Arthur Chang

Week Four

Wow, I've almost lost count of how many weeks it has been since we started building our app (photo unrelated... mostly).  It literally started from scratch 4 weeks ago, and tomorrow we are already ready for our second beta release.  This isn't a pure web app, mind you, it's an iPhone app.  We got backend, frontend, api's, stat servers, natural language processing processes, and more, all playing nicely in 3 weeks, and now 4 weeks ready for another release.  On top of all of that, we have all the nitty gritty business details: seed funding, design work, branding work, marketing strategies, PR relationship building, shmoozing, twittering, and blogging.  It all really gets complicated, and it's amazing how we're getting everything in line and organized.

This week was dedicated to improving our first release, w hich I'd like to call our alpha.  After using the app ourselves along with 20 or so beta testers, we've really gotten to know how our idea works in real life.  An idea and a finished product are basically two completely different things.  What you think your product will be, is actually not how it will ever feel once materialized.  Focuses shift, things are stripped out, and the core features are redefined and polished.  Every release is going to throw curveballs at you, you just have to be ready for it.  All the features and ideas you thought were table stakes might just be superfluous things that really don't make your app cool.

With FanPulse, we've found that, sure, there's about a hundred different things people would love in the app, but does that make them more likely to open up the app again?  Nope.  What do they like the most, what do they use the app for?  That's what we need to focus on.  If there's an outrageous amount of demand for a feature that's outside the scope of our core, even more so than what the awesome feature the app is centered around, maybe it's time to look at another product that has been unearthed by your previous idea.  Yes that could happen, but don't force it.

Tomorrow we're releasing a set of features that is a continuation of our efforts to polish and make our core functionality work even better.  I still regard the next release as an alpha, as it's still testing out our earliest ideas.  I'm not against saying that it's not perfect or ready for the public yet, because it will be soon, and releasing small and often will pay off big time.

If you're not in our releases yet, and want to get in on this next beta, send an email to beta@wethefan.com with your name and email.  If you have an iPhone and know how to get your UDID, send that too!  We'll get you in for tomorrow.

And if you're all wondering what the heck the picture is above, it is of a Porcelain Crab.  The Neopetrolisthes ohshimai is not actually a true crab, but a squat lobster evolved into what is more or less a crab looking thing.  I think this evolution is called carcinisation.  Basically shows how crabs might have evolved from lobsters due to environmental factors (hiding under rocks for example).

Anyways, these guys are cool!  They use their claws to fend off predators or in my case a few harmless snails and fish, but use what's called setae to catch food.  Setae are basically a pair of arms that stretch out from underneath them that have "nets" in them.  They catch particles (planktonic food) and shove them into their mouths:

I currently have a mated pair in my tank, they sort of just hang out together and grab stuff out of the water column.  I doubt I'd be able to keep any of their offspring successfully, but it's fun having them as a pair nevertheless.

Week Three - Stay focused especially with a release

The Calcinus laevimanus (Zebra Dwarf Hermit crab) in my reef tank gets blown around quite a bit.  I have flow that amounts to about 7500 gallons per hour flow through the tank, so as soon as the hermits lose grip on a rock, they go flying.  This little guy tumbled quite far, but was able to get back up after a little rocking back and forth.  Determination and focus to survive is as simple as getting your house upright again.  Well, maybe simple for a hermit.

Week three of my startup company has been pretty exciting.  We met up with one of our board of advisors, who provided really good feedback and information.  It's always great to have people who really make the effort to share their knowledge and insight.  It's not like you rely on that for direction, but it's good to keep your head out of any echo chambers you might be in, and really listen to other experts out there to see how other people and groups think in the same industries.  That is one of the most important things to learn in a startup: how everyone else is thinking about the same problems.

The worst that could happen to a company is for all the founders to put their heads down, bury themselves in code and business details, talk amongst themselves, and in essence, persuade each other that what they are doing is exactly right.  Echo chamber.  Everything really comes down to the same way of thinking for startups: release fast, often.  This will get you the most feedback from real life people, and with what they say you can easily determine what to build next as a feature.  There's no need for you and your founders to be geniuses, knowing exactly how people will want the app to behave, knowing the perfect UI flows.  There's also no need for countless hours discussing how exactly the best way to present information is.  Just present it as best you see it, and let the people tell you.

And of course there's simplifying.  If you find yourself needing more resources and hires to build stuff, you are definitely NOT focused on the one goal.  If you need to branch out to maintain some completely separate product to give your core product some value, you have just created two startups.  Whenever you are faced with tons of features that aren't maintainable, you've probably gone too far.  Focusing on one strong goal, either it be 140 character status updates (or face it, 140 characters of bragging), or it be checking into sports games with your friends, will keep you from biting more than you can chew.

Our next release will not be a ton of more features that 1 to 5% of our users wanted to see, but it's going to be polishing up and making the core functionality that 100% of the users have used, even better.  Of course making it even better doesn't mean just making buttons shiny, or fixing a few bugs, but it can definitely include features that all go towards the same goal of making the core functionality that much more appealing.

It all comes down to a fine balance of not building non-core functionality features, and giving people enough things to be excited about for the next release.

This will be our next biggest challenge!  Utilizing user feedback to determine what's next on the list.  I'm not going to lie, we do already want to do about 100 different things, but we're going to try our best to keep it simple.

Thanks to all the feedback so far on FanPulse!  Those beta testing are really the ones behind exactly what this product will become.

Mespilia Globulus: Algae eating beauty

The mespilia globulus, also known as the Tuxedo Pincushion Urchin, is amazing when viewing them close up.  I was lucky enough for mine to come right up to the glass for me to snap a few shots with my macro lens.  This is pretty close to a 1:1 magnification.  You can see some feelers coming out around his spines.  His blue stripes are totally uniform, it's insane.  Also an amazing Golden Ratio feat as well as the blue stripes are 3 to the spines 5.

New pictures of my tank

My Nikon camera has finally been fixed and returned from Nikon Service.  Amazingly, it works even better than before.  I think it came with a slight defect that I didn't really notice.  Anyways, to test it all out, I took pictures of the most interesting thing at hand at the time, my 80 gallon Saltwater Reef Tank.  I just got it restocked a month or two ago, so the corals are still real small =)  The tank has been setup for a year+ now though.

Sanjay Black Photons (Ocellaris x Percula)

I received a pair of clownfish today, they are both a hybrid from a captive bred brood formed between a Onyx Amphiprion Percula and a black and white Amphiprion Ocellaris pair, two totally different Amphiprion (clownfish) that are very rare in that they're completely black with white stripes.  This is a pair from them, which have a dark orange mixed with black.  These were bred by Sanjay who has done a lot of research in aquarium lighting for reef tanks, and he has dubbed them "Black Photon Clownfish".  

The male (smaller one) with a non-completed middle stripe.  The female (larger one) came with some ich, hopefully she will pull through soon.  I'm hoping my ELOS 120 tank will be a great home for these two extremely unique clownfish.  In the coming weeks I am going to try to collect a pair of naked ocellaris (no white stripes), a misbar pair (with non complete stripes), and perhaps a snowflake pair (tons of white, little orange).

Here are a few pictures of the pair in the tank: