Jambo

“All of which reminds me that at this stage, I’d rather have quality assurance and no venture capital than the reverse.” –Mark

Mark, our lead developer, just bought a Danger SideKick. It arrived today, just in time for Danger’s data service to come crashing down. They’re going on their 5th day of outage right now – major. He sent me an email about it, which I’ve posted below. His summary comment made me feel very good about the slow and steady development approach we’ve chosen at Jambo. We chose to build our tech out for well over a year, before approaching customers. We brought in a QA test team, before approaching customers. With testing and coding standards in place, we launched (at DEMO!) and began pursuing customers. In small technology startups, this is the exception, not the rule. I’ve pasted Mark’s email below:
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I was having a cup of coffee with Will Layton, Co-Founder of COPAN Systems this afternoon. He has been a great sounding board for us over the last 9 months or so. I was giving him an update on our progress since DEMO. We also talked about tomorrow’s advisory board meeting.

“Who are the top 5 customers you are targeting? The ones that will make a significant difference to your growth?” I instantly loved the question. We should be focused on these customers above all else and trying to get in the door anyway we can. We should be asking our advisory board and anyone else we know if they have a contact at these organizations. (A warm call is always easier than a cold one.) I counted off about 10 or so names that would be ideal for us to have, but this was a question we needed to think through some more. On the way home from the meeting, I came up with another 10 that would be great to have as well. Now its time to prioritize. Particularly for a company our size, we don’t have the resources to be targeting everything under the sun.

The question is, how far do you pursue any single opportunity before walking away? With one of our customers, I met with about 5 different people before finding our champion. Sometimes it takes a little creativity to get in the door, but other times it just takes persistence. Luckily, like most entrepreneurs, these attributes aren’t something I need to worry about. Unless the customer (particularly the ultimate decision-maker) sees our technology solving an explicit need they have, a deal probably isn’t going anywhere. Maybe they will come around after we reach our tipping point, maybe they won’t, but either way, its time to reorder our list.

We’ve managed to assemble a pretty crack advisory board, and while we’ve been working with them individually for a while now, this week we’ll have our first pow wow with everyone together. I’m really looking forward to it – a chance to tap into some deep knowledge on some of the strategic issues that we’ve been struggling with. Just as with any meeting though – the more clearly we can define our goals beforehand, the more we can get out of the meeting. Basic stuff, but easy to forget.

If you have never gone to a TED Conference before, BEWARE, because you will probably get addicted and have to go every year thereafter. This year’s TED was amazing. It started off with James Watson (discovered DNA) and ended with Eva Vertes who is the next generation of scientists (she is a 19 year old Princeton student) developing new ways to combat Alzheimer’s disease and Cancer. I was impressed with her poise on stage, her passion, and the creativity she is bringing to her work. There were so many great speakers that there isn’t enough room to talk about them all, except to say that it is worth it. The other attendees were just as stimulating as the speakers. They are curious about life and passionate about what they do – my kind of people! I can’t wait till next year!

Always be ready, because what can go wrong, will.

No one in the audience noticed how close we came to aborting our demo at TED. In fact, the demo went off very, very well. No technical glitches, everyone on stage was very composed, lighthearted – a professional, fun demo from the audience’s perspective. But, oh, it could have been very bad indeed.

As the audience begain pouring into the room for our session, I’m still onstage, hooking up equipment – I see Jeff Bezos sit down. John Doerr, Pierre Omidyar – the list goes on. I plug Charles’ laptop into the VGA, and his trackpad freezes! We have one speaker before us (20minutes), so the stage tech tells me to unplug the laptop and go backstage to fix it, and he’ll sneak it onto the stage. The lights go down and the speaker starts, and I’m in full panic. I reboot – the trackpad is still not working. With 14 minutes to go, I decide to cut my losses and sprint back to the hotel to get another laptop and load Jambo onto it. I’m back in 10 minutes, and the stage-tech needs the laptop right then. We walk onto stage with a totally untested environment running. The demo works as planned, but it was *way* too close for comfort. I learned a whole slew of lessons that day. While I had met Murphy many, many times before, it had always been within a certain comfort zone. On this day, I got to know him face-to-face – too close for comfort. Always be ready.

So I’m in the hotel breakfast room this am, stressing about how much work I have to do before the conference begins, and I’m scarfing down a bagel, when in walks James Watson and sits right down at the table with me. He says “How ya doin?”. *This* is a TED moment. (And the conference hasn’t even started yet!) What can I do, but spend the next 45minutes discussing the future of genetics with the man who discovered the double helix?! It’s not every day that you take your breakfast with a Nobel laureate. It was an excellent opportunity to put things in perspective and open my mind to the opportunities (and genius) around me. This was the perfect start to the TED experience – thank you Dr. Watson!

I have been hearing about the TED Conference for the past few years and I am so psyched to be finally attending. Everyone that has been has said its one of the most mind altering/stimulating events they have ever been to – a time to recharge your battery for the entire year. I can’t wait. After DEMO, we have a lot of work ahead of us, so I need every bit of help to go full throttle to execute on our plans.

Ahhh… I’m sitting out here on my hotel balcony, enjoying the California sunshine and getting ready for our second “debut”. The TED conference is a very special event. My first time to attend was TED8, and I’ve only missed one since. I’ve always been as an attendee, and while we’re not giving a full 20min talk for this one, we are going to be demo-ing our software on-stage. Going into this demo with the momemtum we generated at DEMO should be very interesting. We’ll keep you posted!

We always felt like the little guy at the event – the tiny little startup. However, I felt it most strongly when we walked in to set up our booth. Each company is given a desk, a power strip, and a network drop. When we walked in, all the companies around us were setting up giant plasma displays, surround-sound speakers, heavy computing artillery. They had all shipped large boxes of equipment from their home office/mother ship. We walk in with our 3 measely laptops (our personal laptops!). We look at the empty desk, we look at our laptops, we look at each other, and we shrug our shoulders. “We can set these up tomorrow.” We go back upstairs, leaving our desk empty, while everyone around us continues to build out their display. We rationalized it by saying “Jambo is a mobile application”, “its more effective if we have a minimalist display – it shows the simplicity of the app.” The reality was that we were the little guys at DEMO. I guess you gotta start somewhere!

A few pics:



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