Value of Engineering to the Entrepreneur

This post originally appeared on Badger Engineers.

My company Spinback was recently acquired by Buddy Media, the largest Facebook Management Company in the world. It’s clear that my four years studying in the Wisconsin College of Engineering has played a role in that acquisition.

At the core, I’d argue that an engineering, math, or science related degree is the single best degree or use of four years in an undergraduate program, especially a program at UW – Madison. In my years in the COE, I obtained a certain skill set that has helped me succeed during and after school, and in the various businesses I was involved with including Spinback. I’m not talking about skills like designing a circuit or solving for a system of equations. I’m talking about the cliché skills we always hear about but disregard as obvious and too abstract for our own benefit.

The skills I’m talking about are teamwork, problem solving, hard work and creativity. In every single class and project that I worked on while at school, each one of these skills was required.  I remember spending many hours with my friends like Steve Weisman (ECE ’08) and David Nosbusch (ECE ’08) poring over class notes and textbooks (and also starting two businesses together while at school). No matter what the content and material, the routine was the same. We studied together, relentlessly discussed the problems together, and used creativity to help solve a solution when we couldn’t find one. In the COE, this is what we were all taught to do. In the real world, these are the skills that have helped me succeed and they are also the same skills that have given me confidence to venture out as an entrepreneur.

Before we were acquired, we were the typical startup. We had raised very little money and had a billion and one things to do. We had to build a product, sell the product to clients, create marketing materials, manage finances, create processes and business workflows, deal with attorneys, and on and on. The reality is I never learned about any one particular topic in school that was applicable to our business. Its not like I took a class called “how to prioritize features” or “how to get a terms sheet from a VC.” I did however learn how to think in a certain way. An analytical thought process that allowed me to break down each component of our business and understand how each component affected the other.  And this is what engineering is all about. It’s about understanding how things work, in order to identify a problem and ultimately solve for that problem.

At Spinback, the problem we were solving was how to help online retailers leverage social media to drive and track new sales. In a short period of time, our solutions called EasyShare and EasyTrack helped us secure over 15 clients in less than two months. We were able to sign up some of the largest online retailers in the world, convince investors to give us money to scale our business, and secure our position as a thought leader in the social commerce space. As a result, we were lucky and fortunate enough to be acquired by one of the fastest growing technology companies of all time.

Looking back, I can recall one very late night in our Union Square office. As we were trying to solidify a sales and marketing strategy one of my partners said, “this is one giant equation that we are solving.”  In that moment I thought about the four years at UW-Engineering and said, “Yes, yes it is.”

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Insane Maniac Business Partners

Starting a business is very hard and to be successful I think you need to have a certain set of characteristics, one of which I’ll call the “insane maniac” trait.

I by no means think you need to be certifiably crazy to start and run a business, but I do think you need to be able to handle the stresses of entrepreneurial life and to do so requires a mentality that, in some cases, you can just flat-out call crazy.

Things like:

  • Paying people with money you don’t have
  • Working 24+ hours straight
  • Flying across the world and back for one meeting
  • Buying assets with money you don’t have
  • Living with no income, but lots of expenses
  • Distributing flyers room by room, in hundreds of rooms for hours on end
  • Obsessing over a problem or idea during all hours of the day
  • Walking around for weeks with inventory in your backpack in hopes of making a sale to random people
  • Stocking boxes of inventory in your bedroom to the point you can’t move
  • Writing 50 page business plans at 3am
  • Diagraming an entire network of one’s business contacts
  • Selling something that doesn’t exist
  • Learning chinese to have one phone call
  • Learning how to write code from scratch to in order to build software

These are just a few things I’ve either experienced or witnessed firsthand by other entrepreneurs. So I think if you have partners you can trust, but can also operate at a borderline crazy yet obsessively steady pace, then I think you have a good foundation for building a business. And it will be with people that are crazy enough to make it work, whatever “it” is and whatever “it” takes.

I’m thankful to have been able to start businesses with people that fit this mould (even if only a little): Joe P, Lauren R, Steve W, Jesse S, Reese P, Dan S, Jeremy R, David N, Tom W, Corey C, Andrew F.

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Dogpatch Labs NYC – The Spinback Home

Now that the dust has settled a bit and the acquisition is done, I wanted to talk a little bit about Dogpatch Labs NYC and the role they played in Spinback.

