The Post Money Value

Failing 2010 - Fashionable?

Wired Magazine is all about failure in the latest issue. The science of it along with the requisite people talking about the oops, never giving up, etc. I hope the VC community in Canada, the people who run start up programs in Canada, etc, all read this stuff and try to remember that lots of time, failure equals experience which can lower the odds of failure round two. People who have failed should, by this act of failure, gain experience and become more valuable.

Fail fast, learn, rinse, and repeat.

Now that Wired's got it on the cover, maybe it will become mainstream and even acceptable.

Start Up, VC

EYODF Part 13 - The Edge that is Canada

For years I've been telling you about the amazing programs and services the Canadian Government offers businesses. Now, I get to practice what I've been preaching.

The Canadian Trade Commission Service is a shining example of Government programs that not only work but exceed expectations on a number of levels. The Trade Commission has over 150 offices worldwide that are dedicated to helping you expand your business. Everything from market assessment assistance, finding qualified contacts, and helping with problems, there are hundreds of people around the globe who get measured on how great you become. These programs are amazing.

In addition to direct advisory services, Canada has booths in many of the major shows worldwide. For 2010, I'm going to have a presence at Mobile World Congress, CeBit, and CTIA. The total cost for all three of these shows is under $10k. Tack on the airfare, food, hotel, etc, and I'm all in for around $20k. That's for all three major events. Beyond just the booth space, the various trade commissioners have set up press interviews, supplied marketing assistance, arranged meetings with business partners critical to my success, and much more.

Over the years, I've had the pleasure of working with many of the Trade Commissioners. This honour and pleasure continues in my start-up capacity. To date, I've yet to find anyone associated with the Trade Commission who hasn't been off the charts great.

Case in point: Leanne Lalonde. Leanne is a Trade Commissioner based out of Ottawa. Midnight. 2a. Sunday afternoon. These are just three of the time stamps from email I've received from Leanne. She thinks, acts, and works like an entrepreneur. She is an incredibly hard working professional dedicated to my success. That's a far cry from some faceless Government bureaucrat. Susanne Schmidt-Knobloch from Vienna and Anne-Marie Parent from Madrid have also been working overtime to ensure the Mobile World Congress event is productive and successful for Fixmo. These professionals are delivering advice and services that are invaluable to our success.

In Ontario, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade maintains offices worldwide as well as hosting trade missions around the globe, including trade show booths. Bryan Harvey, Mauricio Ospina, and Gilles Chatelain are just three of the power team that is Ontario Exports. Bryan, I've known for years. He has been instrumental in helping hundreds of companies here in Ontario. I had the pleasure of meeting Mauricio when looking into CTIA. For 45 minutes, he enthusiastically discussed his programs, ideas to grow Fixmo, and was simply over the top in wanting to offer up assistance. Ditto with Gilles and CeBit.

If you are an entrepreneur in Canada, you can't afford not to take advantage of the Trade Commission Services as well as the many other programs here in Canada. From extensive tax and research credits, Provincial export programs, to grants and direct investment opportunities there is no better country to start up a business than Canada.

I've believed it then and I believe it now.

Fixmo, Start Up, VC

EYODF Part 12 - Have an Amazing Partner

Rule 1: Hire people smarter than you and get out of the way.

Rule 0: Team up with an off the charts smart partner and increase your odds of winning by a factor of 100x.

When I first kicked off this idea, the single most important thing I knew I had to do was get a partner who would lock onto this idea, go way beyond my thinking, and be my trusted ally to get this baby over the finish line.

Meet Shyam Sheth, my partner.

Shyam is a former Google rockstar having been involved in the Google Mobile App development as a Product Manager. The man is a product delivering machine. His CV is loaded with shipping product. He's smart, customer focused, passionate, and has been contributing to the company exactly 6 second after he met up with me. He's been quietly (but firmly) working the product side of the house.

