Note to the Gang

| April 27th, 2012

I am going to be short and honest. Actually I am short and honest. In any event I need guidance from those that know more than I.

I need to break the start up code.
I will give you a quick as possible run down of the history of Storyline.
1. Get idea whilst out with Zoe looking for chinese food in a sketchy barrio. Take shower to solidify idea.
2. At the same time as this I am made aware of the fact that Barcelona has been struck with “Start Up” fever. The are seemingly 3 Meet Ups a week that have something to do with this. This is great because it often seems that most of the time all that anybody thinks about here is, “When’s lunch?” (sorry Nick, I love my adopted homeland) This is not exactly a bad thing but after your thousandth bowl of estofat it kinda gets a little worn out. In any event I am inspired to go “Once more into the breach!” of project development. Cue the sound of five pairs of eyes rolling in unison.
3. I flesh out the idea and do a Prezy slide show and become the featured guest at intimate lunch where by you present your idea to 11 other folks… all of whom are supposedly either like minded entrepreneurs or potential investors.
4. It goes well and I hook up with 2 people. 1, an Italian programmer and 2, a guy from the US who has what seems to be a IT consultancy of some sort. The Italian guy is all over the project but then for some reason starts sending me emails pointing out that the idea is doomed because it is exactly like things like Dressupyourdoggy.com, Porn-u-like and Fungus.org. I tell him it’s not anything like any of these things. He bangs his head against the wall, starts screaming the names of various shapes of pasta, puts on his rubber Klingon ears and exits stage left.
5. It goes better with the American consultant but I am swept up in Y Combinator land for an intense but short and untimately disappointing while… thanks for going along for the ride. Once returning to the fray I have a number of meetings with the consultant and his young dutch partner in their lovely offices on Passeig de Gracia, Barcelona’s most swanky address which is under constant construction due to the need of various brother-in-laws (often named Jordi) with construction companies to increase the size of their fortunes which are stashed in safes hiding behind bad Miro knock-offs in their bibliotecas next to informal photographs showing the great uncles of the various aforementioned brother-in-laws arm wrestling Jordi Pujol
6. A plan is hatched! They will help me develop the idea and then will find a. FFF seed money. (Family, friends and fools… their phrase), b. Angel funding, c. Series A. Venture Capital… capital. I see myself saving this and fixing it up and we all live there and code and think of big ideas and what’s for lunch. I find a new baby sitter for Zoe. And finally stop taking the bus. On the humanitarian front for some reason George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and I will buy Corsica and populate it Bonobos and Giant Pandas. Anyway after a number of these top level meetings it becomes obvious that these guys ultimately want 256% of the company, an upfront fee of the GNP of Germany, a skybox at Camp Nou and an introduction to Zoe’s potential new baby sitter. Hmmmm… so close… yet so far away. Anyway I whupped up the “wireframe” in hopes of showing them the real viability of the project… after seeing it they said they would now also require 2 copies of the recently released Van Halen box set. Forgeddaboutit.
So here we are, with our wireframe in hand, a tenderness in our nether regions and weird smirk on our face. Now what?
With this in mind I have been reviewing the systematic way in which the brilliant creator of Instagram went about building his world changing app… social… sharing… WTF… thang.
Item a: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-10/tech/31317166_1_zynga-founders-investments
OK. “Guy goes in a bar with an IPhone (he worked for Google… what’s that tell ya) full of flash sprites and a whackadoodle mock up using Comic Sans and Papyrus… has a mojito and comes out with 250 grand.” The thing originally is call BURBN… because the guy likes… Bourbon (!) and it has nothing to do with… photo sharing… (later on they PIVOT to the photo sharing thing, don’t get me started on this notion of PIVOTING… AKA fucking up and thinking of another idea really fast because the VC guys have these friends from Columbia who all watched and really enjoyed, “Scarface”) This white hot passion blows over to Andreesen,
Item b: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/instagram-deal-puts-horowitz-on-defensive/
who also kicks in another 250. I won’t even go down the road to Series a funding. Series b funding… nor Zuck driving a hard bargain and stealing this world changing app… social… sharing… WTF… thang for 1,000,000,000 cool samolians. Apparently Mr. Burbn wanted 2,000,000,000 clams. Man I would not want to buy a car from that guy.
Listen amigos, Storyline (and for that matter George and Emily’s amazing app and and anything Nick is currently imagining) is way better than this mess.
Here’s my dream: 1. We take the idea and the wireframe and, hell yeah, another damn zooming slide show and what ever else it takes to get enough seed money so that we can all get paid to work on this. We launch. 2. We play the VC game a little. 3. We use this to make this into a pretty neat addition to our world. 4. We take these funds and build some more ideas (I have 2 more) whilst at the same time building a few schools where ever they need to go. Etc. Etc. Repeat until things get better… for everybody… in this world and our planetary neighbors.
But I am stymied as to how to do this in a clean, professional, dignified and predictable way. I don’t want to go to Mountain View, California and trawl the terraces of California Pizza Kitchen and TGIF for microbrew/latte maciato doppio sucking venture capitalists. I don’t want to play the lottery and listen to some 27 year old tell me at some incubator thang how he worked so hard for a year and half for his first 50 million. I just want to talk about all of us and tell this idea to folks who will get it and will (wisely and prudently) invest a workable amount of cash in this rock solid concept.
So the floor is open. Any ideas are welcome. Any contacts. Any mantras. Anybody got Marc Andreesen’s phone number…
Onward.
Robin
PS. I’m including the original entry to Y Combinator incase y’all forgot.
PPS. So much for “short.” Forgive me.
PPPS. Our motto is: We will never release nuttin’ before it’s baked and no, we don’t pivot.