1. Collaboration

For the past few months the Spinback team has been working out of a union square loft in NYC hosted by Polaris Ventures. We have been working alongside 15 – 20 other impressive and humbling startups all of which are building truly unique businesses. Every day, we had the opportunity to walk around to other startups and engage in conversation on a variety of topics that affected our business. We were able to get real time feedback on specific topics from unique perspectives. For example, a custom commerce startup gave us feedback on our EasyShare design and sharing process. A real-time group messaging platform gave us insights to different marketing tactics.

2. Networking

In addition, many companies were often meeting with angel investors, advisors, clients, and other high level folks. Often times, these meetings would spill out on to the Dogpatch floor and we would also end up speaking with these guests. These folks would dive right in and start asking us questions like “what are you working on” or “who are your working with?” Questions that ultimately led to more introductions and more business relationships. Furthermore, many of the folks in Dogpatch Labs have previously worked at other startups and large corporations so it would be a fairly regular occurrence for a fellow dogpatcher to say, “hey, do you want to meet so and so at company x?”

3. Education

Lastly, Dogpatch Labs would host many lectures, seminars, keynotes and workshops for people in the startup and technology community. It was commonplace to have 40 people listening to a speaker at the front of the office while we were writing code and making client phone calls in the back of the room. This aspect of Dogpatch Labs transformed the space from an office to a next generation classroom.

At the end of the day, Dogpatch Labs is perhaps one of the most important entities in the NYC startup community. Their ability to provide opportunities around collaboration, networking and education makes them the ideal home for early stage companies.

Big thanks to Peter Flint, Matt Meeker, and the rest of the Dogpatch family for letting Spinback call Dogpatch Labs our home for the past few months. Also, big thanks to the rest of the dogpatchers for keeping us humble and hungry in the pursuit of building a great business.

(partial) Spinback Team @ Dogpatch:

(left to right: Andy, Corey, Dan)

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My Company Spinback Is Being Acquired

As the news says, today my partners and I over at Spinback are pleased to announce that we’ve been acquired by Buddy Media, the Facebook management system of choice for eight out of the ten top global advertisers.

When we started Spinback the goal was to build the most cutting edge technology that would facilitate conversations and sharing of products. More importantly, we wanted this technology to also track how word of mouth marketing affects new sales and new customer acquisition.

Now as a part of Buddy Media, we will have  all the tools and infrastructure necessary to accelerate our collective mission which is ultimately about leveraging this new social web in new and interesting ways for leading companies around the world.

We are really excited to begin the next chapter and I’ll leave the rest of the details to Buddy Media.

“On to the next one…“

UPDATE – Here are a few press releases:

UPDATE – June 14, 2012 – Buddy Media was acquired by Salesforce

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Celebrities Have No Privacy. We Are All Celebrities.

Ashton Kutcher 2008-09-08
Image via Wikipedia

There is a lot of debate going on in Washington DC and among the Ad Tech community around data and privacy. Technology has enabled every single one of us with the ability to communicate freely and broadly with ease and there are companies that make this possible, most notably through advertising revenue.

The loose claim being made is that our privacy is not safe and that as consumers, we are being exploited. However, I offer the following points to think about in order to add different abstraction to the conversation:

  • As a celebrity, you have the ability to communicate to the masses.
  • As a celebrity, you are subject to continual public criticism and scrutiny.
  • As a celebrity, you are subject to unwanted or unwarranted photography and videography.
  • As a celebrity, your likeness is often times used to make money (e.g. tabloids).

The current communication tools available make us all, to some degree, celebrities. We all have the ability to influence, communicate, and inform anyone and everyone. A right and privilege that has never been available to the masses. A right that has only been available to, and earned by, celebrities.

Now, almost anyone in the world can partake in celebrity-like activities for free. And the reason these tools are free is because companies are subsidizing the development and hosting costs with advertising revenue. They are paying for your right to use these powerful tools. Tools that give you unparalleled communication capabilities. A soapbox to the world (e.g. this very blog).

So when I hear about pending legislation on privacy and how companies are being “creepy,” I just think, celebrities have no privacy. We are all celebrities.

Only we are overnight celebrities thanks to the companies working hard to enable us with these powerful tools. If you don’t like it, you can send me a hand written complaint letter by horse, buggy, and courier.

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Eyewitness Account of Navy Seal Heroes

Cover of "Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness A...
Cover via Amazon

Osama Bin Laden is dead and today I recall the feelings I had on that fateful day in 2001. Although I am admittedly filled with thoughts of joy about how this evil is wiped off the face of the earth, I still cannot seem to shake the sadness that continues to live on with those who lost loved ones over the past 10 years. And although the Seal team executed this operation with surgical movie-like precision, there have been other Seal teams that did not have the same fortune during this extended war against terror.

And it is with this in mind that today I recall the story of Marcus Luttrell, a Navy Seal who was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions against the Taliban during Operation Redwing. During Operation Redwing, Marcus lost his closest friends and was quite literally a Lone Survivor in the mountains of Afghanistan.

From the book description – Lone Survivor:

Four US Navy SEALS departed one clear night in early July 2005 for the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border for a reconnaissance mission. Their task was to document the activity of an al Qaeda leader rumored to be very close to Bin Laden with a small army in a Taliban stronghold. Five days later, only one of those Navy SEALS made it out alive.

This book tells the story of Marcus and his team from SEALs training in Coronado to their military assault in Afghanistan. It details their experience, their brotherly bond, and their ultimate sacrifice that has led us to this day. A day when we can celebrate justice and remember those who gave their lives in pursuit of that justice.

Today I think about all of those that lost their lives on September 11th, but I also think about those individual Seals and servicemen that gave their lives so I didn’t have to.

If you are enamored by what life is really like as a Navy Seal and want to pay tribute to those that were not so fortunate in this war, please go buy the book Lone Survivor. Any proceeds made from this post will be donated to the Lone Survivor Foundation.

Below are the names of those lost their lives during the operation (courtesy of Wikipedia).

 

Name Age Action Hometown
SEALs
LT Michael P. Murphy 29 Part of 4-Man Seal Team killed in an ambush Patchogue, New York
STG2 Matthew Axelson 29 Part of 4-Man Seal Team killed in an ambush Cupertino, CA[18]
GM2 Danny Dietz 25 Part of 4-Man Seal Team killed in an ambush Littleton, Colorado[18]
FCC Jacques J. Fontan 36 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down New Orleans, Louisiana
ITCS Daniel R. Healy 36 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Exeter, New Hampshire
LCDR Erik S. Kristensen 33 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down San Diego, California
ET1 Jeffery A. Lucas 33 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Corbett, Oregon
LT Michael M. McGreevy, Jr. 30 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Portville, New York
QM2 James E. Suh 28 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Deerfield Beach, Florida
HM1 Jeffrey S. Taylor 30 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Midway, West Virginia
MM2 Shane E. Patton 22 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Boulder City, Nevada
160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment[3]
SSgt. Shamus O. Goare 29 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Danville, Ohio
CWO3 Corey J. Goodnature 35 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Clarks Grove, Minnesota.
Sgt. Kip A. Jacoby 21 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Pompano Beach, Florida
SFC Marcus V. Muralles 33 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Shelbyville, Indiana
MSgt. James W. Ponder III 36 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Franklin, Tennessee
Maj. Stephen C. Reich 34 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Washington Depot, Connecticut.
SFC Michael L. Russell 31 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Stafford, Virginia
CWO4 Chris J. Scherkenbach 40 Killed aboard the helicopter when it was shot down Jacksonville, Florida

 

 

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A Tornado Hit My House

On May 27, 2001 an F2 tornado hit my house while I was inside. The tornado was 200 ft wide and had winds of up to 120 miles per hour. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.

However, the past two days have unleashed horror on some folks in Alabama where Tornado’s have claimed at least 247 lives, as of this writing, and these events keep bringing me back to that day when the tornado hit my house. That day looked like this:

It was a warm, sunny day and family and friends were at my parent’s house. Some people were outside barbecuing, some were in my brother’s room hanging out (room facing the front of the house), and I was in my room with my cousins (room facing the back of the house). We were all chatting, joking around, doing what anyone would do during a house party and then it happened..

My brother and his friends started sprinting down the stairs screaming “tornado, tornado…get in the basement.” My entire room cleared out and my cousins quickly followed suit.

For whatever reason that I still cannot describe to this day, I didn’t run down the stairs right away. Instead, I made my way to my brother’s room to see what exactly was going on.

As I took a step towards his door, the air pressure changed. My ears started to pop as if I were on a plane. A very depressurized plane. Explosion-like sounds started going off in succession all around the house. From room to room it sounded like dynamite going off. Those sounds finally knocked sense in to me and within seconds I made it down to the basement, but by the time I got downstairs it was all over.

After waiting about a minute or so, and after everything had calmed, I walked back upstairs to assess the damage starting with my bedroom. My room was virtually untouched. For whatever reason, my windows weren’t locked and the windows flew open to equalize the pressure.

