Last week TechCrunch ran an article leaking the news that UberCab had closed our Seed round of funding. Our initial hope was to hold that news off until we could launch a new site (coming soon) along with the funding announcement. We had hoped to completely own the telling of that story, but as we realized, this wasn’t going to be the case, so we had a decision to make. Option 1: Keep quiet and let the journalist fill in the facts of the story, or Option 2: Provide the details and influence the story to be told accurately. We would have loved to keep control, but we had to embrace reality and influence the outcome as best we could.

So, what can you do about it? Sometimes nothing. But, my gut tells me that when things get out of control, or out of your control (big difference), you should guide the situation where possible. So, when we got news that the funding announcement was leaking whether we liked it or not, we decided to provide all the information that would be needed in order for the story to be correct. We decided to provide details and keep some influence. We confirmed funding amounts and investors involved. We opted to provide the journalist, who’s job it is to post this type of information when they have  access to it (gotta love them for it), all of the details in order to report accurately.

In the end it turned out to be the right decision. While the attention we’re getting for raising money is not something that we necessarily wanted this early, it’s helped awareness of our product and the problems that we’re solving for YOU our users, which is a win. Now however, there are entities and “ankle biting” competition that will inevitably pop up. Now that the story was told pretty accurately, it’s time for us to getting back to things we can control.

This is as much of a post about sharing Evernote with you as it is an apology to Evernote for not giving you a chance until now. My mistake and my loss, learn from me and your gain. The simplest way to explain Evernote to those of you who don’t know is that it’s a database for you brain. If you have ADD (like me) it’s a must have tool! Evernote collects information in almost any format that you could ever want to throw at it, and it creates the ability to log, categorize, and store that info. Then, when you need to find something from a random though a few months back, you can search and the search is amazing! One crazy example of the technology is that you can write your name on a white board, take a picture of the whiteboard, then save that picture to Evernote and search for your name. Evernote will pick-up the text from the picture and make that text searchable…incredible!

For so long I had heard about people using Evernote for notes, picture search, and other menial tasks and I dismissed the service. I was actually using the Notes iPhone app and TextEdit saving files in this format, “4/22 notes”. That was dumb. Now that I use Evernote I can tag thoughts, search history and “appear” to the world that I have a great memory.

As a person with brutal ADD, this web service may become my most valuable. I’ve only been using it a week but I’m in love already.

Here’s a little tip on importing old notes into Evernote:

1. Download RTF/TXT Evernote importer

2. Install the application

3. From Evernote, make sure these preferences are selected.

4. File > Import … select all your files and your entire ‘Notes’ history is searchable, backupable, and awesome!

Let me know if you have any questions ryan [at] thedreaminaction [dot] com

I figure identifying and sharing my weaknesses here on this blog are one of the best way to overcome them. Both from understanding them better myself and benefiting from your feedback and “sage wisdom”. Thank you o’ commenters of the blog, I do sincerely appreciate you wasting your life on my writings.

So here it is, my largest identified struggle with entrepreneurship is the ability to quickly change from high level planning mode, to nitty gritty details focus, and then back. I’ve found that I both enjoy and do well at both, individually, but I suck a$$ at jumping from one to the other. Maybe it’s the ADD or maybe something else but that’s what seems to be very difficult for me. Let me explain a bit further.

Since I started running UberCab March 1, I’ve gotten the opportunity to literally do everything. I’ve touch code, and by code I mean HTML/CSS on the site, I’m not a developer by any stretch (yet). I’ve done deep dives into very specific product specs and inane use cases of each aspect of our product. I’ve build out financial projections and I manage the day to day budget. I’ve hit the phones cold calling and doing sales, then I’ve done biz dev type activities and longer term relationship/partner planning. Recently I’ve started interviewing and recruiting and hopefully not to far away we’ll be hiring (get your application in now if you’re interested in working with us at UberCab!). So I’ve done a ton of different stuff, some very high level long term, and some very specific and detailed. But still it’s tough for me to go from high level, long term to what we need to get done this week, or today, without some significant rebooting of the hardware between my ears.

What’s frustrating is that I thoroughly enjoy both! The variety in my work, and the variety of task required to build a company as an entrepreneur is a dream come true! But I feel in order to be really solid I need to be able to start high level and smoothly transition down into the nitty gritty. That’s the way great plans come together and I’m definitely not where I’d like to be with this skill…

Any tips from you more experienced entrepreneurs on how to overcome this or at least improve as I go?

