San on Startups |
Founder/CEO of ShowMe. Help organizeColumbia Venture Community and NYC Lean Startup Meetup. |
I quit my job with $15K in savings to start my company. To survive in NYC AND build my company, I had to radically cut back on my expenses (I’m talking ramen multiple meals per day, and sneaking flasks into bars).
I also had to get as much stuff for my startup for free. Luckily most of it was actually free (i.e. EC2 hosting, Dropbox, Google Analytics). However, some of the software and tools I desperately needed were quite expensive, and I didn’t have much cash in the bank. In those cases I had to get “creative.”
Here’s how I got what I needed for my startup.
Books/videos
This is a no-brainer. I was a novice to building a web startup, and I had to learn fast. There are tons of excellent books and videos out there, and nearly all of them exist on Bittorrent sites. I downloaded and learned from:
Software
Bittorrent sites are lousy with design and development software. I downloaded, amongst others:
Adobe software was the toughest nut to crack by far; it as a ton of anti-pirating provisions built in, so it was super annoying and time-consuming to crack them, but I eventually prevailed. It was the effort; I desperately needed them to create our first mockups, and didn’t have thousands of dollars to throw around.
Removing Watermarks
I needed stock photos for our landing page, but I couldn’t find high-quality pictures that didn’t have a big X-shaped watermark across it. So I found this clever little hack to remove them:
http://www.instantfundas.com/2010/04/how-to-remove-watermark-from-image-or.html
Odesk and Elance
Not technically free, but insanely cheap if you use it well. I don’t recommend it for coding or design - in my opinion you should either learn to do it yourself or find a cofounder. I used Odesk for a variety of data entry and other rote tasks.
I tried a bunch of different workers in various countries, but found the Philippines to be most reliable: they were insanely cheap (sometimes $2-3/hr) and spoke pretty good English.
Copying other products
This is maybe the most useful hack out there, and it’s technically not illegal (to an extent).
Come across an especially slick signup form UI? Copy it, and use the same design in yours. See an HTML button you like? Fire up Firebug, and copy the code wholesale.
Copying from other products not only gives you potentially valuable ideas to use in your own product, but also saves a bunch of time, which is by far the most valuable resource for the startup.
With very little design/coding experience, I was able to throw together a relatively nice-looking product, relatively quickly.
What’s more, this isn’t even that unethical. Cross-pollination happens all the time on the web; even big sites get inspiration from other sites and adopt new conventions. In fact, it’s the very reason conventions exist!
(I discuss this further in my Design for Hackers talk: http://www.slideshare.net/sk2185/design-for-hackers)
Anyway…
Since we got funding, I’ve stopped pirating. All my software is legit and paid for; not only that, I’ve bought additional copies for our team and recommended it to others.
I don’t advocate pirating when you don’t have to, and I hate to take away money from good companies; but when you have to, you have to. Hopefully when your company hits it big, you’ll find a way to give back to the ecosystem.
As you develop your product, don’t just pay attention to which features your users request; but also who those users are, and how passionate they are.
Are they just casual users on your site, or do they depend on it daily? Do they talk about it on Twitter? Do they get their friends to sign up?
The most passionate early adopters are extremely important to your company’s early growth. Make them happy, and they’ll pay you back in kind.
Of course, you should always be cautious when building niche features that are geared to a small sliver of your audience. But if these users are that passionate about what they want, and are willing to push you over and over to implement them, that’s should count for something.
Sometimes these users are the canary in the mine, signaling a need before the rest of your audience catches up to it.
We talk a lot about early adopters, people who are first to try a new product. But what about early believers, those who believe in the product, and sign up to use it before there’s anything to adopt?
One of our early believers was a NYC-area tutor named Karen Ishii. I had posted on Craigslist to get feedback on an early concept, which eventually became ShowMe, and Karen jumped on board head-first. Soon she was giving us all kinds of feedback, first over the phone, and eventually in person at our office.
Karen was clearly passionate our project, and let us know it by volunteering tons of time and effort. Knowing people like Karen existed let us know that we were truly onto something.
Over a short period of time, we had built a relationship of mutual trust. We trusted her to give us unvarnished, honest feedback; and she trusted us to eventually build a product that would help her.
Early believers are precious commodities. Seek them out. Once you find them, ask for their help. Early believers often have a better vision of the product than the founders themselves. In a sense, they are more important to your company than any employee.
I got an email today from a CU student named Jan, and I thought it would be helpful to post my answer since I get this question a lot. Below is my reply, below that is the original email.
If anyone has additional suggestions for Jan, please leave comments and I’ll edit.
Update: I forgot to mention Hacker Hours, “Office hours for programming help,” which was started by the awesome @aidanfeldman. Check it out: http://www.jux.com/surround/global/users/~aidan/quarks/~www45
Hey Jan,
Great to hear you’re proactive with learning this stuff; it is invaluable for sure, and college is the perfect time to develop these skills.
Coding is broken up into to general areas: 1) front-end and 2) back-end.
- Front-end code is what you see when you visit a website - how the page is laid out, the font sizes, colors, backgrounds, signup forms, etc. Front-end code is done with HTML and CSS.
- Back-end code is the stuff behind the scenes - taking the login information you enter and put it into the database, displaying dynamic content like personalized recommendations, local content, etc. There are many web programming languages/frameworks that address this, but Ruby and Rails and PHP seem to be the most popular these days.
