Adventures in referrals

We are up and running on our demo site as we work out some kinks.  All good.  I have been spending my time getting re-acquainted with Google Analytics.  It is not a big lift, but they have added new functionality in the 6 years since I last looked at it :).  I noticed that we were getting some funny traffic with 100% bounce rate and no duration.  I checked out the referrers and turns out they were Ghost referrers that generate referrer spam.  I am now coming up to speed on the various forms of bad behavior that publishers need to deal with.  I liked it when Adobe just handled this stuff for me...

Book Review: Be Smarter than your Lawyer and Venture Capitialist

I won't spent to long on this, but if you are the CEO of an early stage startup, I would highly recommend reading: Be Smarter than your Lawyer and Venture Capitialist by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson.  They go through a platonic term sheet with very practical explanations and commentary.  Once you start down the financing path and someone says they want participating preferred, you don't want your response to be a Donald Trumpian:"I know what that is, but give me more."  You want to have a thought out, principled, response.  Well worth educating yourself on the more common "Gotcha's."

When you raise money and plan to do some PR...

You are supposed to file a Reg d with the SEC.  Even a private raise should be filed.  Some companies ignore this requirement, but it seems pretty easy to comply and, I think, shows that you know what you are doing.  Which is to say, I am thinking about PR.

The problem with Periscope. For sports.

Major League Baseball is not a fan of Periscope-like services where fans live-stream the video of a game in real time.  I get that.  Fans are ripping off the rights-holders.   This was a big deal for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight as the audience was streaming the fight on Periscope and people at home were tuning it.  In effect, Periscope enabled pirating of the fight.  If only there were a tool that let people add their own perspective to events.  Maybe facilitate the creation of some second screen content as well.  If only.

Words not said

One of the problems that we want to address with YourCall is the artificial nature of live television broadcasts.  I am specifically thinking of the narration provided by the announcers.  A couple of news items that illustrate the point.  The first is the extensive notes used by WWF to shape what their broadcasters say.  Actually, if you are an aspiring broadcasters, I would give the notes a read.  The WWF has been in business for a good long time and they have learned some things.  Regardless, if you were a broadcaster for WWF, the notes would certainly constrain what you are going to say.  Similarly, here is an article discussing restrictions on announcers at the Masters.  Patron, not fan.  Bunker, not Sand Trap.

Cord Cutting Complete

It took like two months and Comcast charging me for an additional month as I dropped them as our phone carrier and they automatically moved us to a la carte pricing, but we are done.  The final system includes AT&T for broadband (18Mb), Slack.tv for our main cable channels and HBO, Roku players for every room (standard interface for each room), two Logitech Harmony Ultimate Universal Remotes (gets rid of a bunch of device remotes), and Plex.tv as a media server (available on Roku as a client and for our Mac Mini at home as the server).  And we are done.

Update: Just bought and Amazon Basics HD antenna.  We have an occasional desire to watch sports, real-time.  

Payroll

One of the big hassles of starting up a company is the whole payroll thing.  Getting paid is good.  Getting people paid is not as good.  Tons of various agencies you have to register with.  My sense of it is that if the government wanted to encourage new company formation, they would drastically simply the process for new companies.  Of course, that complexity has led to an eco-system that handles payroll and the various forms.  We use Paychex.  They have made things much easier.

Refining our pitch deck

I came across Pitch Envy.  They keep a library of pitch decks and highlight what was good about the deck and what needed work.  Great resource.

The future of broadcasting

I met a lovely young woman the other day who had just received her degree in broadcast journalism from an established journalism school.  I asked her about her curriculum and it seemed very...traditional.  She knew how to produce a local news segment, for sure.  But then I asked about Twitch, and YouTube broadcasters.  She had no idea that people were making a good living by creating content for those medium.  Kind of shocking, I thought.

YourCall.tv

Joe Wilson and I started a company about 6 months ago.  We aren't ready to talk too much about the company, but we both changed our Linkedin profiles to reflect the name of the company, YourCall.tv.  We have been in the process of developing the backend and are  starting to put together the front end.  It is all scary and exciting and chock full of learning.  We will come up for air soon.  Looking forward to sharing what we are working on.

