James Siminoff

PoketyPoke Succeed

We launched a new service called PoketyPoke in early January.  For those who don’t know what it is, PoketyPoke is a personal conference manager (full explanation here).

Yesterday was the first time I was on a real conference call with a 3rd party where every participant used PoketyPoke.  There were 5 people on the call and everyone came in at the same time.  For those who do conference calls, you know that with 5 people this never happens.

Most conference calls I do start about 5-7 minutes late, I do approximately 3 conference calls per day so that means I am wasting over 60 hours a year waiting for people on conference calls.

Success can be measured in a variety of ways, most people quickly equate money to success.  Money is a decent point system but for me it is nothing compared to the feeling you get when you see a innovation you were involved in working and fixing real world issues.

If you want to try PoketyPoke, just go to www.PoketyPoke.com, for now it is free.

Blackberry is Windows Phone

Yesterday Microsoft announced its next dud-to-be operating system on the mobile, Windows Phone.  I am negative on the platform because you already have too many big platforms out there getting developer attention and I just do not beleive that Microsoft can come in this late to the game with something attractive enough to developers/end users to make a difference.

Also in reality the Windows Phone operating system already exists, it is just not owned by Microsoft,  the Blackberry.

Blackberries are tightly integrated into the windows and MS office world.  They are already there and have real entrenchment in the IT departments, just ask Apple, Google and Nokia how hard it is to break Blackberries strangle hold in the enterprise.

So Microsoft it is time to pony up and buy Blackberry.  At the current valuation of around $40 billion it would be a stretch but you could probably handle it, in fact you could use that money that you earmarked to by Yahoo a few years ago for it.

This deal would guarantee Microsoft a seat at the big boys table in mobile and help them in defending against Google.

Time Scheduling Services

Before I describe the service I have to talk about the name.  I am not one to throw stones about bad names, I did have a company called SimulScribe.  A few days ago someone asked me if I used Tungle, my first reaction was what I do in my private life is private… when I realized that it was a scheduling service I loosened up a bit.

Anyway I have tried a lot of these online scheduling services in the past like, TimeBridge, jiffle, Scheduly, Doodle, MeetingMade for putting together conference calls and meetings.  So far I have hated almost all of them.  I typically find them to be a pain to use and that it would have just been easier to chat directly with the people to make a time to chat.

Tungle.me is the first one that really has me excited about the time scheduling space.  The site is simple, clean and easy, exactly what you need for something like this.  Try it the next time you have a few people to schedule a call with and see how you like it.

This space is a interesting one to follow as I believe there will always be a need for a third party aggregation system to take in all of the calendar feeds and other info like Tungle is trying to do.

Being an entrepreneur

I saw the below post from David today.  It brought back memories of a very brutal 2001.

I was very lucky to have fairly immediate success in my first venture which I started in 1999.  The business quickly was profitable and doing millions in revenue per year.  In early 2001 things got “tricky” and money went “missing”.  All of a sudden I owed over $200,000 to vendors and my core business was to put it mildly destroyed.  I was total f’d.

Somehow I was able to make payroll every month and rebuild the company to a point of stability.  Looking back I do not know mathematically how I did it, I used every trick in the book, credit cards and ate a lot of humble pie taking a loan from D.A.D. bank.

In the end what I was able to resurrect I merged with Nobel which ended in a huge success and incredibly positive outcome for me.

I learned a lot from that time and I am glad that I learned it young, before a wife and kids.  After that I have always made sure to plan for Armageddon and no matter what have enough reserve to make it through.

caterpillarcowboy:

For the first time since November 2008, I’m getting a paycheck today. It’s not much ($930.46) and 1/5th of what I used to be paid, but I’ll take it. Needless to say, I have no money left and credit card bills to pay, so it’s coming at a good time.

Being an entrepreneur means sacrifice. I gave up my $3000/month beautiful Brooklyn loft for splitting a 2 bedroom with 3 people in Bayonne, NJ for $300/month. I was without health insurance for 15 months. And I can’t tell you just how much I appreciate J for putting up with living in Bayonne when I know she misses NYC and hates the commute.

Being an entrepreneur means being comfortable living on the edge. Last March, when I was still in Brooklyn, I had a $3000 rent check due in 2 weeks, and I didn’t have the money to pay it. And yet, you find a way. I was able to secure an investor and pay my rent on time.

Being an entrepreneur means riding a rollercoaster. One day in December, we’re celebrating because an angel investor told us he wanted to put in $200,000. Over the following weeks, we agree to a price and terms, and then he pulls out. From what Chris Dixon writes, this is more common than it should be. In the end, though, I think it was the best thing that could have happened to us.

