Arthur Chang

Week Nine Ten Eleven

We've come a long way from the first days of FanPulse, starting from Joe and I building the foosball table.  Yes, the foosball table was the foundation of our entire company, setting the mood and proof of how fast and solid we could build something so that we could start playing with it ourselves.

I haven't blogged the last few weeks about our progress because it plainly drained me enough every day such that I had no motivation to just sit and blog, instead I sat and coded.  We have huge news, our iPhone application has launched to the public in the Apple App Store as of last Thursday.  See the blog post about it here.  That day was really exciting.  For the next couple days it was almost all building hype, which included spamming the crap out of our friends, borderline begging people to join us in watching the SuperBowl, and also presenting opportunities to sport bloggers to be featured as our news content provider for certain teams.

Building hype is important beyond anything you could possible do in a startup.  Not just in volume of hype, but the method of going about it.  At no time do you want to ever build the type of hype that creates expectations for exceeding your ability, but that doesn't mean even the simplest of applications can't have a lot of excitement surrounding it.  Play off of the fundamentals of your app, what already works and works great.  Talk about what these simple actions can do for the users.  Make users feel like they will become even more awesome after engaging in the 2 or 3 actions of your product.  Most importantly, don't promise anything that doesn't exist or hasn't been built yet.  Build hype about the present, be proud about what you have now.  The emphasis should be all about what's going on with your product today, and how it's currently making people's lives that much better.  Never make excuses for things your app might lack, or needs improvement on.  Make it sound like we purposely made everything the way it is (which should be true anyway).  Give people confidence in the product without making it sound like a scam.

It's huge to be confident in your own product.  That alone will increase the quality in the eyes of users.  If you're somewhat timid about making a fool of yourself, then that means you're truly not proud of the product and that's a bad sign.  If you're not proud, then you shouldn't have even released something.  Startups all understand that first revs, and every revision after is nowhere near the final goal of taking over the world, but knowing that goes a long way.  You see the qualities of what you have now, and it really shows when you pitch the idea to customers, investors, and beyond.

Avoiding criticism by making excuses is a huge turnoff.  Take criticism as suggestion and a learning experience, don't try to guess what people might hate or not like.  If you're stern enough, people will start seeing things your way, and the most passionate and well thought out suggestions will come up.  And of course, you'll get a bunch of random criticism that all stems from people trying to use your product in a different way than designed.  This probably means the messaging for what your app is really about was not clear enough.  There are exceptions where people are just looking for yet another hardcore "scoreboard" app for example, which we aren't.  If you read even a single paragraph of text, you'll understand this, but some will not and miss the point completely.  Hey, that's totally fine, but there's always room for improvement to make even the laziest users understand what's happening.  Once that's good, you can hook anybody.

Every release and big event for your product is a huge learning opportunity.  Build like a madman, hype it up like no other, piss people off, make people scream with joy, listen and learn, then do it all over again.

We were lucky in many ways, biggest being the SuperBowl event.  We saw a huge number of people check-in and shout about the game.  Once your friends are all on the app, it's actually really awesome while the game is going on.  The need for more cross platform solutions became even more apparent as a lot of our friends were sitting around not being able to join in.  We're pushing forward on our desktop and mobile web version of the application immediately.  We have a shell page for games already in the works: http://fanpul.se/games/133633  This will be good news for non-iPhone users, and people who just like playing with things on their laptops and desktop computers as well.  We'll get everyone's friends on this soon!

Time to get back to work!  More updates soon.

Week Eight

Today was an important day in the history of FanPulse!  We have officially submitted our product to the Apple App Store.  It's pretty amazing how much has been developed in such a short amount of time, much attributed to the awesome team we have.  Above is a photo I took of Joe and Vish as we prepare for the app submission on Saturday.

It's a good feeling to have to hit your deadlines, however aggressive.  Sometimes that extra pressure helps and makes everything just a bit more rewarding.  What this doesn't mean is that we're all taking vacation, it's quite the opposite.  We're diving head first into the next round of features and improvements we have been planning all along.

The difference between an iPhone app submission and a web app submission is that web submissions are up to you, and you can do them as many times as you want and as frequently as you want.  With the Apple App Store, you're at the mercy of their process.  What we released was a great minimum viable product, but there's still plenty of awesomeness to build.

For all the new, casual, and expert sports fans out there, this is just a taste of what's to becoming the coolest thing you'll ever see =)  I'll be posting on the FanPulse official blog (http://fanpulse.posterous.com) soon with details, and once we hit the app stores you'll see plenty of updates and buzz.

You should follow us on Twitter for the latest updates here.

