David Duey

Morphing

I've been busy morphing over the past several months - sort of.  Heather and I weren't quite sure what to do with Georneys.  We finally decided to morph; however, the path to morphing wasn't direct.  At one point we thought we'd move on and do something else, but nothing ever felt quite right.  Finally, one day it all came together and we decided to morph.  I realize now that we just needed some time and distance to gain perspective on what we were doing.

We should have the alpha of the newly morphed Georneys ready by the end of May.  We're excited again and we're ready to apply all of the things we've learned over the past year or so.

Report Card

Update:  Heather posted a parallel entry where she gives us a passing grade, but just barely.  I'd have to agree.

For whatever reason, it seems like a good time to step back and assess all of the entrepreneurial things Heather and I have done over the past eight years (which includes seven absolutely fantastic years of marriage and two wonderful little boys).

First, I’ve listed, in roughly chronological order, many of the entrepreneurial things we’ve done over the years.  Then, I created my own little report card.  The report card isn’t very good, but I think it’s good enough for Heather and I to do a little self assessment.  The point of the exercise is to step back, look at what we’re doing, and then, with any luck, keep the good stuff and improve on the not so good stuff.

This is a long post and I decided not to provide a jump after this warning, so beware.

Stuff We’ve Done

Scubalicious.  We started the Scubalicious website to document our scuba diving adventures and to provide information about great dive sites.  The site was created in 1999; it was really a blog, but I don’t recall anyone was using the term “blog” back then.  We didn’t have a CMS; Heather maintained the site using static html. 

Although we’d discussed turning Scubalicious into a business, it was actually more of a hobby.  I thought I’d mention Scubalicious because it was the first thing we'd done together (although it was mostly Heather’s effort) and we did considered the business aspects of the site, so that must count for something.

I believe the Scubalicious site was live for about three years; however, it was rarely updated after the first year.

Lenfis (Law Enforcement Information Systems).  Lenfis was a web application that Heather built for law enforcement.  I was the one who suggested she try developing the application as a hosted application that law enforcement agencies could purchase using the subscription model (occasionally I’m forward thinking). 

Heather created Lenfis in 2001.  Lenfis was created before there was much mention of hosted applications (it was well before SalesForce was released).  Lenfis was ahead of it’s time and it was hard to convince people that hosted application would work well.  We actually had a booth at a TAC (i.e. SWAT) conference in Orlando.  Lenfis seemed to generate a lot of interest, but no sales.

Lenfis slowly faded away into our dead pool.

POTTS (Police Officer Training Tracking System).  This is another application that was developed by Heather.  It’s a desktop application and is currently in use by the Tallahassee Police Department.  Heather never very seriously pursued selling the application to other law enforcement agencies. 

Conservancy Software Group (CSG).  Heather started CSG as a sole proprietorship for her consulting work.  Heather did several projects under the CSG name. 

Duey Software.  This was another of Heather’s sole proprietorships for consulting work, although I don’t think any consulting work was ever done under the “Duey Software” name.  But, I still have a polo shirt that says, “Duey Software, We Do Software.” 

Item Banking (my market analysis).  This was never a product or a company; it was just a market analysis.  I mention it because it was my first really thoughtful foray into the possibilities of starting a software product company.

Item banking software is software that maintains a library of test questions for exams of all types.  With item banking software, you can create and grade exams and rate the effectiveness of test questions.  It’s a niche market that I was drawn to because I knew something about item banking and it’s kind of an esoteric niche market.

Over several months, I did an in-depth analysis of the item banking market.  I came to the conclusion that I could fill a void in the market at the high end of the market, but it would take at least two years of full time work to create a product that would fit high-end needs.  I was working full time and we had one little boy who was about one year old at the time; I correctly came to the conclusion that I didn’t have time to build a high end product.

Innovux, Inc.  Heather and I decided to go ahead and incorporate our software business.  The decision came after a lot of debate on my part.  I was afraid of failure and the consequences of failure, but fortunately, Heather was supportive and almost literally had to kick me in the ass so that I’d take the plunge.  I’m glad she did.

When we founded the company, we did it with the understanding that we wanted to become a product company, not a custom software development shop or an IT staffing firm.  However, we did think that we could do custom projects and staffing as necessary to help build the company.  We quickly found out how difficult it is to do custom projects and/or staffing with state agencies (state government is the largest part of Tallahassee’s economy).  We made a decision not to pursue any IT staffing opportunities because of the low margins and precarious nature of the business (good decision and probably worthy of another post).

Innovux is the company that we use to do all of our various entrepreneurial activities.  Currently, most of our income comes from contract work, but we’re hoping to change that soon.

