Before joining our startup I worked for a media company. Just like any jobs you had good days and bad ones. During the bad ones I always had the option to shut the door to my office and calm down. There were plenty of ways that you could feel better, from calling a friend and venting to looking for something inspirational to read.
There’s two things I’m learning in the startup world. The ups and downs are much more extreme. One day it feels like the greatest thing ever, and the next is really low. Sometimes it’s only hours apart.
The second thing is that there’s no time to be “off.” As I’ve shared, I share the room with five other guys. If I’m down or snippy, they all know. The same is true if you are up. Trying to be eager and level headed is very important as a result.
This came about in particular as a particularly long purchase cycle appeared to be coming to completion. It would have been a major milestone and triggered a bunch of activities on my part. However, the seller pulled a bit of a bait and switch and things were not as they seem. One minute I could feel them momentum building, and the next we hit a brick wall.
It’s a bit later and I’m calmer now about it, but I was really angry at the time. It was a good reminder not to get too excited before any deal is closed. I learned that in business development, as every deal we ever had (and I think every deal ever) had something come up at the 11th hour. I don’t know why I expected this to be any different. We’ll take the emotion out and make the best business decision. That’s all that can really be done. 
Tags: media
Everyone knows about happy hour, that time just after work when you can unwind with a beer and your friends. In my household, we have just the opposite, the unhappy hour. Unfortunately this usually happens right around the time I get home from working on www.free-singles.com. I’m tired, and it couldn’t happen at a worse time.
Here’s the way it typically goes. I get home at around 7 most days. I’ve worked a long day, as has my wife, and both kids are home. We’re ready to eat, or getting ready. That’s when it starts to break loose. I’m not sure why, but Curtis often starts to get a bit fussy right around then. After that, Celeste starts to get antsy and want attention. Two kids need us, but we have things to do like feed our faces. Celeste doesn’t want to sit at the table with us, so she’d like to get up and play.
A tradition before kids was to sit at the table and enjoy some wine and conversation. We still try to do that, but the kiddos make it quite the challenge. It makes that short window at home for me when they are awake quite frantic.
The toughest part is that I really want to enjoy this time so much, but it often ends up being a disappointment. I’ve been working hard and I just want to have fun, but the tension level gets raised pretty fast.
I’ve been reminding myself that “it’s just a phase.” Curtis will get over his brief fussiness and be more interactive at the table. Celeste did precisely that, so I know it will go away sooner than later.
As quickly as the unhappy hour began, it ends. As we start to give the kids baths and get them ready for bed, things calm down and get much more pleasant. It really makes me wish we could move that unhappy hour to some other part of the day.
Tags: balance, dinner, evenings, happy hour, kids
In my typical crazy mode, I managed to have some fun this weekend. Audi was kind enough to send me an invitation to test out their new car as part of the audi driving experience on Texas Motor Speedway, and I was happy to oblige. My time was for 3pm on Sunday, and I just made it out there in time after spending time on the playground after Church and trying to fix a broken cable box. The speedway is some 35 miles from my house, so it a bit of a haul to get there.
Once I got there it was two hours of getting to drive some nice cars like they were stolen. The cars we drove were the Audi A4 with the 3.2 engine, a BMW 328xi, a Mercedes C300 and a Lexus IS 250. In my opinion, as i’m sure was the intent, the audi was quite impressive. It drove in a manner that inspired confidence and felt solidly built. The BMW was only a shade less desirable, mostly becuase it seemed to want to over-steer more than I would have expected for an all wheel drive car. Of course, that made it feel more like a typical BMW.
Certainly it was crazy in getting there, but on the way home I found out some bad news. Our site (www.free-singles.com) had gone down that morning, and I was still running adwords. I was about an hour away from home, with no real way to shut off the spigot. We wasted a fair bit on bad clicks as a result, but at least it was only for one day. The hard part was that it was a Sunday, which is often a pretty good day for online dating sign-ups. It was also a reminder that there’s an awful lot going on at any given time in my life right now.
Tags: adwords, Audi A4, online dating, online dating signups, Texas Motor Speedway, weekends
Today the password came off of our dating site (www.free-singles.com), allowing me to start test marketing the site. The url isn’t what we hope to be on long term, so we’re keeping our spend very low for right now. It’s still a chance to test out what works for our site.
Let me start by telling you what our brand is intended to be about. We’re shooting to have a dating site that is pure, honest, respectful. We have this rating system called realratings to allow people to verify the authenticity of the profiles on the site. We want our site to be an oasis for honest people to meet online. We’ve tried to put out the message that we don’t want people online that are just looking to “hook up” or for one night stands.
So you might understand why I’m a bit upset that my first conversion was someone looking for “erotic fun” Certainly there are a great number of people online that seek no strings attached relationships, but I wanted my site to be free of them.
Even worse, my wife was sitting right next to me as I had this “proud” achievement. Awkward… My wife is a very moral individual and this is the furthest thing from her world view.
I’m viewing this as a challenge. We tried putting the line “If you are looking for a one night stand, this site isn’t for you” Maybe that isn’t strong enough. Maybe our splash page is too urban. Who knows right now. But what ever the issue is someone we didn’t think would find our site appealing, did.
PS - No personal disrespect to the erotic fun seeker, if that’s what you are into fine. I just was hoping you’d go to a site that’s a bit more your speed.
