A Reputable Journal

This is a post I’ve been thinking about for a few days. Its a serious post, but especially after today, its surrounded in humor. Here’s the problem, to me this is funny, but if you had to live with it every day of your life, it might not be funny.

My thinking about this goes all the way back to the first day of JTerm, when we walked, and walked, and walked… through miles of parking garage to get to the light rail that would take us downtown. When we arrived downtown, most of us could easily take the escalator conveniently up to street level. Where we hunted around for the elevator for the rest of the group. It turns out the elevator is never in a location that is convenient or close to the escalators.

The next day, I led the group into a coffee shop (not a Starbucks) that our host had recommended. I popped in, looked around, and quickly realized that we couldn’t stay, not only couldn’t we stay we couldn’t all get in the coffee shop. Stairs only, no ramp.

On the positive side, the Seattle bus drivers were all extremely knowledgeable and courteous. They were able to quickly help get everyone on the bus, and locked into place for a safe ride, without one word of complaint.

The train ride from Seattle to San Francisco was 23 hours. It was uncomfortable for most of us, especially when trying to sleep, but it had to be sheer torture for someone who couldn’t get out of their chair for the entire time. Things started to get humorous when we got on the bus outside the Amtrak station. It was like the driver had no idea how to operate the wheelchair lift! Hey lets just press some of these buttons and see what happens. Never mind, the picture diagram of what to do that was posted right there.

When we needed to use the super shuttle to go from San Francisco to Menlo Park, things got a lot worse. First, the super shuttle has yet to be on time. Second, even though we ordered an accessible van, the drivers once again clearly had no idea how to make it work. Luckily by this time our own guys had figured out the general principles of a lift and were able to quickly give useful advice. The real shocker was our bus from First Student. All jokes about being on the short bus aside, it blew me away that the driver showed up with a non-functional lift. He said the battery was dead, but that didn’t stop him from randomly pressing buttons while our crew figured out how to operate the lift manually.

Its been an interesting process of learning and discovery on our travels, learning to look for ramps and elevators. Learning to avoid crappy rocky roads whenever possible, and generally feeling a small part of the pain of a comrade that has to put up with this stuff every day.

Today we moved south, from Fisherman’s wharf down to Menlo Park. But most of the day was spent at Google. This was certainly a day that everyone has been looking forward to for most of the trip.

My interest in Google+ was renewed by a great tech talk by Ed Chi. Who said some very nice things about me in front of my students. They probably think I paid him. We heard about supporting an organization as large as Google from Luther Alum Charles Banta, and about i18n – i(nternationalizatio)n from Luther Alum and former CS faculty member Craig Cornelius. Yes there are 18 letters between the parenthesis! We had a fabulous tour of campus, a stop in the 3D printer lab, time at the gift shop, and of course, lunch at Charlie’s Cafe.

You have probably heard about Google’s famous slides, but they also have fire poles for people that want to quickly get down a floor. And, in case you don’t want to walk between buildings they have these cool Google Bikes all over the place. Guests are encouraged not to ride the bikes, but nobody said anything about posing with one for your picture.

The other talk we heard was from Brian, a member of the self driving car project, who gave us a quick overview of the Google X Chauffeur Project. The technology is interesting, and I have to admit I hadn’t really thought past the cool sensors, and modeling that would be required. But, what is even more interesting are the many social implications of self driving cars.

Brian pointed out a couple of interesting facts for us to consider. Most people dedicate more space in their homes to their car or cars than they do to their own children’s living space. He also asked us to think about all the cars in the parking lot outside the office we were in. What fraction of the time are those cars in use? Are they parked 90% of the time?

What if our self driving cars could take the kids to school in the morning, and then return a while later to bring us to work? What if we could just bring up our smart phone and request a self driving car to pick us up at work and drop us off at home. We might not need such large garages. Could we turn much of our driveway space into gardens? Would this mean the end of rush hour? Probably not, but if the car was self driving, could a self driving car pick up you and a couple of friends on a logical path to work and drop you off? On the freeways would traffic flow more fluidly if the cars could talk to each other and the automated sensor systems were good enough to ensure a nice safe drive with cars spaced out 10 feet apart? A self driving car has no need to slow down and gawk if there is an accident.

Would we collectively own fewer vehicles if our car could be called to pick us up with the touch of a button on our smart phone, or automatically scheduled to pick us up based on our daily calendar?

