We are settling into our new offices at "Studio C" (Ooma and Jangl were both here in the early days). There is convenient freeway access, plenty of parking, a private office in a tree, gym membership (pool, badminton, basketball, nature trails) and a cafeteria. It's a good vibe, environment and the price is right!
A year and a month ago marked the closing chapter of my prior venture. There are many learnings among the scar tissue. And many that will be played into strengths in the next chapter... The next chapter began when I joined Venrock last September as an EIR, with the prospect in mind that I would start my next business with them. This alone was personally validating given all things, and provided a palette to work with, in an environment suited to succeed. Within a month we had nearly a dozen different ideas cooking. One of them was a mobile messaging service called Chadr. It was so simple but when we piloted a prototype, it overwhelmed handsets with volumes of messages. Enough with the mobile already, it was time to move on!
So Ben Dean joined me in November officially, and we ideated heavy with a long list of must-haves. We had a Cc:Betty alpha up quickly (thanks to Chris Finne and Sean O'Malley) and launched it to some friends and family on New Year's Eve. And then iterated for a beta in early March. Then last week we launched another major iteration thanks to Jeff Carnegie and Paul Canavese. In parallel we built a distribution implementation version with the help of Alex Soto. (We're not talking about that one yet). Finally, today we announced our first round of funding, thanks to Brian Ascher at Venrock who provided us this opportunity. Also in that funding are Tuff Yen from Seraph Group and Boris Putanec from Hillsven, both angel investors who share our vision. (Oh, and thanks to Paul Bragiel who made those angel introductions! When was the last time a user and fan of your product introduced you to a VC!)
With a great balance around the table, a great product in the making, a great time in communications history (Hello Wave), a known quantity team, it seems as though stars are coming into alignment - which is rare and not to be taken for granted.
It just goes to show you, when one door closes, another one opens... It's just like your mother said, Tribec!
Technorati Tags: Cc:betty, Venrock, Hillsven, Seraph Group, Paul Bragiel, Sean Omalley, Lefora, Bill Hunt, Dave Gravano
Providing an informal tour of the latest iteration of Cc:Betty at New Tech Meetup. Go to 13:40 to watch
Technorati Tags: Cc:betty, New Tech Meetup
Technorati Tags: Japan Airlines, LAX
2AM: went to sleep
330AM: one eye open on the clock to make sure I wasn't over sleeping
448AM: another eye open on the clock to make sure I wasn't over sleeping
545AM: iPhone alarm goes off. Fumble, fumble, drop it to the wood floor, BAM, it's ok, can't get a new phone afterall. I realize my son hopped into my bed sometime in the night, so tip-toe around to get ready
615AM: jumped in hybrid, taking traffic head on, bouncing around music and sports, listening to voice mails, reflecting on a busy weekend playing music, hoops with kids, but shorting them out some on Sunday
645AM: Sunol grade blows, I should have kept my original hybrid which DID have the damn stickers! What an error that was. I didn't have the memo on it at the time
705AM: Rounding the horn to the 280, stop and go, fighting rats, realizing I forgot to grab a Naked Juice, damn it. Listening to people phoning into KFOG, talking about the swine flu not being as big of a deal as everyone thought, looking at the guy in the car next to me - he's still rockin' a mask
720AM: Trying to get to the office by 730AM to get ready for a meeting. Listening to Los Mocosos "in the house" - it's my personal rocky theme I think
730AM: Made it, where's my card key? My other bag? Doors are locked it's so early. Place is a ghost town. Found the card key in the glove box - good thinking, a nice place for it.
740AM: Let Ben in the front door - he doesn't have a card key.
741AM: Dial in the board room projector, get resolution dialed, make sure wi-fi is up, find an OJ
8AM: Showtime
844AM: The shot clock was on, I was done with 30 seconds to go. Answered some questions, shook hands, right on.
9AM: Catch up on morning email load, schedule more meetings, quick look thru our next product release, coming along, time to plan the next one in parallel
10AM: Catch up with Sean about a talk we're doing at Stanford Graduate School of Business today about startups, musing about having been on academic probation twice in college. (I would have never been accepted into a place like this).
1030AM: Coordinate some PR stuff for our next release, move, shake and bake
1115AM: Guys come out of that 8AM meeting, kudos all around, mission accomplished
1130AM: Print out yet another corporate insurance item for the love of God. Signed, sealed delivered.