The one thing I haven’t talked about too much is the actual startup I’m working for, rather than the experience, so a bit of background seems in order. The company is ready to launch a new free Internet dating site with an interesting angle. We are working to make the site as honest as possible. We will be using the power of the community to make sure that people can feel safe and secure that the person they are communicating with is real and honest.
There’s a lot of excitement for us around this concept. It’s a pretty universal complaint in online dating for people to show up to meet someone and find that the person is using photos that are 5 years and 20 pounds ago. Using the community to help keep people honest in online dating is only the first thing we are going to do, but we think its a very significant first step.
We are also actively testing the site. We are seeking churches and other non-profit groups with access to single individiauls to test out the site while its in a private beta. In exchange for the group participation, we’ll make a donation to the organization. Honest and active people are a key target for us, so the feed back is very important.
It’s been an interesting experiecne for me. I’ve been married to my high school sweetheart for many years now, so I know very little about dating, let alone the Internet version. Hopefully, it makes me more objective as I have to look at data objectively. I can’t be a focus group of one.
Today I had lunch in a restaurant that shall remain nameless, to protect the potentially innocent. At the time, a shrimp quesadilla seemed like a good idea. However, it really didn’t seem all that clever a few hours later when my stomach began churning. It started off innocently enough, but grew to a loud clatter rather quickly. It wasn’t that long before everyone else in the room knew said shrimp was no friend of mine.
For a moment, let me describe the glamorous life of a startup. I share an office with six other people in an area of about 150 square feet. Our desks are folding tables, and one of them squeaks. I’ve aspired to have a paperless office, and that’s a good thing because there wouldn’t be much room for a filing cabinet. It’s great for team building and work, but there is no privacy at all. Gum is required after a garlic filled lunch, let alone what I was likely to eminate.
So a churning stomach was well noted by everyone. I was feeling green as could be, and I was sure that everyone could feel that too. I finally was feeling so awful that I had to leave. I struggled home and lied down for a while. My daughter knew I had a “tummy ache”
A few hours latter the pressure had passed. All I could think about as I started to feel better was this episode of South Park:
When it was all said and done, I lost a few hours when I needed to build some of the details of our marketing plan. At least I didn’t make our micro office a biohazard zone.
Tags: ache, home, Marketing, South Park, Startup
As I recently noted, one of my roles is working for a startup in Dallas focused on internet dating. The site is ready to go live in the next couple of days, and there are just tons of things to clear up before we launch. Even though my responsibility is for marketing the site, and most of my action will occur once the site is live, there’s a lot for everyone to do. I could work at home right now, but since everyone else is putting in 12 hours at the office I’m trying to do the same. It’s a bit of a sacrifice with two kids at home. However, it’s worth it to show commitment since I’m the new guy on the team.
The hard part of the sacrifice came tonight in the form of a phone call. It was my daughter right before she went to bed.
As I answered the phone I heard a gentle “Hello” in the sweet innocent voice that only a child can make.
Then she said:
I miss you Daddy
I love you Daddy
Her voice was so beautiful to hear that it just broke my heart to still be at the office.
Startups are hard. Having a family is hard. Putting the two together is that much more challenging.
After a few moments, I started to think about friends that are consultants. They spend most of the week in nondescript hotels far away from their family. At least I get to go home and see my sleeping daughter and son before I go to bed, and see them in the morning before I go to work. They are a big part of the reason that I want to do something like this that matters in the first place.
We’re pushing for a release in just a few days, and then I’m pretty sure that I’ll be working even harder. It’s little moments like that that make it both hard and possible. I’m sure that little voice will be quite inspiring to me in the morning and in future days.
Tags: Dallas, internet dating
One of the reasons that I wanted to start this blog in the first place was because I wanted one place to centralize all of the many different things I find myself involved with. Just in trying to install the blog, I’ve had to deal with a screaming child who insisted on having goldfish. Just yesterday I was creating a couple of new domains, while dealing with the other child’s teetihing issues.
Burning the candle at both ends isn’t descrptive enough. I have at least 4 ends to my candle.
The first is that of a parent and husband. With two kids that I enjoy immensely, and a wife that I adore, I get drawn into tons of things to do all of the time.
The second is in working with a startup. We’ve are just about to launch a new website that will be a unique offering for internet dating. We’ll have a great system for people to use to communicate and ways to make people feel more safe and secure that they are dealing with someone who is honest and authentic. It’s quite the experience, and I have the daunting task of making sure the world knows about it. More on that later.
A third is as a frequent blogger. I’ve started blogs on reaching the unreachable consumers at www.skal8.com , a blog about lying daters at www.bsdate.com, a blog on the newspaper business at www.newspaperbiz.com. I try to write for each of them when ever I can.
The final is that of my own interests. I love wine have a 100 bottle or so collection. I enjoy computer games, but rarely have time to play them anymore. There are times that I feel bad that I bought a Wii, and it sits idle quite often. A few of my ends intersect, as I blog on wine at winedfw.blogspot.com for a wine club that I run and of course in this blog is where all the ends come together
Just in trying to write this I had to look up 4 menus for various restaurants in the area so that my family could decide where to go to lunch. Here’s to multitasking. I couldn’t make it if I only had one thing to do.
Tags: internet dating