Entrepreneur In Training

It’s July already? Not good.

It can’t be July yet. There are things that I have to get done that were supposed to be done in June because I said they would be. The beta launch of Supplier View being top of mind. Honestly I’m not happy about this right now at all. I fully expected that this would happen and was even expecting it to be more mid-June than late June. According to my calendar though today is July 3rd and we aren’t live in any fashion. This is a one man show so I have no one to blame but myself. I need to be more clear and direct on my expectations with my outsourced development team. One of the things I am making a conscious effort on is not trying to be friends with everyone I meet. Its just not possible and sometimes its not even beneficial. Right now I need my developers to be my developers. I have lots of people to drink with and talk about sports. What I don’t have is my development done.

For those of you that have signed up for the beta group, please be patient. It is coming. Soon. If you haven’t signed up for the beta group and are interested about how Supplier View is going to change how supplier performance management and development is done please do so at www.supplierview.com.

Posted in Entrepreneurship |

Yankee fan needs help

I’m traveling to NY/NJ tomorrow for a customer meeting on Tuesday. It will be my first time in New York since a Cub Scout trip to see the Yankees and Angels when I was 8 years old. With this being the final year of the Stadium before the new facility opens I really want to see a game on this trip. I’ve been asking some questions out on Twitter and so far people are skeptical of being able to pull this off given my schedule. I’m up for the challenge though. Here is my schedule.

I land at JFK at 4:37 PM on June 30. The Yankees play the Rangers at 7:05 PM. So the first challenge is getting from JFK to the Stadium. I pulled this info from HopStop. According to this I should be able to make it to the stadium in plenty of time for the game. One problem…what do I do with my carry-on bag? Are there lockers at the stadium that I could stow that away during the game? Also is there anything about this route I should be aware of?

From: JFK
To: E 161ST ST and RIVER AVE, Bronx
Entrance near I-678
Take the JFK AirTrain from John F Kennedy Airport station heading to Jamaica Station
Get off at Sutphin/Jamaica Station
Transfer
Take the E train from Sutphin Blvd - Archer Av station heading Downtown / to World Trade Center
Get off at 7 Avenue
Transfer
Take the B train from 7 Avenue/53rd station heading Uptown / to Bedford Pk Blvd
Get off at 161 Street - Yankee Stadium
Exit near intersection of E 161st St and River Ave
Total travel time 1 hour 33 mins

Now that the game is over I have to get to Parsippany, NJ where my hotel and the customer meeting will be on Tuesday. 3 hours and 30 minutes? There has to be a better way. Any ideas?

From: E 161ST ST and RIVER AVE, Bronx
To: 909 PARSIPPANY BLVD, Parsippany-Troy Hills Twp, NJ
Entrance near intersection of E 161st St and River Ave
Take the D train from 161 Street - Yankee Stadium station heading Downtown / to Coney Island
Get off at 34 Street - Herald Sq
Exit near intersection of W 34th St and 6th Ave
Start out going West on W 34th St towards Broadway
Entrance near intersection of W 34th St and 7th Ave
Take the 12:34 AM NJ Transit - Montclair-Boonton Line from New York - Penn Station station heading to Hackettstown
Get off at Mountain Lakes
Exit near intersection of Midvale Rd and Romaine Rd
Start out going East on Midvale Rd
Turn right onto Intervale Rd
Turn left onto Glen Rd
Turn right onto Winding Way
Turn left onto Forest Dr
Turn right onto Parsippany Blvd
Total travel time 3 hours 21 mins

Alright blogosphere lets pull together and make this happen. Let the brilliant tips start flowing!

Posted in Other Stuff |

Make you cry for your Mommy

I finished up my month long CrossFit boot camp this morning with a grand finale workout called Filthy 50. It should have been called “I’m going to kick your ass and make you cry for your mommy”. At the point I was doing Burpees I told Matt that it was the first time in the whole boot camp I questioned my ability to finish any of the rounds. I went out to YouTube to embed a video here to show what a Filthy 50 workout is and found a great one. There are a couple of slight variations from the workout he does and the one I did but the two are very close. The guy in the video did his faster than I did which is good because it gives me something to go after. I was glad to see that the Burpees kicked his butt too. I was way pathetic looking doing mine. Matt was kind to count half of them.

Now that I’m done with the boot camp I want to keep going with CrossFit and get back to the distance running. The boot camp broke the rut I was in. I’m thinking I’ll do a half marathon this fall. Either Philadelphia in September or San Jose in October.

Posted in Running |

I really dropped the ball today

I don’t usually write blog posts in the middle of my work day, but I need some self-therapy. Get ready for a lot of ‘I’s.

I was given an assignment by a person a couple of rungs up my management ladder at the end of last week.  I thought it was completely ridiculous. I told her why I didn’t think it was necessary. I told her why the information was already there. She held firm though and said this was the expectation and that she needed me to do this. So what did I do? I procrastinated. I couldn’t get my mind around doing this because I thought it was stupid. I waited until the very last minute and then did really poor job on what she needed. Which then put her in a bad spot with her management. In the end I dropped the ball. Now I feel like crap because I let her down.

This isn’t about working at BigCo or a start-up. Everyone has people that rely on them for something. And that means sometimes you have to do some thing that you think is stupid. Maybe its hiring a lawyer to validate some color by numbers Terms of Service document or buying a fax machine so that the one person at that one big client can get you documents. Some things are worth fighting for or you can just knock it out and move on. I choose the wrong option this time. 

Dammit.

Posted in Other Stuff |

Supplier View mid-June update

I was in Bryan, TX today meeting with Downtown Cartel. We caught up on the development status, clarified on some use cases and requirements , and sat down for a good dinner at Square One Bistro. One of the side benefits of working with smart guys who you can actually socialize with is good conversation on everything from the value of a playoff system in college football to the coolness of a Wii to the adoption of social media.

At the end of our meet-up we mapped out a timeline for the next couple of weeks. Part of this is that Monday I expect I’ll be working on a live site and maybe a week or so after that invite a few people for a private beta.

Supplier View will always be about a very iterative process on design, development and function. What is released on private beta day 1 will not be what the public sees on launch day 1. What the public sees on launch day 1 will not be what the public sees on launch day + 365. Rapid, meaningful iteration while meeting customer needs all the time will be the standard.

Haven’t filled out the private beta interest form, why not?

Posted in Entrepreneurship |

What do you mean you found a bug?

I was reading on Webmonkey about a defect that was found in what should have been the last release candidate before Firefox 3 is released. Reading between the lines it appears that this was found towards the end of testing. Mozilla hasn’t formally announced a release date for FF3 but people were expecting it shortly. Pretty mundane stuff. It doesn’t appear to have been important enough for Techcrunch to jump all over it. So why the blog post?

Because at my current place of employment finding a defect towards the end of testing will get your abilities as a human being questioned. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard somebody ask “Why wasn’t that found earlier in the testing cycle?” Which makes me want to jump through the phone and scream obscenities that would make Brad Feld blush. The purpose of testing is to find defects, to break stuff. You have a testing window and a plan because it takes time. You don’t test everything on Day 1 and then sit on your ass for the next 3 weeks. You test for the whole 3 weeks (or whatever). To try to make someone feel stupid or less of a tester because they found something at the end of the testing window is asinine. We should be giving out bounties. I’m getting off my soapbox now.

Note to self…when its time to hire a full time QA person for Supplier View, reward them handsomely.

Posted in Entrepreneurship |

A note to myself from the future

Dear David,

It’s tough running your own company sometimes isn’t it? Remember those days at BigCo? There was lots of gravy but it was some pretty bland gravy wasn’t it? Remember what you read in that Founders at Work interview with Brewster Kahle?

Kahle: Having your own company means that its much harder to blame somebody else. If you are working inside a big company, you can always blame management, marketing, engineering or something. But when you are running it, you can’t, because its all your responsibility….

Another, I thought, was expressed really well by Don Yannias of Encyclopedia Britannica. He said “Now that I am running Encyclopedia Britannica, I have to be Mr. Sunshine every day.” Because people are looking to you, not just for the ideas, but for the general attitude toward how to make the whole thing work. Carrying a company is a lot of weight. You have to make sure that you keep on the uptick - not just financially, but also make it so that it’s a fun environment and people want to work there.”

So David remember that you WANTED to do this, you NEEDED to do this, and it was absolutely the RIGHT thing to do!

Keep your chin up, keep laughing and go out there and overwhelm somebody with greatness.