Note it says "team up" not hire. I didn't hire Shyam, we teamed up and have spent 100s of hours together on products, ideas, roadmaps, etc. Together; as a team. We aren't hung up on titles, egos, etc. We have both put in big chunks of our own money, are equal, and we are in sync when it comes to where we want to go. We, together are now on the hunt for smarter people: see rule one.

And he has 1.8 million fans! From October 2008, I bring you my partner and mobile Gmail which has been viewed 1.8 million (and one; me) times:

But, wait, there's more. From June 3rd, a little Android launch love.


I'm delighted to finally be able to talk about my partner, we're rocking! And the Android app is really looking outstanding!

Inside the Crackberry Nation

[Warning: Long post, sorry]

It's been slightly over 24 hours since we kicked off the beta over in Crackberry Nation. I thought it would be useful to give you an inside look at what happened, what when right, wrong, etc. The objective here, as always, is to help you and your start up.

Crackberry Nation was the right call:

Simple put, I made that call because I believed, based on my knowledge of the Kevin's readers, the application would get smacked around really hard and if we passed muster with the CB Nation crowd, we'd be well on our way. And, true to form, a stompin we a gettin. Exactly as we wanted.

Answer people's email....immediately:

My core belief on beta software is that if somebody takes the time to download it, try it, and then give you feedback of any kind, respond to them with a personal note as soon as you can. Within 3 minutes (I clocked it) of Kevin's post, we had 100 downloads. Within 5 minutes of that (8 minutes total), the first feedback came in and I answered it, 300 emails later into the night, I was still pounding on the keyboard. Then we have twitter stuff, then Crackberry started forum comments, as well as comments on the blog post itself. My happiest emails, for the last 20+ years, have always been those magic words: Thanks for your prompt reply. We will, of course, put in an auto-responder to ensure people know we got the note. We now have two extra people tracking and logging the bugs, etc. The core of any good company is how you treat your customers and what they say about you. You can get "product wasn't for me but, wow, great people" and that's win for many reasons. Raising capital? Trust me, investors simply Google/Twitter/Search for this stuff to get sense of your culture. I know, I did it for eight years.

Beta Testing - Target the Crowd:

If I could buy a round for the entire Crackberry crowd, I would for one core/top reason: The idea of an actual 'beta' is not dead? Got a BlackBerry application you want actually tested with people who will really test it, understand it will have bugs, etc? CB nation. The lesson here is that whatever your product/service is, use care. We/I could have done a blog post, had people re-tweet/blog, etc, and get feedback. No problem. It made far more sense to go to the source and target a focused/hard core group to get a mass number of people kicking the tires all at once. It was solid squeeze and a solid pile of feedback. If you believe in the fail fast theories ( I do), this process works. This crowd would give us the back to the drawing board message loud, clear, and fast. So far, so good.

Friction-Free:

I'd like to take credit for this brilliant insight but I got slapped into reality by my co-founder/partner. We had a fairly good sign up plan for the beta. You signed up, gave us a pin number, we validated, did this, did that, sent emails, etc. All great coding, process. All stupid, my bad. Plan B was ask, open it up, send it out, and those people who become rabid love it/hate it, will phone it in. Ah, yup. Hundreds did. Lesson: Get it out there and let the people speak. Friction-Free trumps process every time. And I should have known better anyway because the gang at Xobni had it down to a science. If we are half as good as those guys, we're picking out the yachts.

Via la Competition:

This is the best part for me. Cutting deals and teaming up. It's a massive market (Thank you RIM and Google). If you have a product, code, etc, and you'd like to partner up, email me, we are here to grow a massive business you can be part of. Hopefully, for others, rising tides will lift all our boats. Lesson here: Check your ego at the door, ignore titles, don't be a control phreak and focus on the big (massive/profitable) big picture.

