Georgia Climbs a Tree

Georgia climbed her first tree today.

Avila Beach

It's a gorgeous day in Avila Beach, Ca. Having lunch here today with
my family.

Cake At A Birthday Party

I've never seen kids pay attention like they so when they are watching
a birthday cake cut.

Baby Hair-Do

My wife isn't very happy with Julia's hair-do this morning. I slicked
it back and put it in a ponytail. Then used a little hairspray to
give it a little hold.

Golden Gate Bridge Photo

I've been trying to get a good photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. With
a little more light, this would have been a nice picture.

Fleet Week San Francisco

The girls are watching the Blue Angels fly their jets at Crissy Field.

Family Walk

Taking the family to Walter Haus Park.

Dress Code

In case you missed the memo. The dress code is goggles and rain boots.

California St

Heading down California Street in San Francisco.

Bomb Sniffing Dogs

I've noticed that there is frequently a german shepherd in BART that
is sniffing for bombs.

I asked the policeman handling the dog about it and all he would
whisper is that he is a bomb sniffing dog.

I've also seen more of them at the airports like the one photoed
below. I snapped his picture at the Ontario Airport last night.

I've always enjoyed seeing animals work. Only if the Iphone had a
video camera, then I could have captured this one on the job.

It's a Boy!

After two girls, I heard somewhere that it is an 80 percent chance
that third baby is girl as well. It looks like we bucked the odds.
It's a boy.

When Can You Charge for Listings

This is continuation on classifieds. In order to charge for listings
the site has to have one of two compoments - that are really one
thing. Buyers.

People pay to list on eBay, even though there are a zillion free
places to post because eBay has an enormous community of buyers and
the likelyhood of selling your item is good. With the exception of
craigslist, there are few places that offer this.

So, if your sites new or lacks an established traffic flow of buyers,
then it's nearly impossible to sell listings. Unless the listing fee
is used to attract buyers.

If I was going to try and start a paid classified website, I'd try and
build a community first. Microsoft tried to launch a free classified
website on the strength of its funnel. I doubt that this service has
the stregth to take on craigslist. However, Facebook launched a
classified site on top of its community. I think this has a good
chance of becoming the dominant classified site.

Classifieds

Craigslist turned local classifieds for newspapers upside down.
Cutting prices to the low cost of free for most types of listings.
This has caused a serious financial issue for newspapers.

Today I learned that a large piece of the online ad spend growth is
expected to come from online classifieds in four big categories. Jobs,
autos, misc and real estate.

eBay has been succesful with the pay per listing model, but I'm not
sure that this market isn't headed towards free.

Also, the trend is heading for decentralization of the listings. Sort
of like YouTube for classifieds.

The killer solution seems like an API that accepts listings and a
service that pushes it everywhere you would like it to be posted. For
example, I want to fill out one form, post it to ebay craigslist etc,
have an option to post it to PPC search engines and gives me a widget
to post it anywhere.

Pets on Muni

I don't know if pets are allowed on Muni in San Francisco, but I see a
lot more of them these days. Yesterday, there was a giant lizard, but
I couldn't get a picture.

This little dog joined us for the morning commute.

Messaging

Messaging on a website is communicating benefits, highlighting a new
feature, providing help and alerting a person to other important
information.

The key to messaging is providing it at the right time. As products
add features the messaging becomes increasingly complex which makes
delivering the right message more difficult.

The interesting thing is its hard to find a website that consistently
delivers messaging across the site that is effective. On HubPages we
have used a right hand nav that highlights as you change boxes. We
have placed the answers to the top customer support issues in the
boxes. However, it hasn't cut down the inquiries. I wonder if the
best messaging is simply a big button with a phone number that is
answered quickly and answers questions accurately.

Fundamentals and Innovation

If the 80/20 rule holds for creating a viral website I'd say it's 80
percent fundamentals and 20 percent innovation.

Fundamentals are the core skills of running a site like customer
support, and making the app scale. Don't underestimate fundamentals.

Innovation is what makes your site standout. It differentiates you
from the noise. And its what people talk about when they describe
your site.

My advice is to innovate, but remember that successful innovations are
built on top of fundamentals. If Magic Johnson couldn't two hand chest
pass, he'd never be able to throw a 92 ft no look behind the back
bounce pass through a defenders legs and over the next persons head
for a perfect alley-oop

Beating Costco

I drove by this tire shop in Mountain View yesterday and there's this
BIG sign that says we "We Beat Costco."

What I didn't get in the picture is a we're hiring for $10/hr sign
right next to it.

See, Costco pays higher wages and that attracts talent that is
knowledgable about tires. Plus they have the best return policy around.

It takes a lot more than cheap prices to beat Costco.

Viral Website Part Four: Natural Search Engine Optimization

This is a huge way to leverage content into traffic. Don't do
anything blackhat or you will eventually get caught and killed.

Just organize the site well. And follow fundamental SEO rules. It's
best to start this from the beginning.

Ok. That's it for the series.

Viral Website Part Three: Give Them Something to Talk About

This has two meanings.

First, create something unique. If one person loves it, the chances
are good someone else will as well. People that love something tell
others.

Second. Let users communicate on the site. Comments, forums, chat,
and email are ways to do it. This makes a site sticky and keeps
people coming back.

Viral Website Part Two: Contribution

Once you have lots of people signing up, people need to get value to
continue to use it.

When it's new, there isn't that much there, so it must be easy for
people to contribute. Digg lets users submit stories, which is easy,
but even easier is to leave a comment and even easier than that is a
one click Digg vote.

The key is to figure out how people will contribute and to make sure
there is something very easy that anyone can do to add value.

