THE DREAM IN ACTION

Last week I drove back up to Milwaukee for the first time since my move in early August to speak at Web414. I was asked by the founder of Web414, Gabe, to share my experience of failing at a startup (SocialDreamium), a topic that people usually shy away from sharing.

The main reason that I accepted the offer to share this experience and expose myself and the weakness’s of my first startup is the fact that I think sharing, claiming, and learning from failures is likely the single best way to promote trying. Doing a startup is tough and risky but what we need more of, EVERYWHERE, is trying. Eliminating the fear of doing a startup is important. We can do that by realizing that if things don’t go well your career won’t be over, you won’t be crucified, and you’ll likely be better off for it!

I would love to get your thoughts on the talk, please comment!

Below is the presentation that went along with the talk.

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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.

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Today, I’m announcing my plans to close SocialDreamium, LLC.

This decision, which came about over the last month or so, was a challenging and complex one. Either way, I’ll tell you that this decision revolved primarily around money, competition, vision, and team: maybe the most critical factors of a successful startup.

SocialDreamium was attempting to compete is one of the most crowded spaces on the web at the time. We were building a social media application that would aggregate Twitter, Facebook, and other popular networks. Sound familiar? There are many companies with significant funding and resources who are developing similar applications so it became very difficult for us to see a successful path through that market. Our team was strong but faced many challenges of communication and execution. In short, for us to really drive a lot of users to our product over some of the other startups in the space was like trying to put out a fire with a squirt gun.

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No 10 mile run today. However, the weather was probably the best it’s been in the last 2 years of my life. I started the morning hopping on Yelp and finding an awesome little cafe called Caffe Capriccio in North Beach. Cafe Capriccio was the quintessential SF cafe with hipsters galore and breakfast egg wraps to die for. I did a little reading and scheduling the rest of the day.

Just after noon I headed south on the 101 towards San Jose to meet up with Ryan Kuder in Palo Alto. I had this perception of Palo Alto and all of Silicon Valley that every establishment has wifi, every coffee shop is filled with keyboard blazing software developers, and every restaurant is packed with VC’s either raising money or funding the next Facebook. I was excited to see how close my perception was to reality.

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Be flexible.

If you have some perfect situation in your head about how your company will be formed, how it will grow, and how you’ll fair, don’t. All of your expectations will likely not be met and your “perfect scenario” will not come true. However, you do need to have vision. It seems like a catch 22, I know. You need to focus on what you want to accomplish, not how you want to accomplish it.

Know where you want to go.

Your destination should definitely be in mind. What type of product would you like to build, what industry do you want to serve, and what values will your company operate on? These are things you do have control over and can use to help guide your business. These things will no doubt help in determining your success (or failure) but this is about as detailed as you will be able to get with much accuracy in terms of what your company will accomplish.

Don’t know how you want to get there.

The less you have pre-determined the better off you’ll be. Trying to force a triangle through a circular hole will not work. So, focus on building the pieces and figuring out what type of team you have to work with then go out with your triangular team and find the market that needs triangles. You’ll be much better of this way that forcing something that just isn’t going to happen.

Shut up and listen.

If you’re focusing on the right things that your focusing on your team. The who is so much more important than the what with your business. Once you have the team in place than trust them, shut up and listen to them, figure out where you collectively will go and no you the “leader”. If you did your job well in creating a team then you got some very intelligent people, no follow in their footsteps and be intelligent by listening to your new team.

Learn.

It doesn’t matter that you’re not a developer. If you’re building software (like we are) then you need to learn. Sit with your developers, learn what they go through, and learn what they love. If nothing else you will learn what to look for in your next hire. Community managers need to sit and learn from developers, developers need to learn how to market their product, finance guys need to figure out how to get a product to market and how price affects that process. But, most of all, you the leader need to have a hand in all of it. You need to realize how your organization is structured, what everyone is working on and WHY. Start learning these things now and never stop.

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I’ll be speaking at Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI on January 30th.

Alverno College is an all women’s liberal arts college in Milwaukee and my talk will be on using the web to network.

If interested in more information please contact:

Megan Olson – Alverno SIFE President

meg.a.olson@gmail.com

Many of you know that my search for a technical co-founder started here on this blog. I figured that if I needed help and a strong partner to help bring this dream to life I would start where I needed it most. SocialDreamium has now grown into a team of 4 passionate individuals and we are still growing.

We are gearing up and preparing to release our first product, whose name will be released soon, (while already developing our second) and were running into a few issues that we’re going to look to you to help us solve!

