Aug
28
We started Digital Lodestone Group to solve a true market need: People couldn’t find local events. Not good ones and often not event bad ones. Local events were coming and going and consumers were terribly unaware.
Why? Well basically you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s tough to find out about events you know nothing about because you can’t go to a search engine. What good is Google when you don’t have any words to type in that little box? What was missing was a place where consumers could discover events. A website that would take their preferences and interests into account and deliver event recommendations to them.
Enter Digital Lodestone. Breaking convention we set out to build the next great web application - an event discovery engine.
Funny thing happened on the way to the forum however. Consumers want to discover local events, but they sure don’t want to pay for this service. No surprise there, which means someone else is going to have to foot the bill. And beyond that, we needed relevant local events to provide consumers. Now we were in a bit of a spot - we needed local events to make our web application powerful and needed advertising to foot the bills. Collecting local data is hard and selling advertising takes expertise (aka not things we wanted to do).
What do you do when you realize your master plan needs a customer that you didn’t count on? You find one obviously - and preferably one that is good at selling advertising and has ties to local data. If you’re lucky, really really lucky, they’ll be trying to grow their online revenue as well. And if you did something nice for someone in a past life, they’ll be trying to grow online because their offline business is failing.
Hello newspapers, tv stations, and radio stations! Hello Event Seek!
Funny thing happened on the way to the forum however. Suddenly we’re selling this great idea to media providers. And they understand the recommendation bit and why it is important, but are constantly asking “How does it affect my bottom line?” It’s a good question and one we needed to understand. Recommendations keep people coming back, they keep people on the website and they entice users to invite their friends. Recommendations create a “sticky” application.
“How does it affect my bottom line?” There it is again, those silly customers asking questions. When I was just trying to sell to anyone using the web (consumers) it’s easy to explain the benefit of recommendation - you find better events. Now that I was selling to media providers there was a whole other layer of the onion to peel back.
This constant questioning allowed us to discover just what we can do for our customers however. Event recommendation is nothing more than understanding the consumer. It’s applying logic to the preference and interest matrix you build for each customer to pick out events from the database. Apply those same statements to advertising and you’re talking about targeting advertising. And doing it with meaningful data about user actions that no one has used before. You’re event history and preferences teach me about what you like and enable me to make sure the advertisements you see don’t suck.
Now we’re starting to deliver some real value for our customers. Suddenly our event calendar is a tool that enables our customers to learn about their consumers, study them, and monetize their actions. Consumers find local events, organizers can get to the most interested consumers, advertisers can reach consumers who are likely to buy, and media providers laugh all the way to the bank!
One small problem however. Everyone has the next great web idea, and anyone with half a brain wants to sell it to media providers (what with their attempts to use the internet to grow revenue). Suddenly we’re buried in a pile of “great ideas to improve the website.”
Funny thing happened…all of these “great ideas” are add-on solutions. They offer media providers a new section of the website, a new place to sell advertising, or a new revenue stream to attack. All of this gives media providers a way to add new revenue to their online property.
Event Seek is different. Our ability to target advertising is website-wide. That means we can help our customers increase their online revenue on the events section of the website, and everywhere else as well. Don’t just bolt-on new solutions - extract value from the property you already own with Event Seek. It’s easy to jump to the top of the pile when you start talking about driving value on 100% of the website, not just 10%.
Consumers are great - they make the whole thing possible and without them we wouldn’t be able to do any of this, but they sure don’t pay the bills. We have one customer - media providers - and we have a service that can do amazing things for them in their time of need. Time to start telling the world about it!
Posted by: Connor Fee
Aug
21
Alpha 2.0 coming soon
Filed Under alpha, production | Leave a Comment
In the next week or two, we’ll be relaunching our alpha site with a few key features that should make the site a live and working local event discovery tool. I’ll be sure to update everyone with an email and invite you all.
Key improvements include:
- Complete working offering (no more bugs or random pages that don’t go anywhere)
- Access for all browsers (IE, Safari, Firefox, Opera and a few others)
- The ability to invite your friends to events through our guest list feature
- Simple event management and tracking with a new dashboard
- Improved recommendations through our updated suggestion engine
- Capability to invite friends to the Event Seek system (more users and less closed doors)
Before you know it, you’ll be discovering new events through Event Seek, inviting your friends and tracking all of your interesting events in one place - just like you’ve always dreamed.
Get excited - alpha 2.0 is just over the horizon!