Sincerely,

David

Posted in Entrepreneurship | 4 Comments »

A really chill Saturday

I’m just taking it easy today. Work at HP was pretty intense this past week with lots of activity around a release occurring this weekend and some early indications of what the EDS acquisition will mean to my organization. I didn’t get much done on Supplier View, but did continue to make contacts in the entrepreneurship community in Salt Lake City in preparation for my move next month. One cool development was my first interview! A friend of mine writes a blog that gets a good amount of eclectic traffic. Aaron recently started an interview series and I was really happy to answer some questions.

The item that has me most in need of a day of downtime though is the completion of my first week of CrossFit boot camp. I was in the Army for 8 years and I’ve been running seriously for the last 4 years, but CrossFit is introducing me to a new chapter of fitness. If you aren’t familiar with CrossFit take a look at this video.

I’m doing my boot camp at Champions CrossFit. Matt is completely kicking my ass. Can’t wait for more of it on Monday!

Posted in Other Stuff, Running |

Cities and Ambition - my perspective

Two blog posts in one night. I’m on a roll.

Paul Graham writes a brilliant series of essays, mostly about the start-up world, and his latest really has me thinking. Isn’t that what a good essay is supposed to do?

In this essay Graham discusses the ambitions that drive a city. In New York it’s money, in LA its fame, Boston its intelligence and in the Silicon Valley area its innovation. As I prepare for yet another move, this essay make me think about the cities that I’ve lived in. One point that Graham makes is that not all cities have this single identifiable ambition. Great cities do. I’m not sure that I’ve lived in a great city yet, but here is my take on the cities I have lived in the last few years.

Colorado Springs: Colorado Springs is about being outdoors. Its takes great pleasure in being in the annual healthiest cities lists. It could be Boulder except it doesn’t have a great university. It has a very good college. It also struggles with the heavy impact the church and the military has on the community which tends to temper creativity. A nice place to live but not a place to grow.

Roseville/Sacramento: I only lived here for a year so it’s hard to provide a good analysis. Roseville was retail. Spending money, eating out, and driving new cars. The capital of California is in Sacramento but no one wants to go there. Try to setup a meeting in Sacramento and see what happens. This area is about being close enough to everything else. 2 hours to Tahoe, 2 hours to the Bay Area, 2 hours to Napa. It seemed like people lived here to be close enough to easily get away.

Houston: Again, only a year here so I’m no expert. The problem with Houston is that it’s huge, it doesn’t seem like anyone lives here by choice (birth or job is why they are here), and the economy is driven by energy which no one seems to be a big fan of these days. That being said there are some incredibly motivated people here that want to make Houston a destination for those with great ideas. I wish them luck.

The next stop on my migrant voyage is Salt Lake City. I don’t know what Salt Lake City is about. What is the ambition of Salt Lake City?

While I’m at it what are the ambitions of some of the cities that Paul doesn’t mention: Boulder. Austin. Atlanta. London. Tokyo. Seattle.

I would love to hear your opinions.

Posted in Other Stuff | 4 Comments »

An exciting day

Today was a very good day. It started with a 5K in downtown Houston. It was hot. I ran a 22:53 which is about a 7:25 pace. Nothing to be too excited about but nothing to be ashamed of either. The best part was getting together with some friends and driving into Houston, meeting up afterwards and just catching up on different topics.

Next up was some work. In the afternoon I posted this on Twitter

Though Supplier View is not launched yet, the web site is operational with a sign up page for the beta launch which will happen in the next couple of weeks. I was really excited about this partly because I had to learn a little about working with the Apache web server to get the page posted and the logos working. I was just sitting at my laptop with a big goofy grin on my face when I finally got everything working!

If you are involved in procurement at your company, interested in supplier development or supplier performance management, or Enterprise 2.0, I encourage you to sign up for the beta.

After that success I went and played 9 holes of golf with another friend and had a great time. It was even hotter but I hardly noticed. I hit some good balls, lots of bad ones and enjoyed every one of them.

This evening has involved getting the mail servers configured for Supplier View and continuing with my attempts to learn Ruby. I’m about to take it easy for the rest of the evening and maybe catch up on the backlog of Scrubs episodes on my DVR.

It’s been a great last day of May. June will be even better.

Posted in Entrepreneurship |