My brother’s and sister’s room however didn’t have the same fortune. Their windows were locked, so in order for the pressure to equalize the windows imploded creating the explosion-like sounds. Their rooms were torn apart. I stuck my head outside my brother’s broken window and on the front lawn I could see my cousin’s van. It had been tossed upside down and thrown about 50 feet from the street onto our front lawn. I turned my head right to look at my neighbor’s house. Half of their roof was missing. Their front yard was destroyed.

I did some more assessment and walked around the house mesmerized by what had just occurred. As I made my way to the backyard I heard the sirens. At that point, I made my way to the front of the house to see the commotion and it looked like a war had just taken place on my block. An army of firetrucks and police cars all surrounded the block. By this time, the rest of our family, friends and neighbors also made it to the street and it looked like everyone was accounted for and ok. No missing people. No injuries. A lot of shock and disbelief.

In hindsight it is still very bizarre that I had this experience. Who would ever think a tornado could affect you (especially in New Jersey)?  Nonetheless, it happened and I’m fortunate to be able to tell the story.

So keep an open mind and always be on alert because you never know what can happen to you, until it does.

My thoughts and prayers are with the folks involved in these southern storms. Stay safe.

Side Note: If you or anyone you know has been involved in a tornado, please leave your story in the comments section.

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Quitting On Your Potential

In high school, I quit wrestling at the peak of my wrestling career. I had just come off a nice run at kid states taking first place at a big qualifying round, I was going to be made a captain of the varsity team, and I was just beginning to master some advanced techniques. Techniques that I learned at a wrestling clinic an hour away called the Edge, taught from 6 – 8pm, after already having high school practice from 2 – 5pm (not to mention school from 7am – 2pm – about a 15hr day all in). And during that time when I had all of that momentum, I flat-out quit.

Why?

At the time I realized that wrestling, for me, had a very low ceiling. Even if I became the best in my weight class, I wasn’t sure I liked the best case scenarios. I asked myself, “What if I were the best?” What would that mean for me? Wrestling at college? The olympics?” Those weren’t goals I wanted to pursue, even though they are very worthwhile and I commend those that have pursued that path. Instead, I quit and devoted that time to ski patrol and this year marks my 10th year on ski patrol. After I quit, people would joke around and call me names like “ski bunny” but I didn’t really mind because I knew it was the right decision for me. And in those years, I’ve had invaluable experiences and lessons. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have had equally as valuable lessons with wrestling (I’m sure I would have), but I am saying the lessons would have been very different and that difference was worth making the decision to quit wrestling at a time when I knew I still had a lot of potential.

Had I continued wrestling, I would certainly not be where I am today and I would certainly not have experienced some of the best moments of my life – like this.

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Academic Inflation

We are experiencing academic inflation. This is a theme I can’t seem to shake and its something that I think is only getting worse. Much worse, so long as our educational institutions keep up the status quo.

If you break it down, the logical train of thought should go something like this:

  1. Go to school
  2. Do well
  3. Graduate
  4. Get a job
  5. Make lots of money
  6. Live your life

Somewhere along the road we ended up at a place that looks something like this:

  1. Go to school – if you can even get in
  2. Take adderall to do well on tests
  3. Do well – assuming the class isn’t beaten up by a ridiculous curve
  4. Graduate
  5. Not qualified enough to get a high paying job so repeat steps 1 – 4 (or you just want more job security)
  6. Graduate
  7. No jobs, student loans, and you realized you were passionate about something completely unrelated to the previous 8 years of school
  8. Take a crappy job, make money and pay off your loans or pursue your dreams as an unemployed entrepreneur
  9. Live your life

I’m obviously exaggerating a bit (or am I) but you get the idea. I think we are at that moment in time when people are beginning to realize that education is more about practical experience and less about theoretical, mental gymnastics that spit out a piece of paper after 4 years.

This excerpt from a recent TechCrunch article called Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education. really spells it out and I really think Peter nails it.

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

The post than goes on to say:

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe.The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

And this couldn’t be further from the truth. Just ask any recent college graduate and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Fortunately, there are some very smart people doing some very smart things in the educational field but at the end of the day, this will be a battle between cultural expectations and measurable results. After seeing innovations like the Khan Academy, which is in my opinion one the most important advancements in information technology and education, I’m confident we’ll move beyond the status quo and into an era that rewards results, innovation and happiness, and not elitism, cultural norms, and degrees.

Below is a video by Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy and perhaps one of the soon-to-be most important figures of our generation.

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