Posted by: Connor Fee
Aug
20
Say we aren’t cool…I dare you
Filed Under fundraising | Leave a Comment
Event Seek was recently selected by TAG and ATDC to join an exclusive program to prepare companies to raise Angel, VC, and other institutional funding. CapVenture is a seven week bootcamp program that helps companies focus some of their energy on the pitches, documents, and slides that are necessary to secure outside investment. You can read more in the press release on Techlinks.
This is of course, all part of the grand Event Seek plan. For those of you keeping score at home it goes a little something like this:
Launch company, build prototype, find strong developers, build an alpha product, start talking to potential customers, finish a beta product, get accepted to CapVenture, sell a few beta customers, raise outside investment, grow development and sales teams, focus on several metropolitan areas, grow ties to local communities with Event Seek Lite, strengthen revenue channels, grow like gangbusters, sell company, retire, rule world.
As you can see, we’re making good headway on the plan.
Posted by: Connor Fee
Aug
20
Why the unprovens matter
Filed Under fundraising, management styles | 1 Comment
I’ve been debating for the past few days about whether or not I should post this article. It’s certainly not intended to be inflammatory or offensive, but is my honest opinion now that I’ve been doing this for about a year. This article is not intended to reflect our situation at Event Seek as we’ve been very well received by the startup community, but I also believe there is certainly room to improve. I believe there are individuals out there willing to bet on the unprovens, and we’ve worked hard to align ourselves with them. I just hope that the number of these visionary individuals will increase over time and allow Atlanta to blossom into the type of startup environment everyone wishes it could become.
The Atlanta startup is abuzz with opinions both about why Atlanta has a lot of work to do to become a great place to build a startup and why it is getting there and should get more credit for it. I thought it might be fun to weigh in on one small aspect that Jeff Haynie wrote about.
Successful startups are built by any number of people - experienced veterans, ex-corporate types, and brand new bodies. There is a lot of credit given to founders when a company is successful and a lot of blame given when one is not. One, two, or even three individuals are not and can not be wholly lauded/blamed for the ultimate outcome of a startup - they are of course the largest driver of outcome, but the ecosystem, the team, the market, the competition, and a bit of luck also has a lot to do with the final result.
Great founders are aware of all of these exogenous factors and work long and hard to prepare themselves and their company in a way that will overcome any outside influences. They pick a market with real potential, build a team that can overcome challenges, align themselves with mentors and advisors who will support them, and differentiate their product from other competitors. Even with all of this planning and prediction, sometimes great founders with excellent backgrounds and a great idea don’t succeed.
The fact of the matters is, however, that experienced entrepreneurs who have built sustainable successful companies are often better at mitigating these risk factors than those who have not built companies. Often is not always (for clarity feel free to check Merriam-Webster). Given that there are no sure bets in startups, most investors and individuals will flock to experienced individuals because they want to reduce any risk associated with their investment. They should! I would if I was in their shoes.
If no one wants to align themselves with young, unproven entrepreneurs, who will be the next generation of experienced startup architects? There is no talent pipeline for entrepreneurship. Consulting firms, investment banks, VCs, and the like look to business schools to fill their ranks each year because they know great intellects can be trained, molded, and developed into successful employees. The on-the-job training and mentoring allows young, unproven individuals to grow into their roles and eventually add real value to each company. There is no clear career path for entrepreneurs. No clear logical proven set of steps that makes one person ready to lead a startup.
Is this a terrible thing for the system? I don’t think so. It just means that the on-the-job training is critical. And on-the-job training requires one or more individuals to take a huge risk and build their own startup. But these brave souls can not do it alone - they need advisors, mentors, and arguably most of all investors. With no investors willing to bet on these unprovens how can we expect to build the next crop of talented individuals who will become the experienced veterans of tomorrow?
Out west (and I try not to glorify it as many often do), there is a significant number of well-funded startups with VC backing. This kind of capital allows many people to work in early-stage startups and build up the experience and knowledge necessary to work for a few years and then go off to start their own ventures. Atlanta doesn’t have this kind of ecosystem in place and the big wins experienced in the 80s and 90s can not continue to support the numbers of veterans needed for the future.
If the startup ecosystem in Atlanta wants to grow we need to support some experience building and experience sharing. The next generation of startup veterans will come from the rookies of today. We need to support these individuals with both time and money. Look around at the host of companies that are leading the web 2.0 revolution - many of them were started by young unprovens.
Success isn’t predicated by age, experience, or even the level of investment an individual can raise. Intelligence, hard work, ability to adapt to change, and singular vision - these are the traits of individuals who build successful startups and return not only to investors, but to the community that helped them out along the way.
