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Fanpop Opinion Article
The Humble Beginnings of a Startup
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One fateful day in the fall of 2005, Papa and I started talking about our dissatisfaction at our respective jobs. I was doing marketing for a consumer electronics startup and sorely missing the Internet world. Papa was working at a big company in an Internet division that was full of politics and clueless management. We missed the days of Yahoo! and working on cool products that people actually used. We were fed up with working for others when we knew we were capable of doing so much more on our own. So it was that day that we decided we would take the leap. There was so much changing in the web world around us. Papa was regularly using a geek site called Digg to find new content. I was constantly visiting a little obscure site called YouTube to watch viral videos. My new source of restaurant reviews was no longer the archaic CitySearch, it was a hip new site called Yelp. The big old tech companies were getting fat and lazy while plenty of scrappy young startups which were nipping at their feet were now actually starting to get people's attention. All three of these sites had one thing in common, they were empowering the people and giving them voices. People don't want to be force fed content chosen by editors or webmasters. We were seeing a revolution of users who wanted to express themselves and be known which was evident in the explosion of blogging and MySpace. Starting a company sounded glamorous, but we quickly learned why so few actually take the leap. For the next several months Papa and I worked part-time on our initial concept which was a travel idea. We were both product managers so we spent our nights and weekends working on product ideas, user interfaces, wireframes, feature lists, product specs, and researching the online travel space. Trying to work a day job and trying start a company was exhausting and difficult. Working a day job from 9-7pm and then working on your dream from 7-2am was not sustainable. Especially for Papa who had a little girl and another little boy on the way. We tried to work with an old colleague of ours who was an engineer at Yahoo! Soon it started to fall apart. We realized that while our idea was a good one and that people would want to use our product, the execution would be more difficult than we had originally planned. We also lost our developer because his day job was becoming more demanding and he didn't want to let us down. We were back at square one after almost two months of non-stop unpaid life-consuming fruitless work. It was enough to make us throw in the towel...but thankfully we didn't. We came up with another idea after being inspired by our own little personal side projects. Over the summer I had started a website called EOSrebels.com for Canon Digital SLR camera enthusiasts and beginners. I found that there were no good resources for people like me and dozens of friends kept asking me for advice. So I decided to build a website that compiled and organized all of the fragmented research and resources I had found all over the web. I added a blog and a forum and before I knew it, a community began to grow. There was clearly a demand for this niche community of digital photographers who used this one line of cameras. Papa saw this and decided to build his own site called Dunderball around his favorite television show, the NBC sitcom the Office. He immediately got traffic and people were participating in his polls and forums. We felt that these sites were proof that there was demand for a better way to form communities around topics of interest. Yahoo! Groups hasn't changed since the 90s. Digg and Del.icio.us didn't really offer any social interaction. And MySpace was just a bunch of hideous and useless individualistic profiles. We started the whole arduous process of specing and designing a product all over again. The thing is, when you are building your own product and something that you believe in, there is no greater driving force to propel you forward. We were excited because we had a vision and we didn't have some director or general manager telling us what we could and couldn't do. The next few months were not without more headaches and frustration. We had a difficult time finding the right technical person to join us. But once we found Cliff, we knew we could make this happen. The only thing holding us back was our day jobs. My friends who were entrepreneurs all echoed the same sentiments...quit your job. They said that it's nearly impossible to really get anything off the ground if you aren't going at it 100%. They were right. We were so tired after our full-time jobs that we weren't giving the best hours of our energy to what we truly cared about. It also was growing more tedious spending our days at jobs we weren't passionate about. So we decided that if we were going to do this we had to lay it all on the line and we quit our full-time jobs. Once we took that step of faith, things really started to take off. We got lawyers, we incorporated, we raised some money from friends and family, we hired an amazing addition to our team in Michael and most importantly, we built our product. We launched the site in August and haven't looked back since. Needless to say, we learned a lot of lessons from this experience which I want to share with you: 1. Taking the step is scary, but you'll never regret it I recently told my friend with entrepreneurial aspirations that starting a company is just like the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indy has to step off a cliff out into a chasm of darkness to get across to the Holy Grail. He has to have faith that he will make it across, but everything in his right mind tells him it doesn't make