Archive

And we’re back just after lunch with another episode of Alexis writing 750 words daily! Lily and I just had veggie chili from the soup place around the corner in efforts to staying warm while temperatures dropped to almost freezing over night. It’s cold! This spring sucks so far! What the hell?!

A few noteworthy things today:

I updated the UI for timestacks.co

I only realized yesterday that I’ve been using my own little time-management software called “timestacks” for almost a year now. It’s exciting because I really wanted to know if the system and process I devised would work for me before launching it publicly. I hadn’t used timestacks for a while but now that getting stuff done is really important I have gone back to scheduling my time more rigorously and it looks like its working. In total I’ve completed more than 450 discreet tasks such as “Read Book X”, “Take a walk”, “Wrap up project Y”, “Write invoice for client B”, “Send proposal to prospect D” et cetera. 450+ tasks completed is pretty good I think and I have everything tracked on a day-to-day basis. The UI I built for myself a year ago was good enough to validate the functioning but in 2014 it’s important to also make it look good. I’m going to allow other people to join the platform soon.

I updated the copy for timestacks.co

Just because timestacks work for me doesn’t mean it’s obvious how they even work for anyone else. I went ahead and updated the public-facing part of the site and wrote/edited a few paragraphs that explain why, what and a bit of how timestacks have been working for myself. I haven’t finished writing this part and think a quick intro video will possibly do a better job communicating but it’s time well spent now to prepare making the app public soon. (No one is drawing a salary here, so morale is crucial to have everyone stay excited about the project. It’s especially important when you really can’t assume or force or expect anything from anyone you’re working with. Because it’s a startup everyone is responsible. However, because no one is paid, no one can be held responsible.)

We kicked off the day with the team with a good standup

I got in to The Farm early enough, around 9:30, to prepare my day and prepare the standup meeting. Staying in touch with the team on a daily basis makes it easier to feel connected and to feel in control in an environment where everything is up for grabs at any point. I really enjoy seeing everyone’s faces at least once every day and we are doing a good job keeping things nice and short in respect of everyone’s time. I’ve always been a person to talk a lot and I’m learning to keep myself shorter than usual. I like giving context and rationale to what I say but I am learning that there is a healthy balance between relaying information clearly and rambling.

Lily and I discussed a thank-you initiative and are going to plan a small get-together as well

I was unclear about the types of events Adrian and Lily had been planning and considered saying “Thank You” to our first VC partners a priority. Lily filled me in that, for events, she was thinking of one “Happy Hour” where we get together the VCs we’re working with and one “Launch Event” that caters to existing VC partnerships, new VCs and startup founders. I added that the lowest hanging fruit would be to first set up an event where we say “Thank You” to the 6 or 7 people that have helped us launch the first set of data and Lily came up with a great idea: Instead of doing an event, let’s just send them a package of sorts with a thank you note. That’s nice and easy and doesn’t require everyone to come in at the same time. I think that’s a great idea and I think it’s easily implemented. The goal is to have the thank-yous go out by end of coming week.

Today, for the rest of the day, I’ll be working on Code with Sandip and then hopefully I get a chance to work on our onboarding copy. I scheduled myself 45 minutes for todays words and I’m coming in at around 35 minutes so far. That’s good to know and I definitely think that giving myself the limits of time to finish my tasks has helped me accomplish more in less time with greater intensity and less procrastination.

That’s it for today!

Okay, here we go again with writing in the middle of the afternoon although I really didn’t want to do it this time. Across from me sits an english man who hasn’t gotten the memo how rude and dumb it is to take phone calls at the table while others are working. Well, for today I’m writing with a spoon of honey sitting next to me and a fresh cup of tea steaming. Todays productivity has had its ups and downs but overall the direction and goals we want to reach as a team are clearer. The past 3 weeks I would say have been useful to take a step back and really think about what we’re doing here. In particular, this means that we’ll position ourselves as a data startup more than a pure software startup. The challenge of a data startup lies in collecting a lot of the right kind of data at a good level of quality. In best case, the data is somewhat general-purpose but has many uses that make it indispensable once used. Basically, the data that we’re collecting and that we’re going to collect moving forward needs to have a match with the right type of market and the markets needs. I’ve been raving about a company that has been doing this right: CompStak. They are serving two general customer segments with two distinct value propositions:

Customer Segment 1: Broker, Appraiser, Researcher –

Brokers get to access the CompStak database by sharing their own Commercial Lease Comps and getting “points” for doing so. After sharing their own data and having it verified by an internal team at CompStak a broker gets points he can spend by first searching down to other data points and spend points to get access to the actual figure of the found comps. It’s pretty genius I have to say because having the point system ensures a few things that a data sourcing company like them (and ourselves) need:

1. Get more data – The only way it seems to get access to more data is to share more data. This will be especially challenging for us where we ask users to enter new data every 3 months. If the resource (the rest comps) are scarce and access is measured by points spent from the get-go, sitting down and entering

2. Get better data – Requiring recurring data is one thing but the problem now is how to ensure that participants not just plop in random data. CompStak has solved this issue with two measures. First off, every data point gets reviewed and can be flagged by an internal team. Secondly, other users can flag a data point as questionable. If a data point gets too many second-guesses, the user account gets blocked.

Customer Segment 2: Landlords, Investors, Lenders

I’m not 100% sure how this segment is served but it looks like they basically pay for general access without having to provide their own data. They probably don’t even create comp records themselves but need the information upstream towards their deals. From one anecdote we learned that having access to the data is crucial for raising money and making the right decision.

What I find fascinating is how the actual customer segments are diverse in their day-to-day dealings (Broker, Appraiser, Researcher, Landlords, Investors, Lenders) but all rely on the same set of data with the same type of grouping and filtering. It’s curious how a good amount of quality data can be so sought after.

What I also find noteworthy is how they focussed on getting really, really strong coverage in New York first before moving into other markets. This is a discussion we’ve had internally and seeing them following the path of focus confirms the assumption we’ve had: Get strong in one city first and be able to provide a lot of value to that geographic segment (However, we won’t say no if someone from another place wants to get on board and put in their data!)

Anyways, that’s what’s been turning me on in the past 30 hours or so. Our growth using the onboarding flow we built last month is still slow. There can be many factors that affect how and when startups join VA but we saw an immensely larger group of data flowing in when we were just using spreadsheets. While, yes, it’s possible to automate or improve a visitor flow using web forms, it seems like people like sending around spreadsheets. And if that’s what they want, we won’t say no. Instead we’ll probably just automate the import of the files on our end and it won’t take much more time on our side but we hope to get more data than in the past few weeks.

Focus & user understanding.

And finally, I’m curious what companies or products have inspired you in recent days. Post your links in the comments below!