Components of a Viral Website: Signup

If you learn by seeing what is successful, what do the large social
networks have in common? It's a well integrated signup process that
connects you at the beginning with people in your address book that
are already using the service as well makes it seamless to invite
others.

The downside is this technique has been criticized for being spammy.
So make sure users can opt out of sending emails.

The upside can be tremendous with thousands of people signing up
daily. The experience for each new user is also enhanced when they
are connected with more people they know.

Trading Up Problems

I try to be aware of the type of problems I'm dealing with daily. I
have two buckets. Good and bad.

Bad problems are ones that should have been prevented. I screwed up
and now it's biting me in the ass. Like a bug. Or a legal issue where
you're at fault. Or even worse, you lose customers.

Good problems are trying to decide which features to build. How to
scale because more people are using your service. Or where to invest
because your business is throwing off so much cash.

The key is to understand the type of problems you have. Then you'll
have a picture of where your business is heading.

Testing Googles New Video Upload...and Happy Bday Eddie

Picking a Better Name

Don't you think they could have picked a better name for their thrift
store?

This store is located smack downtown Ventura.

Losing Weight

I've been thinking of trying weight watchers to see if I can lose 20 lbs by Christmas. That would put me at about 210 lbs. One thing I like about Weight Watchers is the point system. If you're not sure what it is you can read about Weight Watchers Points and tell me what you think.

Nice Day in Noe Valley

A very comfortable day in our neighborhood. Perfect for sitting on a
bench.

Dry Ice

Someone left dry ice outside our office. Good thing nobody stepped on
it with bare feet or picked it up.

When Do You Hit The Gas

If you read other bloggers in the VC area there has been a lot of talk
about time. The short of it is that things don't work out as quickly
as we would like, but if you can hang in there long enough, you will
make it.

There is a spend to grow formula and a save cash until you figure it
out formula. The big question for new companies is what are the signs
that it is time to switch from figuring it out to spend to grow.

Probably the worst mistake you can make is thinking you have it
figured out when you don't because it usually means increased spending
which takes away time.

In the end it's time that matters.

Guadalupe California

I snapped this picture coming down Division Street out of Nipomo on
our way to the Far Western.

Brothers Arm wrestling

Family arm wresting championships tonight.

San Luis Obispo County Free Cigarettes

General Hospital in San Luis Obispo has a sign posted that says the
county is nolonger providing free cigarettes. Shocking.

Google Power on Public Markets

For the most part, when Google updates it's algorithm it's a million little webmasters that hunker down and discuss it in forums such as webmasterworld. They talk back and forth and try to understand the changes. When an algorithm change goes against you, it can mean that you lose a substantial portion of your income.

Public companies like About.com - owned by the NY Times, and Answers.com have a huge dependency on Google traffic as well. Last week Google tweaked it's algorithm and just like that, Answers is down 28%. Ouch. Also, last week Associated Content announced a $10 Million round of funding for a site that lives on Google traffic. Venture Beat calls it a bold strategy. And, just to be clear, Google is by far the biggest source of traffic for HubPages.

When it's a million little webmasters that feel this pain it goes fairly unnoticed in the main stream press. When it's a big company that screams it could be different. It may also be different because Google has the ability to change the value of a public company with a very small tweak. Answers.com is down 11% today. Think it has another 17% to go?

Customer Problems

When you have a new site that is growing there are pain points in the
administration. It could be things like deploying new builds or
simply moderating the site.

Most people defer the infrastructure work until it feels like a
nagging two year old and can't be ignored.

One thing to be cautious of is that there is probably something that
is just as painful for your customers that use the site everyday.

Fix your customers problems before you fix your own.

Making Progress

Through the last year we have continually worked to improve the
Hubpages website and monetization. Progress, measured by monetizable
traffic has come in big steps that doesn't line up with new features
or improvements.

The biggest gains in traffic have been where few things change for a
longer period of time. While the biggest step backwards has been
after our most major changes.

However, after each major update the site does recover and hit new
highs.

A good thing to keep in mind when updating the site is can you
pinpoint causality for traffic changes and adjust quickly for unwanted
side effects.

Patxi's Pizza

Patxi's Chicago Pizza is located in Hayes Valley in San Francisco.
This has been one of my wife's cravings since she's been pregnant.
Not bad at all.

The J Stinks

It's packed, slow and terrible. At least the air-conditioning works
today.

Movie Dummy

Someone is shooting a movie outside our office. It looks like there
was an accident, but it was actually a dummy.

Good Kinds of Arguments

In general, I don't like arguments. However, there are good types of arguments in a startup. Things like which feature should we build next. Or should we add a feature or improve what we have. Should we change our Terms of Service. Should we remove a feature. Should we hire this person or get a contractor. What's a bigger opportunity for the business. Should we raise money, should we sell.

These are important discussions to have. If your startup is debating these issues. Good for you. You're developing healthy habits and having good arguments.

On the flip side. Be worried if nobody cares or if everybody just takes your word.

Tartine for Breakfast

Taking the girls to the bakery for breakfast. Yum!

Decorating Tonight

Georgia and I are playing with stamps and pens. The end, a
beautifully decorated sheet of paper.

Mitchells Ice Cream Run

I love Mitchells. But, could they scoop ice cream any slower.
Anyway. I'm waiting for my shake.

Rough Day

With several calls today, a new partner going live and several action
items from yesterday's board meeting, my computer gets a virus.
Mgrs.exe is a nasty sucker. It makes your computer unusable. I tried
cleaning it with spy hunter. No luck. Mcafee next. No luck and $100
spent. Damn. Finally. I rolled back to a two day old check point.
Back in business. James and I ate sushi. Now. Back to work.