Ken

Cutting the cord

I am trying an experiment and going to get rid of our cable service.  Wife is on board.  So far, I have signed up for Sling TV, bought a new Roku player, and a new video A/V receiver.  Sling has a deal and I got the Roku player for half price ($50) with a three month commitment.  Monthly content cost is $60.  As part of this experiment, I am also going get an IP based home phone, ViaTalk.  I can keep my phone number and it costs $189 for the first two years (and then $15.95 a month). 

Some random thoughts.  First, there is not a lot of VOD content on Sling.  But they promise more in the future.  On the upside, I got HBO for $15 a month.  On the downside, HBO does not seem to work. 

I also bought an HD antenna ($30).  Once I have everything installed and tested, I'll change my ISP and cancel.  Figure this will take a couple of weeks. 

Tools and techniques for starting up a company via Thoughbot

I have been asking around about design firms.  One of the folks in my network came back with a link to the ThoughtBot playbook.  Thoughbot is a design and development consultancy, but run by very tech savvy folks.  If you are thinking about starting a tech startup, I would encourage you to read the ENTIRE playbook.  I love that they have structured their business processes on modern services.  There is a lot to like and to learn from reading the playbook.

A post from Dan McKinley on why choosing well established technologies is the right way to go when building something new.  I agree.  It causes too much stress on your development staff if your use too many immature products.  And you can't hire a seasoned dev with experience in, say, NodeJS.  And the documentation may not be robust.  And the technology may have quirks that are not well understood.  It is funny that Joe is building our product on NodeJS, and MongoDB (the two technologies he uses as an example).  But everything else we are using is pretty well established.

Linkedin for Startups - Gust

Just discovered Gust.com.  It is a social network for start-ups and investors.  I am just starting with it, but it has, I guess I'll call it "funding workflow" functionality.  You can use it to not only develop a presence in a relevant social network, but can use the site to exchange documents with potential investors.  Looks good.

What Every Angel Investor Wants you to Know

Just finished "What Every Angel Investor Wants you to Know" by Brian Cohen and John Kador.   I have mixed reactions to this one, but I think it is a must read.  The author is a well known angel investor and he has good wisdom on how he thinks about evaluating a start-up.  In my, admittedly, limited experience, I would take his advice as a data point, but not as roadmap.  He helps shine a light on the process of angel investing and provides a lot of detail that will help a new company prepare for the process.  But don't confuse successful funding round with a successful company.  Financing is fuel.  You still need to tend the fire.

On selecting a corporate lawyer

I feel very good about all aspects of our progress and state of the business, as it were, except for one thing.  Our corporate legal representation.  Lawyers are a bit like doctors.  They have different specialties and what is common knowledge for one specialty might be totally foreign for another.

The first type of lawyer you will need is a corporate attorney.  They will help you set up the company and get things like NDA's and employment agreements together.  It is important to get this stuff right.   I had figured that this early stage stuff is commodity kind of work and does not need some high powered, big priced attorney.  I figured that this is an area where we could just select a competent local lawyer who has some tech experience and move on with our lives.  I was wrong.

Upon further review, my advice for a technology start-up is to go with an experienced corporate lawyer who specializes in technology.  There are terms that any experienced investor is going to expect to see in the founding documents.  A lawyer who does not have the relevant experience will not include them in the documents and that could be detrimental later.   

A some of red flags that we saw, but did not realize until later.

1. If they have never heard of a SAFE.
2. If there is no kind of vesting schedule or termination provisions for the founders in the shareholder agreement.
3. If they have you create the company in any state but DE (or maybe CA or NY, if your are based in either of those states.) 

We are changing out our corporate representation.  Both of the firms we are looking at are not cheap.  But some things are worth paying retail.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

When I was at Turner, my friend and colleague, Karen Painter, said that I absolutely had to read "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team."  I had the best of intentions.  About halfway through and I wish I had read it earlier.  The notion of your peers being your primary team is one construct that I think is right and needs to be set from the start.  Also, that the team has the same goals.  Obvious, but I have not seen in practice.  Regardless, food for thought.