2Ruffians.  2Ruffians was yet another one of Heather’s efforts.  2Ruffians provided us with a way to separate our “normal” Innovux business from the law enforcement software that Heather was working on.  I was insistent about separating the law enforcement stuff because I didn’t want Innovux to look as if we were heading in many different directions (which we were).  Looking back, that was a stupid concern on my part.

FeedGadget.  FeedGadget was going to be an ad-hoc RSS feed creation tool.  I wanted to develop a desktop application that would allow the user to add any information to an RSS feed and immediately publish the feed. 

FeedGadget has moved on to our dead pool.  I spent a lot of time developing FeedGadget, but the more I worked on it and the more I looked around at the various things going on, the more I felt like it would probably not be a product that many people would use.  I think I was correct in that assessment. 

One of the big mistakes I made with FeedGadget was attempting to develop a relatively large, feature complete product prior to getting any feedback and input from potential users and customers or mentors.  That’s a hard lesson to learn (and to sometimes re-learn).

Locker Monkey.  Locker Monkey was a hosted application developed by Heather to securely store personal information such as credit card numbers (in case of lost or stolen credit cards) and other sensitive information.  It never really went anywhere and is in our dead pool.

Georneys.  Geoneys is a web application that can be used to help find lost children.  The application is in beta and we’re currently seeking input from users about ways to change and improve the Georneys.

Georneys has been hugely fun for me and Heather to develop.  We used Georneys to apply to TechStars and, although we were not selected for TechStars, I think we had the time of our lives during the process of building the application, applying and pursuing TechStars and gaining a mentor (David Cohen). 

Georneys is one of our on-going projects.  I have no idea how it will turn out in the end.  One of the problems I see with Georneys is that it doesn’t seem to reduce the “friction” of helping parents find a lost child.  But, with some tweaks and changes, it might become a very useful and much needed product/service.

I think Georneys has really helped us to become more refined as entrepreneurs.  And, we discovered a great entrepreneurial community in Boulder, Colorado.  We’ve decided to move there; we’re just waiting on our house to sell.

ListrBlistr.  ListrBlistr is a Facebook application.  It’s a “to do” list that Heather created so she could learn how to develop Facebook applications.

FevrBlistr.  FevrBlistr is a widget that Heather is creating so she can try her hand at widget development.

The Report Card

Below is my assessment of our (Heather and I) entrepreneurial abilities.  The assessment categories probably suck (I just made it up as I went along), but I think I’ve captured many of the things that are important.

Entrepreneurship:  A-   We’ve successfully started a company (Innovux) and we’re able to support ourselves via our tiny company.  We’ve tried a number of things and we’re constantly learning about creating and building a successful software company.  The reason I gave us an A- and not an A is because we haven’t yet realized our goal of deriving most of our income from a software product rather than contract work.

Execution:  B+  Heather does a great job of execution when it comes to getting started and building an application.  I don’t do nearly as good a job of execution as Heather does.  I’m more of a thinker and Heather is more of a “doer,” so together we make a good combination.  However, we haven’t executed well when it comes to marketing type stuff; things like getting and responding to customer feedback about our products and services.

Marketing:  C  Like I stated above, we haven’t done a good job of marketing.  I don’t mean sales, I mean things like getting feedback and building a product that the customer wants needs and will use.  We need to work on this, or we need to round-out our team with someone who is good at it.  Regardless, I think we’re both aware of the marketing void and we’re working to improve the situation.

Flexiblity:  A  I think we’ve proved to be flexible and willing to change, but, we may be doing this to a fault.  Instead of refining a product or service, we often become disillusioned by the lack of overwhelming consumer response and move on to fun stuff like developing a new product.

Focus/Becoming the Best:  C+  We’ve shown pretty good focus with Georneys, but I think we need to be willing to dig deeper and find out what customers need and make changes to provide those features.  We need to be the best at something.

Conclusion

I’m sure there are better and more relevant assessment categories, but I see a clear theme in my assessment; we need to actively seek feedback early on in our development process and continue the feedback process as we build our product/service.  Hopefully, Heather will post a parallel entry to this one to describe her assessments of our strengths and weaknesses.

Georneys' Journey to Beta

We've released the beta version of Georneys.  It's been a long journey.  Gearneys currently has minimal features, and there are things we'd like to change and improve, but we're happy to have made it to beta.  It's tough to get software cranked out amidst all of our obligations, including creating cash flow (i.e. doing contract work), raising two wonderful little boys, and trying to sell our house.  My wife, Heather, deserves all the credit for relentlessly pushing Georneys forward.

 

Rethinking Georneys

As we prepare for the beta release of Georneys, I’m beginning to wonder if the best approach to the lost child problem is to provide Georneys as a subscription service in places where it’s needed most (places like theme parks and zoos).  Georneys would be free for anyone to use, but theme parks and other attractions could use Georneys as their “lost child” system.  The advantage to the organization is that the child’s description and guardians contact information would already be recorded and it could greatly improve efficiency and effectiveness when dealing with lost children.