Kill the Snake

I was reading Brad's blog about his wife finding a rattlesnake on their patio. I'm deathly afraid of snakes. I know it's not rational. I once caught a Kenya Sand Boa in Santa Clara. Apparently, they live there now. I thought, I'm going to get over this fear of snakes. I bought it a cage, a heat rock, and water dish. I brought it home and tried to go to sleep. But. I coudn't sleep. I was so damn afraid that the snake was going to escape and bite me. After several days of bad dreams and soaking my sheets in sweat. I gave the snake away.

I'd have to kill the snake. Just to sleep. No doubt I'm going to have nightmares tonight about getting bit by a rattlesnake

George Washington

I've been listening to an audio book of His Excellency: George Washington on my iPhone. It's very good and worth a read/listen. I love audio books.

Oso Flaco Lake

Just south of Arroyo Grande, off of Highway 1, you can find Oso Flaco
Lake. It's one of the jewels of the central coast. Just follow the
very nice path across the lake, through the dunes, and end up at the
beach. Great bird watching in an ecological wonder. Beautiful.

Rope Swing

My mom picked up two used kid swings for $5. I tied them up to an oak
tree in their backyard. Julia loved it.

Swimming

I'm going to take the girls swimming this afternoon at my folk's place.

Swinging Bridge

If you ever come to Arroyo Grande, go see the swinging bridge and eat
dinner at Ginas.

The Things Kids Say

Georgia looks at my mom and says, "Do the cracks in your face mean
you're old?"

Refinished Hardwood Floors

We replaced the carpet by having the hardwood floors refinished. I
think it will save us money in the long run. The floors turned out
great. I hope our new tenants like them.

Driving to SLO

We drove to San Luis Obispo last night. Traffic was fine, accept for
the small fire on the side of the road. See the picture. We ate
lousy Mexican food in Salinas and made it in about 11 am. Now back to
work on my board package.

Who Taught Julia

Julia loves to play with my phone. She knows how to activate the
screen, unlock it, and dial. I want to know, who taught her how to do
it?

Startup Energy

When you have a startup it takes an enormous effort to get it going at
a velocity to make it in a market.

I've had to learn to avoid the energy sucker. Worry. Nothing does
less for yourself or your company.

Note to self. Apply all energy to opportunity and progress.

(waiting for the J)

Exchange Push Email with iPhone

The iPhone is missing push email integration with Exchange for the business user BIG time. If it had this, I'd really, really like my iPhone. Until then, it's a good consumer device, but not ready for the business all-in-one user.

Believe the Hype at HypeFly.com

This is a little plug for my brothers style blog. HypeFly rocks. I'm the first to admit, I'm not the coolest guy around, but they have twice nailed just what I was looking for. I got tired of being told that my fashion faux pas of a crew neck under a dress shirt, so I was in the market for some V necks.

Also, I was just thinking, I need some new loafers. Mine are a bit worn out.

Thinking Time

Riding the J muni is a good place to think and blog. Today, I'm
listening to "His Excellency" the biography of George Washington on my
iPhone and thinking about the best way to allocate our resources at
HubPages for our near term objectives.

And wondering where we'll find our next engineer to hire.

Parental Help

My wife is eight weeks pregnant and a bit tired. So we called in my
folks to come help us out for the week as Robin gets through the
morning sickness period.

What a tremendous help!

Startup Planning

One of the advantages of a startup is speed. When it comes to
planning and specs, they can take valuable time from development. So
we opt for broad work-items, and rely on the lead engineer to figure
out the details. This optimizes for speed.

I have also learned to put fewer items in the next release. My
suggestion is to try and shoot for monthly releases. If it takes a bit
longer, you're still OK.

Summary: Plan the strategic work at a high level. Trust engineers
to do a good job and constrain development cycles to a month.

HubPages Designer

My little brother, James, has come to intern this summer at HubPages.
I'm hoping he'll get the opportunity to improve the usability of some
of our features.

HubPages Fights Poor Content

HubPages has had to develop lots of technology to slow spam down (GigaOM). I left a similar comment on Jason's blog that if you want to prevent SEO spam, then the best thing to do is to stop the benefits. In SEO language, noindex the page (prevents google, yahoo, msn and other search bots from including the page in their index) and nofollow outbound links. SEO guys love link juice. They want a high quality link and any traffic is just a bonus.

HubPages uses a scoring system called HubScore to apply this type of system to the content. The scoring system includes direct inputs (thumbs up/thumbs down and others) and many algorithmic inputs as well. It's improving all the time, but it still represents a challenging question for open publishing systems on the best way to be open, fair, and accept the differences in the wide range of content that people want to publish.

HubPages allows all types of content to be published. Mature content is much less visible and all of the content is marked with nofollow meta tags. We also don't display mature content on all the interlinked pages that have correlated tags (you may have to browse HubPages to understand this - click one of the green tag links), but you can find it in search if you are looking for it. We thought this was the right user experience. Since we implemented it, we received many positive comments from the HubPages community.

When Squidoo allows a spam page to be visible to search engines they are allowing the search engine to decide if the page should or should not rank for search terms. If the domain becomes too polluted, the risk is that Google or any other search engine will simply stop ranking pages from the domain so all traffic is effectively cut off.

Paul Edmondson
HubPages
CEO

No Parking Sign

I think I understand what coach Durant meant when he said, "There are
football players and there are football players, and he is a football
player," after I saw a no parking sign today.

In similar words of coach Durant "There are no parking signs and there
are no parking signs, and this is a no parking sign."

I'm never going to stop telling on you

Today my daughter let me know, "I'm never going to stop telling on
you, even when I'm a grown-up." Somehow, I believe her.