Apologize:

We have a problem with the BB Tour. My bad, I didn't properly test the device and there are a couple of hundred people who I know have the problem which is getting fixed. To the hundreds that wrote in, we are saying "sorry, thanks for letting us know, its being fixed, my bad for not doing a better job testing your device." This probably goes hand in hand with the answer people's email point, but this point is the specifics. Mea-Culpa has people coming back to us saying no problem, I'll keep helping which is exactly what you want. I know this sounds simple but saying, known issue, thanks, fix coming is not as good as "my bad" it's personal and people, hopefully know you care.

Hosting Rules:

Servers in the back room and under my desk? Ahh, I'm thinking no. RackSpace rocks. Nuff said. .

Have Fun

One person wrote in from Munich. I grew up there and ask how close they were to my old house. Great back and forth. One guy wrote in who was from Sprint and I talked about my uber-smart nephew who works there. A lady who was on a sail boat (!) wrote in. She was a live-aboard and we talked about all of that fun as I am a sailor. And so it goes. Life is short and (this is the secret) most people want to help you. Really. Most people want you to succeed. They will share in your success, gladly pay for product from people they like. Investor point: They turn down personalities and culture way before they get to the idea/company. Have fun, it will show and pay off.

Some numbers for you:

Thousands (5) of downloads within 10 hours; still happening. Hundreds (10%) of feedback notes. Piles of great ideas, features, and I'd pay for this product notes.

My favorite email so far:

"Wow this is an amazing application, thanks for doing this. Since you appear to know the Blackberry, perhaps you could help me get some really cool iPhone apps installed on my BlackBerry"

Yeah, really...

Finally:

To everyone who has download the application to test and give us some feedback, we all thank you. It is truly appreciated, we are listening, we care, and we will be delivering products to meet your needs. It's our goal/mandate/passion.

Fixmo: Time to Make the Doughnuts (Beta)

I first met Kevin Michaluk of Crackberry fame over the Internet when the BlackBerry Partners Fund was first started. Kevin came up with a zillion ideas for contests, giveaways, and just about anything that would promote the developer community around RIM's BlackBerry devices. When I met Kevin at the first developer's conference it was pretty clear that he had the admiration and respect of developers, rabid BB users and the vast majority of RIM employees. Memo to self: when doing anything on the BB platform, involve Kevin.

Fast forward to today. Our little adventure we call Fixmo is ready to roll out some beta code and there isn't a better place to do this then inside CrackBerry Nation.

Fixmo is entering beta and if you have a BlackBerry device and would like to help kick the tires and give us much needed feedback, stop one is CrackBerry Nation. From there, you'll be guided to the beta, find out about the product, and join the beta. I'm delighted to be working with Kevin and the CrackBerry team. We'll be rolling out some interesting things over the next few weeks and we'll be keeping CB Nation in the loop first so I heartily encourage you to sign up to get the Crackberry blog and be a part of something really fun: CrackBerry Nation.

To read about the beta, go here.

TorQuest Goes Gold

My good buddy Michael Hollend has joined TorQuest Partners. Michael is probably one of the nicest and smartest investment professionals on Bay Street.

TorQuest is a mid-market firm that invests in the big money rounds, typically in the $15 - $100 million range. They invest in a wide range of transactions that don't just span technology. From the website:

TorQuest's private equity funds seek control or joint control through management buyouts, leveraged buyouts, and recapitalizations in companies that operate in established industries. TorQuest is a generalist firm with deep relationships across many different industry sectors, but has developed particular competitive advantages in the most attractive sectors of manufacturing, business services, financial services, food, consumer products, and chemicals. TorQuest is focused primarily on opportunities within Canada, but has made a number of successful U.S. investments as well.

