THE DREAM IN ACTION

I’ve been thinking about how my new startup adventure is going to be different than my role with GE and a few things have risen to the surface. So, I’ve decided to do a series of posts on those topics. You’ll be able to follow the series under the tag ‘corpvsstartup’ here.

The first that I want to discuss here on the blog is the need to be bold. In a corporate environment things are usually pre-determined. Processes exist that you have to follow and the challenge can usually lie in just following those pre-defined processes. Aligning resources (PEOPLE) and following the appropriate timing is tough, but it’s still following a plan. In a startup there is no plan, no pre-defined processes. You have to define processes for the first time yourself, you have to write the plan, and you have to be bold to do that!

The story of how I got this opportunity is one that I’m definitely proud of. It’s so undefined, so nontraditional, and nothing that I could’ve ever planned for. But it definitely took some boldness, some balls, for it to happen. Here’s what went down.

Back in early January Travis Kalanick, an angel investor and startup advisor, tweeted this, “Looking 4 entrepreneurial product mrg/biz-dev killer 4 a location based service. pre-launch, BIG equity, big peeps involved–ANY TIPS??” I’d been following Travis for a while and knew that he was working with some awesome startups out in SF and I responded, “@KonaTbone here’s a tip. email me :) graves.ryan[at]gmail.com“. Kind of smart ass, but I figured a boring “I’m interested, please email me” response probably wouldn’t get his attention. It turns out that I was right. He email me that night, then we ended up getting on the phone and had a long conversation about my past experience, what he was looking for and some of the details about the opportunity.

About 3 months, and a few trips to NY & SF later, I’m diving in head first to work for a company that Travis is going to be working with very closely. The team of people behind our company is amazingly experienced and the market opportunity is ripe for disruption. My story is not to brag, although I am pumped how it turned out, but rather to show that this, one of the bolder moves I’ve ever made, really worked. Being bold creates opportunities and that’s the kind of mentality I believe is required to be successful in a startup. It may have even been careless but by really stepping out there and having enough chops to back it up, I was able to land a role running an awesome startup.

This is not even close to the end of boldness required to be successful. The startup path is one of trail blazing and getting your hands dirty in areas you never thought you’d be involved. But when I took the job with GE I had to submit that standard application and resume, and follow the traditional interview and hiring process, not in a startup. It’s nontraditional and requires boldness.

I’m pumped to continue to share other differences from GE’s corporate life to other startup lessons learned. Let me know in the comments if there is anything that you’d particularly like me to touch on.

With a lifetime of knowing that entrepreneurship is at my core and now 4 years of studying the web startup world, I’ve finally made the jump from ‘Office Space’ corporate America into the infinite abyss of the startup adventure.

I’ve had a great taste of the startup world, but this is something entirely different. In 2008, I attempted the nights & weekends project; with SocialDreamium we were creating a community analytics product focused towards startup community mgrs. I did all product design and customer development while my co-founder did all development. When Tweetdeck & Seesmic launched their FB & Twitter clients in April 2009, it took the wind from our sales and we closed shop in June 09. Many lessons learned.

More recently, I’ve had the amazing opportunity to work with Foursquare. Tristan Walker & Dennis Crowley are awesome, and in a short 3 months I learned a ton, and was continually inspired by the product they were building and the (what will be) powerful business around it. If I learned one thing from that experience it is that you absolutely must be excited about what you’re working on. If you’re at all bored with your work, you have no chance of success. The excitement that the Foursquare team brings to the office everyday is truly inspiring. I’ll miss working with these guys, thanks fellas.

I had an incredible experience over the last 2 years with GE Healthcare. I was exposed to so much through the management training program I was apart of and was able to work for some of the best managers in that business. I worked on everything from major ERP deployments to enterprise e-commerce, and was able to refine my project management skills in possibly the best environment in the world to do so. But recently a co-worker asked why I’m leaving GE and my answer was this…

My priorities with a job are two fold, first, I want to learn as much as possible, and second, I want to be excited about what I’m working on. I found an opportunity that will allow both of those priorities to be filled in a greater way that I believe GE could. When it came down to it, it was a pretty easy decision…

So, what’s next. It’s a combination of everything I was looking for. I’ll be working with some of the most bad ass entrepreneurs & investors in the industry, and I’ll have an opportunity to learn more in shorter periods of time than I believe I could in any corporate program. I’ll be at the ground floor of a startup that has the opportunity to change the world. I found the opportunity with a little bit of luck, a little bit of right time & right place, and a lot of hard work and preparing for an unidentified opportunity.

So, what is it?

Unfortunately, we’re not quite ready to bare it all. While I generally like to avoid the term “stealth mode”, we’re early and we’re running as fast as we can. I can tell you that I’ll be working between New York & San Francisco and I really look forward to making all the relationships I’ve created in those startup hubs over the last 3 years real life friendships. The world of no health insurance, jamming late nights, endless responsibility, and some of the most fun I’ve ever had are ahead of me and I’m so stoked.

The number of brands that are jumping on the Foursquare train is awesome. We’ve been talking about the no-brainer that is engaging with your customers and it’s very satisfying to see it happen with such strong companies and brands.

Zagat

Mashable reports:

Zagat is calling the partnership “Foodie Love,” and there’s even a new accompanying foodie badge. Zagat.com is extending the partnership beyond Foursquare and starting a “Meet the Mayor” online interview series that will feature discussions with prominent Foursquare mayors.

Foursquare’s relationship with Zagat is clearly an answer to Yelp’s introduction of check-ins, especially given the trusted and prestigious nature of Zagat content.

Warner Bros.

You’ve all had a blast playing foursquare, and now the entertainment continues. Chris Dixon said that the next big thing would look like a toy, and take my advice here, Dixon knows what he’s talking about. No a game is becoming a way for movies and tv programs to bring the story off the screen and directly into the lives of viewers.

Through the promo’s & tips that these brands are offering, users/viewers can live vicariously through the characters. I’m so pumped on this. Of course, it wouldn’t be Foursquare without a badge to go with the campaign.

“Visit and check-in on Foursquare at any of the locations on our Valentine’s Day inspired list of the most romantic places in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston to get a Valentine’s Day badge! Then go see the movie, in theaters on February 12!”

HBO

Now HBO’s new show “How to Make it in America” that has been compared to a New York based entourage, will also run promo’s through Foursquare. With 4SQ’s huge NYC presence I guarantee this blows the show up! What if the Jersey Shore guys gave tips? I guess nobody wants to live vicariously through them…

Foursquare’s first direct relationship of note was with the Brooklyn Museum. The museum saw the obvious value of visibility into who checked-in and decided to embrace the opportunity to directly provide it’s visitors with tips and tricks around the museum. The created an interactive experience and essentially a personally guided tour! Awesome. Other institutions saw the obvious value in this type of partnership and wanted in, as I said before, the people who get in early will benefit the most. Tristan is killing it in driving these partnerships and infusing compelling reasons for users to checkin and amplifying the value of the checkin.

Our next announcement was that Harvard University got on board by populating over 30 tips for both students and visitors all around campus. The cheeky headlines read, “Foursquare goes to school” and they were right. With Harvard U. on board Foursquare was learning that the potential for these partnerships were reDONKulous. Harvard used the Foursquare platform to populate a virtual tour guide with tips like…

@ Harvard Hall: In 1764, Harvard Hall burned down in a nor’easter, taking with it almost the entire College library & John Harvard’s book collection. (December 9, 2009)

@ Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage: An American landmark since 1960 & voted best burgers in America! Try “The American Idol” burger w/ bacon, cheese, mushrooms and onions. (December 8, 2009) [Link]

Can you imagine the potential of the worlds best location based social network and the worlds best restaurant guide teaming up? Exclusive tips from Zagat about the highest rated restaurants in major cities like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco becomes very interesting for the foodies out there. Did someone say Foursquare Foodie badge? I think so!

Oh snap, with a Foursquare/Bravo partnership 4SQ enters 90 million American living rooms and hits mainstream big timeness. BravoTV’s experts and celebs give tips about the venues they love so that when you check in, you’ll see their exclusive tips integrating your checkins with that of the BravoTV shows. Everything from Michael Cohen of Miami Social, to Patti Stranger from Millionaire Matchmaker…know you’ll be in the know like never before, and you can live vicariously through the shows and their stars.

@ Joe Allen: This is where the understated in-crowd always dines. You actually need reservations because the food and This is where the understated in-crowd always dines. The menu changes often but for lunch, the La Scala salad is so good!  Their fish selections are also notable. -Michael Cohen, Miami Social (1 day ago)

@ Dave and Buster’s – Hollywood: Sports bars attract hotties. That’s why I love the wings at Dave & Busters. -Patti Stanger, Millionaire Matchmaker (1 day ago)

The institutional partnerships are taking things to a whole new level. Foursquare was always praised for being a game that provided real world, offline value, but with these partnerships that value was just amplified.

Why raise $30 million to hire an enormous, nationwide sales force if you could use the power of existing sales teams for a fraction of the cost? Recently, I’ve been thinking about how startups can leverage other, larger, companies to build out their model. After all, a startups purpose for existence is to test their model. So why wouldn’t a startup leverage every existing system possible to keep costs low and test the model?

An increasing trend in startups, for good great reason, is to use Facebook Connect to leverage the existing social graph. Look at Foursquare, HotPotato, or OMGICU, all great examples of instantly connecting via FB connect to pull in all of your friends from likely your largest existing friend network. The time and wasted money that these startups would spend developing a brand new social graph is ridiculous.

There are so many opportunities for rapid growth through this type of “existing system leveraging”. With Foursquare I’ve been working hard to get as many venues involved and offering specials in the application as possible, so why wouldn’t I take my own medicine here. I try to use, excuse me, partner with the people who already have relationships with these venues. It turns out there are marketing teams who have great relationships with large groups of bars and restaurants, working directly with these people may bring in 10-20 venues in one fell swoop rather than me pounding on each venues doors individually. Or, another example is liquor distributors? They have strong relationships with bars and can possibly influence the end price of the product to a customer who say, checks in on Foursquare…get it. There are sales teams that work with these people and have a system in place already like Coke, or Zoom media (those ads above urinals), etc. etc. etc., the list could go on.

Whether you’re building a social app, or a utility that sits on top of the ’social graph’ I’d encourage you to look at ways to use existing systems, social or otherwise, as your best distribution channels. The cost is likely lower, and the impact likely higher.

What existing system have you leveraged?

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Back in October I wrote a post about wanting more feedback on this blog. I vowed that if you gave me feedback, I’d listen and sculpt the content of this blog in such a way that it was valuable for you, the reader. I’ve often struggled with the question, should I write for the audience? or, should I write for myself? I’ve found that a mix is the best for all of us. If I’m not really engaged and passionate about what I’m writing it’s probably not going to come off as very interesting to you, and sure as hell if I’m not interested in the topic then I’m wasting my time writing.

What I haven’t done to-date is share the feedback I received so I want to do that today. It’s important to me to let you know that your “voice” is being heard, and that I actually have been listening to your feedback. One of my favorite startups out there is Rypple, a Toronto based company that creates tools that make it easier to grow as a professional. Their feedback tool which allows for completely anonymous input through email or in this case an embeddable widget (which is still in the side bar to the right) is perfect. The people at Rypple are some of the best and you should follow their progress and use their tools at your company. Check out (@jaygoldman, @ddebow, @dpriemer) Anyway, anything you write in that box is completely anonymous, otherwise I’d give some credit to those who contributed. You know who you are so thank you!

Here are a handful of the tips and feedback that I got…

“I like to hear what motivates you as an entrepreneur– to hear your special reason and drive.”

“I love what you write about – its a must read blog… thanks! It would be great if you wrote more about some controversial topics – the BS of arrogant entrepreneurs, the Kool -Aid drinkers etc. But – don’t be negative, just honest.”

I really like this idea and I’ve not written about it yet. I definitely plan to… (I frickin hate the Kool-Aid drinkers)

“blog what you want, it’ll be best if you like it.”

“Could you talk more about lessons learned from start-ups and their culture and how that influences what you are doing at GE. but in general, keep mixing it up and making it interesting in every blog post.”

Because I do work at GE full time I’ve refrained from writing about it so far. I have been contemplating writing a series of ‘how I use startup lessons in the corporate world’ type posts. I appreciate your feedback here and will start to take more action on it.

“Your stuff is great Ryan, one of my regular reads.”

And that kind of feedback is what keeps me going! I appreciate all of you who take the time to read this blog a few times a week. I will continue to listen to your feedback, feel free to post it in any posts comment section or anonymously in the Rypple tool to the right ——->

Last week Mashable ran a poll to find out which location based service YOU like the most (I say YOU because I’ve learned that the folks that read this blog are likely the type to also peruse Mashable on a regular basis). I was very please to see the result here, obviously, and I’ve been giving the battle for best location service a lot of thought. What does each service have, not have, and have the potential for?

I decided to use something that is very easy to analyze, a car, to explain what I think each service offers…or doesn’t. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Gowalla is too gamie. The feedback I’ve gotten from all of my friends who use Gowalla is that it’s so tough to figure out. There might be free iphones and tshirts hidden around town but those gimmicks fade quickly. Because of it’s overly gimmicky nature, like the PT Cruiser, I think it’s shelf life is very short. Where other services will beat Gowalla, and likely already have, is that they’re useful, they’re a service and people only play games for so long. There’s got to be user utility otherwise I’m out.

Yelps recent entrance to the location services game is on the surface appealing. They do have a lot of venues to work with but it’s clunky, not social, and ultimately not fun. Although mini vans are super effective cars, they fit kids, surf boards, Christmas trees and almost anything else, but they’re not fun to drive at all. Trust me I drove one all through high school, and although I was awesome (or so I thought), my ride was not. :) Yelp is too much on the service side, the game mechanics that other services bring to the table will win out in the end. Phin Barnes of FRC recently wrote about how gaming mechanics will be critical to all social applications in the future and this is where yelp fails, no community.

Ultimately Foursquare has the best combination of social and utility. It may not be the smoothest ride (yet), but it gets the job done better than anyone else and it’s fun, a powerful combo. The foursquare app can fit your friends and your fun into one ride. Like an SUV foursquare is enjoyable, you can be proud of what you’re driving because the community is a strong one, and your friends will think your cool :)

Although I’ve used all three of these applications, foursquare still blows the others out of the water. Yes, I’m biased (disclosure, I’m working w/ foursquare) but, I don’t see how the others are going to cross the chasm into true social utility. Because foursquare was built for that purpose from the ground up it will win.

We’re almost ready for the first, CHICAGO TECH MEETUP and I hope you’re joining us January 20th at 7pm at OfficePort for guest speaker Jason Fried (37 Signals) and presentations from local startups and entrepreneurs. Our first event was a great opportunity to socialize. This time you’ll want to bring a notepad in addition to your thirst.

A few details dates for all attending the meetup on the 20th:

An advance and sincere thank you to our sponsors: Thinklink, RackSpace, FourSquare, Sprout Box & OfficePort! (links below) We’re able to put on this great event (and many more) free of charge to our members, thanks to these folks!

We’ll be starting promptly at 7:00. To get a good seat (or, just a seat!) please arrive early. We’re at capacity. Following the keynote from Jason, we’ll take a quick break to grab food and drinks before the Startup session begins. We’re keeping the place open for plenty of socializing and drinks afterwards (where should we do the after party?), so don’t worry about fitting it all in between sessions!

I also want to thank our Panelists who have volunteered for the Startup segment. Our goal is to give the startups lots of actionable feedback, suggestions etc. (it’s not a contest by any stretch). On the panel we have Tim Courtney (SocialDevCamp), Alex Wilhelm (TheNextWeb), Mike Trotzke (Sprout Box) and Nik Rokop (Illinois Institute of Technology) – an awesome panel for anyone to be getting feedback from :) There’s also some great press in attendance (one of them rhymes with Chzech Bunch).

The four startups presenting will be WinkVid, Toy Studio, Sprout Social and Tgethr.com. I wish we could have fit everyone in, but we’ll make more room next time around.

I hope everyone is excited! I’m still blown away by the talent and enthusiasm of our members. Our membership represents a vast mix of local high-profile tech companies, startups, investors, thought leaders, bloggers, entrepreneurs and developers. Good things happen when this many talented people get together!

I’m really really pumped about our sponsors for this first event!

ThinkLinkr is the webs first, real time fully collaborative outliner!

SproutBox is a new approach to venture capital that helps entrepreneurs turn their ideas into viable businesses.

OfficePort is a creative community of entrepreneurs, freelancers and small-business owners.

Foursquare turns the city into you’re playground.

Rackspace, dedicated servers, managed hosting, and web hosting, with top notch service.

For a while now I’ve been writing about Foursquare customer development, sales, and business development. I’ve written about my experience as a foursquare sales rep and the challenges of selling to local venues. Now, I’d like to share some of the details of my newest project and what we’re going to accomplish.

I’m extremely excited for this project because of foursquare’s opportunity and potential to change the way business is done.  The challenge of reaching local venues is incredibly difficult and the only successful method to date has been to deploy a very large sales force. Yelp and others have used this method but in my mind traditional methods are not very exciting. What if there was a new way to sell at the local level? What if you could reach venues through their customers and create a win win experience that benefits every party? The possibility of that win win is very exciting, innovative, and exactly what we’re going to build with the Foursquare Street Team.

In the movie ‘The Patriot’, Mel Gibson builds and leads a militia to attack the British in a way that they had never seen, on the ground and by surprise. The normal sales approach has been the equivalent of the “line up and shoot at each other approach” of the pre-American Revolution British Army and what we’re going to build is a quick moving and innovative militia. This “street team” is made of up passionate foursquare users and passionate customers who want their venues to benefit from the value of being connected to customers like never before.

Our next step is forming this street team and empowering them to show venues the value of foursquare. If your an excited foursquare user, see the value of the platform for venues and users, I’d love to speak with you. We’re going to kick this effort of initially in Chicago and expand from there, so please get in touch. [ryan@renliv.com]

Here’s where we are now.

Existing Chicago Foursquare Promos

@ Chaise Lounge: Show that you’ve checked in on Foursquare and get 10% off on food.  Show your waiter to redeem!

@ Dragonfly Mandarin: Show that you’ve checked in on Foursquare and get 20% off every 6th visit!  Show your server to redeem

@ Piece: Show that you’ve checked in on Foursquare and you’re mayor and get your second pint on us! You can also follow Piece on Twitter

@ The Drawing Room at Le Passage: Show that you’ve checked in on Foursquare to the Drawing Room and get a free dessert with the purchase of an entree, small plate or drink. Show your waiter to redeem! Follow the Drawing Room on Twitter

@ David Burke’s Primehouse: Show your server that you’ve checked into David Burke’s Primehouse on foursquare and we’ll send out a complimentary chef’s choice appetizer to add to your breakfast, lunch or dinner. You can also follow David Burke’s Primehouse on Twitter

@ J Bar: Show your cocktail server or bartender that you’ve checked into J Bar on Foursquare, and receive 2 cocktails for the price of 1 before midnight.

@ Metropolis Rotisseria & Annettes: Show that you’re mayor of Metropolis and get a free brownie!

@ Meze Tapas: Show that you’ve checked-in on Foursquare and get 20% off meal with purchase of a pitcher of house sangria.

@ The Food Feastivals: Show that you’ve checked in on Foursquare and get one free admission per paid $10 admission!

@ The Hunt Club: Get a free shot with a foursquare check in, show to staff to redeem!

@ The James Hotel Lobby Bar: Show your cocktail server or bartender that you’ve checked into The James Hotel Lobby Bar on foursquare and receive 2 cocktails for the price of 1.

@ Wow Bao: Show that you’re mayor of Wow Bao on Foursquare and get a free 6-pack of bao!

You can follow Wow Boa on Twitter

@ Wow Bao – Chicago Loop: Show that you’re mayor of Wow Bao on Foursquare and get a free 6-pack of bao!

@ Wow Bao – Water Tower: Show that you’re mayor of Wow Bao on Foursquare and get a free 6-pack of bao!