Hayes Valley Patricia's Green

Wakeup Call

Who needs a 6 am wakeup call, when you have one of these?

iPhone Box

I bought an IPhone

My blackberry was having a bit of trouble so I bought an IPhone
Sent from my iPhone

Al Gore 2008

I keep thinking Gore will join the election in 2008. I hope he does. But if you caught him on Larry King, it seems unlikely.

Baby Widget

Notice the baby in the sidebar. This will track our baby due April 1, 2008. I'm not sure why it says 12 weeks old today. Since it's not due for a year. Hmmm.

Hub on Gift Ideas for Dads

My dads gift idea Hub may seem a bit grumpy, but I bet lots of fathers would agree.

My Visitors

Just testing this out. Apparently this gets a fair amount of traffic and makes good money for them. I say weak, but a possible business model for widget makers.

My 2007 NCAA Bracket Picks

Moving to HubPages

I'm going to probably post very rarely, but I will be posting more Hubs on SEO, startups, etc at HubPages. I might even move these posts over there...

Telling People What They Want To Hear

I remember taking a career assessment in high school and one of the top three job recommendation was a radio repair man. I wish I still had the data, but I think that is the closest thing to a personality test I ever took.

I was checking out AVC Blog and clicked on the profile. The link pointed to a personality profile instead of a bio. For whatever reason I looked at the domain, found and took the assessment. Here is my profile.

Interestingly, the results were how I view myself or what I'd like to be told about myself. So I told two others about the site. I think the beauty of this system is telling people what they want to hear. It makes them feel good.

Weight Gain

When we started Hubpages I was 220 lbs. My back has been a little sore, so I started thinking that I might have put on a few pounds. So I jumped on the scale and holy cow. I've put on 12 lbs. That's about 3 lbs per month. Geez, at this rate I'll be in the WWF.

Time to cut back on the danishes, fast food, and Mehawk. And maybe I should mix in a little exercise.

Currency of the Internet and Networks

It's always interesting to read what others think about the changes in the media business. This is a space that doesn't ever seem to leave my mind...even if I want it to.

Jeff Jarvis has written about media networks and how they are changing...and where they might go. At the very bottom of the article, he writes about how it might all work, but he says it's is complicated. I think it is pretty straight forward.

1. Make a platform with content creation tools that plugs into Ad/Affiliate networks (authors share in revenues).
2. Organize the content in a marketplace ie. a ggregate the audience.
3. Share revenue with anyone that sends traffic or signs up authors.

Hubpages has all these elements built into the platform. As far as we know, it is the first of its kind to do this. Can't wait to see it in action.

Entrepreneur DNA and Championships

I was reading on the Sequoia Capital website about what they look for in the DNA of successful entrepreneurs.

Successful entrepreneurs possess the following attributes: Most come from modest
backgrounds. Many are immigrants or first generation Americans. All know the
value of money and understand the difference between need and want. Their
confidence is tempered by an understanding of their shortcomings. They know that
speed and stealth will usually help them beat large companies. They know that
other startups pose the greatest threat to their existence.

The profile makes sense to me, but I think they should add one thing. Championships. If I had an unproven entrepreneur, I'd want someone that had learned how to win. Straight A's and individual accomplishments are nice, but a real champion has done it with a team, against stiff competition, and under adversity. I've found that few people know how to really win, how to bear down, focus, suck it up when everything hurts to ultimately lead a team to a championship. I've seen more talented and smarter teams lose to a team that knows how to compete. A tight group, that understands their roles, that in a war, you never question or point fingers, but focus on the goal.

Here are a few tests.
1. Play pick up basketball. People that win hate to lose. Someone might tell that person, geez it's a pickup game, relax. Why, because they play harder than anyone else. I'm not saying they win every game, but over the long haul they will win much more than they lose. Even if it's only to eleven by ones. With each team win, they learn how to win the next time.

2. Play for stakes where it hurts to lose. This is a personal example, I was one of six sons and my father was a high school English teacher. We weren't wealthy. Every dollar was significant to me. We used to play Techmo Bowl tournaments. Each person put in a couple of bucks and then we would play head to head until we had a champion. I wasn't the best, but something about playing for money made some guys tight and others better. I was always better. My friends would joke that they could beat me, unless they played me for money. Look for the person that comes out on top when the stakes matter.

The Way I See It

You only have three options if you work in a large company and dream of starting your own business.

1. Try it and succeed
2. Try it and fail
3. Don't try and don't know

The way I see it is you have to go after your dreams. Failure, while dissapointing, is still better than not trying. Not following your dreams is unacceptable.

Spouses of Entrepreneurs Day

If Mother's Day is about celebrating Motherhood and all the hard work Mother's do, then there should be a day for Spouses of Entrepreneurs (SED).

For Mother's Day, I'm getting my wife jogging socks and shoes. It's just what she wants. For SED (which occurs annually on the day of funding) it starts with her sleeping in. I'll take the two girls and just let her rest. Then breakfast. Oat meal, toast, coffee and juice. Her favorite.

After breakfast, a family walk in the park and a picnic. I'll pick up sandwiches, fruit, drinks and a bouquet of flowers for her (not from costco if I can resist). Then I take the girls home and send her to the spa to get her nails and toes done. She loves that. When she comes home, I have a few small gifts for her and have arranged a baby sitter.

Dinner reservations at a new restaurant that she has been wanting to try. Followed up with drinks at an out of the way jazz club and then we head home. One more small gift, a foot massage and hit the sack.

Ramblings of a Migrane

Got a migrane this evening. They always make me look forward to tomorrow since I know how much better I will feel.

Outside of the etailing space is there an online business that grew from great marketing? Or was there great marketing really a great product? If it's the latter my feeling it's better to invest the headcount in an engineer than a marketing head. At least at the beginning.

