Zack's Questlog

I have never found myself saying “I don’t know” this much. I used to see it as a sign of weakness. 

Now that I have founded a startup, I make hard decisions and answer tough questions everyday.

“What is the best way to pitch the revenue model for our business?”

“Who would be the best incubators for what we do?”

“How much content can we possibly populate in a week?”

“Which bloggers should we approach?”

“What kind of content should we focus on first?” 

I don’t know and I’m not afraid to admit it. 

If an entrepreneur didn’t have to make difficult decisions day in day out, they wouldn’t call it risky business.

The best thing you can do for yourself as an entrepreneur is to not delude yourself and think you have all the answers. 

It is OK not to know everything. Just be the hustler and do everything in your means to get from not knowing to knowing. 

When pitching without a prototype or traction, make sure that the problem and solution you describe resonates with the audience. They have to be able to relate to it.
 
In other words… Make whoever you pitch feel the PAIN! Half the battle is won if you can rub salt into the wound and see discomfort on their face.
 
If you don’t see them wince, rewrite your pitch until they do! 

Angel’s Gate has received lots of scathing remarks from the entrepreneurial community in Singapore and it doesn’t come as a much of a surprise to me judging by how much they try to play up the drama of the entrepreneurs’ sacred fund raising process.

It’s TV

I have mentioned a couple of times that the same sensationalizing happens on Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank, the UK and US equivalent of Angel’s Gate. Though I have been told that in the overseas counterparts, the investors invest their own money and actually care about the businesses. Do remember however that Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank have been running for some time now while this is Angel’s Gate’s first season.

Ultimately, TV shows that show the startup process as a “reality tv” series make use of hardworking founders as fodder for television drama. Just look at Techstars TV, some of them got edited with “tv magic” to the point of being portrayed as terrible.

Encouraging Signs

Despite that, Angel’s Gate in Singapore shows one very encouraging sign, and that is that the public and media are starting to notice the growing and hardworking local entrepreneurial circle.

Continue Shipping

There have been many people trying to help the local startup ecosystem grow and it is starting to bear its fruits. Angel’s Gate is more of a drama serial than reality, but it is a product of local entrepreneurs working hard and getting ourselves known and noticed and we should be proud of that.

In the mean time, keep shipping. No complacency allowed, EVER.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ag2r/3783368698/

Naming is a bitch

We’ve found a name for our product but the process of naming a startup in this day and age is crazy tough especially if you are on the web. I’m not talking about a player scoring 40 points in one NBA game kind of tough. I’m talking about a player scoring 80 points in one game kind of tough. There are a few well known reasons for this and that includes the need to get the following (in order of importance):

1. Domain Name (that is preferably .com)
2. Twitter and Facebook
3. Other social media account namespaces

Head Banging!

While looking for a good name for our product, we were banging our heads on walls at first, randomly plucking names from thin air that we thought matched what we were doing. During this time, we used name.com, godaddy.com and namecheap.com to check domain availability.

Many hours were lost on the fact that we wanted to settle with a name that all 3 co-founders would share an affinity to. We wanted to make sure that we would all love it and infuse the name with our heart, soul and personality.

Read these for a better name

We decided that we needed more help, so we went through a number of resources that would give us insights into good names for modern startups:

1. How did D’Angelo and Cheever come up with the name Quora?
2. Syllables, Scrabble Letters, and Picking Brand Names
3. How Today’s Hottest Startups Got Their Names
4. 17 Mutable Suggestions For Naming A Startup
5. Naming your startup: Settle down, it’s cool!

Another Round?

And so we tried again and on our second round, we started with some criteria that’d we’d like to have for THE name. The name should be

1. 2 or 3 syllables
2. Spellable
3. Not commonly used by a well known company
4. Makes sense for our product

We didn’t mind made up words and we started using our list of culture and product description words to try to come up with more names whether made up or not.

Namestation.com

A tool that really made things easy was [Namestation.com. It has various ways to help you brainstorm for names including adding popular prefixes and suffixes, combining words in customizes lists, blending words from custom lists with top 1000 keywords, alliterations and many others. On top of that, it does domain checking for each name which cut down the time and effort needed by another 20%. I highly recommend startups to check it out if you are having trouble finding a name.

