.

The first response from the email blast actually came in the form of a text.

We received and made over 5 phone calls. These calls proved to be invaluable as we learned about the many CRM solutions that real estate agents were currently using and the frustrating communication problems between them. We learned that some of them were buying solutions that had way too many features and were overly complex.

Our testing led us to kill our Facebook idea, as we learned that a good number of realtors did not feel comfortable adding their clients as friends.

From the many mentions of Gmail, we pivoted and came up with ProDap, a super basic CRM solution that lived in Gmail.  Real estate agents would be able to use ProDap to assign action plans to their clients. These action plans would automatically populate their Google calendar.

I photoshopped together a screenshot of the product and with Dane’s guidance, built a landing page for it.

Dane then email blasted his client lists with a link to the landing page and we waited.

I took to Twitter and tweeted out a link to the landing page to real estate agents.

The results were fairly impressive. In three hours, we had managed to get 97 people to the landing page. 32 of them clicked on “Buy Now” button and of those 32 who clicked “Buy Now” and learned that there actually was not a product yet, 8 of them signed up to beta test.

Combining those statistics with some quotes from our phone conversations, I thought we made a decent showing of our work.









Closing thoughts
I learned a lot from Dane especially in the areas of copy writing and salesmanship. The best piece of advice Dane gave me was to stop thinking of business ideas and instead just ask people what their problems are. Initially, I had thought that I knew all there was to know about Lean Startup methodology, but LSM has shown me that knowing and applying are two very different things. This weekend has given me much more structure with which to apply my anthropology to customer development.

It is always a shock to hear people speak well of my skills. Whenever Dane told me what an awesome partner I was, I always questioned the truth behind it because for the most part I felt pretty lost without Dane’s direction.

Did I expect to win? HELL NO! It was the biggest surprise ever, especially since on Saturday Dane disappeared to take a nap without telling me. When I could not find him, it annoyed me a great deal so I headed to the bar and watched UFC. In hindsight, that two hour break was actually a great idea because we came back invigorated, however, at the time it seemed like a colossal waste of time since An’s team was working diligently the entire day. Sunday at 11AM was even more nerve wracking as Dane called his uncle, a realtor with 200 agents under him, and he told use that he would not buy ProDap. For the presentation, I ran out of time halfway through my slide deck that did not even have all the “requirements” listed in the LSM manual. Knowing how much work some people put into their ideas and competing with actual businesses, I am still dumbstruck over how we got second place.

Honestly, I do not think we deserved to win. Considering, that the amount of effort we put into ProDap paled in comparison to many other teams and the fact that we were terrible at following directions. I am still scratching my head over how we managed to pull this off.

Will we be going further with this idea? Probably not, since Dane more interested in pursuing spirituality right now and I was never really interested in the real estate space. However, Dane has offered to guide me and connect me with his Pakistani developer who costs $600 a month if I do decide to go forward with ProDap. So you never know!

2nd place never felt so good!

Old Interview Questionaire

Couple months ago, I was interviewing for an internship at a online education startup.  It was the most intense interview process I have ever been through, consisting of 3 Skype sessions with the marketing team, 1 phone call with the founder and a long questionnaire.  I ended up getting an offer, but turned it down to work at InternMatch.

Below are my responses to the questionnaire, which gives a good representation of my thought process, skills as well as glimpses of my personality .

If you did not already do this, please write 2 concise paragraphs explaining why you are interested in working at Company X.

A few weeks into starting my first startup internship at Wednesdays.com, I bought the Lean Startup lecture series from Company X.  Since then each time I logged on, I saw Company X getting bigger and better with each iteration.  In addition, I kept reading about how Company X was the future of online learning on GigaOm and TechCrunch.  With all that in mind, when it came to apply for summer internships, Company X was a no brainer.  

However, more than just wanting to join a promising company, I want to work with a cutting edge team.  Being at Wednesdays.com and hanging around the startup scene in the bay, San Diego and Shanghai have given me an appreciation of the companies that 500 Startups invests in.  I strongly believe that if Dave puts his money down on a startup, it must mean they have a great team.  Steel sharpens steel and I am looking to learn from the best, which I see happening at Company X.         

Provide 2-3 “crazy ideas” for things Company X isn’t doing today that could have a HUGE impact on our success. 

(For this question I went increasingly more crazy with each idea) 

Offer package deals or subscriptions to clubs, organizations, corporations and schools

Quickly sign up a large number of users by soliciting them all at once via their club, organization, company or school.  Organizations are always looking to help their members grow and develop new skills, so the idea of affordable courses that their members can take on their own time would be appealing.  User acquisition costs would also go down because Company X would be chasing a smaller number of leads. In addition, Company X would get a big boost in credibility by having major corporations and organizations signed on to the platform. 

Meetups/Schedule office hours for popular courses 

Utilizing a service like wednesdays.com or grubwithus.com to start building a physical community through meals, happy hours or coffee meet ups.  Using one of those services to connect instructors with their students or students with each other; call the meetings office hours or study groups to give them an academic feel.  Perhaps even charge in a fee per person for the meeting and offer the instructors a cut of the fee as an incentive to show up.  Company X can sell tickets to the meetings as an add on to the course.

Get on national television

A tried and true publicity stunt is having sports fans hold up placards to make a billboard.  Bribing fans with some coupons for food or drink that they could redeem at the park or stadium would most likely convince them to hold a piece of cardboard for a minute or two.  The message could be something short and sweet like "learn online" before switching to the Company X logo in order for TV viewers to quickly get it the message of what Company X is about.  This stunt may have a higher chance of success at a college game, where security is more lax and students are more enthusiastic about holding signs. This is possibly the cheapest way to get on national television, with hot dogs costing no more than $10 each and requiring only a couple hundred, at most a thousand fans to create a large enough billboard.

Name a real person (who you don’t know) that should be an instructor on Company X. Draft a sample cold email that could be sent to him/her inviting them to create a course on Company X.

Hello Marcelo Garcia,

As one of the most decorated grapplers and a living legend in the sport, many Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students look up to you and are dying to learn from you.  Unfortunately, due to factors like distance and cost, most of them will never get the opportunity to train with you at your New York academy.  

But now with Company X, students anywhere in the world can still learn from you.      

More reasons to teach on Company X:

70,000 courses viewed a month and skyrocketing

                - Catch up to and surpass the Gracie University in no time

Company X is mobile

                - Students can take your lessons onto the matt with their smartphones

Lower costs and less time

                - No more minting DVDs, processing payments 

                - Learn a variation in competition? Update the lesson instantly!

Interact across the world

                - Quickly and easily answer questions with students through the site

               

Email me back and I can walk you through the set up process so you can start teaching Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to the world. 

Best,

Jonathan Lau

Company X Sports Representative

Provide a link to something funny. 

http://5z8.info/white-power-rides-upon-stallions-unstoppable_p2m3wy_gruesome-gunshot-wounds 

(Led to a Rick Roll page on my blog)

So let's get real :-). We're a startup. We work very hard. 12 hour days are the norm (not the exception) and we typically work multiple hours on the weekend. Is that cool with you? *

Not a problem! At my CAUSE internship in LA I worked overnight at the office during crunch time and even slept on the office floor once.  Currently at Wednesdays.com we hacker hours on a regular basis.