I heard some good insights from Gordon at Emergence Capital today. If you your business has unit economics that have been proven and its in a large enough market, you can raise money all day long.

I gave a practice pitch today. My friends are tougher than VCs which is good. They are critical, but fair, and all for my benefit. Today was the first time I put a demo to the deck and next week will be the first time I do it for a VC. The feedback was great. It circled around telling a story that tied to the deck, asking the audience to participate in portions of the demo. Keeping the demo to five minutes (if it's just me talking). The audience can extend it with questions. Lots of questions about our target audience, and how we will market to that audience to get authors. Good tough questions.

Just watched Nemo with Georgia and shared a bowl of ice cream.

MSN Deep Crawler for Search

It's rumored that in the coming weeks Microsoft will launch a deep site crawler. Up to this point, MSN indexes pages frequently, but doesn't dig out and index all the pages of a site like Google. Deep crawl is an SEO term that means the bot indexes pages several levels deep and in the case of URLs with multiple query string parameters.

This should have a significant impact to large sites and to the SEO community. I'd expect to see the number of pages indexed in MSN from a site grow rapidly. Lots of people have been clamoring for a real competitor to Google. I think this is a great step for MSN for two reasons. I suspect the quality of the results will increase since more content from sites will be included and I suspect it will be even more impactful on the SEO community. Sites that are large with good content should see a pick up in referals from MSN.

These are big changes and its great to see MSN getting this out there with Ad Center, and the froogle competitor.

Cross Referencing Alexa with Google

I follow the startup space closely. When companies are going head to head, I love to look at traffic figures and see who is winning. Alexa while not all that accurate does show trends.

http://www.alexaholic.com/insiderpages.com+judysbook.com+yelp.com+citysearch.com
This link shows a few of the companies going after the local review market. Citysearch is the old man, Yelp, Judysbook, and Insiderpages are the up and comers. The Alexa graph shows CitySearch the far and away traffic leader. Yelp next and then it's close between Insiderpages and Judysbook.

If you do a search on Google, with site:yelp.com or any of the other domains it will say how many pages Google has indexed (this isn't completely accurate either, but good for trends) from the domain.

Citysearch: 22,000,000
Yelp: 2,370,000
Insiderpages: 1,150,000
Judysbook: 71,000

Interestingly, the traffic rankings in Alexa corresponds to the number of pages in Google. So the more pages you have indexed in Google, the more traffic you had in Alexa. In Yahoo and MSN, it didn't work that way. Yahoo and MSN reported more pages indexed from Judysbook than Yelp.

My conclusion is if you want to beat your competitor for traffic is to get more (legitimate) pages indexed in Google.

Presentation

Presentation tweaks
hmm, too many slides, I think
Presentation shrinks

Startup Haiku

Millions don't matter
Not to me, Make something great
Pleasure will find you

Next Gen Publishing System Needs Private Beta Members

Sign up for the Hubpages Private Beta

Hubpages is our new company that will be launching a private beta in May. Hubpages is a next generation publishing platform and website that combines many useful tools for creating webpages that allows you so share your expertise. You can create your own information or aggregate it from many sources, and even earn money by publishing links to affiliate partners or ads.

The pages you create, we call Hubs. Hubs can be about anything. After you're finished, you can publish your Hub to the Hubpages website.

We have over 600 people signed up for the beta and are looking to go over the 1000 mark. We would like to have 1000 Hubs created before we open up to the public. Thank you for participating.

Founding a Company vs. Working at Microsoft

I just found mini-Microsoft blog. Some things she says is right on. However, it feels like they want a startup like environment with the security of a large corporation. When we founded Hubpages we had to give up a few things to get others. I wonder how many MS employees would rather gripe about working at one of the best technology companies vs taking their own swings.

Here are a few tradeoffs if you are thinking about it.

Good Salary at MS vs. Living on your savings
Great Benefits vs Cobra ($1300+ per month for family of four)
Performance Reviews vs The ultimate performance review - Survival
Internal Politics vs Internal deliberation
Office with windows vs Office in garage in house under construction
Subsidized cafeteria vs Mehawks
Solid days of meetings vs Solid days and nights working on the product
Four hours a day of email vs 20 minutes of email
Drink fridge vs Costco runs
Ergonomic desk vs Card tables
Executive presentations vs VC presentations
Spending someone else's money vs Spending your own
401k match vs What's that
Stock grants vs Founders shares
Makes payroll vs Doesn't have one
MSN homepage for traffic vs Building something people want
Admins vs What's that
Raises vs Hmmm
MS Poll vs Funny, that will be the day
Promotions vs Ha, You're the boss
Gold Stars vs Aren't those great

Would I do it over again? You betcha.

One of the Coolest Things I've Seen From Microsoft

As a former employee who enjoyed my experience at MS, I was glad to see this from Microsoft today. Microsoft creates some amazing things in their labs, but like many large companies sometimes they have difficulty in commercializing all the IP. By making these technologies available to startups increases the chances that we will see more from MS in the marketplace via several creative companies.

I'd encourage people interested in research technologies to check out what MS has made available to startups and others.

Here are a few of my favorites that could be killer.

1. I've read a lot about Riya. I thought it was pretty cool. I wonder if another company will leverage this to compete with them.
2. I live in SF near Sanchez. Sometimes I pickup the Dirty Sanchez wifi signal. It's a little weak from my house. I'd like to see if this improves it.
3. I can't wait for my IP devices and cell to do this.

Something Good Today

It's going to be a good day.

1. My wife and I found a baby sitter to watch the kids Friday night. It will be the first time we have been out in SF since we moved here.
2. I had a pleasant drive to work. Traffic across the bridge was moving. Ahhhh, nice.
3. The Homemade Cafe had tasty pear crumb muffins. Yum.
4. We moved the coffee maker to the garage. Caffeine.
5. I completed a document...and a blog post...by 11 am. Yes.

And I counted to 5 correctly, but who's counting?

The Hubpages Garage

I like the garage. I like the costco card table desks. I like Berkeley. I like our whiteboard. I like it.

The beta is coming!

(Yes, that is everyone that works on Hubpages)

Making a Good Business Development Deal

Let's start with what is not...

1. Where one party assumes all the risk. Examples include having a partner guarantee revenues that will materially hurt their business if your site doesn't deliver what they expect.
2. Contracts with grey areas, especially around performance.
3. Contracts where both sides don't have an out.

What are signs that a Business Development deal is good.

1. It lasts. Not for a quarter, but for years. It grows, changes and endures.
2. Its a win/win situation with risk, time and reward.

Hubpages is about a million business development relationships between authors and affiliates designed to last and be a win/win deal for everyone. We provide our partners a platform for free to create Hubs on anything. We make it simple for them to create a Hub. And provide tools so they can easily monetize their content by integrating the affiliate partners goods into the platform. Our risk is the time and money that goes into the building and support of the Hubpages platform. In exchange we get authors to provide content on a breadth of subjects that we could never cover.

Our Authors provide information that they incorporate in the Hubs they create. They offer subject matter expertise, and time. In return they get a free platform where they don't have to worry about the technical operations or pay to use the service, but they can actually earn money by programming links to affiliates so they can earn money.

The third piece to this interesting triangle are the affiliate relationships with partners like Google, eBay, and Amazon. All of these partners make their inventory of products and ads available to anyone. They offer commissions to people that refer them business. Their risk is similar to ours in that they invest time and money creating and supporting these systems. They win when authors program links to their products, auctions or ads.

Hubpages is one of the first companies to orchestrate this simple business development opportunity for three major stakeholders, and set it up so that everyone can win and hopefully create long term relationships between everyone.

Money, Energy and Thankfulness

Cash is always a huge consideration when starting a business. Questions like how much reserve do I have, how much will it cost, how long will everyone stay with the project without a salary and how soon will we start making money were always on my mind. I knew I needed to change these thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts or I wouldn't be placing my energy in places to improve the product and attracting the necessary outcome for our company Hubpages.

Here are my main two reasons, when you focus on a lack of money, it comes through in the product. Early and new products need to be great and in many cases growth is key. Stuffing a site full of ads, constant upselling, leave behinds, and pop overs can kill a good site. Also, shipping a product too soon with too many ads is a double whammy. The goal is a great product not compromised by trying to over monetize a site early.

Reason number two is energy. There is good energy and bad energy that goes into a startup. Worry, concern, and fear are all natural when it comes to money and a startup. Almost every entrepreneur I've talked to has described these feelings. I know I've felt them all, probably all at the same time. These thoughts I put in the bad energy category. When I catch myself with these thoughts, I do my best to change my thoughts. Instead I now choose to focus on the opportunity.

I'm thankful for Paul and Jay. The work and creativity is amazing. A year from now we will have the best platform to easily create a webpage integrated with resources from across the internet. In the next year thousands of people will use our platform to create a webpage and millions will consume the information.

I'm thankful for the competition. Lots of new companies. Some well funded and others bootstrapped like us are trying lots of things. It's kind of like a giant idea discussion where everyone can see what works and what doesn't. The best thing about all the innovation is customers are getting access to new technology at a speed never seen before that is all designed to serve their needs online. Whether it's shopping, news, finding a job or mate, the innovation in the last twelve months has been incredible. All of these new sites are helping eachother weave a pass to success.

And finally I'm thankful for the opportunity to pursue a dream. It's been my dream since I was a kid to start and run a company. This is my chance.

Lost Wallet and Releases

I lost my wallet nearly three weeks ago. My gut said it was in the house. This morning I decided to do a detailed search. The process reminded me of launching and tuning a new business where you have an idea where the money is, but you have to try a bunch of places to figure out what really works.

V1, I opened the drawers that my wife normally sticks the stuff I leave out in. Third time I checked these. Nada.

V2, I shuffled through my closet, removing all clothes in hope that it had fallen out. No luck.

V3. I go through the bathrooms. Nothing.

V4, I pick through the mail stack and desk. Not there.

V5, my daughters bedroom. Not in her top drawer, not under her dresser. Plop down on my knees to look under her bed and there it is. All my credit cards and cash. Whooooo. I'm very happy to find it.

When I came into the garage this morning, I held up my wallet to Jay and Paul and said, look what I found with a big smile. I can't wait for this to happen with Hubpages.

Why Are There So Many Bad Websites Built Around Good Business Opportunities

I have a few theories why

1. The people with the ideas lack the skills to build a decent site, but have just enough determination to slap a website together that serves a need, but is generally poor. Page weight, navigation, and browser compatibility never cross their minds. They are just happy to have a webpage online. Now, how do I setup a domain name?

2. The allure of the quick buck. Minimal effort to make money from from ads under the guise of evergreen content. This had it's day, but is mostly stomped out now. How many websites were slapped together with the least amount of work possible and left to rot in the cyber dump with individual pages of 500 word generic content in hopes of a decent Google ranking. Which leads me to....

3. Search Engines. As they grew in popularity, people realized that it was the least expensive way to get traffic. The game was on. No need to pay attention to users and repeat traffic, just figure out what it takes to rank well on MSN, Yahoo, and Google. Then watch the money pour in! Auto generated sites, scraping, link campaigns, and even ruthless content stealing became attractive to make a quick buck. When Larry and Sergey created link popularity, I wonder if they ever thought it would come to this.

eBay is a marvel to me. I think they got so many things right. Not sure if it was luck or skill. They made a platform that let the webmaster novices sell things online (took away the technical requirement to sell things online), then the incentive to create good content and descriptions enhanced a persons ability to sell. This aligned ebay's interest of quality with the sellers. Then the auction piece. Time based listings since so many people had decent products under a category it worked. Think if Google used time based listings. Wierd. Ever wonder what the percieved quality difference is between rankings on Google? Oh yeah, I'd always pick lucky over good. Ever here of Pierre Omidyar, I bet he is a little of both.

Sage Advice from a VC

A well respected VC contacted me about Hubpages about a month ago. I had met them casually and they were intrigued by Hubpages and wanted to learn more.

I was excited for the opportunity and practiced and tuned my pitch. When we headed into the conference room they had gathered four people. More people than work on Hubpages. I usually attend pitches while Jay and Paul keep progressing on the product. Anyway, I start the pitch. We have one hour to get through ten slides. No problem. Then questions start pouring in from the group. Two of them understand the product and business and are diving in with questions. One is focused on the technology, and the other is trying to ask questions to clarify his understanding. With a one hour schedule, I think to myself, answer each question and don't rush. They know we only have one hour so just be patient and if we don't get through everything, we will have to schedule more time.

We get through four slides. They all understand the product, but we haven't gotten through all the details. I'm a little dissappointed since it's my job to explain the business clearly. I knew I could have done better. Then as we are walking out the the partner says, "Let me tell you one thing." I think, be positive and accept the feedback. See what you can learn from it. He says, "Don't sacrifice your family for your business. I did, and you'll never get the time back." Wow, not what I was expecting at all.

When it comes to balancing work, leisure, and family, I feel lucky in that my occupation is my vocation so I only need to balance work and leisure with family. It can be a little tricky, but at least I get great pictures all the time of my kids. Thanks Robin.

How to stomp your competitors in Web 2.0

The game has changed. Traditional marketing for web 2.0 means viral features and a huge dependency on word-of-mouth. Meaning, you better build a kick ass product that is unique enough to make the first page of digg.com. You most likely won't get there on your first attempt so you better be ready to iterate.

With the dramatic explosion of web services, and an unleashing of creative efforts surely there will be huge successes and monumental failures. Giant bets are made every day on build it and they will come. The dream is herds of web surfers relentlessly punishing the servers with request after request, traffic builds so quickly that you have to stay up all night racking servers to keep up with demand, the network is saturated, and your nightmare is server too busy messages. Your systems architect smile widens as you seamlessly plug in server after server and the system scales. This is what we call a good problem in the web 2.0 space.

The problem with all the services launching everyday is rising above the noise. Most of us will make bets on what we think users want. The best and most agile web 2.0 companies will make several bets. The key to crushing competition and putting other companies so far in the review mirror is creating an architecture that allows for rapid releases, extending the platform, and iteration at a speed that you blow past your competitors as they are trying to figure out how to scale the backend and unjoin those last few tables...

The key is architecture. It starts at the beginning of development, and is built by engineers that are master at systems, extensibility, and understand that most features are bets that require flexibility because few get it right the first time. Some features will never get used and a few will make you great. You want to tune and tweak existing features, not redesign. You want to extend an existing platform, not redesign. You want to scale databases, not redesign. You want to scale web servers and application servers, not redesign.

I believe that several companies will crush their competitors before a single pixel of UI is displayed. These companies will have the site architecture that allows them to innovate at a speed their competitors will never reach and continue to innovate quickly as traffic grows. Rapid innovation, many failures and few successes will be the working plan of record for the most successful web 2.0 companies. Each tweak and new feature is a result of a great architecture. This allows for doing more of what is working and cutting losses on stuff that doesn't. The more time spent innovating vs scaling is directly proportionate to the distance of your competitor in your review mirror.

Get a great system architect is what you want to play in the big leagues of web 2.0.

Heading Home for Easter

Five of my six brothers, three kids, two wives, one great grand mother, one pair of in laws, one great grandmother, and a neighbor are coming to my parent's house for Easter.

Two things are for sure, we will break something and there will be plenty of food.

The one brother not coming home is heading to Vegas. We'll miss you Cam. Put $50 on black for me. Yes, one spin.

Web 2.0 Business Development Run By Software Engineers

(For Web Companies Only)

After working in large and small organizations I've seen how thousands of man hours could be saved. It's by having the software developer run the business development. Uhhh? Think about it.

1. Software Engineers can smell out if a deal can actually be done. This level of practicality saves negotiation and legal huge amounts of time. How many times have the Ts & Cs of a deal been hammered out just to find that the deal isn't technically feasible or compatible. All you have to show for it is a frustrated business development team that has just been alienated a little bit further from the product development.

2. The relationship is maintaned at a level that can make it work. It's not about having dinner and drinks together, its about instantly contacting the person that can help when the service is having trouble. Good Engineers will be much more patient when dealing with other Engineers vs running through a middle man. If you want a deal to have life, have the Engineers talk and get out of the way.

3. Nobody ever schedules well. The worse is when someone other than the developer drives it. Developers understand this so well they have even optimized development practices so that the furthest out they have to schedule is the next daily meeting. And don't be surprised if they miss that date. No matter what they will always hold quality over the head of time. Having the development team and not the manager give the estimate gives the team some accountability. Even though this is true, don't expect them to hit the schedule. It's just part of software development. Engineers will be happy with a schedule that says the deal is due when the integration has been developed, tested, and is determined to be supportable.