X-Factor

The final step of our naming equation was a Reality TV type game where we were the Startup Name X-Factor judges. Through the help of NameStation, we created a master list of over 500 names together with our original list and we put the list of names into a Google Docs worksheet. We would then give an X each for names we would like to pass. To stay on the list, the name needed at least 2 votes based on our judgement using the criteria we listed. We did 3 rounds to cut the list down to the Final 10 before we discussed the pros and cons of each and finally picking the one we all loved.

That was a mega rant of our naming process. So what’s the name we picked? We’ll let you know once when the launch page is up. Until then, hang on tight and get ready for an adventure of a lifetime!

tl;dr

Recommended Steps to Find a Name

1. Read the posts listed above
2. Pick criteria for the name
3. Use a tool like [NameStation.com](http://www.namestation.com) to brainstorm and generate names
4. Use a voting system to cut the list down according to criteria picked
5. Talk through the final list
6. You have a name. Congrats!

Met a friend who’s been running a business for awhile. He looked at me and said, “Heard you’re doing a startup for the first time. Congratulations, but be warned that the first year will be all about self discovery.”
 
It is now my 4th day of working on my startup full time and I get what he’s talking about. It probably won’t be just a one year thing.
 
Nothing you have ever done will prepare you as a first time founder for the amount of introspection and self reflection you will do because you are constantly making decisions. And you’d be lying if you say you always know you are making the best choice.
 
That is probably why so many of us turn to Hacker News and other startup blogs to seek crowdsourced wisdom from people who think they’ve got it right.
 
The truth is that we will almost never have a damned clue over whether our decisions are the best but we can definitely wish that they lead to the best outcome.
 
What we can do for ourselves is to make decisions in a lean and agile manner just like how we want to run our startups. Early on, make decisions based on your hunch and keep iterating depending on the results.
 
Be flexible and be smart about it. We are in the school of hard knocks and there’s no way around getting hurt in the process of starting a company. We just need to keep optimizing and learning.
 
Good game and good luck.

I have been asking around for why people use foursquare and it is becoming increasingly apparent that game mechanics involving points, badges and mayorship are not the features that keep people checking in.
 
People are checking in as a show of social status. It shows that they are doing something interesting somewhere. A check in is thus inherently social without the need for badges, mayorship or points.
 
This is also true for all other social products as the social web is essentially breeding a popularity contest. How many Likes will I get? How many followers do I have? How many people are going to reblog my post? How many karma points will I get?
 
What people are concerned about on the social web is their social status. The question they are asking can be simplified as “Do people like me?”
 
If you can build product that helps people get to a “Yes!” for the question above, congratulations! You have an addictive and viral product.

We have seen the value of Likes from the S1 filing of Facebook just last week. Facebook has built a multibillion dollar business by understanding what their users say they like, but more importantly they have incorporated Verbs in order to add more context to their users’ status updates.
 
The reason for them doing this is simple really. You can talk about what you Like and think all day but it simply doesn’t mean you will act on it. What is a much better indicator of possible behavior is a user’s prior behavior. Being able to understand the context of what users are doing will allow advertisers to target users even more accurately.
 
That is because if you listen to a certain type of music or watch a certain genre of movies frequently, chances are high that you would listen to the same type of music or watch the same genre of movie. Same goes for most lifestyle activities we engage in. Personal preferences are best understood through past behavior.
 
Activity tracking will be the future and privacy will be compromised. However, in a web eco-system where the social layer drives increasing amount of activity, it is bound to happen.
 
Activity tracking is not entirely a bad thing however because it provides metrics that provide deeper insights into human behavior and will help us make progress as a species.
 
In fact, if we are able to create a gamified tracking system that intrinsically rewards users, we will be able to solve much bigger real world problems together.

People have often advocated starting a new business during my own free time while I’m holding a full time job before jumping into it. Sure, it means stability and lower risks since I would probably be able to determine whether the business idea will work out.

However, the fact is that a very important aspect of building a good business is actually the founders’ ability to maintain a laser sharp focus on their vision and being able to execute the steps required to reach that vision.

Flow is a state of extremely high focus during an activity and it takes time to get into that state. Every time we switch from one activity to another, we break the flow and our productivity takes a huge beating. Activities that require high focus should be done with as little disturbance as possible.