• Preferred Deal Size:
• • Equity Investment of C$15 - $100 million per transaction
  • Enterprise Value of C$40 - $250 million

• Investment Preferences:
  • Corporate Spin-Off
  • Entrepreneurial Transition
  • Management Buyout
  • PIPE Investments
  • Growth and Expansion Capital
  • Recapitalizations

An great example happens to be Lowepro photography bags which I swear by. I've taken this stuff all over the world, including Antarctica, and these bags just rock. This is from the TorQuest website:

-----------

Business Description

DayMen Photo Marketing LP is the trademark holder of Lowepro, the worldwide leading brand of protective carrying bags and packs for imaging and electronic equipment. DayMen and its subsidiaries oversee the design, manufacturing, marketing and merchandising of Lowepro products, which are distributed through DayMen's wholly-owned operations in Canada, US, UK and Germany as well as through third party distributors in over 90 countries. In addition to Lowepro branded products, the DayMen companies distribute a number of other photographic and consumer electronic products and accessories in the imaging and photography industries.

Investment Thesis

TorQuest has invested in DayMen based on the Company’s outstanding track record of growth and the prospects for continuing on its growth trajectory. DayMen will continue to benefit from the worldwide growth in the imaging market and the growing importance of photographic accessories to retailer profitability. DayMen also has a number of identified opportunities to enter new markets. Lowepro is the leading brand in the industry and is known for its innovative designs and quality. Finally, DayMen and its subsidiaries are led by an outstanding management team, which has partnered with us on this acquisition.

-----------

Congrats to TorQuest, you scored big in landing Michael.

What's 2 Minutes Worth? Ask Jing and Say It Visually*

[updated to fix methodology/method point made by Tim]

One of the things Start Ups usually excel at is support. It is one of those weirdly inverse things I've seen over the years. A one or two person company goes nuts with respect to support, answering emails around the clock, sending out compiled fresh daily code, etc. Success follows, company grows, and support does't keep up, gets an automated ticket systems, etc, etc.   

In any event, here is a great little investment of 2 minutes with respect to giving the support person power to get stuff out to users vs. being an after thought of a company or lost in big company political mess.

Jing is a screen capture application with some pretty powerful features. The product is Mac/Windows and there is a free version. Here's what Casey, your friendly technical support guy, did to quickly (2 minutes) show the Mac users all about the product. The obvious next step is to include this link in the welcome or thanks for downloading email.

It's well done and is a good example for you to imitate with your own company.

Another method of getting the idea across is to give the user a tour of what it is you are attempting to offer. My good friend Matt Dunn founded a company called Say It Visually. Matt and his team create a really good/short animated story about what your company or software does. They do it in a fun way so people will stick around and get the message. One good example is what Indicee has done. You can see it right on their home page. Landing on the home page and getting information immediately is always good thing. Getting it in a more lively, fun manner is even better. Give Matt a call, he is uber-smart and worth twice whatever he charges you.

The larger message here is that there is no excuse for your customers to be confused or lost. The upside of the internet, fast bandwidth, always on, etc, is the ability to deliver issue focused videos (Jing) and big picture stories (SayItVisually) for low cost.

I Guess I Was NOT Supposed to Show Up

Overhead while I was hanging out with a bunch of start-up folks:

Her: "How was your holiday party last night?"

Other her: "It was pretty good. We invited the VCs but they didn't show up so we really did have a great party, we could be ourselves, ya know, a real party."

Ouch....

EYODF Part 11 - Controlling Costs With Increased Services

Like you, I lay awake at night plotting how to keep costs down. Now that I'm sitting on other people's money next to my own, it's even more important. I used to balk at certain costs when I was a VC, now I'm just bananas when they come up. My BlackBerry is missing keys and it's it my pride -n- joy. Business cards? I know I have to get them but I haven't yet. And so it goes, none of this is a surprise to any of you in Start-Up land.

When I went off to do some trademark work, I got pointed to a website called Trademarkia, a really good place to search and register trademarks. The price was excellent and generally the web site got me through the paperwork in no time.

