David Duey

Tiering-Up with Volta

Volta is an interesting Miscosoft technology for .Net developers...

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Dick Costolo on Business Models

Dick Costolo has a good post about business models for startups.

I generally believe that for many technology companies, you need not necessarily have any idea how you will make money when you get started, and if you show good progress on the product and customer adoption, you need not make any commitments to a business model for some time. You do need to intimately understand where you sit in the proverbial value chain and what your position there means for your company, but you don't need to know precisely how you will extract value. In fact, I'll go farther and say that focusing on business model too early can hurt a company's prospects.

By the way, Dick Costolo is one of the TechStars mentors this year. 

Automate Stupid Things

Nova Spivak has an interesting post titled "Artificial Stupidity: The Next Big Thing." 

I need software that will automate all the stupid things I presently have to waste far too much of my valuable time on. I need something to do all the stupid tasks -- like organizing email, filing documents, organizing folders, remembering things, coordinating schedules, finding things that are of interest, filtering out things that are not of interest, responding to routine messages, re-organizing things, linking things, tracking things, researching prices and deals, and the many other rote information tasks I deal with every day.

It sounds a lot like Brad Feld's Implicit Web.  There's lots of good stuff there for anyone searching for good startup ideas.

Tagged

I was tagged by Eric Norlin to disclose eight things about myself. 

1. I used to hate cold weather.  Then, I moved to Chicago for a year.  That cured me.
2. I’m a private pilot, but I haven’t flown in years.  That’s something I want to start doing again one of these days.
3. All my life I’ve had difficulty with the left hand, right hand thing.  That probably explains why I could never be an accountant (debit on the left, credit on the right) and it may also explain why I was employed by Arthur Andersen.
4. I’d been reading Brad Feld’s blog for about four years before I ever met him.  When I finally met him at a TechStars open event, I was near speechless.  Figures.
5. I attended the 1994 FSU-UF football game in Tallahassee.  It was a tie game (back when tie games were allowed) and the most awesome comeback I’ve ever seen.
6. I was addicted to cave diving for a while.  Having kids hampered my addiction.  Now, I rarely think about the cold, wet caves (but I still have my gear).
7. My wife says I think too much, she might be right.  I’ll have to think about it.
8. I have the most wonderful wife and children that anyone could ever hope for.

I’m tagging Heather Duey, Jon Fox, Jonathan Chauncy, Tom Keller, 5280 Angel (hee hee), Tom Chikoore and Ari Newman.

TechStars For A Day

I've been neck deep in contract work, but decided to take a short break to check out the updated TechStars web site.  Version 2 is slick and there's a good video overview on the site as well.

While I was snooping around, I discovered TechStars For A Day.  Heather and I have been discussing whether we'll apply to TechStars again (we're old farts), but I think TechStars For A Day cinches that decision.  I suspect we'll be making flight and hotel arrangements in the next few days.  (Our house hasn't sold yet, so we have to commute.)

Email Triage

I’ve never given much thought to improving my email system until I watched a video of a lecture on time management given by Randy Pausch where he lambasted email systems.  Everyone is concerned about filtering spam, but amazingly it seems like little has been done to filter and categorize all incoming email.

Microsoft has an interesting research project named Snarf (I like that name) that addresses some of the email triage issues.

SNARF was built around the notion that social network information that is already available to the computer system can be usefully reflected to the user: a message from a manager might be seen differently than a message from a stranger, for example. SNARF applies this idea to email triage: handling the flow of messages when time is short and mail is long.

Other good email triage information can be found here.

Eating My Own Dog Food

Over the past few weeks I’ve been advising a friend and colleague about a software product that he’d like to create.  He’s in the enviable position of having a potential customer at his door step that has a need for his product.  The problem is that my friend has good vision; he can see what the product can become and gets caught up in the “vision” rather than focusing on the specific needs of the customer.  Given his lack of resources, it’s important for him to remain focused and only provide the feature set required by the customer.  When we talk, I’ve repeatedly stated the following:

• Stay focused on the problem that’s causing the customer’s pain.
• Don’t write any code at first.  Instead, create a slide show that proposes the solution and listen to the customer in order to discover the customer’s specific needs (feature set).  At the same time, try to find out if they’re willing to buy rather than simply show interest in the product.
• Don’t over-analyze or over-build the product to suit a “generic” customer (a variation of the “stay focused” theme).  The product can be modified to suit other customers later.

I think the advice I've given my friend is pretty good, but unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that I don’t heed my own advice.  I haven’t been eating my own dog food.  It's like the old saying, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say.”

When I have a new idea, I’ll often dive right into the technical aspects of implementation without seeking input and feedback from mentors or potential customers.  I waste a lot of time on things people may never want or use.  I’ll have to change my ways and start listening to the advice I’ve been handing out. 

Failure

CNN posted an article from oprah.com titled "How to Fail Your Way to Success."  It's a good, motivational and brief read. 

"Success is as dangerous as failure," said Lao-tzu, and any life coach knows this is true. I can't count the number of times people have told me, "I hate the job I'm doing, but I'm good at it. To do what I want, I'd have to start at zero and I might fail."

Dwelling on failure can make us miserable, but dwelling on success can turn us into galley slaves, bound to our wretched benches solely by the thought, I hate this, but at least I'm good at it.

This is especially ironic because researchers report that satisfaction thrives on challenge. Think about it: A computer game you can always win is boring; one you can win sometimes, and with considerable effort, is fun.

With time-killing games, where the stakes are very low, pretty much everyone's willing to risk failure. But when it comes to things we think really matter, like creating a career or raising children, we hunker down, tighten up, and absolutely refuse to fail. Anyway, that's the theory. The reality is, we are going to fail. Then we make things worse by refusing to accept this.