Hard Thing about Hard Things

The current book list is pretty analytics focused, but I have ben reading some of the startup books that folks recommend.  First one:  Joe Zawadzki (founder of x+1 and MediaMath) called out "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz.  Ben is a founder in the VC firm  Andreessen/Horowitz.  He was the CEO of LoudCloud and Opsware and has great experience building big companies, relatively quickly.  

I liked the book, but Ben has a perspective that is obviously driven from his experience.  And  Ben's experiences are a bit rarified.  He was running B2B infrastructure companies and talks about needing to raise (and then spend) $100MM to ramp the businesses.  Also, he had enviable advisors.  Micheal Orvitz, Bill Campbell to name drop a two.  But he also had to deal with serious threats to the business.  Regardless, I would recommend the read.  Short version, don't give up.  There are going to be very hard times.  As a CEO you need to be prepared for the hard times.  He leaves the "how" as an exercise for the reader (I think he would say that every situation is different and you need to find your own path for your particular hardship), but the book provides plenty of food for thought.

I will also say that this is the only business book I have read twice.  I aspire to build not just a company, but a team, as influential as Ben.  I have promised myself that when we hit 50MM in revenue, I will read it again.  And I read Ben's blog.  He just did a piece on "The Prophets of Rage" as a prototypical personality in a company.  I know several PoR from both Turner and AOL.  Given my time as a sound engineer with Public Enemy, this piece resonated with me in both name and content.  

As an aside, I saw an Amazon reviewer ding the book on use of the female pronoun.  I did the same thing for my dissertation.  One comment: Be the change you want to see.

Good reads

The funding process for the later rounds is a bit opaque.  But there are tons of resources to help you understand the investors perspective.  I found Reaction Wheel blog, written by Jerry Neumann, a couple of weeks ago.  He is a long time angel investor.   I have also been checking in on AVC by Fred Wilson.  Both are worth reading.  Fred publishes every day.  I also read the "startup trades", Venture Beat and Tech Crunch daily.  

Where is Kenny?

Some folks are asking why I am not listed on the Capture Your Flag site as an interviewee.  Not sure. I reached out to Erik to ask. Here is a link to all my interviews. I did the year 4 interview maybe 5 months ago and we talked how I thought I was ready to be a CEO; that I thought I had been in training for the job and ready to take the plunge. I dId not think we were going to start our own thing. Surprise!

Starting a company is like making sourdough. Start with culture.

I know it is a bad title.  I thought it was funny.

As a former academic-wannabe, I like to research things before doing them.  I am wired to process information.  So when Joe and I started to talk about the company, I read books and websites on entrepreneurship and founding a company.  There is a lot out there.  Over the next couple of months, I'll post resources that I think are worthwhile.  To start:

Getting the company culture right (or at least not wrong) in the early days is critical.  Once the culture gets ingrained, it is very resistant to change.  Like impossible.  Just so we are on the same page, I think of culture as the beliefs that drive behaviors in the organization.  So the critical thing piece when trying to influence your company's culture is your first set of hires.  They bring their beliefs with them and those beliefs drive behaviors.  Of course, you have to know what beliefs you want to embed in the company.  Then hire, in part, for those beliefs.  And if you find that you made a wrong decision on one of your new colleagues, well, as the CEO, need to make it right.  

If you are starting a company, you should take a look at the Netflix culture deck.  It provides a great food for thought when thinking about what your own company's culture should aspire to be.  There are some things I really like, but at its core, it is an exhortation to hire "stunning" colleagues.  Having great people around you solves a lot of problems.  Check out the discussion of what happens when your company gets large and specialized (around page 45).  I have observed this very phenomena and made the same observation.  But more importantly, they way they avoid the problem is to just hire great people.  And career development?  No formal program.  They provide great colleagues.  You are expected to learn from them.  And how do they find these unicorns.  They pay top of the market.

I don't like that there are nine values.  Seems a bit heavy.  I'll share my thinking in a later post.