Being an entrepreneur means compromise. Having no money means you can’t buy what you want, go out to eat whenever you want, travel wherever you want. But in return, you get to create something meaningful, be your own boss, and love what you do.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Take control over your destiny

The reason that PhoneTag had a successful deal and survived and thrived in such a difficult market was a direct result of our retail platform.  The retail platform brought in enough profit to cover all of the costs of the business including a small profit. Additionally as Bijan pointed out in his post today (included below) it allowed us to have full control over our destiny.

Having tens of thousands of individual customers is a incredible strong foundation to build off of.  When you have that many customers, they do not all move at once, so it gives you a stable platform to go for the more risky deals.

When you go after the wholesale or carrier business as a small provider you have to have unlimited runway.  Getting a carrier deal can be the most rewarding financial thing for a small business but many go bancrupt in the process.

One carrier that rolled out voicemail to text (a very large one) took over 3 years from picking a vendor to going live… 3 f*cking years!  The bigger problem is that it was not supposed to be 3 years it was supposed to be 6 months, imagine if you had 9 months of runway and you were relying on this deal, you would be dead.

Even though our retail brand will never be as big of a opportunity as the carrier business it was a very key part of our success in building the business.

(I described this exact issue in my keynote speech at ITexpo and used the above picture to describe startups that “get stuck” going after the big deal)

bijan:

I’ve seen a number of consumer startups trying to reach massive scale by doing deals with carriers or device manufacturers (cell phone manufacturers)

Some worked out nicely for the startups but most don’t.

I like consumer startups that are taking charge of their own destiny. They are not white labeling their product or brand. They are not licensing intellectual property. They are not comprimising the user experience to make the big “partner” happy. They are not indifferent to those decisions.

Instead they are 100% focused on the user (and developers) and establishing their brand and purpose.

Awhile back I wrote about a problem I encountered when I ported my phone number. I asked for a better way to communicate this info to my friends, family and business associates. I received about a dozen emails from startups going after this problem. Unfortunately most of them built a product and approach that assumed that a deal with carriers was better if not essential.

I’d like to think that the open web and open mobile platforms allow us to finally go direct to our users and figure this stuff out together.

Now there are times where partnership and distribution deals make sense. I like them if they add value to the network and don’t hide the consumer brand or force the startup to make unnatural choices.

But in the absence of those things, I say damn the torpedoes and take control over your destiny. Don’t outsource it.

(clarification: this post is about consumer applications. i’m not talking about infrastructure or technology licensing companies, etc).

Thanks Fred

There are a few blogs that I read every morning, one of them is Fred Wilson’s.  Fred is a VC and has a amazing track record of finding incredible companies before they hit the big times.  One of his tricks is simple, he goes out there and tries everything himself.  He was one of the first people to find PhoneTag and write about it.

Today he wrote about a service that I had never heard of called chatroulette.  When you go there it basically puts you into random video chats with people.  So at 10am this morning I went to the site and this is what my first chat looked like:

I tried to keep the above a bit PG but unfortunately I was able to see the video in its full high definition.  Luckily I did not scream out loud as I was on a conference call at the time I was checking the site out.

Well I continued to check out the different videos, basically you just keep hitting next until you find something or someone you would like to talk to.  The feeling you get is almost like being a fly on a wall, every time you hit next you get a different image of something, someone, somewhere, it is creepy and sort of addicting all at the same time.

Fred’s daughter said this site was more popular then Facebook at her college and I can believe it.  The idea behind chatroulette is very big, while the site might fizzle out I can immediately see the same platform taking off in a more controlled manner for dating.  Single people could go online and with some parameters could randomly engage with potential dates and go to the next one with a click of a button.

So thanks Fred, it is always nice to see new exciting business models and a random guy jerking off all in one stroke of the keyboard:)

Where is your line?

There are many moral/ethical lines that you often run into as a business owner/operator.  In subscription services one of these has to do with how you message to your customers.  There is always a percentage of customers (I do not care how great your service is) that have sort of forgot about it

Yesterday I go this reminder that my subscription to Carbonite, a service I loved, is up for renewal.

While I find it highly ethical of Carbonite to contact me, they did not have to.  If they had just done as my preferences allowed them to they would have $54.95 more then they will now.  I meant to cancel the subscription when I got my TimeCapsule going, but forgot to. I bet they could have gone a few years before I canceled the service.

Everyone needs to make the decisions of how they run their business.  At PhoneTag for example if someone calls in and has a legitimate issue with the service we always offer a refund.  Happy customers that you treat right on the way in and out are your sales people.

In the case of Carbonite, I think they actually went to far.  I am a adult and chose auto-renewal, they had every right to just proceed with that.

What do you think?