Fast forward to last week. After about, maybe 3 weeks or so, I wanted to check on the status of the trademark. I flipped a note to customer service asking what's up. With about 5 minutes, I got an answer from Sarah which said, here's the link, click it to check, let me know if you need anything else. I click, busted link. I send note to Sarah, which was the support (customer.server) email address letting her know.

Now, Fred is involved. Fred says, sorry making some changes, one sec. He sent that from his iPhone. Next email says, okay, try it now. Nope, sorry. After a couple more emails with an external development house added to the thread, the link they wanted me to go to got working.

Now, it gets interesting.

The link didn't actually give me what I was looking for. I wandered around the site and eventually found the status but is was hard and time consuming. I pointed this out to Fred and the developer who was working on the site. The developer replied with the reasons why she coded it the way it was. It was a polite, logical, thought out answer which, to the customer (me) made no sense. I stress to you the developer was very polite and very logical. It was for that polite/professional attitude, I create a lengthy reply with the customer use cases the present UI didn't consider.

At this point, Fred and Raj (the CEO) had both responded with good points, back to you shortly. All of this email was going back and forth on the customer.service@ alias. A few days later, I got a note, again via customer.service from the CEO saying we made some changes to the admin panel, take a look and let us know your feedback. I did, it was perfect and I said so. Well done.

Here are the smart things that came out of my experience with Trademarkia:

1. I saved money and got massively personal service for essentially pennies vs. traditional lawyers doing this kind of work. My friend Lawrie Wilder here in Canada has a legal service I'll be blogging about later which expands on this even more.

2. Everybody in the company was responding on the customer service email. What's super important to note is everybody was doing it at the appropriate times, not stepping on each other, contradicting each other, etc. It was really well done and this is a key lesson I'm taking away for my own customer service. I hope this scales because it's very smart and very personable. Microsoft used to have an internal system back in the 90's called TomCat that dealt with forums and managed to let 100s of people respond in a consolidated way to customers. Great system, should have been open sourced when it was killed.

3. They took the feedback and said thank you. What's important is not that they actually did anything I said, rather I really felt like they listened. Again, a great takeaway from my experience. The other big lesson here for you is when you give feedback or ask feedback, get it or give it framed as use cases. Explain the flow and expectations. It helps clarify the feedback. Everybody needs to stay professional. If a customer takes the time to detail out the points, they are giving you their time so respect it. These folks got that point down cold and it shows.

4. It looked and felt like the whole company had dived on my problem. It felt like I was getting tons of service for less money. I feel confident that every penny I spend with this company is worth at least 2.

Trademarkia is recommended. (Thanks Matt!)

Score another one for Canada: Opalis

Opalis got acquired by Microsoft and my buddy Peter Carrescia over at Vengrowth gets to put into the win column for (VC) Team Canada. Peter is one of the better/good guys in the VC world having lived the life on both sides of the aisle. He is calm, smart, careful, and always professional. I had the pleasure of serving on the Truition board (which also got acquired last month so score two actually) and can tell you Peter is a true value-add. He is a very accessible guy and one I heartily recommend you seek out if you are going anywhere near VC land for any reason.

Congrats to all

Always Try to Reward Honesty

I get my fair share of LinkedIn requests. I happen to find the product extremely valuable and have a paid version. Lots of time, you get the odd one where somebody just uses the templated "I want to add you" stuff. If I don't the person, buh bye.

So along comes Marc who takes the time to be straight up:

"I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

We don't know one another but I'm a Toronto guy, doing my MBA in Boston right now and trying to get into startups in TO. Read your blog and know your network will be very useful as I find places to land. Thanks!"

VC DNA - Make Sure You Get a Swab

In between pounding on my product and getting ready for our beta (if you have a BlackBerry Device and are interested, email me), I've been trying to hold true to the giving back/pay it forward philosophies by meeting with the occasional start up to help review this or that. It's free advice and worth every penny.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've met up with two start ups which stand out in my mind because of the interactions they've had with my former work life; the VC community. Both were at the early stages of business

SU1 opened the conversation with "If we just told our VC we quit, left, and started something new, could they get our houses?" Yowsa...