Week Seven

The last few weeks (since the start of FanPulse) have sort of been taken up by family and friends over the holidays, mixed in with a lot of hard work.  I'll call this past week, Week Seven, since the previous few I spent most of my time hanging out and not doing as much coding and meetings as usual.

This last week we worked almost entirely from home, except for Thursday we went over to Dogpatch.  Working from home is pretty cool, you wake up and sort of just start working.  The worst part is you totally forget what's outside and work 15 - 16 hour days without realizing it.

It's probably worse to work too much in one day than to work too little, though the measure should probably be in weeks rather than days.  It's definitely quite OK to work a lot for a day or two, but over a long period of time, it'll really wear you out.

The nice part of week seven is that I felt a lot of confidence in the product, and that we were all on the same page.  We didn't have to discuss much, as we knew exactly what each other co-founder was thinking and had in mind.

The flow and process really clicked, and we pumped out a ridiculous amount of features.  If you, your developers, biz people, and all co-founders really agree and realize the product in the same light and know the gritty details, however pleasant or ugly, production skyrockets.  

I really felt that the last week was amazingly productive, even more than before, because FanPulse is almost ready for it's final app store release.  When you're really close to a first release, it's amazing how all these features just come together all of a sudden into a nice polished minimum viable product.

I'm totally excited, and I'm driven to work not because of deadlines or pressure, but because I really want to see what games my friends checked into, or what games I should be watching so I can keep up with the chatter amongst my social group, or what have you.  I want to use it!

If you guys want to venture into the "edge" version of our newest release, let me know.  We can send you the latest files and have you try it out even before it hits the app stores.

The photo above was taken on the Thursday we were working out on Dogpatch Labs.  It was a fairly foggy day, but nice light nevertheless.

Week Six

Here's week six in my series of documenting the early stages of my new startup.  The purpose is to document our progress, our maturity, and what we learn and experience every week.

This past week has really shown me a few key things.  

Lots of startups are trying to launch right around Christmas, either to tag onto the shopping spree of the economy, or to get things finished so they can go relax for the holidays.  There's quite a buzz in the startup community about now, and you learn a lot from them.  There's also a high level of stress, especially the balance between work and holiday festivities, which include shopping, family and friend events, traveling, and more.  Best thing to do?  Stay out of it.  Depending on Christmas for your app to launch successfully shouldn't be your strategy, though I won't deny the boost it could give.  Either way, the ultimate success of your product won't hinge on it being ready for Christmas, if it does, you have other problems to worry about.  Other stresses include the Apple App Store closing down to any changes or submissions you might have during and around the Christmas day, long lines to get approved, and other elements of your product that are totally out of your control.

Another cool characteristic about this time of the year is that you're more likely to be around friends and family.  Holidays are a great time to practice the elevator pitch.  I've learned a lot about my product by talking to a lot of people, strangers and friends alike, that I probably couldn't have in the same amount of time with my co-founders or buried in code.  I left my echo chambers last weekend to go on a photoshoot with a seriously eclectic group of people.  There were new faces, familiar faces, and old faces at the shoot.  The photo posted above is from the event at the Maritime Museum in San Francisco.  I met a few developers in enterprises, a few from Google, a few from startups, and then also a bunch of other people in various trades and fields.  All of which had at least some interest in sports.  If not before we talked, definitely after =)

At the event, I was able to take a breather and walk at least 7 - 8 miles, enjoying the outdoors and the holiday decorations.  I also talked to a lot of different people, about the new company, about my new product, and about what they thought about it.  Sure I wasn't the only one talking the whole time, but I did get a lot of reactions and feedback.  By the end of the night, my pitch had matured dramatically from when the day started.

I am a developer most of the day, coding, but that doesn't mean that's all I need to concentrate on.  Founder status requires the responsibility of keeping your head above the clouds, out of the echo chamber, and putting on many hats.  Gathering data from feedback and analytics through the product is one thing, but also just trying to describe and basically convince people that your product is awesome gives you an idea of what people want before even seeing the product.  In essence, I was trying to sell vapor.  I get a little credibility for the vapor since I'm actually building it.  This weird "Matrix" type stuff I do on the backend seems to add just enough mystery for people to give me a little more cred than I would have otherwise =)

What I've done in this exercise is further gain another set of feedback from a totally different group.  I've also further improved the pitch.  I've substantiated more of the product's focus, and have more ideas on how to market the main features.  Sure it's not the final or only set of data go off of, but getting out and doing something completely different with a totally different group of people has definitely helped me as an individual become better in experience and knowledge to continue development of the product.  It also helped me step back a bit in my thoughts of my product, to reorganize what I have been doing for a few weeks, and describing it in it's most primitive of forms.  It really helps to be able to get out of the huge hole you've dug in your product, so you can remind yourself what fresh minds really think about a potential product of yours.