How do you finance a Friends and Family round

I am looking at various resources for startups.  Our product will be consumer facing and we'll need to raise money at various stages.  Currently, we are putting together our Friends and Family round.  Typically, this round uses a convertible note where the investors lend you the money to start the business and then that loan gets converted to stock at the Series A valuation.  We are using a similar instrument called a "SAFE" created by Y Combinator.  Same notion, but it is not a loan.  There are some important terms in the SAFE; the premium and the cap.  Both are optional, but seem to be common.  At least in my conversations.

First, you may specify a premium that the investors gets, over and above their investment.  So, if an investor gives you $100k and the premium is 20%, when the shares get issued, they get $120k.  In effect, the risk premium for the investor is 20%, plus they get the upside of any future valuation.

Second, you can set a "Cap."  The cap acts as a maximum valuation for the investors.  Say the cap is $5MM and the investor puts in $100k.  If the valuation at the Series A round is $2.5MM, the cap does not apply.  Note that I did not put a premium on the investment.  Hold that thought.  Now, if the Series A round had a $10MM valuation, the cap applies.  Without a cap, the investor would get 1% of the stock (100k/10MM=.01).With a cap, the maximum the denominator can be is $5MM.  So, in the example, the investor would get 2% of the stock (100k/5MM=.02) regardless of the valuation.

Typically, the SAFE has both a premium and a cap, but the investor gets one of the other.  If the series A valuation hits the cap, then the investor does not get the premium.  Of course, if the cap is not reached, then the premium applies and the cap is not used.

Some investors don't like the SAFE; they have no claims on the assets of the company if management needs to close the company down.  A convertible note has a little more protection.  But in the early rounds, the investors I have spoken with are not worried about a wind down.  They are making a bet and assume that if we need to liquidate, we will do right by them.  And they are right.

Left Turner, working on something new

A bit of news.  I left Turner Broadcasting in December and have started a company with Joe Wilson.  Joe was my VP of engineering at Turner and we have had a great professional relationship.  I don't want to say too much about the company at this point, but we are working on a media product.  More details as we get closer to having the product in a state where we can demonstrate it.  I expect to do some postings on starting up a company.  More to come.

Linkedin Premium Search Traffic

I needed to send some inMail messages, so I signed up for Linkedin Premium.  You get a little bit more visibility in terms of who is looking at your profile and how they got there.  The most interesting thing for me is how little search traffic comes from anything about my functional job; only 1% of search traffic to my profile is based on the phrase "Big Data."  Almost all of my traffic is driven from what my SEO team would call "Branded" terms.  That is, derivations of my name.  Number one search term is "Kenneth", then "Rona", then "Ken Rona".

Standardizing our Interviews

My current team has grown to a bit over 50 people, including contractors.  We are constantly hiring for some function or another and some of my staff seem better at hiring than others.  Some teams seem to attract and retain great staff.  Some struggle a bit.  Even within a team, our hiring experiences vary.

I am not surprised that we have these challenges.  The SVP of "People Operations" at Google, speaking about their hiring practices said "Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring. We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except for one guy who was highly predictive because he only interviewed people for a very specialized area, where he happened to be the world’s leading expert."

So what are we doing about it?  A couple of things.  First, we are putting together a small set of attributes that every candidate will be evaluated against and a set of questions that can be used to test for those attributes.  We are going to try to improve consistency of our interviews and see if we can get everyone to adopt best practices.

Second, I now interview every candidate.  As the leader of my organization, I need to be responsible for the quality of the staff.  Problem is, I am not scalable and I bring my own biases.  I know that the CEOs of some internet companies want to review all hires.  I get why.  And to be fair, I don't know that my involvement will fix the problem.  But I can make sure that we are hiring people that I can stand behind.

Ah, well.  First step is recognizing the problem.  I'll tackle the scaling issue when it becomes acute.

Amazon does something interesting.  As part of the interview loop, the candidate is evaluated on if they will make Amazon smarter.  And the person doing the eval is not part of the reporting structure.  I think they are part of HR.  I like the notion.

