Figuring out my 40th birthday gift

For my 40th birthday, I asked my wife if I could take 1 month and travel -- sort of a walk about. I wasn't sure what I was going to do but knew that I wanted some time for soul search and reflecting upon the next stage of my life. She happily provided this gift and the last year has been spent fantasizing about all the things I might do. I've climbed kilamanjaro, gotten a pilots license and learned to speak spanish fluently -- all in my mind. And the time is quickly approaching and I haven't made a single actual plan. I don't know what I'm actually going to do -- it is likely going to be much less aspirational and grandiose than any of the previous ideas -- but I realize that the gift I really received was teh gift to dream and fantasize! And that was a great gift in and of itself.

Dear contractor, there's a leak in the roof ....

At some point in the future, I will write about the remodel that we did about 12 to 18 months ago. It's a long story -- too long for today. For now, I'll just grumble about the leak that has appeared in our roof for the second time in the last year. I have to stay at home and make sure that the contractor has access to the house so he can temporarily fix the leak. And yes, it's raining cats and dogs in Seattle again. Great way to start this week. Grumble, grumblem grumble.
I leave later today and will be at pubcon all week. If you're there drop me an email and we'll get together.

Therapy and Ben Casnocha

My friend and fellow blogger Ben Casnocha asks "Should Everyone Go Through Therapy?".  I'd have to answer the question, yes.  It's important to know that I subscribe to the belief that the examined life is the one worth living. I know it's not the only way to live -- but it's a core assumption to MY answer to Ben's question.
I've been a big believer of therapy. I see a therapist now and have just starting seeing the person more than once a week and admit that it's been an eye opening experience. I've started to inquire and explore my unconscious in a way that I never have before.  Powerful stuff that is very difficult to explain in a blog!
I've used therapists in my marriage and in my work life with good success. It's always useful to have an outsider "listen" and "reflect" back to assist in processing.
Ben -- the real answer to your question is another question -- "Should everyone go through therapy?" ...well, Ben, forget everyone, do you think you should go to therapy?

Judy's Book farewell party

We had a really great farewell party last night with lots of past employees from the company attending. It's strange -- I had a little nervousness about having past employees attend the farewell party but in the end it was a great thing to do. I'm really appreciative to all those that were able to make it.
The whole event reminded me that endings are just as important as beginnings. It's usually harder to celebrate at the end of a relationship that didn't go the way you wanted it to (whether that be with a company or with a person) but in fact a celebration is exactly what's needed. Tequila sunrises don't hurt either.

My Thanksgiving day 2007 call to 911

My father-in-law Marvin's dog -- Sweetie -- died Thanksgiving morning. So, when Marvin came over that day he was feeling down. We had a nice Thanksgiving meal consisting of turkey, ribs, mashed potatoes and stuffing. The highlight of the meal was Marvin's eloquent and vulnerable toast to Sweetie. I can't summarize the toast sufficiently here but suffice it to say that he talked about how the dog really lived up to being "man's best friend" and how much he (Marvin) appreciated all the listening that the dog had done over the past years (to him). After dinner, Marvin sat down and I noticed his eyes start to close. My son went over to him and told him to wake up. When I noticed that Marvin didn't react to the wake up request, I walked over and asked Marvin if he was ok. I put my arm on his shoulder. He didn't respond. Next thing I know -- I'm calling 911. Guests are laying Marvin down and putting a cold towel on his forehead. His blood pressure had dropped to 44 or something like that. The paramedics arrived within 2 minutes and he was rushed to the hospital. My wife went with him. Turns out that Marvin had purposefully had a bottle (or 2) of wine AND had accidentally taken his blood pressure medicine twice that day. That combination was not a good one! He's fine now. He's still bummed about Sweetie but we're all thankful for Marvin's health.

Opportunity costs for an entrepeneur

I had coffee today with another entrepreneur who recently had to wind down his business. We were comparing notes. He had raised 27 million and spent 7 years trying to grow his business and ultimately had to shut it down. I spent 3+ years working on Judy's Book. 
The time spent on a venture that is not picking up steam -- that lacks break out momentum -- has real opportunity cost. As an entrepreneur, there are so MANY ideas, and so little time. Time (and energy) are the limiting resources for an entrepreneur. Reminder to self -- pay attention to my investment of time as a real investment with a real cost.

My feelings surrounding Judy's Book public wind down

My wife asked me how I was feeling about the fact that the wind down of Judy's Book got so much press in Seattle (Seattle PI, TechCrunch, etc).  At first, I admit there was some shame. I felt like a failure and I was ashamed of not succeeding. Lately, however, I've been feeling (in an odd way) somewhat pleased about the public nature of the flame out. From my perspective, the publicity means that people cared about what we were doing at Judy's Book. This feels good.
In addition, the publicity means I don't have to have the awkward and painful experience of telling everyone about the failure.  You know -- seeing people in cafes, holiday parties, and in public and being asked "how's it going at work?" and having to tell them some version of -- "oh, I laid everyone off a month ago and am winding down the company". People already know the facts and they come up to me and say "I'm sorry to hear about Judy's Book. What are you doing next?". This is much better in my opinion than having to constantly tell people the same story over and over again.  Don't get me wrong -- I wish Judy's Book succeeded. I didn't start the company to end up winding it down. I'm just trying to share some of my feeling about having the wind down being so public.

The job market is too hot

I was chatting with one of our lead developers at Judy's Book and he told me that he's received about 20 offers of employment in the last week!  Many from recruiters and people he didn't know -- but he was amazed and said the market has never been like this before. Given the public nature of Judy's Book wind down, people were coming out of the woodwork to contact him. So for all those people who have emailed me in the last few days about developers -- you need to move faster, much FASTER, the developers were "open minded" and "unemployed" for all of 36 hours max.

Mistakes in the early years of Judy's Book

We did a lot of things right in the first 2 years of Judy's Book business (FYI - July 2004 was the start of the business), but I think we made two reasonably big mistakes.  Both mistakes prevented us as a company from achieving critical mass as a company in a specific geography -- i.e. Seattle.

The first mistake: we weren't aggressive enough in customer acquisition. We had the idea of using the address book as a hook into customer acquisition but we never spent the energy and focus to really maximize the use of the address book in growing the social network. We thought that using the web address books was too "spammy". In retrospect, this perspective on customer acquisition was a little too ivory tower and not enough boot strappy. In fact, there's a broad spectrum of what constitutes spam in the eyes of a consumer. We/I didn't understand the subtleties of consumer perceptions sufficiently to build the app that grew our social network AND that consumers wouldn't perceive as "spammy". Linked In and Facebook today have finessed and pushed these consumer perception boundaries -- but back in 2004 and 2005 it was difficult to see just how willing of consumers were to send out invites from their address books. 

The second mistake: we expanded out of Seattle in August 2005 and went national. We did this because Insider Pages expanded nationally and we were feeling the competitive pressures to keep up. The fact is that neither company had figured out what it took to create a community directory that achieved critical mass. I remember when we were raising money for the series B round and Bill Gurley of Benchmark challenged me on the decision to nationally. I defended the decision at the time. Looking back, I think the decision to go national in Aug 2005 was an error. We ended up spending the better part of 6 to 9 months building a local search web site that could be accessed nationally -- going national was more work than we expected. Ultimately, this decision prevented us from focusing on the customer acquisition problem I mentioned above as well as other improvements that would have made our product more sticky and compelling.

More mistake and lessons learned blogging to come....

Another major lesson learned: baby steps come first

I think it's useful to think of start ups as babies. The metaphor works pretty well. Start ups and babies require lots of love to get from infancy to the toddler stage. And when it comes to starting a technology business, it's necessary to take baby steps before walking and you have to walk before running. 
At Judy's Book we had a BIG vision -- I think in retrospect, perhaps too big for a start up and in retrospect I think we didn't take the necessary steps to break that BIG vision (your friends yellow pages) down into sufficiently small enough baby steps to prove out the concept before expanding the concept nationally.

Judy's Book lesson #1: markets win

My first and biggest lesson learned from the past 3.5 years can be summed up in a business school lesson I learned many years ago and now really grok: markets win.  You know the adage about putting a quality manager in a lousy market and the market winning. The reverse has also been stated: put a lousy manager in a great fast growing market and the manager seems like a winner. The primary job of an early stage CEO is to get into a great market. I thought that online local search was such a market -- but the details of that market have stumped many a company and many an entrepreneur. 
Online local requires critical mass in a geography and a category. Online local also requires local customer acquisition. Both of these items are very challenging for any company -- and make the market of online local gnarly. I still think the market is a good market -- someone is going to make a lot of money -- but trust me, online local anything is HARD. Very hard.

Emotions of winding down a company

I haven't read a lot about the emotions that accompany a wind down.  For that matter, I haven't read a lot about the emotions that accompany business in general. This post is about my emotions.
The past week has been filled with anxiety once I knew what was happening and before I told the employees, with relief from telling employees what was happening, embarrassment of having failed and reading about it in the newspaper(not succeeded in the way I hoped -- I actually don't view Judy's Book as a total failure but more on that later), and sadness of letting go of the company dream as well as letting go of my mother in law.
Sadness is where I'm at today. Many people including myself worked hard for a long time to try and make this business work.  It didn't work the way I/we had all hoped. Now people are working hard to wind things down responsibly and they're starting to look for other jobs. In situations like this, employees move on fast -- no one wants to be the last one not to find a seat with another company. It's a bit like an adult version of musical chairs.  At times, I can feel some of the angst as they look for work.  I'm struck by the realization that there are a whole host of relationships with people I like -- that I used to see everyday and now I know that I won't see them. That's a bummer! I'll miss them. I'll miss my investors and our die hard customers. I'll miss Judy's Book. It's sad to see all that come to an end. Yep -- Sadness is where I'm at today. 
I'm glad it's been sunny in Seattle...reminds me that everything is going to be ok in time.

Lessons in Internet Layoffs: Word travels fast

I'm going to write some blog entries about the process I'm going through with Judy's Book. One lesson learned is an obvious one -- word travels FAST in the internet age. Case in point: I announced to the company that we were going to be doing layoffs at 11AM on Tuesday.  By 11:20AM, people were IMing and emailing with past employees. People we hadn't even heard from in a over a year contacted us and asked what was going on. By 3PM, I had gotten an email from 2 reporters asking what the story was. I posted my blog around 4PM and by 5PM, there was a post on both the Seattle PI and techcrunch.
Some things to think about:

  1. That was fast! Imagine any business doing a lay off or winding down 20 years ago and compare it to the story above.   Word may have taken 6 months to travel as far as it did in 6 hours today. Wow!
  2. Don't try to contain a story like this -- all you can do is get out in front of it and hope for the best. Stories and the truth want to be free.
  3. Have a press and blog strategy on the checklist of any layoff you're doing.