sense or that it's not worth it. If he steps off and nothing is there to catch him, he will fall. The cliff we were standing on was stable and sure. We had good incomes, we had health insurance, and most of all we had security on our cliffs. Stepping off would mean we would give all of those up to step into a potential abyss of failure and uncertainty. But it wasn't until he took that step that he found out that there was a bridge he didn't see ready to support him all the way across. We didn't see it until we stepped off but the support and encouragement of friends and family have been there all along. We don't get the fat paychecks anymore, but the satisfaction and enjoyment we have of working together with a good team on something you believe in and not having to deal with company politics or red tape more than make up for it. 2. Find a developer who is ambitious and eager to learn We realized early on that the ratio of 2 non-tech guys to 1 tech guy is not a good one. But finding a good programmer in this environment is harder than ever. There are too many good opportunities out there at innovative startups and Google has caused a brain drain on the Valley and elsewhere. Finding talent is one thing, but finding a talented developer with passion and ambition is another. Most programmers working at big companies are pretty comfortable and settled. They're content with maintaining the status quo and getting their paychecks for meeting expectations. If you want to find a developer who will make an impact, there are two things to look for. Find someone who is constantly trying to learn new things like programming languages, this shows that they are eager to learn and want to be challenged and intellectually stimulated. The second thing to look for is someone who has side projects that they work on in their spare time. This demonstrates that they are ambitious and want to create and build something new and useful. There are thousands of cool projects out there that precocious developers out there, you just have to reach out to the right ones. Find a great great project and you'll find a great programmer. If I hadn't come across Cooking for Engineers, then I never would have met Michael and Fanpop wouldn't be what it is today. 3. You can do so much more when you're not in the confines of a large organization It still amazes me what four guys in a living room can do. We didn't have any departments of graphic designers, accountants, PR, marketing or business development. We had four scrappy guys who pooled their talents together and made it happen because we had to. I majored in Finance and became a graphic designer. Papa majored in Music and he became a web developer. When something needed to be done, we found a way. You will be shocked at what you can do when you are hungry (both literally and figuratively!). You also can't imagine how much more productive you can be when you don't have to deal with incompetent management and bureaucracy. We don't get bogged down with unnecessary meetings and processes, we just work. At a big company you probably produce about 50% of what you could be producing if you weren't a cog. When I was at one of the biggest Internet companies in the world, I couldn't get them to adopt RSS three years ago because they were scared that it would take down servers! Cliff and Michael both agree that they can churn out so much more code when they're not distracted by documents, e-mails and meetings all day long. Sitting in a small room right next to one another goes a long way for productivity. When you're working for your own survival, you tend to be pretty darn inspired. Starting a company is scary. Quitting your job is scary. Finding the right developers is scary. I'll freely admit that it's not for everyone. I thought that being an entrepreneur wasn't for me. I've always taken the safe route of going to big name companies and big name schools. I was content with taking the road most traveled. But if you have a good idea and don't pursue it, then you are only robbing yourself of what could be an amazing journey and experience. There will always be jobs out there, there won't always be great opportunities. You owe it to yourself to take a chance to find out. Once you do, you'll never look back. Two people that were full of practical and profound advice on starting a company were Guy Kawasaki and Paul Graham. I've been fortunate enough to meet both of them and thank them for their insightful words. Here are some great ways to benefit from their words of wisdom: Paul Graham's Essays Guy Kawasaki's Blog The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki Find more great resources like these for entrepreneurs at the Startups and Entrepreneurship Spot.
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Dan, if I had 1.65 billion, I wouldn't buy Fanpop. I'd buy a house composed only of solid gold. Every nail, door, wall, floor, window frame, sink, etc.. would be gold. I would sit on top of my gold house in golden clothing with a golden microphone and yell to the neighborhood the following:
"Hey look at me, I'm the greatest man in the world! I've got a gold house and you don't. You're poor and I'm rich! Ha, ha, ha! You stink! I rock!" You know, something like that. Or maybe I'd buy Paraguay. One or the other.
monkeypup, if you bought a house made of solid gold, how would you know you missed the toilet while peeing? Because you wouldn't be able to see where the pee stains are...makes it kinda hard to wipe up your spills. Not like I have that problem--I've got good aim!
Just found your website....its like looking at the gates of heaven!!! Wonderful Site, easy to use and i get to see all my programs from your side of the pond!!
Keep up the great work and i look forward to adding to this success!
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