The Larry and Shelley Story

In few minutes or so, MusicIP, a company that we’ve invested in, takes the wraps of a ton of work at the SXSW show in Austin.  I’m pleased that all the team’s hard work will be paying off.  I’ll let the company do all launch stuff first and point you to some interesting things as they go public.

This entry, tho, is about Shelley Powers and Larry Borsato, two interesting folks that managed to cross paths here in the virtual world of blogging. 

Way back in September of 2005, I wrote a post about getting in the game where I basically said “just go code something”, blog about it, and get going.  Got some smiles, rah rah, etc, etc. 

I also got a comment from Shelley Powers which simply say “What a crock.”  After finding out who she was, author, cat owner, and interesting person, I blogged the comment, made some nice nice about her stopping by and left it at that.  I got all the “that’s Shelley” emails, etc, but it bugged me. 

I’d worked for Microsoft so I know all about hoards of angry people, being yelled at, name calling, etc. But it bugged me.  It ground on me for months. I have lots of empathy for guys like Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, and others who are 1000x more popular/famous then me. They get Shelley like snarks all the time, yet, this nothing nit still bugged me.

Meanwhile, our friendly Canadian, Larry Borsato goes off and codes up an offline blogging tool called Bleezer. Works on all platforms, multiple blog engine support, free for the trying, etc, etc. Excellent.  Larry makes some reference to Segal said go code something so I did, which gets my attention. I have the product, use it, like it, etc.

Back at MusicIP, things were getting a bit hairy, coding reinforcements were needed.  I call Larry. Doesn’t matter that he wasn’t up on the exact stuff we needed. Doesn’t matter that he was in Canada and the core programmers are in California.  All you had to do was read the guy’s blog, check out his code, and you could get a reasonable idea of what he could do. And after you meet the guy in person your expectations are exceeded.

After a quick call/phone interview, we flew Larry out to California for an intense 15 day get up to speed, code quick, learn fast, adventure. Larry dived in and I am using a freshly coded version of something he coded as I type this.  The guy is a rock solid professional and, for bonus points, a super nice guy.

As a result, we have some new products and a trusted member of the MusicIP team. Larry makes a good recruiting poster for getting in there and “just coding something.”

Here’s what I learned. Patience. At the time, I wanted to dump all over this snarky Shelley Powers person and didn’t. Instead I decided to just work the theory, find some case studies and make the point. Larry Borsato is case study one. I am delighted to tell you that I have others working in investee companies which says to me that it is a whole lot easier these days to get in the game then ever before.

I also learned, there are lots more smart people out there, lined up and ready to get in the game. What are you working on? I’d like to hear from you as I’ve got lots of time for smart people wanting have some fun, change the world, and get into the game.

If you are looking for some interesting tech books, review Shelley’s stuff.  If, on the other hand, you’d like a hands on, live case study of a successful person to emulate, save your money and talk with Larry. He is worth listening to. Well done, Larry, well done.

Comments

[viinnie mirchandani]

you may enjoy my tongue in cheek Blog as Resume

http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2006/03/blog_as_resume.html

[Jeremy Wright]

Yeah, Larry's a kickass guy. Great choice!

Would you say for non devs (ie: entrepreneurs) that "just go build something" is just as important. We're absolutely loving our bootstrapped operation, in spite of all the pressures, and it's great to be able to prove a model well before you talk to anyone about funding.

I'm seeing more and more of my peers doing this. Not because they want funding or are looking to build to flip, but because they simply want to do something they love (for a change), and building something that works is incredibly fun.

[Jeremy Wright]

Eep, there should be a question there after "just as important" :)

[Rick Segal]

The short answer is yes. Go for it without the suit overhead (me) for as long as you can to make milestones. Come in for a no harm no foul meeting, get to know me, I you, etc, so that the process is faster..

[Andrew Leyden]

It has always amazed me the lack of a total, universal music cataloging system. We have ISBN for books (and some CDs and the like), the Library of Congress Catalog System for books (and Dewey and Amazon, to some extent) but music seems to have all sorts of strange competing standards. I've always thought there was an open source solution out there somewhere, or at least room for one.

[Vaibhav Domkundwar - iNods.com]

I just came across this, Rick, and we have found tremendous joy and fulfillment in doing exactly the same - executing and hitting milestones. We feel we can be much more confident in using VC money when we have proven the basic concept and provided a tangible proof of our idea/vision. I'll definitely contact you when we hit our milestones for initial critical mass and the need for investment!