This further substantiates my belief that being a successful entrepreneur and developer is strongly aided by your ability to take part in other activities outside of your daily work.  I'm not saying go out to random venues to try to push your products, nor take time away from development or from the product in order to try to gain more feedback.  But go out and enjoy the world from a different perspective completely, keep your own self achievements a little more diverse, and you'll be amazed at how people think outside of the world's startup bubble.

Practicing your pitch also gets you organized, fresh, and thinking.  It keeps you from putting yourself into dead ends, or too far down the wrong road.

Also partaking in some holiday fun will help you rejuvinate some of that spirit and excitement that is constantly being sucked away by memory leak issues, internet explorer compatibility issues, and dealing with battling third party services (apple, facebook, etc) that you depend on.

Happy holidays everyone!

Week Five

Week five has been really exciting, and here is a little recap of it as part of my series of documenting the early stages of my new startup.  The purpose is to document our progress, our maturity, and what we learn and experience every week.

It's been a pretty exciting week.  Along with our great beta testers, being part of the target audience really helps as we can visualize and understand the app with first hand experience.  I couldn't imagine building something without having any interest in using it when it was done.  Building something that you will eagerly use is as exciting as it is motivating.

Week five was awesome, everything we did had a substantiated direction.  Instead of waiting around and trying to justify what we've built, we've proven a few theories, and totally eliminated others.  All the polishing we did made the app better, and what makes the app better?  By improving that core feature / functionality that everyone understands and uses.  We didn't spend time working on a page that only 2% of our users saw, and nobody really cared for.  We didn't spend any time adding in features that had nothing to do with our core functionality.  Everything we did helped people do what they naturally came to the app to do.

One big question we talk a lot about is, what's the pitch?  One thing to realize is that if your product doesn't dictate a clear enough pitch, it's definitely not focused or clear enough itself.  If we were making a machine that materializes a hamburger, and that's all it did, our pitch would be quite clear: "Our product makes hamburgers out of thin air."  I wish that's what we were making, but the reality is, few things are that simple to start out with.  It could have started with an idea to make food from air, an entire meal, multiple meals, for an arbitrary amount of people, possibly creating liquids to drink too, and with kosher and vegetarian modes, and what have you.  All of that is what a lot of different people want, but why promise so much when you could simplify to start with just making a hamburger and doing that really well to prove what you're capable of.

Once everyone knows exactly that one core feature that's where the excitement starts.  You no longer have as many lingering questions, nor too many tasks to tackle.  You don't have to hire tons of people to take care of each category of what your product has, but instead the core team that you like a lot working on the same core elements.  Simplifying will also help you release early and often, without ever needing to explain exactly what all the new things will help you do.  You'll know that you're going to get a better hamburger, and because of that you're excited right away.  You don't need to read into the bulleted list of features to know that.

Simplifying is the best decision to make, but it can also be the hardest one because you're letting go of all these features you were really excited about.  The best way to think about it is that nobody else is thinking as much into it as you, you're down a path way further in maturity than your product is, and that each of these features probably has a place and time in your product, but that time is later.  Wait until the audience understands and loves your core features, and then be the good guy who gives these people all the little features that they start to need.  The demand is what wil l keep your product alive after launch, the demand is what is going to help investors decide to invest, and the demand will show you the possibilities of generating revenue.  Launch with something that is awesome, just one thing.  You'll be surprised!

Anyway, the photo at the top is a picture of one of the natural bridges near Davenport, California.  I went down there a few times that day, trying to find the perfect lighting and weather.  It was raining pretty bad, and I was hoping for some breaking fluffy clouds, but settled for a dark semi-long exposure to capture a minimal look on these cool structures.  More on my Flickr stream: http://flic.kr/photos/kinetic

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.

Week Two

Week two has felt like an eternity, and surely the amount of productivity is close to that.  I've never expected to have put together something so quickly and with such high quality before in my life!  The requirements for the upmost quality of code and timeliness is as extreme as you could imagine, since the one I have to answer to here is simply: me.  You are your harshest critic.