SU2 opened the conversation with "These creepy douche bags don't have a clue what start ups actually do." Another satisfied customer.

Without boring you with all the details of each story, here are some observations I'd like to pass on as you wade into the funding adventure. Or not.

VC DNA

With unbelievably rare exceptions, there is no such thing as "Stage Agnostic" Venture Capitalists in the true sense. By Stage Agnostic I mean a firm/person who can be equally comfortable doing a seed/jumpstart deal or a $5 million series B. I say this not to get bombastic or incite screaming among investors. Most investment specialists follow whatever is in their comfort zone and whatever matches the skill set they bring to the table. Some people are analytics and heavy duty thinkers. They throw massive amounts of due diligence work against a potential investment, chasing down every possible market metric, forecast, historical trends, etc, etc. Lots of brilliant people making very smart investment decisions, bravo, above my pay grade.

This type of person, however, is a walking disaster when you combine them with a founder and his napkin. The the idea is on the napkin here, I need X dollars to figure it out and if I'm right, presto the next Google. That's a Ron Conway thing, if I can use him as one end of spectrum. He spends the short amount of time sanity checking the person, not necessarily the idea, lays down some coin, and takes a shot. Wildly successful guy, bravo.

All of these Y-Combinator shops cropping up all over the place have investors that think like Ron (or try to) and take shots with little more than the napkin. A 150 million fund with piles of process, weekly meetings to endlessly (and maybe rightfully) debate the potential of a $3 million investment with the whole we need 20% argument thrown in simply doesn't have the DNA to take small little risks based on little more than the napkin and founder. That fund spends just as much time on a $200,000 investment as they do on a $15 million investment which is a dumb use of the talent around the table and it has serious implications when they flip some pocket change into a seed deal.

The impact is they don't relax and let it play out, they are on the board creating process & committees, weekly status meetings, fretting about immediate revenue before the idea even gets shaken out, etc, etc. They stress out the entrepreneurs, come off as jerks when they are otherwise nice people, and in general cause the fund to get a bad name in a space they shouldn't have been near in the first place.

The second bad thing which happens to these seed deals in big funds is they can get cut loose, often times, unfairly. A $150 million fund which spends it's time looking at 3-5 million investment clumps who tosses a little coin ($250k) into some idea doesn't have the mindset as I said above. Absent the play it out mentality, it's the seed idea the founders are smart and will figure it out filtering process, what often happens is: cut em loose, it's a rounding error.

The VC community will respond that it is good discipline to cull the herd, not throw good money after bad, etc, etc. It's all true and I agree with it. My observation is that I'm worried about the environment in which that call is made. One partner is a gut check, let's just see and 6 others are 'banking investment types' makes for a stressful table if you sitting there wanting to get some additional capital for an idea that is evolving. I mean no disrespect to banking types, I'm using that term as a label to make my point. And, yes, having others to prevent Dr. Gut Check from drinking all the Kool-Aid and spending insane amounts of money are good checks to have in place.

My point, again to be clear, is the culture/DNA of the firm and people making that call. Angel/Seed guys who do only those types of deals, totally have a better sense of how to cull that type of herd versus (in my opinion) some big fund who allocates some play money. The play money investments can often time get killed because the big fund partner spends too much time on little deal. He spends that time because that's what they do on all investments so it is only natural to say this 200,000 deal isn't worth my time, etc.

What you can do.

First, read the web site of the fund. Really. I know you've heard this advice before but really do it. Spend the time learning about the people in the firm. What have they done, come from, invest in, etc. Read the blogs of the firm/partners. In summary, get to know the DNA. Call the CEO/CTOs of companies they have invested in.

Second, have endless meetings. Yeah, I know makes no sense. Of course what I mean is don't think of those meetings a waste of your time rather use them as an investment in your time. Most of the CEOs who had to slog through Rick's rants and me sitting on the board would tell you they 'knew me' and knew what to expect when the deal closed. I didn't go all Frankenstein on them when the check cleared the bank. I was nuts prior, during and after. Consistency. My point is getting to know that person who will be on your board, in your face, etc, is a seriously important investment in your time, don't blow it off. Interview them, push them on what they've done, get references on them, etc. Just the exercise of you doing it and watching investors reaction will give you volumes of data.

Third. Good ideas get funded. If you have a good idea that others think is a good idea, you can find a way to get the idea into the game. It probably sounds polly-anna but I believe it. So do the homework.

What we (Canada) needs to do.

- Build some $20 million seed funds with people who eat, drink, and live it. It's a DNA thing. Grow the right type of fund for the right type of investments.

- Embrace failure. I've harped on this forever.

- Team up the big funds with the little funds so we start to create a farm team of founders and companies which can grow into big things or get sold as little to medium things which then give the big funds a pool of talent to draw from on big bets. Rinse and repeat.

We live in interesting times.

Non-Competes and My View

Bijan Sabet has a post up about getting rid of Non-Competes and Fred Wilson suggested that other VCs chime in with their thoughts. His thoughts are here.

If you are just spending dollars for something you don't intend to enforce, well, don't waste the money. I think that is something everyone will agree on.

I would not give up non-competes.  To be even clearer, if the founders of the company pushed back hard/refused, I'd probably question the deal.

The key points for me:

Tightly defined.  Mark Evans had a non-compete in his b5 agreement and when he moved over to PlanetEye, there was no issue even though he is blogging and working with community at PlanetEye.  If Mark had left to run a blogging network, nope.  The key is very very tight language that narrowly defines the specific circumstances under which there is a competitive or imminent harm issue.  Don't let the lawyers go crazy here.

Tight confidentiality.  The big issue is confidentiality, trade secrets, etc.  What I care about is somebody leaving with customer lists, marketing plans, etc, and using that information as a direct attack on a company.  The NDA, Trade Secrets, super hush hush stuff also should be defined and the impact of disclosure should be made clear to everybody.

Pay to bench.  You can not simply deny somebody a livelihood. If I want a 6 month or 12 month non-compete, there needs to be compensation to the individual as part of the enforcement.  If you bench somebody, they have to be paid.

Applies to key people.  A star developer is super important as is a start sales person. Both should be covered, both should sign and both should get paid if you decide to let them go.

So, no, I don't believe you should do away with them, sorry Bijan.  I do believe they should be narrow, tightly defined, and properly implemented.

Windows Live Writer - What he said

Paul Kedrosky has his first impressions of Microsoft's entry into blog writing world.  His "huh" has some merit based on my first impressions. My friend and intrepid reporter, Mark Evans, also has a view.  I saw Paul's review first, triggered by the weird post Live Writer stuck into his blog, more on that in a minute.

I'll give you my impression from two perspectives, one the dumb user (me) and the VC as this applies to the start up world.

User Feedback

The download was (thank you) straight forward, no signing up for anything; 5 points. The install, on the other hand..  For those of you that remember the 'make XXX my default whatever' wars, fear not, they are alive and well inside Redmond  It's not possible, for example, to have a button on IE to just 'blog it', nope, you have to take the whole Windows Live toolbar enchilada which, of course, mess up all the nice configurations I had with Google's toolbar, search, etc.   Live Writer is part of the toolbar group/family. My reasoning?  Press the F1 key while in the product and you get:

Okay, a bit of the conspiracy theorist coming through, heh. But, least you think Microsoft is becoming a massive pile of programming drones all marching to the single sound of Ray, relax, there is independence thriving inside the company, no worries.  After all, what else but somebody wanting to say bite me to the man, could explain why this application uses SHIFT-F7 for the spelling check when every other Microsoft app PLUS most other apps trying to conform to a single 'standard', uses F7.  Oh, and this is interesting. If you jump into Outlook or Word and type 'the man' with the single quotes, hit the return key and type Redmond, the spell check ignores the single quotes and figures out that Redmond should be Redmond.  Here, in Live Writer, Redmond gets you an error (it can't figure it out) and 'the is an error as is man' because the spelling machine inside Live Writer can't figure it out.

