Todd Earwood

Developers Versus Others: Steve Johnson Video

Todd Earwood — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:04:05 +0000

I’m not a developer. I have managed a team of developers, partnered with them and employed a few in previous ventures. One thing is certain, developers see the world differently than us “business types” and that can be a very good thing.

Steve Johnson of Pragamatic Marketing’s presentation (see below) at Business of Software offers direct insight into a developer’s work struggles. His points border on the edge of pessimism, but I can attest many of them are very real. If you’re on the business (especially sales) side of a company you may want to initially resist his points and humorous digs directed at non-tech roles and actions. However, Steve hit on several points that are worth highlighting.

There is a perceived and sometimes real divide between your technology group and the the rest of the company. Specifically, between those selling, supporting and building the product.
Communication reigns supreme. Many of Steve’s issues could be resolved with better communication (i.e. - give the dev team access to all parties involved).
Even if you don’t assign a project manager/leader… someone is still doing it.
Software/product development cycles don’t have to be adversarial, but it does require time.
Salespeople need to consult the dev team BEFORE making promises to clients.
Developers understand quantitative data. Show them the numbers or dollars for feature requests not one solitary prospect’s wish list.

I realize an hour is a long time to watch a video online, but if you work or plan on working with developers it’s worth some review. Steve also has some helpful files on product frameworks and gap analysis.

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Continental Flight 1404 Denver Plane Crash on Twitter

Todd Earwood — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:14:46 +0000

Continental Flight 1404 passenger Mike Wilson (@2drinksbehind) used Twitter to communicate first-hand news of last night’s plane crash. I took screen shots of his tweets to show what Twitter can do for immediate access to information. I broke them down into the summary (shown below), the most recent and all of Mike’s related tweets.

It’s pretty amazing how quickly Mike’s account of the incident raced through Twitter and Mike’s tweets were even cited by major news outlets.

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650 Days of Twitter

Todd Earwood — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:04:52 +0000

Today marks my 650th day using Twitter. Rob and I first signed up for Twitter at SXSW in March 2007. At the time, we both didn’t “get it” which remains the same for most new Twitter users. However, today I continually find great links to information I’d probably miss, insightful input on questions I need answered and of course good old entertainment.

In the beginning our issue was we knew very few folks and no one locally using the service. However as I mentioned recently, Twitter users now face a very different scenario… how to deal with the masses. You can see based on these stats my usage and follow patterns have drastically changed. That’s no mistake as I couldn’t handle the stream.

Last week I had a cartoon about Twitter and I couldn’t resist sharing this fitting one below created by the smart folks at Hubspot. If you’re wondering why people aren’t following you back, check Shannon’s list (don’t miss the comments either).

Will I be using Twitter in another 650 days? Hard to say since the signal to noise ratio is changing rapidly and I have been known to be wrong about social networks. At this point, I’ll just say Twitter has been a great network to participate in and I can only hope the water doesn’t get poisoned too soon.

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A New Addiction

Todd Earwood — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 03:38:32 +0000

After four years of Treo’s, I’ve switched to the Blackberry. Just a few weeks after I blasted the Blackberry Storm, I did join the “Crackberry” ranks, but with the Curve.

I frequently get asked why I don’t get the iPhone and my typical answer is… I need a keyboard and the iPhone’s screen just doesn’t cut it. Although I said early on I wouldn’t buy an iPhone, I did decide to use the bPhone theme just to make my iPhone friends happy.

I’ll post more here about my transition to the Crackberry way of life, but for now enjoy the closest I’ll get to the iPhone.

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How Do You Handle Twitter Overload?

Todd Earwood — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:21:07 +0000

I’m starting to get overloaded by Twitter. I really enjoy their service, but I struggle to see what my friends say because my feed is too crowded with my web contacts. Sometimes I get asked did you see what some local person says on Twitter and usually, I’ve missed it.

I started using Twitter in March 2007 and while you definitely need a critical mass (imo) to enjoy Twitter (it was slow at first around Louisville), there has to be a line where too you can’t follow any more. I used to buy into the twitter theory of follow back everyone who follows you, but that made my twitter experience even worse.

A few months ago, I dropped over half of the people I was following, but in that time I’ve added 50 more people who first added me and I personally know. With the Twitter audience on such a rapid growth rate, how do you handle who to follow? Currently I’m following 426 and that’s still too many. This comic strip above reminded me of how we can get trapped into the obligatory friending or following. So what’s your solution?

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Approaching Your Next Startup Round

Todd Earwood — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:11:32 +0000

The most common word in the startup vernacular to describe the stage of financing is its round. I told Andy Swan Tuesday, I view startup careers more like rounds in a boxing match with each one being a new business.

In a professional boxing match, a round is three minutes long. In my startup life, some rounds felt like they lasted 30 minutes from the pummeling I’ve taken, while I’ve also been fortunate to knock an opponent at least down (fine… it wasn’t a standing 8 count, but I still clocked him).