Above is my SXSW Foursquare scoreboard. Foursquare had a mini game within the app four SXSW participants to checking w/ as many different friends as possible, checkin at as many places as possible, had a collection of SXSW specific badges to acquire, etc. This actually made checking in really fun aside from it’s obvious utility. Another big high five to Dens, Tristan, Harry, Nate, Mike, Mari, Naveen, Tim, & Paul. I am more bullish on foursquare’s potential now than I’ve ever been.

So, back to what went down at ‘south by’. On Sunday night…

Gary’s hotel room

On Sunday night I had the incredible opportunity to hang for an entrepreneurs jam session in Gary V’s hotel room (until 7am). It was literally a group of the web entrepreneurs and investors that I respect the most, including Dave McClure, Travis Kalanick, AJ V, Micah Baldwin, Ryan Sarver, Galpert & others. The conversation rolled from where the power houses are going (Google vs. Facebook), to what sites are underrated (Alice.com & Formspring.me) and what mobile approaches will win (Apple vs. Android). There was some incredibly eye opening and inspiring conversation, and not something I’ll forget anytime soon. I was honored to be included.

In fact, this prank call actually came in (at 5am) when we were all in the room. Notice how Gary fakes asleep, then comes right awake. Hilarious!

VIPitch

On Monday, my last day in Austin I had an opportunity to hang at a happy hour that included another set of bad ass web folk. I got to share UberCab withChris Sacca, the guys from EverLater, Laura Fitton from OneForty.com, and Trammell from Twitter among others. It was again an awesome chance to go into pitch mode and share UberCab with some of the folks that see tons of pitches everyday. And again it was inspiring to get such positive feedback on what we’re building and got me even more excited to launch in June.

Exhausted

So after 4 days of hanging out with some of the most exciting entrepreneurs on the web I was pooped. My average time to bed, and by bed I mean the floor and a sleeping bag, was 5:15am. I had the chance to meet tons of people and share what we’re building at UberCab. I lined up some people for our Alpha in San Francisco and got valuable feedback from potential customers. All around phenomenal trip and an event that I won’t miss next year! Definitely want to thank Travis for hooking me up with some of these opportunities. As far as advisers go, I can’t recommend anyone stronger than I can recommend him, and it’s only been 3 weeks.

In this short interview of Jeff Bezos, now CEO/Founder of Amazon.com, he talks about how he decided to leave his safe cushy job for a startup, Amazon.com. I’ve shared many of his exact thoughts in the process to leaving my safe cushy job at GE to join a startup, UberCab. I really dig his outlook on the decision and his ability to simplify the decision making process.

No matter what your doing, in order to invest well you must be able to look past the immediate to see the future potential return. Luckily for me the decision to join a very early stage startup is an immediate gratification as well. I now have passion for what I’m working on, and this passion is a highly underrated thing. Passion is what will get you up in the morning with a hop in your step. It’s what will push you to call 5 more numbers after being hung up 10 times in a row. It gets you through the suck, and onto the fun.

I think the immediate passion Bezos had for the potential idea of Amazon is what allowed him, and what now allows me to to look past the potential short term risks, which probably aren’t even that significant, and invest in the future. When we define success in the shorter and long term with some level of passion required we see the best possible outcome. Amber says it well:

when we establish a personally relevant framework for success, we become more decisive and action-oriented. when we focus on minimizing regret rather than risk, we become more comfortable in the notion of taking risk. (which i then ask, which involves more risk: having regret or embracing uncertainty?)

establishing a framework allows us to make more decisions faster as we’re able to more easily see the big picture.

My framework for success includes enjoying the process. I wasn’t enjoying that process until very recently but keeping passion for my work at the forefront of my framework allows me to minimize the risks of a startup and invest in the future. Thanks Jeff.

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.

I read this post from @Micah today and it pretty much summed up the reading or writing to get inspired vs. doing. The gist, we don’t need inspiration from external sources to succeed. Focus on what you’re doing and inspire yourself.

“Inspiration is for amateurs, I just get to work.”
-Chuck Close

So, I’m no doubt going to continue to blog, and even just pontificate at times. But primarily, I’m going to focus on writing about what I’m doing. I hope that you can learn from that, I hope that you’re interested in that, and I hope that I can possibly even inspire. But make sure you’re not just reading blogs to get inspired. Make sure you’re doing so that you can inspire yourself.

Get to work.

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 ——->

More Cupcakes was kind enough to sponsor the event and made some Foursquare branded cupcakes with a Mayor badge. Check out those crowns!