The big car companies will say that self driving cars are 30 years in the future. The researchers at Google feel like we are more like 5-10 years from reality. Who is better situated to make that call? The companies with the navigational, and sensor technology, with access to smart phone interfaces and calendars? In short a company like Google? Personally, I’m rooting for Google on this one, and can’t wait to buy into my first self driving car collective.

“Ann is on a roll, we are going to be late.” I texted to Phillip. Indeed she was. Ann Winblad was the first investor in my Company, Net Perceptions, back in 1996. She was an investor, a mentor, and a supporter of us for years. Today she was giving my students a lesson in the new economics and ecosystems of software development. I was taking notes as fast as I could to keep up with the stream of new companies and technologies that were must know things according to Ann.

After the lesson she opened up the floor to questions, and the stories began to flow. And flow, and when the students stopped asking questions she asked them questions and told them stories about their answers. We were long past the end of our scheduled time, and I noticed her long term assistant Katie, standing across the room arms folded, glaring at Ann. Heaven only knows what poor entrepreneur was downstairs sweating while she was entertaining us!

Ann repeated a number of themes we’ve heard throughout the trip. One I don’t think I’ve mentioned here but we have heard from several people: Don’t sweat your first job. or Your first job is just your first job, so don’t worry about it too much. This is such a change from when I graduated from college, and I think its a real shock for midwestern students to hear. But I think it is true. We tend to think of that fist job as a real important commitment whereas the truth is it is a chance to get experience for 2-3 years and then to help you really decide your direction.

One thing I’m not sure I agree with is Ann’s assertion that 90% of sofware will be assembled from already existing components. This may be true for some companies, but it seems to me that real, big, breakthroughs are still going to come from creating new and innovative components for other people.

This is continuing a trend/theme that we have picked up on in this trip, but that may also be a bit troubling. 1. It is so much cheaper for a software company to get off the ground these days. Amazon AWS, is just one contributor to this, Sonatype is another. 2. Automated sales and marketing software is yet another. Gone are the days when you need a big face to face sales force to sell enterprise software. 3. The result of this is that VC’s are able to make bets on software companies for a relatively small amount of money. The downside is that they may not be investing in the riskier, bigger companies that may result in really big breakthroughs.

For my own, and your convenience, here is a list of words of wisdom and interesting companies to check out:

• You need to know Atlassian, Github, and Sonatype

• Think about Engagement Moments These are the times that people are really paying attention to their devices and are good times to hit them up with an ad.

• Learn Hadooop

• Writing SQL is a requirement for everyone

• Plumgrid

• Hortonworks

• MongoDB

• Puppet and Chef

• Nuodb

• Baynote

The following is a republication of a post I wrote for Luther College’s “Ideas and Creations” Blog.

Changing the World: Understanding Entrepreneurship, January 2014

I have never been so glad to leave Minnesota as I was on January 6th. The temperature outside was -24 with a windchill that defied all logic. I was headed for Seattle with 11 Luther students to begin my course on “Understanding Entrepreneurship.” I really enjoy traveling with students. Their energy, their enthusiasm, their ability to eat a doughnut burger at the airport before getting on a three hour flight.

Our itinerary for the three-week course includes four days in Seattle, an overnight train ride, six days in San Francisco, four days in Silicon Valley, a continuation of the train ride to Las Angeles where we will conclude the trip. Notice the nice progression of temperatures, from -24 in Minneapolis to 48 in Seattle to 68 here in San Francisco today, to even warmer in LA.

The goals of the course are for the students to meet with people from a variety of companies, from early stage startups to very successful large companies, and everything in between. We’ll meet with technology companies, Venture Capitalists, Public Relations folks, managers, programmers, you name it. The point is for the students to hear stories. Sometimes the most interesting and valuable stories are the stories about failure. Sometimes they are about success. Almost always they are a combination of the two that demonstrate passion, persistence, and the willingness to take a risk. The students are from a variety of majors including CS, management, accounting, marketing, and communications.The mix of majors creates good discussion, and questions from a variety of perspectives.

Some of the companies we have visited you have probably heard of: Microsoft, Pinterest, Google, and Amazon. Many of the people we have talked to at those companies are veterans of smaller companies that have ended up in a large company. Some of the companies we have visited you maybe haven’t heard of, and may never hear of: Sqwiggle, Moovweb, Strava, Capsule, and Fullscreen. Some of these smaller companies are still in the “garage phase,” they are just a couple of people with a great idea and a huge amount of passion to change the world.