I charge Atlanta, investors, mentors, and advisors to look beyond gray hairs and resumes to find great ideas with driven founders and support them in their quest to build the next great startup. I for one will be watching as the next generation of entrepreneurs matures, learns and develops. I hope that one day I might even be considered one of them.
Posted by: Connor Fee
Aug
14
Posting hiatus over
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
It has been an incredibly busy month. I just realized that our last post was almost a whole month ago! I must admit that I thought it had been closer to two weeks or so since we last wrote.
Since we’ve been so quiet for a while, I’ll provide a short recap and then get back to regular blogging:
- We’ve been continuing to meet important and influential people here in Atlanta, both learning from their experience and asking them to help us move Event Seek forward
- We’re making excellent headway selling Event Seek into local media providers and businesses. The process obviously takes longer than we initially expected, but many signs point to the potential that we’re building (I’ll keep the details quiet until it is time to share)
- No longer just an idea on paper, Event Seek has become a full-blown reality! We now have a product that we can legitimately deliver to a customer and really drive value for them. For those of you who helped with our alpha testing - we couldn’t have done it without you! As a reward, pretty sizable changes to alpha will be coming soon - I’ll let you know once they’re up for you to use
- In the next week or so, we’ll close a small Friends and Family fundraising round that will provide capital support for us in the coming months. This funding is designed exclusively to help us bring on customers and prove that a sizable market exists
- I’m now driving a Kia Spectra. It has been an incredible change from the Tahoe, and one I really enjoy. The Kia handles beautifully, hardly uses any gas, and has the ground clearance of an Indy race car. Everyone should check out this car, it’s fantastic!
Hope you’re all caught up - look for new posts every few days now that I’m back to blogging more frequently.
And to answer your question, hell no I’m not serious about the Kia. Damn tree fell on my car and I have to ride around in this crappy rental car for a few weeks. I miss Chuck, I miss him so much. I hope when this is all over I can drive him right over this little Kia.
Posted by: Connor Fee
Jul
17
Had a funny and honest conversation with Tristan the other day. We talked about the stress we were feeling, what were the plans for the next few days, and how we were going to handle some investment questions.
Over the course of the conversation, we came to an interesting epiphany. No one else we know gets this. No one has any understanding of how freaking hard this stuff is. Sure we’ve now met a variety of entrepreneurs who can understand, but most of them are on their 4th or 5th venture, and have a hard time remembering just how difficult the first go was.
At any given moment of any given day, I’m worried about the progress of our product, whether we can meet client expectations, if we’ll make rent and payroll this month, what was that email I was supposed to respond to?, how many promises can I make and how many do I have to keep?, should we hire another person?, can we hire another person?, what do I know about sales?, what do I know about being CEO?, is this still a good idea?, is this now a bad idea?, can I do this?, can my team do this?, how did it already become 11pm? You know what they say, you can only keep seven individual thoughts in your head at any given time. What does that mean? It means I lose my keys and wallet a lot.
And if you think that isn’t tough enough, remember that you have to put on a great face for everyone, and I mean everyone. Investors, potential investors, friends, family, employees, advisors, and everyone else. This is why having a co-founder is so important. This is the only person in the world who understands your problems and feels your pain. They’re like your mom, your best friend, and your psychiatrist all rolled into one.
Someday this little business of ours will be chugging along running itself as they say. Until then we’re responsible for all of it.
One last thought to leave you with because you’re probably wondering why anyone would do this: while the lows are tough and often long, the highs are absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible.
Posted by: Connor Fee
Jul
11
Amazing talk on leadership by the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. When I clicked on the video, I never imagined I’d watch the whole thing. Probably the best 20 minutes I’ve spent all day. Phenomenal topic and incredible execution. Worth the watch.
Benjamin Zander: Classical Music with Shining Eyes
Posted by: Connor Fee
Jul
11
I don’t consider myself much of a salesman
Filed Under sales | Leave a Comment
But then again with only three other people in the company (who all have real actual roles and responsibilities), the job basically falls on my shoulders.
Hrmm…
- No sales experience (Unless you count that lemonade stand back in the day)
- Selling into large, slow moving, corporate organizations at a senior level (VP and above)
- I’m still only 26
- The hopes and dreams of a company and its investors placed squarely on my shoulders
Nothing like jumping into the deep end to find out if you can swim! We’ll probably paddle poorly for a while and stay afloat. Hopefully this will give us enough time to figure out some of the techniques that make good sales teams successful. Supplement that with a boatload of research and a “do it or drown” attitude and I think we might just be able to pull this off.