Thinking Fast and Slow Observations

     I just finished reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahneman.  My Phd was in behavioral economics and it was great to get a refresher from the master.  Given my now 13 years in business, I got to read the book with a different eye; one where I could think about common pathologies I have noticed in business decision making but brought back to first principles.  I highly recommend the book.  Some random observations: 

1.  If you have a choice between a for sure likelihood of a bad outcome if you stop a project or a small probability of a good outcome but a small likelihood of a disaster, take the bad outcome. You can explain a bad outcome.  It is much harder to explain that you decided to choose to go down a path that had a high probability of disaster.

2.  If you see a structural impediment to accomplishing a goal, don’t proceed.  See if you can fix it.  If not, do something else. It is really hard to overcome a structural governor on change.

3.  Take a look at the historical ability of a person, partner or team to do something.  If the historical probability is low, do something else.

4.  Organizational change is hard because someone always loses.  And the change hurts the losers more than helps the winners.  So the losers fight harder.

5.  Experts do a good job of figuring out the important drivers of some phenomena.  But we are not good at using those mental models in a consistent way, in the moment of making a decision.  Algorithms are much better at getting to good results.  Even imperfect algorithms.  Think about this in the context of hiring, or forecasting, or evaluations, or capital budgeting or ... 

6.  Don’t just evaluate one alternative.  Always put two down, even if the other one is do nothing.  I like to see if, when something is framed as a positive ("we are giving you a gift") I can reframe as a negative ("You are creating an obligation")

7.  People conflate liking with smart.  In a hiring context, managers wind up hiring nice people who they think are smart.  Not actual smart people.  As organizations get bigger, you wind up with a more likable, but less smart organization.  Next thing you know, you have a large group of people who have a limited skillset and can't adapt to change.

I put together a short style guide for chart creation.  I got tired of giving my analysts the same spiel over and over again, so I codified it.  I should have visuals with the style guide, but it would take forever and I think the texts is pretty explanatory.

1. Every chart should have a governing thought or main message.  The title at the top of a page should not be “Monthly Pages Views.”  Rather, there should be a point to why you are showing the user the chart.  A better governing thought would be: “Monthly Pages Views have increased by 12% from the previous month.”
2. Don’t include unnecessary elements in a chart.  Sometimes I see a legend where there is only one data series in the chart. In this case, you would not need the legend; there is only one thing being shown on the chart.  Another example is gridlines.  If knowing the exact numbers of a metric is important to your story, turn on labels and show the numbers.  And borders around charts.  Lets go minimalist in terms of the elements on the chart.
3. No 3d.  It muddies the visual.  See 2.
4. Don’t go over 4 digits on a scale for a chart axis.  There is no room on a page for 7 digit numbers.  One digit is even better.  
5. Clearly label the scale.  If it is not self evident (like months or business units), please clearly label both what the metric is (Page Views, not PVs) and the scale.  If it is in thousands, put that on the axis.  If it is Millions, put that on the axis.  Above all, I am looking for clarity here.  I don’t want people to spend a lot of time figuring out what the “rules of the road” are for a particular chart.
6. Don’t use our internal labels for external consumers.  So, no labeling a chart about page views: “Monthly_pageviews_all.”  Rather “Monthly Pageviews.”  Use plain English, please.
7. Don’t use double axis charts.  I hate them.  If you want to show two different metrics on the same page, just put two charts on the page.  
8. Make sure that the scale for all charts that are using the same metrics are using the same scale.  Changing the scale in the middle of a set of related charts messes with the viewer.  
9. Don’t use line charts for anything that is not time/date based.  Lines imply date or time to a viewer.  
10. Wherever possible, provide some kind of basis for comparison on a chart.  Some options are Year over Year or average.  It is really hard to tell how things are going without a comparison.
11. Don’t vary chart types without good reason.  For example, pie charts and column charts can show the same data.  Viewers get use to seeing a particular type of chart and if you are changing types on them, they have to mentally change gears.  Just pick one type for related charts and stick with it.  And generally, I am not a big fan of Pie’s.  I would prefer waterfall charts, but am not inflexible about it.
12. If you are going to show percentages, then you need to show the total n on the slide.  If someone needs to calculate the counts for the categories on the pie, they need the total n.
13. Must always source the data.  Tell the user where the charts are coming from.  
14. If there are a material number of data points missing, you have to disclose it on the chart as a footnote or include a “missing” category on the chart.  Either way, you need to be explicit about the limits of your analysis.