One might call the repetition of losing as dumb or crazy or just call them the Cubs, but I think for startup folks the difference can be the accumulation of what you’ve learned. I started MoneyPath with a different approach than any other venture and my gut says it will pay off. Here are a few ways that will make a difference.

Customer Input First - The best thing I’ve done for MoneyPath is go talk to prospective customers before anything and I mean anything else. I didn’t have a business name, wire frame, business card, powerpoint or even an outline. I just offered to buy coffee, lunch or stop by a bank branch to chat. I briefly spelled out what I thought could be beneficial and then I listened… and listened some more. Maybe I was just lucky, but I was amazed at how open people were about their needs and what a solution would entail.
Logo Can Wait - I’m lucky to employ a very good graphic designer, who’s done great work for my print design needs, but I’m rare in that regard. For the first two months, we didn’t have a logo or even a “look”. Did we not care about our look? Of course not, I’ve stated your corporate look is important, but remember, you’re building profits, not a design portfolio.
Names Matter - Buying a domain name is very hard with likely options being create a new word, purposely misspell or choosing from awkward alpha-numeric-hyphenated domains. We tried and tried many iterations for the perfect name, but MoneyPath kept sticking out to us. MoneyPath is the first domain I’ve paid “real” money to acquire. I balked at first at the price, but we’re in love with the name, got great feedback from customers and I’m glad its ours.
Due Diligence, Then Just Do - I probably spent too much time doing due diligence on the industry/competitors and I know some will argue it’s never enough, but at some point you just have to start. Kevin and I built a very nice piece of enterprise software in a really short time frame, but we would’ve been even faster had we just started. Always dig to better understand your market then just get going.
Meet Them Wherever, Whenever - Want help fleshing out your idea? Go find smarter, more experienced folks with different perspectives than your own. I drank more cups of coffee, ate more meals out and bought more rounds of beers in the last 100 days than in the past two years. Thank you to everyone who heard us go on and on about our early steps and a big thanks to my brother, Scott who continues to drop serious knowledge on us about the immense amount of nuances of the banking industry.
Profits Start Now - Our goal was to make a profit when the first quote goes through our site and we’re set to reach that mark. Sure, we put up money to get this going, but operationally we’re staring at the black early on. It feels good mainly because I’ve tried several models… the content play, the brokerage play, the retail play and others that didn’t or just couldn’t reach early profits. Our MoneyPath model would never have been possible without listening early on and finding the REAL problem to solve for both parties.

So those were the early steps I took and now my old cuts are healed, the bell has run and here I am back swinging. Maybe I like the boxing analogy because Louisville is home to a boxing legend they simply call “The Greatest.” Every startup dreams of the big win and MoneyPath is no different, but I suspect my rounds of ups and downs continue to prove beneficial.

I’ll end this post with a request for your comments and input. What have YOU done to start things off right? If you did get knocked out what did you do wrong? Have you seen or heard of others doing things right in the early stages to set up a win? Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, you’ve worked on task forces, class projects, committees or department planning sessions. I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories.

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Creating A New Path

Todd Earwood — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:58:24 +0000

Yesterday, I posted a preamble for today’s post about my new startup, MoneyPath. I truly wasn’t trying to be coy and I’ll try to explain below how MoneyPath came about. To keep this as simple as possible, let me explain what MoneyPath does, who’s involved and next steps.

What is MoneyPath?

On the surface, MoneyPath is Lending Tree for commercial loans. MoneyPath matches a business wanting a new loan (or refi) with banks that want those specific types of loans. The easy description still is Lending Tree due to banks competing for loans, but we view it more like eHarmony because we took loan competition one step further.

Our algorithm truly matches your loan details to the criteria a bank looks for in a loan prospect such as revenue size, ZIP, loan size and industry. We view it as a win-win, as the business gets banks that want THEIR loan and banks get warm, qualified sales leads based on what THEY want. I could go on and on about the other reasons it works, but the true “win” happens because we’re letting both parties submit criteria of what they want and connecting them.

Who’s Involved?
On August 20, 2008, Kevin Frey and I met for coffee at Heine Brothers on Chenoweth. For several weeks prior, I had already been meeting with regional banks to define concretely what I thought was an opportunity to create what we now call MoneyPath. I invited him to coffee because we had had drinks with some mutual friends and I was told he’s a software stud (and he is). He probably thought this was just a normal coffee meetup , but I was on the hunt for a CTO.

So, after almost two hours of talking about the initial idea, we departed with the knowledge I’m looking for a CTO to develop some software banks say they want. You can read my follow up email here. Following that first meeting, I dug around the web for the scoop on Kevin. I asked mutual contacts, friends and a few of Kevin’s co-workers and the answer was consistently he’s REALLY good at software development, fun to work with (very imporant) and liked more than just writing code. Lucky for me and MoneyPath, all those things have turned out to be true.