I promised myself that I would be honest writing about my experiences pursuing “this internet idea”… Ok I also promised myself that I wouldn’t be maudlin or embarrassingly revelatory. But here’s the deal I  (I keep wanting to say we… either I think pretty highly of myself or I  guess that shows how much I want to build a community around this) have hit a wall. After a few weeks of positive discussions apparently the relationship with a local consulting firm has gone away. And by gone away they told me exactly how much they were going to charge me (both in equity and cash) to do the required work to shake hands with those with the required moola. If you see the oddness about the final outcome then you are not alone… so do I. Pay cash to get more or less the same amount of cash… and lose 20% equity? Hmmmm…  Honestly I guess they were a consulting firm… I still don’t really know what they do but they do have swanky offices on Barcelona’s most fashionable street… and young folks running around with airbooks… and the vibe was good, they seemed like minded. They seemed serious but light hearted. They were good guys. Guys… no malice here but damn… you loved the idea, we met 4 times, we lightly bonded, we exchanged links, I still have you’re incredibly old fashioned book on developing a business plan. Here it comes… WTF.

Y Combinator… nope…

| April 18th, 2012

OK back to reality. Now on to building an amazing product that yep… will change the world.

I Heard the Sirens Scream

| April 15th, 2012

Laurie Garrett Takes on 9/11 & Anthrax – Reviewed by “Download The Universe.”

An amazing book reviewed by an amazing site and an example of the kind of serious events that Storyline could be used for.

 

Learn more… Knuckle head.

| April 11th, 2012

The Atlantic: How to Fail Less: Steve Blank on the Secrets of Start-Ups http://goo.gl/mag/ARb40

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/09/at-a-market-cap-of-950-million-the-new-york-times-is-worth-less-than-instagram/

Ok… I’m dancing in this world but… give me a break…

And the numbers be…

| April 10th, 2012

The Atlantic: Instagram Is Now Worth $77 Million Per Employee http://goo.gl/mag/Kn27U

1bn. 1 billion dollares. 1 thousand million clams.

So I’m talking to my new friend X. X is way up in a company that makes and sells glasses. He’s been there for like 27 years. He has a 6 percent piece of the pie. They want to sell the company. According to X a few years ago the rule of thumb for the value of a company used to be 10 to 15 times the annual pre tax profit. (See I am learning the jargon.) Now they can only hope to get 5 to 6 times that number. There are probably hundreds of employees and an entire network of manufacturers, distributors, sales folks, warehouse workers… lots of people. Heck the folks that make the springs that keep your glasses open… Lots of mouths fed. Lots of jobs created and sustained. And a sustained and sustainable 5 to 10% growth rate for the foreseeable future.

Then there is today’s news about Instragram. Facebook pays 1 billion for Instagram. OK it’s a cool gadget but at least on the surface Instagram doesn’t make anything… or at least they don’t charge anything. This makes the annual pre tax profit of 0. OK minus zero… you know overhead…

Quora says Instagram has 6 employees. This means that 6 employees will divvy up 1 thousand million dollars. These employees have also been given jobs at Facebook. OK 6 employees and the angel investors and venture capitalists… which here is like 48 million. Series A. Series B… Pre money… yada yada.

I just had lunch with an old friend who is president of thriving medium sized IT business. I asked him to explain how this all works. He did. I still don’t understand. Anybody else want to try?

OK… the good folks at Y Combinator want a video to go with the application. My buddy Alfonso at Barcelona Center News came over and we whupped this thing up in like 30 minutes. Editing took an hour. Whether they “get it” or not is another matter. Cut Alfonso! Cut!

Y Combinator Application in.

| March 29th, 2012

OK… it has been sent. Finally the team is:

Kyoko Uchida 

James Fish

Charles Young

And me… Rex the wonder dog.

Damn… it’s like the Buckeroo Bonzai… Except for Rex. What to do about Rex…

 

 


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