SocialDreamium is looking for a web designer/s, who love designing simple yet powerful user interfaces and clean images. Dave and I are very open to both ideas of bringing on another co-founder or managing member position into the SocialDreamium LLC and we’re also open to the idea of contracting the work out. We basically just want whats best for the dream…ium. With lots of passion and a limited budget, which we call a lean budget, we want to find a huge value in whoever we bring in. That doesn’t mean that we are going to rip you off. It means that we’d like to find someone who is motivated if not passionate about the end goal of this product, helping businesses and individuals grow communities better.

In the spirit of community I encourage you to repost, retweet, reblog, this call to the depths of the social web. If there are any questions about what we’re looking for please comment here or email me directly ryan[at]socialdreamium.com. The growth of this dream has thus far been phenomenal and I thank you for your support. We have a powerful product being built…please come help us make it look pretty!

Dharmesh wrote another post on why the economic resession is good for startups. I wanted to post 2 that I’ll be keeping closely in mind as SocialDreamium really picks up here in early 2009.

• You need constraints to build great software. If there’s one thing we’ve got plenty of in this economy, it’s constraints. Make good use of them.

• Constraints enforce discipline. You’ll need to, among other things, manage your expenditure, focus on making products that people actually want to buy, learn the difference between cash flow and profitability and figure out how to market on a shoe-string. Now is an excellent time to forge those skills. You will need them the next time things go bad.

• In difficult times, skill and hard work, which you can control, become more important than luck, which you can’t. I like this soccer analogy. If you want to compare my soccer skills with David Beckham’s then don’t put us both six feet away from an open goal and ask us to kick a ball into the net. I might get lucky, and he might show off and miss. Instead, start us off from the other end of pitch against a couple of defenders and a goalkeeper. Then you’ll get a true picture.

Starting a business is risky, but not as risky as you think. The oft-stated fact that 90% of startups fail within their first year is an urban myth. In reality, the four year survival rate for IT startups is over 50%, and there’s no evidence that this is significantly lower for companies founded in a downturn. And most start-ups that fail don’t crash and burn, owing people money and bankrupting their founders. They are quietly wound down, or sold on, and the founders set something else up or return to employment, with the added skills that even attempting, and failing, to build a business bring.

Dharmesh is an obvious thought leader and subject matter expert when it comes to software startups which is the direction that SocialDreamium seems to be taking. With the combination of his expertise and his optimism, I’ll be listening closely.

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Tonight I was reading the Harvard Business Publishing site and there was an article that caught my eye. It was called, What Surfing Can Teach Us About Managing the Unexpected, and was all about responding to such tough economic times. The point was made, very well, that it’s not so important how we react to economic changes but more about how we prepare and position ourselves in a timely manor to take advantage of such turbulence. This point is hitting me strong as I think about timing and positioning, first I’ll share an excerpt from the article…

Instead of paddling around in circles as though we were in some calm lake, we need to learn to act like surfers — to place ourselves in the rising and falling swells, paddling forward while glancing occasionally backwards, so that we will be ready when the big wave comes. If we do that, we will stand up at the right moment, establish our balance, take a deep breath, and ride the exhilarating force of history all the way to shore.

Growing up surfing this analogy really make sense to me. When teaching surfing (I used to give lessons) I’ve always told people that “riding waves is pretty easy, but catching them is almost impossible”. This makes so much sense from a business standpoint too because the right business idea could be ridden out by many folks…these are called employees…sure it still takes work, but not nearly as difficult. What is practically impossible is catching that wave, starting and executing on the right business in the right market, with the right product, and the right people. Timing and positioning.

I’m encouraged that SocialDreamium is actual timed well and positioned accordingly. On Read Write Web today there was a post about how Tech firms are hiring Developers and Community Managers. This is a strong affirmation that the market SocialDreamium is going after is an important, emerging market with a need. If we can develop software that meets the needs and solves the problems that community managers are having we will be successful. But, we must also build the right team and focus on the right targets.

So far, so good.

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As you well know SocialDreamium is in a stage of iterative improvement. A few weeks back we posted on ‘Get audience, get going’ that we were looking for help on our logo and wanted to create strong relationships with designers. We believe that not only is good design important to creating good software but its an absolute must have. To be consistent with that belief we’re constantly working on better design of our sites and products.

Lukas Sparks of Milwaukee offered to help design the new SocialDreamium logo. Lukas runs Sparks Media and will be helping with SocialDreamium design. Lukas’s not yet apart of the team but we will have a very strong relationship with Lukas and Sparks Media in the future. Lukas is a phenomenal designer with ridiculous potential and whether it be a grocery store layout (which he’s done) or new business cards, I would highly encourage you to speak to Lukas if you have a design project in your future.

Thanks Lukas, love you long time!

A few weeks ago I kicked off a survey to find out exactly what the readers of Ryan A Graves.com enjoyed the most. I wanted to get a better idea about what people enjoyed reading most so that I can continue in that direction. I started this blog to facilitate conversation and challenge myself and so far I’ve succeeded to that end. I’ve met some of you offline and I think that has been the most valuable aspect of writing this blog. So thank you. For those of you I’ve not met or connected with please do contact me, I’d love to make the connections more real.

As far as the survey goes… I was pretty disappointed with the number of responses to the survey. I’m no statistics wiz, but I know that the amount of responses I got relative to the number of readers per day was abysmal. This blog is averaging about 125 unique visits per day and the survey only got 21 responses and was up for over a week. Anyway, as promised I wanted to present the results and talk to what I’ll be writing about in the future.

The 3 largest areas of interest where my startup reviews, general startup thoughts, and business development for startups. Just so happens those topics are what I enjoy writing about most so I’m happy to see those topics among the top.

Going forward I’ll continue to write about those topics but I’ll also write about SocialDreamium quite a bit. We’ve made some great progress with SocialDreamium in the recent weeks and there will be some great content to come from those experiences. I will also be writing on the SocialDreamium company blog, ‘Get audience, get going‘.

If you participated in the poll I really appreciate your participation and help in making this blog better all the time! Love you long time :)

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SocialDreamium Test Logo

This is a early version of the SocialDreamium logo. I’m going to be looking for help to evolve this into the eventual logo. I don’t have the $krill to pay for this right now but if your design is chosen I can guarantee that you will get so much credit for this thing you’ll be tired of me talking about it!

Plus if the designer of the logo is interested I’ll give you first right to further logo design for SocialDreamium clients. (business for you!!!)

Thanks in advance for all who help! Looking forward to what people design!

UPDATE:

I was thinking about faking that a reader submitted this in an effort to encourage more submissions but I decided against it. Transparency & Honesty right? What do you guys think of this logo? Please comment and let me know…

Test logo 2

UPDATE 2: HAHAHA, my sister just brought to my attention that I misspelled Social in this logo….oh, well. You get the idea. New logo still coming.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the role of community manager with a startup. Would I be good at it? Would I want it? I came to the conclusion: Yes. But why?

Turns out I already am a community manager. You may be too. One sign that you may be a good community manager is your Twitter followers. Another is the number of people that read your blog. Are you keeping people interested in your conversations on the web? If your thoughts are provoking enough for people to follow what you say and your blog posts are intelligent enough to invoke conversation around them then you probably have what it takes to be a good community manager. In fact, if you have a large Twitter following and a large readership of your blog you are a community manager. You’re managing YOUR community!

It’s critical to remember that not only is it important to stay interesting when managing a community, but you have to stay interested. Don’t see the difference? The difference is very similar to what can make or break a good blog. 2 way interaction.

The reason why AVC.com is such a great blog and is so interesting to be a part of that community is because Fred Wilson spends a lot of time managing his community. I don’t think I’ve ever made a thoughtful comment on Fred’s blog that hasn’t received a comment back. Sure, sometime I just want to give Fred some props and say “nice post”, in this case I don’t expect a response. But, when I have a issue with, or a question about something Fred has said, he always gets back to me.

If you’re a natural networker like me then this should appeal to you. This doesn’t seem like work at all. A community manager is basically the networker for a company. It’s your job to make people aware of the brand and the goals of the company. Next, is to listen and converse. If you believe in your product and your team this should be easy peasy.

Startups are realizing the importance of this position more and more. It’s evident…just look at the startup jobs, they are either development jobs or community mgr jobs. The value in a web startup only exists if there are people using the site, so, it’s critically important to get the name out there. However, startups don’t have a lot of money in this climate either. <solution> Outsourced community manager </solution> Bringing in someone to help you can increase adoption and traction of your product huge but it has to be the right person or team.

SocialDreamium Plug: Social Dreamium seeks to be that team. We are good at creating a buzz and helping a company get attention! We’re also good at interacting and finding value from your users. Managing the value that your community can offer your startup is half the battle and communicating your value to them is the other. SocialDreamium will help you do both.

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As I begin to help clients develop a presence on the social web through SocialDreamium, I am put in a position where I need to design solutions to interesting problems. It is my job to help companies use the internet and social software on the web to build communities and gain attention from potential clients.

These slides jumped out to me as a great approach to defining a problem and designing a solution. Enjoy.