I'm not a spelling phreak, not by a long shot, it just strikes me as odd that something like F7 gets messed with and the spelling of things inside quotes isn't working when this should be done deals with every Microsoft application.  Ah well.

As yet another left hand not talking to the right hand example: The snipping tool that you can get for the Tablet PC from Microsoft clips stuff and saves it, by default, in its own format. Don't do this if you'd like to actually put them into Live Writer, blows the application up.  And pasting a screen shot to the clipboard for inclusion?  That doesn't work either, you can only import a picture.  Not fatal, just another data point.

And on the install/configuration. To make sure it can talk to Typepad, Live Writer creates a post and then can't get it off your blog. It puts up a dialog box telling to go manually delete it.  I saw the test entry in my RSS reader from Paul's blog. It also left a turd on mine but I was right there to get rid of it, hopefully, nobody saw it.   No other tool I've tried does this or leaves a turd behind.  If you have a Microsoft spaces blog, no turd is left on your blog.  Microsoft could have asked Typepad and the others for help here, assuming there is an issue in the first place, but chose to leave the poopy (tired of the word turd).  Seems lazy to me, but I don't know the details.  The fact it works fine with Microsoft's offer does not surprise me and I would not share Mark's possibility this is a new found, play nice with everybody, attitude.  It's interesting this would ship with such an obvious works on our stuff, not on others, but it fits.  Not fatal.

It is not a bad application but not so great as to get me off what I am using today.  It strikes me as a completeness of offer ploy. By that I mean if you use Microsoft's platform for blogging, you should have a tool to blog with and this is being offered up.  Personally, having a word template/macro/button/plug-in or some such would be nice since I live in Word or said option inside Outlook since I live there as well.   So, while not said as harsh as Dr. Kedrosky, I'd recommend sticking with what you have or using a simpler alternative like Qumara, Bleezer (all platforms!), or BlogJet.  Note to the Live Writer team: They got the F7 key figured out and the single quote stuff as well, give any of these guys a call.

The VC Observation

First, the 20,000 person rule applies here.  I talked, in a previous post, about Randy's RMail project and his 20,000 users. At a dollar a month per user, he could do alright for himself.  I don't think this product knocks anybody out of the blogging tools game, not even close. So, keep coding and keep bringing out good tools, there are a ton of people out here in userland that would like to give your stuff a shot.

As a side note, according to Mark's interview with Randy, he is pulling in about $1000 a month in ad revenue, not enough to buy the Google plane but a good start toward box seats for the Raptors.

Second, ecosystem rules apply.  Live Writer has an SDK and that spells opportunities for developers. So, regardless of my nits above, you can count on a number of things.  A ton of people will have/use this product.  That same ton of people will get bugged by a missing feature or service and look to you.  Remember, my nits above don't apply to people outside the echo chamber. They will click on the spelling check button on the application and use Jpegs  for pictures. They probably don't have Tablet PCs either.  So, my advice to you is ignore me, Paul, Mark,  and others.  Dig into the SDK and see what little gems you can create to extend this puppy.  If history is any guide you can be sure that Microsoft will be delighted to tell the world about your add on, so get coding.

Side note: Paul linked to Om Malik (my 'others' above) review of Live Writer.  I just went back and read it slowly. Om made a good point about this being potentially part of the Onfolio acquisition (somebody in the comments section confirmed it).  That might explain the Shift-F7/crappy spelling check nonsense. Not excuse it, but explain it.  Memo to Mini-Microsoft: When slimming down the company, keep some testers around.