Recently, the fact that I have a semi-successful blog has caught wind around my office. I was asked this week to answer a few questions on blogging that will be used in some presentation about why we should be using blogs for communication in the corp world. I hope the presentation reaches some people, but I thought I’d share my answers here…

1. What is the easiest part about blogging?
The easiest part about blogging is that it’s fun. I enjoy taking the time to reflect on a subject and funnel my thoughts into something that I believe will help or be constructive for someone else (the reader). In my 3+ yrs blogging I’ve gotten much better at diagramming an idea and communicating that idea to others.

2. What is the most challenging?
Staying focused can be very difficult. When you start a blog you have choices to make: Who’s my target? What are my goals/metrics? Why am I doing this? Keeping the answers to those questions in mind is critical to writing a good blog. I write posts for the GEHC IT blog that will expose the employees to something that they’ve not been previously exposed to or to give them helpful hints/tips on specific IT things. In short, you have to give them a reason to come back.

3. What are your goals/initiatives as far as professional blogging?
This is difficult to say. First, I’m not at all a professional blogger. Second, I think this term “professional blogger” can confuse some folks. Professional bloggers are blogging for a living, for profit, I blog to stay fresh, improve my writing, and generally increase my voice to the world. It’s still debatable whether or not I have any thing worthwhile to say :)

Before I left on the honeymoon I was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune about my use of and help with Foursquare, the article turned out awesome! I hope this leads to more use in Chicago.

Here’s the quote…

“I probably don’t call and have phone conversations with people as much as I did because I already know what they did on Twitter. I’m in constant contact with them.” said 26-year-old Ryan Graves, owner of Renliv LLC, a Web development and Internet consulting firm. “Now, with Foursquare, you don’t need to tell me where you’re going.”

The other day, for example, Graves said he couldn’t reach friends by phone or text messages. So he jumped on Foursquare and learned they had checked in at Halligan’s in Lincoln Park. He just went there and met them.

Great article @littlewern, and thanks for letting me help.

Don’t forget: You should follow me on twitter here.

I found these plugins through themeshaper.com image from randy stewart

I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s brilliant book, Tribes, over the past week. One of Godin’s theories in the book, that I definitely buy into is the importance of carving a niche with your message. A Tribe by Godin’s definition is a tightly interacting group of people, bound by a special interest. His call to action is for “you” to be the leader of that tribe. It’s time for “you” to step up. He also notes, about tribes, that if they’re too broad they will be diluted and never really operate optimally, or have any real impact on the world. The leaders message, if broad, will be lost with all the other broad messages. It’s the same issue as we’ve all read about before on the web, the signal vs. noise paradox.

In order to avoid getting lost among the others, I thought it would be appropriate to define the types of individuals that I think have enjoyed THE DREAM IN ACTION so far. I never rule out any transitions or changes in focus as experiences, both yours and mine, change. “The only constant is change” so I think it would be foolish to say that this blog won’t.

Here are the types of folks I think would dig this stuff:

1. Mustard Seed Entrepreneurs

By ‘mustard seed entrepreneur’ (did I just coin this term?) I mean those who don’t necessarily have tons of experience running a company and may only have an idea the size of a mustard seed. This includes early stage startups, “we just launched” types, or those who have an idea but are not really sure how to make it something real. The key is that we’re still learning how to extract potential out of ideas with our actions.

lanjut →

In October of 2008 I launched a company called SocialDreamium LLC. I started out doing social web consulting work and used the revenues from that to fund the development of our first product. I recruited a co-founder and development team in December 2008 and we “broke ground” on our product just before the New Year.

Now in late-May 2009 we’ve decided to shut down SocialDreamium and move on. What did we get out of the business? A much better understanding of the social web landscape and significant entrepreneurial lessons learned. As much as I don’t like writing this post, it’s extremely valuable for all of you who are, or will be, in the same boat. The startup road is a narrow and rough one to travel along, my only hope is that you will be smart enough to learn from my mistakes. We weren’t just unlucky, we screwed somethings up; below are many (but not all) of the top lessons I learned from the 8 months we devoted to SocialDreamium.

lanjut →