Note to the Gang
| April 27th, 2012I 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.
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,
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.