Reclusive, Hungry, Lazy, and Cheap Software Engineers Wanted

Hiring great engineers flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Many great engineers are available simply because they interview poorly by standards set by HR. HR and sororities have a lot in common. Both of them fit poorly with Engineers. I've been watching good and bad Engineers for a while and here are a few tips to find some gems.

Software Engineers should have the trade skills to do the job, but when it comes to the soft stuff, this is what matters.

1. Don't look for team work skills. If they can simply pass the airplane test, that's good enough. Meaning they won't annoy the crap out of you and everyone else. The key here is to find engineers with No Friends and that don't like people. The fewer friends is a good sign they spend more time at work.

2. Money and Engineers. Great Engineers save money and are frugal. The money they spend on extra stuff isn't on clothes unless it's a Bluetooth watch with GPS, but they don't buy the latest computers. They salvage, upgrade, and have a large war case of random computer parts. Give a strike to anyone that shows up in a designer suit for an interview, and a smile to anyone with mismatched socks. A key interview question for a developer is to ask them about their saving habits. Engineers that save are good and Engineers that know about the latest processors, but own a five year old PC at home are good as well.

3. Look for laziness. From my experience, the lazier the engineer the better. They do things like automate the build process and instrument it with tests that validate it. They don't like to spend effort on broken things or waste time. They build systems to import test data and automate the build out of development machines. They automate the stuff that has to be done more than one time. They frown on extra effort.

4. Have a passion for food. It doesn't matter if they show up at 11 AM and then eat at 11:30 AM. They eat at non traditional times because they are lazy (don't like waiting in lines) and don't like people (crowds bother them). The lunch hour will be their key hour of meeting for the day. They will congregate as a small group and talk just enough to figure out what they should be doing or if there is another dependency. *Side tip: Good managers know who eats together and places them on the same projects.

The Business of Other Peoples Content

Google has made a fortune from algorythmic search. Taking websites created by other people and serving snippets to people that search for answers. In return the websites get traffic. Seems like a fair deal to me. The challenge for new search engines is to build an audience to serve other peoples content to that is large enough to make make the business work. Search engine CPMs are some of the best around, but the competition is fierce and unlike TV - where audiences are fragmented across a zillion channels, Google, Yahoo, and MSN already have channels in the Billions. Consider these search engines the remote control. It's going to be hard for other players to get users to turn on the TV so to speak with a different baby.

Next, you have the aggregators. These are folks like digg.com and memeorandum. These are sites that take snippets of content from other sites and organize it. The most successful have been the players that focus on hot trendy topics of the day. Some times so hot and new that search engines haven't indexed them so they really fill a need. People that want to be in the know hit the refresh button all day long. Is automated organization better than human submitted? I'm not sure. Maybe it doesn't matter. The challenge of these things is the business of matching ads doesn't work quite as well since the info is hot. It's not like searching for Las Vegas Hotels where many bidders line up to pay for the click. It's still a good deal for the content provider since they get the traffic for free, but I see these businesses as more challenging for two reasons. First the CPM's are lower than search, and secondly they send the user off their network.

The third play is platforms and tools. Challenges to these businesses tend to be keeping the tools relevant to the next adoption curve. Blogs today, wireless tomorrow. Each tools set is unique. There are two types of business models that have emerged for platforms. First is subscription. Outside of the enterprise, we think this will continue to be a smaller, but good business. The largest opportunity is advertising support platforms. Get as much content on a platform and match it with ads. In this sense, there is a double partnership. First, with authors. The tools have to be good and improve the content creation process. The second is with traffic partners like search engines and aggregators. These people will use the content in exchange for traffic. Again, this is a good deal.

The interesting thing is none of these actually create content. Search engines and aggregators organize it, and platforms enable creation. Several good and interesting businesses will be formed based on these models. Hubpages is a platform that allows for any type of stuff to be created. It also organizes the content like an aggregator. Our gut is that many other aggregators and search engines will supply the majority of the traffic. What Hubpages does really well, is it allows anyone to create a page in minutes. Collecting, and aggregating content from many sources. Some sources are purely informational, while others can be used for earning money. The key is it is very simple. In minutes anyone can create their first page. I'll let you know how the business is working out once we are live.

Why Does Content Pay

I believe great content is one of the least expensive ways to aggregate an audience. There are three main types of traffic on the internet that are outside of purchasing clicks or advertising. These are supplied by search engines, links from other sites to yours, and type-in traffic where someone knows your domain and types it in.

Search engines are improving. SEO tricks work less and less. Search engines like great content that answer questions. Create great content and get more search engine love. Vote #1 for content.

People link to things that are interesting and provide comments. People read one piece and follow the links to see the reference. The better the content, the more other people will reference your content on their sites and blogs. Vote #2 for content.

Now that you have a sense of how traffic flows to sites - albeit a simple one, here's a simple analysis of why it pays to create content to reach a targeted audience.

Most content sites are supported with advertisements. Advertisers want to reach the audience the content creator has aggregated. So in this sense, the publisher and advertiser are competing for the same target customer. However, the publisher has to pay less for each user than the advertiser, or the publisher would never make any money. Assuming the content site is profitable, this means the advertiser is willing to pay the content creator a fee that supports the content creation. On top of this fee, there is often a middle man like Google Adsense that is taking a brokerage fee for bringing the advertiser to the publisher. Google's cut is roughly 30%.

If it's profitable for the content creator, profitable for the advertiser, and the middle man is taking 30% in the form of a transaction fee. Why doesn't the advertiser invest in content and save at least 30%.

Hubpages is creating a place where anyone can create content free. Create a piece that supports your business.

A Food Culture

A couple weeks back I me with an investor. She brought up the importance of having a food culture. I never thought of it, but small companies can be like families where the most important time is meal time.