Kevin and I continued our discussion over IM, email and of course more coffee and meals. After refining the idea, collecting additional feedback from banks and fleshing out our roles we decided to build MoneyPath together.

Kevin works as a Lead Software Engineer for a very successful, Louisville tech company and is not going to leave his job. We’re bootstrapping MoneyPath and taking customer’s payments to fund our growth (novel concept focusing on profits, eh?). It’s been exactly 104 days since that coffee meeting and we’ve spent an immense amount of time creating OUR product and getting to know each other over Louisville football games, Ryder Cup rounds, BW-3 happy hours and of course, more Heine Brothers coffee.

Kevin and I’ve talked quite a bit with each other on Twitter, so most of our friends there will just see this as explanation for all our back and forth. MoneyPath is set to launch in January, but in the mean time, here’s how you can get involved.

Request our demo

Rather than just give a wide-open testing site, we’ll just let those who want to play with MoneyPath, request a demo. You can click the link at our site or email us, demo AT moneypathDOTcom. Maybe that’s not 2.0 enough for some of you, but just drop us a line and well give you a login. Please don’t assume because you’re friends with us that we know you want a login. We’re interested to see which of you wants to know more.

Read our company blog and grab our feed!

I know Kevin and I both struggle to keep up a steady blog pace, but there’s so much going on with MoneyPath’s progress, the credit market and the economy, we think this a great way to keep up with us. The URL is http://blog.moneypath.com.

Tell a friend

If you know a business owner who recently completed a business loan or might need one, let us know. If you have connections to folks in banking, we’d love to talk to them too. We’ve talked to numerous banks and business owners, but it’s never too many. Even if you know someone who runs a business association, we’d love to get feedback on MoneyPath.

Follow @MoneyPath on Twitter

If you prefer to keep up with MoneyPath in 140 characters or less, follow @MoneyPath on Twitter.

So, now the cat’s out of the bag. We’ll continue to post about how we got here and some of the (what I think are) interesting stories that led us down this path. There are too many people to thank in just this post, so I’ll save that for another day. Just know that Kevin and I both appreciate all the support, feedback, encouragement, criticism and input we’ve already been given and expect nothing, but heavier doses of the same since anyone can test MoneyPath.com (with a request).

Finally, if you’re one of my current clients reading this, please understand that I’ve planned for this. I haven’t kept a business going for nine years without a little foresight. I am not closing down and have a great staff in place and other resources available to keep everyone happy.

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Startup Mantra: We’re Bringing Profits Back

Todd Earwood — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:16:19 +0000

In seems, the only thing you can read about these days is how bad the economy is and the effects it will have on startups.

Howard says… it’s a bad time to start a startup. Andy says… start with a profit with first customer. Charlie says… he loves the challenge despite the odds. Mark Peter says… the strong will win big.

No matter what anyone says, the prevailing thought for a startup should be to show profits. If you’re showing profits, NOT just revenue, then investors, employees and anyone else pays attention. They say revenue covers all sins, but I would argue profits resolves issues, not just cover them up.

This week, I’m going to blog about the new startup I’ve created with another local entrepreneur. We’ve been quiet about it for many reasons, but have decided it’s time to talk. We’ve let prospects test our software and a handful of web friends give us early feedback. We think now’s the time to let others play with our software and see what happens.

I’m not trying to be coy about this, I’ve just approached this idea with a very different mentality. Rather than talk and talk (quite typical for me), I went to prospective customers first and listened to be sure I was actually SOLVING a problem. After that was concretely evident, I sought out the best co-founder to build the solution.

Armed with an immense amount of customer input and a very talented co-founder, my idea escalated very quickly into OUR company in a matter of three months. We’re fortunate to have a group of advisors and friends to help us navigate this perceived tough time (we think it’s perfect timing) to launch a company. Lucky for us, as this post’s title states we’ve aligned early customers and we’re focused and starting our company with profits. Much more to come tomorrow.

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Chili’s Is Firm But Fun

Todd Earwood — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:39:48 +0000

As promised, I’ll try to keep posting fun things businesses are doing each Friday. Most of us ignore parking signs threatening to tow our cars. I really liked this Chili’s sign because they do need to keep spaces for carry out customers, but they have a little fun with their firm message.

I’ve seen some comments on Flickr saying this messaging would turn some people off, but I think the turnoff should be an organization being serious at all times. Kudos to Chili’s.

Flickr Photo Credit: Jude

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Top Ten Turkey Tweets

Todd Earwood — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:34:41 +0000

I’m very thankful I’m able to enjoy holidays with my family, but truthfully I’m not very big on turkey for Thanksgiving. Luckily, my Mother prepares a ham (ok, Heavenly Ham actually prepares it), but I digress.

This year while others slept, I caught up on some reading and enjoyed a little time on Twitter. Needless to say, turkey, football, naps and more turkey were the predominant terms being discussed, so I quickly grabbed ten funny turkey tweets for Thanksgiving 2008.

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Continental Flight 1404 Denver Plane Crash on Twitter