I’ve got two potential customers interested so far. They’re excited about the product and the opportunities we can provide them, and we’re excited about how they view their online real estate. We’ll be sure to keep everyone updated on our progress. Look for some exciting news in the next month or two…
Posted by: Connor Fee
Jul
8
Customer Feedback is King
Filed Under public relations | Leave a Comment
Just a heads up for those of you who have been posting in the forums and playing with our Alpha test - we’ll be moving to a more robust customer satisfaction platform shortly. It should facilitate better communication between you and us.
Why the change? Simple, you shouldn’t have to keep checking the forums to see if we’ve responded to your comments. So our new solution will automatically reply to you when we’re responding to your thoughts. This means that you can easily find out when we’re working on your issue.
In addition you’ll be able to see what other users have asked and how we answered their questions. Should make it easy to figure out if we already know about a bug.
Love the thoughts, keep them coming.
Posted by: Connor Fee
Jul
7
What’s all this jazz about standards compliant browsers?
Filed Under alpha, product design | 1 Comment
Why can’t I view Event Seek in Internet Explorer? What do you mean I have to download Firefox or Safari? Why don’t you just make it work in IE?
Such a simple question with a slightly more complicated answer.
A brief history of the web to explain what I’m talking about. When the web was created, only a few groups were using it and everyone had to agree on how the computers would talk to one another. They created a set of standards for the communication so data could be passed seamlessly. This simple conversation eventually began one of the most powerful and interesting groups around today - the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The W3C “develops interoperable technologies to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.” If you take out all the fancy words, these guys basically create the standards that continue to make the web possible. One of the biggest tasks of the W3C is continuously updating the standards that make websites possible. These guys are responsible for HTML, XHTML, CSS and a host of other technologies that our browsers use to display webpages.
Basically this group gets together, creates a standard for how browsers should read the information underlying webpages and then advocates their changes to anyone who will listen. Browser builders like Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple then integrate the newest changes into their browsers. All the cool things that webpages can do now that they couldn’t do three years ago are all thanks to these guys.
Firefox and Safari are excellent about taking the standards suggestions from the W3C and implementing them into their browsers. This means that when you sit down to create a web page, as long as you follow the guidelines set forth by the W3C it will look and act beautifully in Firefox and Safari. Should make developing easy right? It does - once you know the language, you can make a browser do just about anything.
ENTER MICROSOFT.
Surprise, surprise, Internet Explorer does not play well with others. Microsoft chooses to follow the guidelines sometimes. And sometimes they choose not to. What does that mean? It means you have two languages - one for Firefox and Safari and a host of other browsers, and one for IE. Shouldn’t be too bad except that you only get to have one webpage. Try talking to a German and an Italian at the same time with the same words and having them both understand you and you’ll know what it is like making webpages on the Internet today!
Developers have resorted to creating what are called “IE hacks” that are little tricks that they use to make IE able to understand the language everyone else uses. While these can be useful, they are inconsistent and can generate problems for other browsers. Think of it like whispering to the Italian and hoping the German doesn’t hear and get confused.
If Microsoft’s browser is such a pain, why does everyone still use it? Why wouldn’t web users just complain and force Microsoft to switch?
It’s amazing how much dominance you can have when you pre-load your browser on 93% of the world’s computers (and people are lazy). Remember a few years ago when an anti-trust lawsuit was filed against Microsoft? Yep it was about this issue exactly. It’s amazing how much dominance you can have when you provide the operating system for 93% of the world’s computers…
So, what does all of this mean? It means you have to hire very talented programmers, who are well versed in the challenges created by this issue. Give them enough time and they’ll figure out a way to communicate with Germans and Italians at the same time. It’s pretty amazing to watch, but it does take some time. Tomorrow we’ll be releasing Event Seek so that it works in Internet Explorer 7 and will spend the next few weeks working on IE 6. At the end of the day, we cater to you and will converse with you in your natural language - that is our responsibility. It’s just going to take us a bit of time.
At the urging of our development team, I’d like to say: If you’re using Firefox or Safari or some other standards-compliant browser, thank you! If you’re using IE 7, we don’t mind you too much. You’re at least easy enough to talk to. If you’re still using IE 6, please for the love of all things that are good, upgrade to IE 7!
Seriously though, continue to enjoy Event Seek, I’ll make sure you can enjoy it in any browser you like, although it make take a few years off the development teams’ collective lives…
Posted by: Connor Fee