Monday 25 August 2014

My gripes with Firefox

I'm not surprised that Chrome is winning the browser competition.


Here's a list of small annoying things with Firefox vs Chrome:
  1. Upon hovering on a tab, I can't close it after I have more than 7-8 tabs open. I have to first click on a tab, and only then can close it. Chrome always shows the (x) on a browser tabs, even with dozens of tabs open.
  2. Copy and paste sometimes just doesn't work. This happens on occasion. I copy something in one tab, switch to another tab and can't paste anything. Also cannot paste anything 
  3. Omnibox anyone? I type a word into the Firefox address bar. I get an error message. I do the same thing in Chrome. I get search results. Of course, when I type TWO words or more into the Firefox address bar, I do get search results. Is it really so difficult to anticipate a one-word search keyword, Mozilla?

Saturday 16 August 2014

Seven lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup

(Background: Dinnr was an ad-hoc, same day ingredient delivery service. Select a recipe on our website, and we deliver everything you need to cook that recipe at home, all the items pre-measured with printed instructions. All you need at home is oil, salt and pepper and a reasonably equipped kitchen.)

It all ended on 12 January 2014, when I decided not to accept a small second round of investment I had secured via crowd-funding platform Seedrs. Seedrs knew about the difficulties we were in and we agreed with the Seedrs team that it was best to cancel the investment. I had run out of ideas on how to turn things around, how to make people buy our product. The only thing I would do with this money would be to try to acquire more infrequent customers and keep the lights on for another few months. No way it would be an investment that would give investors a 10x return.  

It wouldn't have been enough money to pivot to another business model. No one (myself included) even had a good hypothesis on what it could be that would work in London and that we could leverage our assets for. 

I wasn't particularly tired. Even after months of fruitless trying, I was as keen to make things happen as in the early days, but I did feel like I arrived at the end of a dead-end street. Pulling the plug radically was the only reasonable (and ethical) thing to do. 

In those days, I spent 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, sitting in a cold warehouse in West Acton, hot air blowers creating 25 degree bubbles around parts of my body in an otherwise 14-15 degree room. The large industrial fridges were empty. Long gone were the days I pre-stocked ingredients for faster order fulfillment. Now, when an order would come through, I would jump on my bike and buy fresh ingredients at a nearby superstore. After 15 months of operations, we had approximately one order per day, generating on average £26 in revenue and supposedly 30% in gross margin, but given the low volumes, we were losing money on every order. 



Now, with the distance of a few months, it sounds positively crazy to run a "business" like this. But of course, one sticks to the guns because one has set out to make things happen and one has an obligation to investors. And then there's the adage of "a winner never quits", tales of entrepreneur legends who lost all their money, got abandoned by family and friends, were so hungry that they ate cardboard, only to triumph in the end and build a global empire. 

But I had realized that it was over. Dinnr simply didn't have legs (never had them to begin with, to be explained below) and I had reached an inner state where continuing would have been insane. After having spent tens of thousands of pounds of my personal money and working obsessively on an idea that had inspired me for a long time, I felt that I had given it all and that it was time to move on.

This rather long blog post is about my lessons learned and is a post mortem. I will try not to go too much into the Dinnr specifics. Most of the readers of this post will not be interested in Dinnr itself. Instead, I will try to reflect on my 18 months and 12 days of entrepreneurship and see what I can come up with that will be applicable to any startup.

Rock'n'Roll. 

Saturday 26 July 2014

How to get press - great piece by Jason Calacanis

I've been a big fan of Jason Calacanis' "This Week In Startups" podcast where he interviews entrepreneurs - thanks to Pedro C. who told me about it months ago. I really like Jason's incisive questions that are sometimes so blunt and to the point that I hold my breath to see if the person will answer.

On his podcast, @jason also does 15-20 minute pieces on "Startup basics" and I recommend to any early stage entrepreneur to listen to them.