I came across a good article describing how Disney deals with the lost child problem, “Lost in Disney.”

Describing her experiences with lost children, one Cast Member said, "It happens to good parents!"

There are a few ways to help kids carry this information safely. A name badge on a necklace (such as from tour groups or conventions) can be worn inside a child's shirt. A sticker can be stuck inside a child's pocket. One resourceful adult had two ten-year olds pull up their t-shirts and she wrote her cell number with a ball point pen on their upper arms near their shoulders! These techniques keep such information private but make sure that the children have it if they need it.

Finding Emily

Since its inception earlier this year, Georneys' mission was to help reunite lost children with their parents or guardian.  By “lost” we meant young children who become lost in places like Disney World or at the zoo; we weren’t trying to tackle the problem of abducted children.  The idea was in response to one of our concerns; we take a few trips to Disney World each year and we wanted to make sure that our children remain safe.  We've never lost one of our children, but we did understand how quickly a child could become lost in a place like Disney World.

Months ago, when we started Georneys (before it was named Georneys), we did a lot of research about lost children.  We couldn’t find many statistics on the subject, but the information that we found suggested that lost children are indeed a problem for amusement parts (metal note: it's a problem for amusement parks).  We also surveyed parents of preschool aged children about the Georneys service and ultimately decided that Georneys was a good opportunity to pursue as well as being a useful and beneficial service for parents and families.

One thing we didn’t do was to ask the question, “What happens when a child gets lost in a place like Disney World?”  I think the answer to that question might have led us down a little different path.  In the typical scenario, when a child becomes lost, they start crying.  Usually, a kindly stranger stops by, asks the child what’s wrong, and helps the child locate the parents or takes the child to a park employee or park security.  From that point, the main issue is that the park has to find the parents.  That’s probably not too difficult because the parents will probably try to enlist the park employees or park security in their effort to locate their lost child.  I don’t have any statistics, but I’d bet that’s a fairly quick and efficient process since a lot of information can be passed over the phone lines.

When we started out working on Georneys we assumed there was a lost child problem and we continued to assume that as we built the service.  Along the way, we probably should have been asking broader questions, like, “What do you do when your party becomes separated at an amusement park?”  When we go to Disney World, we often separate for a short time.  My oldest son often wants to go on a ride that isn’t appropriate for my youngest so we’ll split up into two groups.  When we do that, we use cell phones to stay in touch (most of the time it’s voice, sometimes text).  Often, it’s a real chore to stay in touch because I can’t hear the phone ring or feel it vibrate and it’s often difficult to have a conversation on the phone.  Anyway, when we go to an amusement park, our problem hasn’t been lost children, our biggest problem has been reuniting with our group after we’ve split up. 

But, here’s our real problem, the Georneys' problem:  we weren’t trying to find Emily (or rather, define Emily).  Who the hell is Emily?  She’s a hypothetical creature who begat numerous offspring that she takes to amusement parks.  Huh?  Here’s a better explanation; I was re-reading a post tiled, “The Teqlo Adventure” by Peter Rip and was reminded of Emily, the hypothetical user:

The first thing we did was toss out any pretense of solving everyone’s problem.  There is an old proverb that I just invented for this situation --  “The boiling of the ocean begins with a single puddle.”  We had to define our puddle.  So we did.

A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago that Snapfish is driven by a product team that thinks a hypothetical mom named Emily is their user.  Their design mantra is What Would Emily Want?  We went out and defined our Emily. 

The next thing we did was develop a hypothesis of the ways in which web application integration would please that Emily i.e., what is her pain?  What is she trying to do? What web services does she use to do it? And how does she cope with using 3-5 discrete web applications to get something done?    What  does she do now?  Then we went out and talked to a small army of Emilys. Arrgh!  This will strike everyone as obvious and necessary.  It is. And we hadn’t done it before because we were too busy building.

We should have defined Emily a long time ago and asked her and all of her friends about their pain.  We probably would’ve saved ourselves a lot of time and energy. 

We’re going to find Emily (she’s got a Georneys ID) and solve her pain.

Flood Insurance

Heather and I have had a lot of parents excitedly remark that Georneys is a “great idea” and they’ll rave about it; at least when we’re present. I think they really believe it’s a good idea, and I think they intend to use Georneys, but we generally find that they don’t run to the nearest computer and sign up for an account.  I think that kind of behavior is probably one of the biggest barriers to marketing Georneys.  Although the sign-up resistance may in part be due to the fact that it’s an alpha version, I liken Georneys to flood insurance; people don’t often buy it unless compelled by some outside force such as rising water. 

That’s a difficult problem.  And, we have another problem: the “lost child” service that Georneys provides is not something that creates constant return visits to the site which means it not the best venue for becoming an advertising supported site.  Thus, paid subscriptions are probably the most reasonable means of supporting the service.