12PM-1PM: Have a piece of the largest pizza I've ever seen. Startup talk to 60 Cardinals. Told them the good, the bad and the ugly. Blurry pics here:
115PM: Still talking with Cardinals afterward, trying to point folks in the right direction
130PM: Gotta jet, boatload of phone calls to do, projects to manage. Walking back to car on campus, where the hell did I park? Oh. I do like the energy here.
140PM: How do i get out of this place?
145PM: Pull over and check emails since phone wasn't working on campus, 24 new emails since 11AM. Jeez. Some critical emails, related to imminent PR plans. Conference call ical event, not showing up on iPhone. Better find wi-fi.
155PM: Pull over into Coupa Cafe, bust on the wi-fi, get mail, get the dial in for the conference call. Get back in car, eye-balling Nola - jonsing for some jambalaya
2PM: Call Ben and talk product plans and meeting schedules
230PM: Call with a customer, unexpected delays, we'll roll with it, time to unwind a few things and wind others up
3PM: Get back online, start dealing with around 42 emails now. Email is at the center of everything I do online (I've heard that line before). I had better Cc:Betty on some of these email conversations...details, details, details.
4PM: Damage control drill, working the drama, finding a way forward
430PM: Answer questions and schedule new partner meetings, start thinking about my strategy at those upcoming meetings
450PM: Peek at Twitter, realizing how much time it takes to keep up to date. Is this really efficient? Doesn't feel like it. All these voodoo 3rd party products to make sense of it all. I think I liked life better before I was so digitally connected.
5PM: Do a quick team conference call, updates all around
530PM: Pitch some more meetings for later this week, organize some back office items, think about where Cc:Betty fits with Zappos
630PM: Take a break to shoot some baskets with son
645PM: Get dinner together, al pastor happening
715PM: Sit down with family to eat, exchange stories from the day, good and bad
745PM: Get son into shower, talk about the day some more, talk about playoffs
830PM: Play a board game, get this guy in bed
9PM: Emerge in the living room, Laker game while doing emails
10PM: Yoga at last. The relaxing poses feel best today. Quieting the vritti's. Don't worry about loose ends, they'll be there when you're done.
Now: Being inspired by that new Dos Equis commercial and having one a day early. Will watch 24 on TiVo as I keep noodling on the mac
Lately: Blogging infrequently - when blogging is this quiet, it means I've got something up my sleeve that i can't talk about yet, that's preoccupying me. Muse: does blogging matter in this chapter or is it all going to Twitter?
Technorati Tags: Cc:Betty, Zappos, Lakers, Yoga, Dos Equis, Swine Flu, KFOG, iPhone, Stanford GSB, Sean Omalley
1. identify a problem to solve
2. identify a customer to solve it for
3. launch a product with a minimum feature set (one that addresses the problem adequately, but not one that requires a lot of capital)
4. validate all of the above as much as reasonably possible, tune as needed
5. obtain feedback from the customer and factor into iterations to the solution
6. rinse, lather, repeat
I'm at step 5 right now with Cc:Betty... A month ago Cc:Betty launched, people played, we listened, and a month later.... new features!
-New, simplified at-a-glance mailspace view
-The ability to SEARCH your Cc:Betty mailspaces
-The ability to VIEW documents within a mailspace
-Alternate mailspace COLOR schemes
-Improved “Betty” interactions
There's no other way to roll. Great thanks team Betty, let's try and rest this weekend shall we...
A Cc:Betty customer from Japan said to us today:
"I’m living in Japan so I don’t have a skill to speak with you in English by phone. So you will be not able to get any valuable feedback from me. I can’t explain about my opinion correctly.But I love CC:Betty functions and I felt that mail has new potential from Betty as a mail 2.0."
Technorati Tags: Cc:Betty, alphaville
...this came via a tweet. It took me 3 tweets to respond:
1. Cc:Betty is a social collaboration tool. Gmail is a webmail service.
2. Gmail can only impact YOUR email, Cc:Betty mailspaces impact EVERYONE'S email.
3. Cc:Betty
a) does better threading than Gmail
b) organizes and presents content per thread which Gmail doesn't
c) gives EVERYONE on the email these benefits