Any other suggestions? 

Mentioned in a Wired article

Last bit of self-promotion today. About a month ago, my dissertation was referenced by Dan Ariely in a Wired article. I went to grad school with Dan. For me, the best thing about the mention was that I am now officially an analytics expert.

New Capture Your Flag Videos

Also have new capture your flag interviews. The first two are from last year. The new stuff is below.

Data Governance

I have not written anything in a while. More a problem of inspiration than anything else. I just didn’t have too much new to say. I now find myself inspired to discuss data governance. How exciting!

My company, Turner, is undergoing some profound changes in how we distribute our content. These changes are requiring us to retrofit existing measurement (that is, data collection) systems and standup new systems. And the process is a bit painful. We are doing a good job making the changes and developing the systems, but despite our best (admittedly organic) efforts we are still wrestling with issues of who makes critical design decisions, how to handle new requests, and who gets informed when changes get made. Though the analytic part of my job is really around building and using the analytic platforms, I was finding myself facilitating discussions around data collection and measurement.

My boss noticed this and decided to make my responsibilities more formal. So, she asked me lead our efforts in data governance and, despite my two degrees in political science, I had no idea what she was talking about. As we were having this discussion, I was thinking, “Do I need to set up a bi-cameral legislature? How about an independent judiciary?”

So what is it? If you do a Google search, you can find long and precise definitions of “Data Governance” but I find those definitions overly complicated. The short version on data governance is: determining, in advance, who gets involved (and defining their role) when there is a change in the data collection and measurement requirements of the company.” At its core, data governance is about communication. Everything else is just tactics. I am admittedly am focused on web marketing and analytics. So, my apologies to folks working other industries if my experiences don’t translate.

In terms of tactics (think policies and procedures), there are a few management techniques that we are using to make sure we include the right folks when data collection and measurement requirements change. First thing we are doing is getting Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) in place that make expectations between internal groups very clear. Our SLA’s specify, in painful detail, for any given situation that we could think of, what our time table is to handle the situation (fix it, meet about it, diagnose it, whatever), who gets contacted, and what the responsibilities of each group is in managing the situation. I treat these things as contracts and we negotiate the “terms” with our internal partners. Also, there are penalties (typically escalating to someone’s boss) for not living up to your part of the contract. I think of the SLA’s as our legal cannon and specify the policies that we are all going to agree to adhere to and what happens when there is an exception.

Another tactic that we are embracing is process documentation. We are trying to get more formal about our internal processes. This is different than the SLA in that they may not be discussed with anyone from any other internal group. We may get their input and have them be part of the process. We may not. Depends on the process. We are using a six-sigma person to do the process mapping, create RACI documents, etc.

On staffing. We are in the process of hiring a ”Data Steward.” Seriously. It is a real job. Don’t take my word for it. Look it up. This is the person who documents stuff and works with our internal partners to get the SLA’s in place, run the meetings. Etc. We are finding that for a company of our size, we need a person handling data quality and collection full time. The data steward will also act as a communications hub and make sure that the appropriate parties are speaking with each other. Note that this role is not a data cop. It is an influence and education type role, not so much a compliance role.

For those few people who have been reading the blog for a while, you know I am a big fan of ensuring that the analytic folks have high quality data to work with. To that end, you can do a bunch of automated data QA to ensure that your data is meeting your quality expectations. One new thing I have learned; you should also check to see that the relationship between variables is possible. For example, you can’t have fewer pages views than unique users. If your data says otherwise, there is a problem. Data quality assurance is going to be a big part of our data governance. In effect, we are looking to ensure that our collection activities are following the “law”

We are doing some other things, but the last thing I want to discuss is conducting prioritization meetings. We have found that if we don’t have dedicated meetings that show all outstanding requests (changes and bug fixes, mostly) it is very difficult to provide visibility to our internal clients what we are doing. They are a very reasonable bunch, but they, understandably, get nervous when they don’t know what we are working on. Or not working on. You can prioritize on a number of issues, but basically it comes down to business impact, effort, and likelihood of success.