To help alleviate those issues, we’ve been exploring the possibility of adding a service to Georneys that will help families answer the question, “where do we want to go today?”  That would be a complimentary service to the lost child service and could potential boost the lost child service as well as providing additional sources of revenue.

The problem with the "two services" approach is that we’re hoping that one service will help bolster another service.  For a startup, it’s hard enough to get one service pushed out the door, much less two services.  I think the two service approach is a poor strategy at this stage.  As we head toward the beta release of Georneys, I think we have two choices:  1. find a reasonable way to overcome the “sign-up resistance” and grow the lost child service, or 2. morph into something different. 

We have some research and head-scratching ahead of us.

I'm Over Here!

It looks as if the bright guys (and TechStars graduates) of Brightkite are building a platform that, hopefully, will be available to developers, to help answer the question, “Where are you?”  That sounds like a nice horizontal problem space and the solution will help spawn a bunch of vertical applications.  I think they’re on to something big, and we might just have a use for the Brightkite Location Platform in conjunction with Georneys.

At the beginning of TechStars our team was gung-ho about creating location dependent applications such as a location blogger and a proximity friend finder. We soon discovered with each application we were forced to answer the same fundamental question of “Where is the user?”. Not necessarily an easy question to answer semantically or technologically. Instead of solving the problem of “Where are you?” over and over again for each application, it was clear that we needed a location platform that allowed multiple apps to query, and update a users given location.

Georneys Goes Alpha!

We released the Georneys alpha version today.  Anyone is welcome to  sign-in and give it a test drive.  We already received some feedback and we know of a couple issues (aka bugs) that need to be fixed, but overall, things seem to be going very well.  If you do give it a test drive, please give us some feedback; good bad, or indifferent.

  Sometime soon I’ll have to write a comprehensive post about some of the things that we’ve learned while building the alpha version.  One of our biggest issues was simply trying to keep things simple.  We built and subsequently scrapped a lot functionality along the way.  Some of the functionality will reappear in the future, but for now, we’re going with the simplified version.

We’ve also changed our business model just a tad.  We decided to go with the freemium model for now.  We’ll have a free entry-level version and later we’ll provide a premium version with additional features.

Again, please give it a test drive at Georneys.com.  Thanks in advance!

Ratings and Reviews

Heather and I have been working away on the alpha release of Georneys.  The sole focus of the alpha version is on the “lost child” problem; to provide a means to have lost children returned to their guardian(s) quickly and safely.

However, as part of the Georneys “product mix” (service mix?) we’d also like to help families answer the common weekend question, “Where should we go today?”  We’ve found that parents often have a difficult time finding new and fun things to do with their young children.  Families typically do the same things over-and-over again; go to the same park, mall, and restaurant.  I think a lot of the repetitive behavior is because familiar things are a known quantity, and with small children, a familiar routine is often welcome.  But, I think a lot of the “sticking with the familiar” behavior is because it’s often difficult to think of new places to go and there’s little time to research and think about it, so the familiar is the default. 

As I’ve given more thought to the “Where to go, what to do?” question, I've seen a number of opportunities to use the internet to help solve the problem.  It’s really an interesting problem and I think most of the current approaches are a bit weak.  What I see very often is that places and events are visually presented on a map (Google Maps, Microsoft Earth and the like).  I think that’s probably a mistake.  If I’m looking for fun places to go, I’m concerned about the distance of the place and the time it takes to get there, but I don’t really care about its location on a map – until I need directions to get there.  I think maps are very useful, but when my question is, “Where is a fun place to take the family today that within an hour and a half driving distance that’s will fit my budget?” I don’t really want a map.  What I want is really good, targeted suggestions of places and events that the whole family can enjoy.  Reviews are good too, but I don’t (and probably can’t) spend my day reading reviews; I want a good summary.

The other issue I have with current services is that user reviews may not always be the best indicator of “what’s good.”  Actual behavior is probably a better indicator; I think it’s somewhat analogous to the attention issue with web content.  Behavior is important, so I think feeding a “where to go/what to do” system with actual data would be very useful.  Fred Wilson talks about some of these issues in his post titled “Taste Neighbors.”  It’s a great post and points to a lot of good opportunities in the user generated ratings and reviews space.

Needless to say, I’m excited about working on some of these problems.

So Close to Alpha

Georneys is so close to being ready for alpha testing that we can taste it.  Heather has cut back on her contract work so that she can focus on the final details.  It's tough to build a business on a part-time basis, but we can feel the momentum building.

We're looking forward to the alpha and the beta versions.  Once the beta is ready, we have a number of people who'd like to use Georneys.  Then, our focus will shift to building a user base, getting feedback and improving the service.