Anthony Panozzo's Blog

A new site called ohours has set up a web app that handles appointments for creating office hours. I'm generally interested in catching up with old friends and meeting new people, so figured I'd give it a spin.

Here is my ohours profile. You can subscribe to be alerted when I post a new office hours session. I set up a few hour block of time and a location, and you can schedule a meeting within this time period. I figure that there's little potential downside (as I could work at the place in the event that no one shows up), but potentially much higher upside. I always learn something new when talking with someone, so this should be a great use of time. When's the next one? A couple days from now. Sign up now!

Apparently it's tough to find good technical cofounders and early stage employees for your company, at least based on recent blog posts. I thought I'd post a bunch of those links to discuss some of the main points people have been making. Here's my summary of the posts below.

My thoughts

The key consideration in my mind is something along the lines of BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement.) This concept applies to many business situations. In order to effectively negotiate with someone, you need to realize your next best alternative to negotiating. Perhaps your company is in good shape, and the deal would only be slightly beneficial. This puts you in a better negotiating position because you know that you can walk away from the deal without worrying. If your best alternative is your company going under, you are more likely to try to make the deal, even if it is at a slight disadvantage to you.

How does this apply to technical cofounders? Simple. They have a lot of alternatives to joining your early-stage company. They could do lucrative consulting or contracting. They could be working for better equity stakes at other companies. They might want to start their own company instead. Hmm, 5% equity at your company or 100% equity at their own company? Why would they work for a split of equity when they could be bringing down cash money for contracting, regardless of the success of the eventual product?

I searched online but found little help on this quickly, so figured I'd post what I found under a good name.

If you want more than one CSS class when using a Rails helper, use the format:

This post was inspired by Jared Brown's recent gamification comic and reading the temporarily popular Gamification is Bullshit article, and my recent startup experience.

Research

At the startup that I just worked at (RewardSnap), we decided to create a game to encourage people to do crowdsourcing of deal ratings. Instead of just crafting a game from scratch, I decided to do a bit of research into the mechanics of modern games. I figured there were companies like Zynga out there that were doing cutting-edge work on viral loops and making games engaging to people. Why not learn from others before setting off on a path that I had little knowledge about?

As I researched, I stumbled over Game-Based Marketing. It was an interesting look into the psychology and history of games for business purposes. Throughout history games and gimmicks have been used to sell merchandise and reward loyal customers. Everything from buy ten get one free, to loyalty cards, to frequent flier programs, to more modern alternatives like Foursquare. Frequent flier programs, in particular, are driven by status more than economic matters. People will literally go out of their way to take flights that earn them extra miles, in an effort to get a higher ranking in the program. If you've seen the movie Up In The Air with George Clooney, you might have an idea what this is like.

If you have things you want to write about, I'll make a case against keeping a large backlog.

Immediacy and Inspiration

It's more useful to write about experiences at a recent conference right now instead of two months from now. The time delay not only dampens memory, it also weakens excitement. It definitely helps to write about things when I am first excited or think about them, because once the enthusiasm fades it feels more difficult.

Topics that I once thought were fascinating are no longer so after I have been exposed to them for awhile. Strike while you are inspired with learning, because after that energy passes, you are less likely to be interested in it because you have already internalized the concepts. It's hard to get fired up about something that you see as obvious. Here is a great summary of this idea.