The latest one concerned getting press and the salient points are:
  1. Identify what you want to achieve with an article mention - grow your profile to attract funding? Customer acquisition? Talent acquisition? And then target the right publication. Don't just do "raise awareness, that's lame"
  2. Build a relationship with the journalist - read what they have written about (you have no right to write to a journalist if you haven't read their last 10 articles), mention them in a blog post, tweet to them. No suck-ups, of course
  3. If you are pre-company, have some form of web presence (blog, social media presence) that the journalist can refer to, something to connect with that's a well conceived presence, ideally with a logo
  4. Do a press tour - "I will be in town, do you have 15-20 minutes to spare for me to show off our new version of product X?" Go yourself, the founder, and the journalist - no PR people. 
  5. Do not do generic pitches to journalists - they land in the spam folder. 
I'm looking forward to the "attending events" segment that's coming up. Follow @jason to know when it's out. 
And follow me @mbohanes :-)


Friday 14 March 2014

Where is the line between helpful feedback and losing friends?

A chat with a friend triggered an internal debate about how people perceive constructive feedback. Often I feel like I'm a martian among humans when pointing out opportunities for improvement. Despite the "launch and iterate" mentality that I am surrounded with, it seems that Dale Carnegie in "How to win friends and influence people" is right when he says that it's better for the interpersonal realm to NOT point out errors made or, as they call it, suggest opportunities for improvement.

I regularly read a blog from an acquaintance which has great substance but poor form. The grammar nazi that I am cringes at errors like the famous it's / its, plural apostrophes ("two apple's and two orange's", anyone?) and other such hooplas that often make me completely unable to focus on the blog's contents and have my inner Hitchens violently tugging at the chains that keep him from unleashing his righteous fury in defense of the English language. I can't tell you, dear reader, how often my fingers itch to write to the author and serve up a fresh shit sandwich of constructive feedback ("great blog, mate, but PLEASE check your grammar...").

Monday 10 March 2014

Notes from Tech for Good meetup

Tech for Good is a meetup that tracks how technology can help with social issues. Lily Ash Sakula- partner at Bethnal Green Ventures chairs the event.
I came in towards the end of @markoneinfour's presentation


1. Mark Brown - One in Four Magazine. Doc Ready App
Problems when developing apps for people with mental health issues:
Too little horizon scanning in mental health, and too little money

Monday 10 February 2014

One doesn't discover one's passions. One develops them.

Heard a great piece on a podcast with Cal Newport who advocates strategic planning when it comes to your career. Passion for your work is to be developed, not discovered like a hidden treasure. 

He argues that many people who end up being very happy and fulfilled in their career don't seem to follow their passion. Rather, they rationally look at what is valuable in the marketplace and consider if there is an overlap between their current skill set and the thing the marketplace values. Then they work hard to become very good in this skill set. Becoming highly competent in what you do maximizes your personal feelings of autonomy, impact and connection to people, which, according to Newport, are the key ingredients in personal fulfillment.

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Good startup intro videos

So we at Dinnr are working on a video. 
Let's have a look at what other startups have come up with and how they rank on the criteria (score out of 10)

  1. FUN: is fun and entertaining
  2. LENGTH: has the right length (I don't think that there's a uniform correct length - different products have different levels of complexity. But when it starts dragging and you think "OMG move on, I GOT it!" then it's too long)
  3. CLEAR: gets the point across
  4. UNIQUE: has a unique and memorable style

FUN: 8 has a few good chuckle moments
LENGTH: 8 a tad too long
CLEAR:  7 for a complex product like this, a screenshot or two would have helped
UNIQUE: 6 high quality cartoon but not particularly memorable graphics nor music
Total score: 7.25



FUN: 10 has just the right level of hilarity without yet distracting from the message. 
LENGTH: 10 is long but the comedic value totally warrants it
CLEAR:  6 I don't yet quite get what are the options as a customer - what types of razors, is it subscription only or can I also just buy? 
UNIQUE: 10 there's a reason this video has 10m views. 
Total score: 9

3. Hubbub
(doesn't allow embedding)

FUN: 1 doesn't intend to be fun or entertaining 
LENGTH: 2 way too long to get the message across
CLEAR:  6 I understand what it's about but I don't really know my options, when I can get delivery, what's the process etc. In 3 minutes, this could have been brought in somehow. 
UNIQUE: 7 good music, good to meet the CEO. 
Total score: 4



FUN: 6 funny graphics and pleasant character animation.  
LENGTH: 10 perfect length to get point across - it's a complex product so 69 seconds are warranted.
CLEAR:  10 Perfectly clear - no questions outstanding. 
UNIQUE: 4 not particularly unique - lots of cartoons like this around. However, good pacing and good voice. Music might have helped but frequent sound effects were good. 
Total score: 7.5

Many more great videos can be seen here.