If you want to be self-contained as a programmer, you should try to do both. Only knowing front-end means you’ll have to work with an actual programmer to make the site work. Knowing both means you can take your idea and develop a proof-of-concept that works, and can put in front of actual users to validate your idea. This is especially powerful, because the faster you can test your ideas, the better your chances you’ll find one that works.
Front-end coding is much easier to learn though, and if you do know other programmers you can split the work for a project cleanly. Incidentally this is what I do at ShowMe; my partner does back-end and I do front-end.
For resources, I’d highly recommend Lynda.com videos (kind of expensive but you can pirate them pretty easily :)) For HTML and CSS, w3schools.com is a handy resource. Also I’m sure you’ve heard of codecademy - it’s a super fun/easy way to get your feet wet.
Hope this helps!
San
On <date>, <email> wrote:
Hey San,
I’m a freshmen at Columbia who attended the panel last Tuesday and I’m very interested in the start-up scene. It was pretty clear though that coding is an essential skill, and I have zero previous experience (I’m an intended statistics major). After some research I found that opinions vary quite a lot and I was just wondering if you had some advice on what language(s) would be good to know/start with and if you happen to know any resources.
Thanks!
Jan Leibbrandt
I was working at a real estate company in 2007, after having bounced around as a musician, part-time teacher, and general underachiever.
When I saw Steve’s keynote presentation for the original iPhone, I was transfixed. Apple had brought to life something that no one had imagined, something that would have been thought impossible a day before.
I started following Apple religiously after that, dogged by the thought that there was something in the trajectory of this visionary company that might serve as a clue to my own purpose and vocation - despite my not having any technology, business, or design training.
I didn’t pursue my venture right away; it took a year or so for me to prepare myself for the entrepreneurial leap. But when I did, I did it all-out. I quit my job with no safety net and no prior progress, driven solely by the notion that I too could bring something meaningful into this world – very hungry, very foolish.
Steve Jobs showed me that what might at first seem out of reach could be realized with enough conviction and persistence. That it was precisely these kinds of impossible dreams that end up changing the world.
Reading the first ever writeup about Facebook on 2/9/2004, just days after its launch. Overall it’s a fascinating time capsule with tons of gems (the subtitle is “Facemash creator seeks new reputation with latest online project”).
On Harvard’s own efforts to create an online facebook (what would the world be like if Harvard had been quicker on the ball?):
“There is a project internally with computer services to create a facebook,” [Director of Residential Computing Kevin S. Davis] said. “We’ve been in touch with the Undergraduate Council, and this is a very high priority for the College. We have every intention of completing the facebook by the end of the spring semester.”
On the connection to Friendster, then the dominant (only?) social network:
“Just as with the popular website Friendster, which Zuckerberg said was a model for his new website, members can search for people according to their interests and can create an online network of friends.”
On the course feature, which is I believe the most significant feature cut from the original site:
“Zuckerberg said that the most innovative feature of the site is that people can search for other students in their classes so that they can branch out to form friendships and study groups.”
On privacy:
Zuckerberg said that the extensive search capabilities are restricted by a myriad of privacy options for members who do not want everyone to be able to look up their information.
“There are pretty intensive privacy options,” he said. “You can limit who can see your information, if you only want current students to see your information, or people in your year, in your house, in your classes. You can limit a search so that only a friend or a friend of a friend can look you up. People have very good control over who can see their information.”
On revenue model and other features:
While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue.
“I’m not going to sell anybody’s e-mail address,” he said. “At one point I thought about making the website so that you could upload a resume too, and for a fee companies could search for Harvard job applicants. But I don’t want to touch that. It would make everything more serious and less fun.”
Original article: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register-for-new-facebook-website/
Full details on the Designer, Front-End Dev positions: http://www.showme.com/careers/
ShowMe is designing the future of learning, one that is open and social instead of stardardized and static, and we are doing it through innovative and thoughtful design.
We are not just designing a product; we are designing a community. We need someone who can conceive both.
We’re looking for //
An interaction designer with 3 years’ experience building awesome products. You must be a student of human-centered design, familiar with web/mobile standards & best practices, and comfortable using data to aid/test product decisions. Above all you must be smart, curious, and constantly learning.
As the company grows you will be responsible for recruiting and managing the design team.
About us //
ShowMe was started two years ago by a couple guys who wanted to change the way people learn. Today we have over 150,000 users, and have gotten funding from an amazing group of investors including Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, betaworks, Learn Capital, Naval Ravikant, and BOLDstart.
We work at General Assembly, the heart of the NYC startup scene, where we interact with entrepreneurs, investors, creatives, and other awesome people on a daily basis.
Summary //
This is a unique opportunity to drive the vision for something truly innovative, one that will have a profound impact on the way we learn. If you’re up for the challenge, send us the following:
Compensation is extremely competitive, and includes weekly happy hour drinks and the occasional free lunch. If you’re not in NYC, we’re willing to help you out to get here.
When we started ShowMe, we targeted a very specific audience, and built features that addressed their needs. As we expand to more user types, we work to “generalize” the product, and often this means removing features.
The less structure you put around your product, the more people who will find your product useful (Twitter is the ultimate example).
Do more by doing less.
After you launch, you’re asking: how are you using X app?
Before you launch, you’re asking: how do you imagine using X app?
In the last few days I’ve learned an incredible amount via the latter question. They say early adopters have a better vision for your product than you do, and my vision has dramatically improved as a result of talking to them.