I have connections to many of these companies from my former life as a software entrepreneur, but what is even more exciting is that I am connected to some of these companies by former students, and other Luther Alums. What a great experience it is for the students to see Luther Alumni, here on the west coast, doing great things.

The students all have their own reasons for taking the course. Some want to see if the West coast is right for them. Some want to learn about the different job opportunities in the high tech area. Some are exploring. Some are looking for an internship for next summer at that one cool company.

It is the passion, and the willingness to take a risk on something you believe in that I really hope they take away from this course. Too often, our Lutheran midwest culture teaches us that failure is bad, something to be ashamed of. What they hear in Silicon Valley is that not trying is far worse. Everyone here has stories about failing. One, two, three or more startups that never made it. The reasons are as varied as the people. Something like 90% of newly started companies are not successful. But, people learn from their mistakes, move on, and do something new, sometimes they do something great. Always, they are trying to make a difference. If they learn nothing more than that, the course will be a success.

What a great day for a bike ride! We rented some bikes at Blazing Saddles, right next to the hotel. Then took off for the golden gate bridge. It was a beautiful day and no surprise, the bike paths were very crowded with all kinds of people enjoying the outdoors and the scenery.

About half of the group above rode across the bridge and back. Here is me leading the pack.

The other half followed me further on into Sausalito, with the goal of making it to Muir Woods. The second half of the trek started off very nicely with a long downhill. which was quickly followed by a steep uphill. All well and good until my riders started to figure out that “what goes down must be climbed back up!” The ride flattened out through Sausalito and beyond so it was a nice easy ride for a while. But it was getting to noon, and we’d already ridden about 12 miles. I misunderstood the directions from the bike shop and thought we had about 12 more to go. So, since the guys all had tickets to Alcatraz and had to be ready to board by about 3:30 we decided to turn back short of our goal. It turns out we were much closer and could have made it to the redwoods! Bummer.

In any case, we rode just over 25 miles, and it sure felt good to be on a bike outside again!

A 23 hour train trip? At some point that seemed like a really charming idea. Eight hours in, I’ll say that the bloom is off the rose. Its been a nice ride, and a good chance to catch up on some reading and blogging but for the most part its just a long ride on a train full of people. The views have been OK, but it is now dark outside.

What? There is no real way to know the answer to this question, but it is one that was posed to the group today. How do you handle uncertainty? How do well do you think on your feet? This is a typical interview question used by many high tech companies. At Luther we might ask prospective faculty, “how many cornstalks in the state of Iowa?”

This question definitely stumped a few people in the room, but others got the idea quickly. This question isn’t about getting the right answer. There is a right answer, but nobody could tell you exactly what it is. There is definitely a wrong answer: “I don’t know,” or “Its not possible.” are two examples of the wrong answer to this question.

So what do you do? You have to make some assumptions. What fraction of the state of Washington is forested, what is the density of trees in the forested area. If you use some reasonable numbers for those two items you can make a reasonable, and defensible estimate. That is something that startups have to do every day. Use the information they have available, and make their best guess. Check the assumptions, and be ready to refine the answer. This is not just true of startups, it is true for all businesses, projects, and life.

Here are a few more highlights and themes from today:

• When you interview, have a story. I’ve been telling my students this for the last several years, but it is much more compelling when you hear it from someone who is actually making hiring decisions. The story should be based around something you have built or designed yourself.

• You can have the best technology and still fail in many different ways.

• What is the one core competency of your company? Starbucks was not coffee, it was training, so that customers had a consistent experience. McDonalds was not making burgers, but rather distribution.

• Finally, it takes four kinds of people to make a successful startup:

  • The Visionary

  • The Builder

  • The Designer

  • The Closer

One person may take on multiple of these roles, but you have to have them all in order to be successful as a company. The Visionary is of course the person who is looking ahead five years and setting the direction. The Builder, owns the solution space. Builders are part of a spectrum. Architects – Hackers. Architects want to have a good strong lasting implementation, and tend to plan the whole system out before coding. Hackers, tend to code as they think, and the best of them have an idea coded by the end of the meeting where it was first introduced. Where are you on that spectrum? The Designers interpret the vision to the builders, they own the problem space, and understand the user experience. In the best case, the builder and the designer are the same person. Finally, the Closer, usually a sales person, often also the CEO is the person who can close the deal.

• The better a company is at serving their customers, the less likely the are to change. This of course goes against every lesson Steve Jobs and others like him taught us. You need to make yourself obsolete before someone else does. In an aside, I think this lesson right here is the achilles heel of higher education.