In the summer of 2009, I was really, really bored with my job. I would check hacker news multiple times an hour, drawing energy from the really cool startups I saw other people doing. Then, one day in August, I decided “dang, I think it’s time I start a startup myself!”. The concept was simple: create an interface to see what is happening in any neighbourhood of the city right now. Want to know the hottest party downtown? Browse to that area, check to see the scheduled events, the tweets and pictures that people are posting online. I was off:
Following suit with the States, the Canadian government injected a massive amount of stimulus spending into R&D to support small business growth. I pitched the idea to a local government R&D representative. After some other loops, I had secured close to $50,000 allocated to my company to pay Canadian employees.
My next major issue was employees. Where do I find solid Rails people? I had attended some local Ruby meetups but never made a major attempt at finding people to hire, only potential employers. So where do I go? How many Rubyists are Canadian? So away I went, posting on Rubynow, Railswork and a couple of others.
I received 30 resumes. Only 3-5 who were Canadians. I called one person up who sounded really great: positive about the project, done recent work in that domain and was very polite. When asked about references, they didn’t have a list on hand but they’ve shipped over 30 apps. After pushing harder for to get the references, the candidate started talking about great new ideas for the project and when we could get started. As I _really_ desperate a solid rails guy, I took ‘em. In retrospect, this leads to my first two major lessons learned:
Tip #1: Check out real references of people. If they cannot produce any there is probably a reason behind that. Ask the references: How are they to deal with? Are they humble, egotistical, have authority issues, focused, stay true to their word etc etc. If they are active in the rails community people _will_ know them and more than likely give you the low down.
Tip #2: If you are desperate, you’ll either a) do something crazy or b) get taken advantage of by people who can tell. Instead, find a trusted source to give you advice in the particular issue you’re having be it hiring, finances, next steps, marketing whatever! Lots of people love talking about prior experiences and are sometimes flattered to be asked for advice.
As we needed a few more developers, my first hire recommended two friends who turned out to good developers but admittedly less experienced. The friendship lead to a major problem that I didn’t see in advance. In all conflicts, these friends sided with their friend who recommended them. If this developer didn’t like a stance I took, the rest of the development team (his friends) sided with him. Understandably, this made it very difficult to push through tasks that really needed to get done.
Tip #3: As a project manager, more than half the job is managing relationships. Always be watching for subtleties in the team dynamic to ensure it’s not personality conflicts that stop things from progressing.
At the beginning of the project, to develop a continuous velocity I had asked for a level of energy commitment from the various employees. There were major issues with people making excuses after excuses as to why they couldn’t meet the target commitment level.
Tip #4: All startups have a window of opportunity. If people can’t follow through on their commitments on a regular basis, this kills the momentum of the project. Start looking for someone to replace them asap. “Fool me once, shame on you.. fool me twice, shame on me”. You do not have time to mess around!
Sometimes I would notice on Pivotal Tracker that a feature was complete, then login to the site to see it a) was broken b) it wasn’t what was agreed upon or c) wasn’t the top priority.
Tip #5: Expectations for feature releases have to be crystal clear. What should it look like? Should tests be completed with a feature? Code reviews? GUI and backed completed for each feature?
When I hired the gang, right off the bat, equity was given to the developer. Oops. They started arguing (right away) about the direction of the business, what features should be done, how I’m not managing the business with their interests in mind, I should buy them new Macbooks etc etc. In short, without doing any work, the developers were owners already. This leads me to my next tip:
Tip #6: Make equity based on clearly outline deliverables or effort. That way, the employer/employee relationship is very clear from the start. Once they show commitment levels, they earn their right to part ownership of the company.
Towards the end of the project (4-5 months), I made some really good contacts in the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation. I would periodically meet with them to discuss issues and they would give me some really, really solid advice. Had they been around for when the business first started, I’m sure things would have turned out differently. This leads me to my first and most important tip:
Epic tip #7: Network, network, network. Find people who will mentor you and offer advice for your project. Find local developers who you know and trust. Build relationships with the local entrepreneur network and start talking to angel investors. You never know who you’ll meet or who they know that can help you along your journey.
I lost hours and hours of sleep over this company, mainly to try to figure out how to keep the project moving on all the while working full time at my day job. I would think about MyMapNow most of the waking hours of the day. I simply could not shut it off!
Was the project a success?
- I learned an absolute ton. Not just about technology; but business, management, project management. More than I’m sure I did in any one semester of university.
- The government was able to pay some Canadians for R&D work during the “economic downturn.”
- It’s now open source on github: http://github.com/jevy/MyMapNow
- So absolutely!
Conclusion
I now know what it takes to run a startup. Basically: EVERYTHING. I’m not ready to do that yet. If the right opportunity and team came along, I’d jump right in. For now, I won’t be actively looking for one and invest in my family and mental health instead.
In the short term, I’m going to keep consulting (to make other companies do great things) and real estate investing. Which I’ll post about in the near future. Thanks for reading!