A day job acts as a daily disturbance to an activity you should be fully committed to and focused on. While holding a day job now, I spend 3 hours a day traveling and 9 hours at the office (sometimes more). That is a total of 12+ hours a day spent not working on my product. Most of my energy get expended during those 12 hours as well and I reach home battered and depleted.

How can I convince the world that I believe in my vision if I am unwilling to dive into it and place my full commitment and focus on the business?

If you are starting a business right now while also working a full time job, stop kidding yourself. You are moving much slower than you should be.

‘Unfortunately, some groups believe that speech or ideas that they disagree with should be silenced. This could not be more wrong. No matter the point of view, everyone has a right to be heard.”  — MPAA

MPAA should stop being such a troll. Isn’t this what SOPA / PIPA was for? So big organizations can silence people but no one can silence the big organizations?

Hacking major sites like yours may not be the best course of action but it has certainly shown the double standards.


Full Statement from the MPAA:

“Our website and many others, including the Department of Justice, were attacked today and the hacker group Anonymous is claiming responsibility for the attacks. We are working with law enforcement authorities to identify those responsible. 

Unfortunately, some groups believe that speech or ideas that they disagree with should be silenced. This could not be more wrong. No matter the point of view, everyone has a right to be heard.

The motion picture and television industry has always been a strong supporter of free speech. We strongly condemn any attempts to silence any groups or individuals.     

The Internet is home to creativity, innovation and free speech. We want to keep it that way. Protecting copyrights and protecting free speech go hand in hand.”

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dexxus/5653503758/

Reflection is the first step for improvement. Without spending time to figure out what to learn and improve on, we fall into the danger of stagnation. This may come a little late but it must be done. Let’s take a look back at my 2011.
 
1. Toy with idea of Gamification
 
It was the beginning of a new year. Being an RPG lover, I started imagining living my life as if it was an RPG, gaining levels while completing quests and achievements.
 
I was sure it was a novel idea but some research proved that it was not. SCVNGR was the biggest real life Gamification service at that time.
 
My first thought was that I wanted to marry Gamification with instagram’s stickiness as an app. Sourcing for funding was a tough matter at that time and I was unsure how to move the idea forward. It probably sucked anyway, as all who have experience in tech startups would tell you about your initial idea.
 
Lesson Learned: Fund raising is a difficult process for early stage ideas and first time founders. Get a working prototype out!
 
2. Account executive work
 
I continued my work as an account executive and learned a lot about customer service and project management, though project management was mostly planning what the client wanted.
 
During this time, I also discovered my love for coding as I made amendments to my developers’ code due to tight timelines.
 
I loved building things. I knew this subconsciously but I was afraid of failing as I never had prior experience, but I took my first step towards development by asking for a switch of department.
 
Lesson Learned: If you want something, dare to ask for it. If you never take that step, no one can help you get what you want.


3. Hunger to be a web developer
  
I was filled with the hunger to develop for the web and devoured knowledge of HTML5 & CSS3 like a famished vulture. I began picking up jQuery for how easy it was to add interaction to sites and I slowly transitioned into the role of a web developer.
 
I had little time to sleep as I juggled the extra load of learning but I thoroughly enjoyed the learning process.
 
Lesson Learned: Coding is a creative and iterative process. It takes awhile to get the code right sometimes but the winning sensation is immensely gratifying.
 
Also, coder’s block is extremely dangerous and causes me to visit Hacker News more times than I should.
 

4. Founder Institute 

During the last quarter of 2011, I received news that I got accepted into Fall 2011’s SG FI batch. I jumped on the opportunity with only the slightest of hesitation. (ok, just a bit of research on Quora before I paid the course fees.)

Q4 of 2011 would prove to be the toughest period of 2011 for me as I juggled the course schedule, the assignments and an intensive work schedule on my day job doing web development. Few hours of sleep with lots of late night discussions, brainstorming and coding became the norm.

It is paying off now as I am about to start working on Questified full time, taking the full plunge into entrepreneurship.

Founder Institute has been the forceful helping hand that’s pushing my non-functioning aircraft off the edge. I am all ready to start the sprint to make sure the air craft can fly before it hits the ground.

Bring it on 2012.