Week two went really smoothly, as I started hitting my stride in feature development balanced with all the other planning, management, and what nots of the product.  There has been awesome feedback so far from our advisors, and just bouncing the idea off people is easier and easier, meaning the problem we're solving, and the solution, are understandable and clear.  It's not completely perfected yet, but everything's pointing in the right direction.  The minimum viable product is stripped down pretty far, and definitely scary to release since it's not exactly what our grand vision is (far from it really).  The human tendency to try to completely bedazzle the audience with the first splash upfront is difficult to ignore.  We must see the value in quick and lightweight releases of the product, as long as each release provides a solid, unique, and easy to understand message each time.

People don't need your product right away, if they do then it has to be perfect right away.  Without even having people try it, there's no way to know what they want.  Instead the approach the company is taking is to give people something that's different, that begins to solve the fundamentals of the problems they have.  Once they commit to that one single idea we've released, they're hooked! Now they NEED new features.  And that's what we build =)

Aside from code, I decided to get out and take some pictures again this weekend.  This time I was pleasantly accompanied by my #1, and we did some exploring around Moss Beach / Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.

See all pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kinetic/

Teasers below:

Week One

The first week of being in my own startup has been quite exciting.  I have always imagined and thought about what it would be like, what I would do, and if it would be a whole lot of fun, or a whole lot of stress.  I thought it would either be really good, or really really bad, nothing in between.  Preparing for the worst by teaming up with talented people, Joe and Vishwas, along with making a lot of new connections with various companies and awesome people, has turned out to make this a stressfully exciting time.

I'm still trying to find my stride and my rhythm, or maybe there is none, and that's what makes starting your own company so intriguing.  The dynamic nature of it will always keep you on your toes.  The mentality of it all I'm quickly realizing, is to not get caught up and stressed about any little thing, and to constantly step back and look at the bigger picture.  As long as you don't get trapped into one little area of stress, it's good.  There are millions of line items to tackle, but if you just pause and breath, you'll realize it's not really that bad.

The people you surround yourself with while working is important too.  Vishwas is probably as awesome of a business guy / CEO you could possibly work with.  Joe goes without saying does nothing but help you stay on track, level headed, and on top of your foosball game.  We've done some cafe hopping, and camped out over at Dog Patch Labs on Pier 38 as well.  It's motivating being around your co-founders constantly, as well as others who are in similar positions as you.

Friday night, I started getting a little tired of just coding.  Given I get outside for a run and try to hit the gym daily, it just doesn't balance out entirely the other 10 - 12 hours of development I had done already that day.  I decided to take the day off (mostly) and just do some chores and take some photographs.  Keep sane so I can keep going full steam.  It's always better to work in solid productive blocks, then constantly but with little energy or motivation.

Today I jumped into the car and drove randomly into San Francisco.  I stopped by the Painted Ladies because everyone talks about it, and you always see those houses in the Full House t.v. show's intro.  These houses are about as boring as any house can be.  They're not that colorful, and there really isn't anything about them that's cool.  The park in front of it is awesome though.

Above you can see the Full House house, but the coolest part were just the people hanging out in the park.  There is a similar "let's just chill outside in the city" vibe like Dolores Park in the Mission, but minus the weed and homeless.  I found the scene absolutely peaceful and happy, so took the shot with people in front.  In the background of the photo, you can also spy a few people painting.  Boring!  Let's move on.

I walked around the park, noticed the majority of the people were young couples with their babies (dogs actually, no human babies in sight).  Some individuals as well watching their dogs play.

And then that was it, the park wasn't that big.  So I got in my car and drove through the Presidio, looked at the gigantic houses, and ended up on a random road that was curving me past the coast along the Pacific Ocean!  What the heck?  Suddenly I ended up at Baker Beach (notorious for the nude aspect of the patrons).  Avoiding the naked old fat people (there are no other naked people there, just fat and old, of course), I found a really intriguing sign.  It was backlit severely so I couldn't make it out until after I got back and processed the photo, I swear ;)

Evidence above shows the sun almost setting right behind it, so there.  Past the sign, I mean in front of the sign, was quite the view.  Baker beach below to the south, the beautiful Pacific Ocean (and ridiculously large waves this time of year), and then the coastline topped off by the Golden Gate Bridge.  I was a little overwhelmed by what to take a picture of, but I ended up finding the old fencing to be the best subjects out there.

And for those who must have color and sunlight:

The Golden Gate Bridge was definitely only about 1/10th as interesting as the fence poles =)  Here's a nice view of Baker Beach at sunset:

And ok, here's a really boring black and white to the north of where i was standing.  Notice the fence posts below, that's where I was for the shots above:

On yeah, and forgot to say, Halloween was a blast!  Had a party at the house, played foosball, wii, and just hung out.  It was great.  Even my Sea Urchin dressed up.  His costume was Reef Rubble: