Archive for 2006

Entrepreneurship Series

This is to announce that I’ll be writing a series of posts over the next few weeks detailing various facets of the entrepreneurial process. Before mid-December, you’ll be seeing articles on:

• Costs and Benefits of Taking Venture Capital
• Exit Strategies
• 5 Web Design Tips for Startups
• What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur?

Some will be posted all at once, and some will be posted in installments as I write them. Stay tuned, the first installment “Costs and Benefits of Taking Venture Capital” will be posted by the end of the week.

EDIT: I will add links to the articles here as they are posted.

Happy Birthday to Me

Thanks to everyone for the emails/IMs/Facebook messages wishing me Happy Birthday. I really appreciate all of them, it’s great to have such caring friends. It’s weird being 21, because it’s an age you look forward to as a milestone, and now that it’s here, I really don’t feel all that different :) It’s strange to think that this is really as old as I want to get, is 21 the turning point where getting older changes from exciting to depressing? I don’t think so, I just think that the milestones in your life become less age-based and more accomplishment centered (college graduation, first job, promotion, etc).

So here’s to looking forward to my next 21 years and beyond full of great friends and exciting milestones (and maybe a beer or two).

Recurring Events at Groupvine

So this is cross posted on the Groupvine Blog, but since I wrote the post, it can go here too right?

Recurring Events
We’ve gotten a number of requests for recurring events in Groupvine. So, thanks to your use of the feedback form (top right inside Groupvine), you got your wish! Today we added a recurring events feature to the “Events” tab. Just click the “Repeat this event” checkbox, and you’re on your way.

As always thanks for your feedback, keep suggesting features, my next post might be announcing your feature idea.

November is Birthday Month
As a final note, I’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to Scott on the 6th (today) and myself on the 8th. Scott has reached the oh-so-mature age of 23, while I’ve passed the oh-so-legal 21 year mark. So Happy Birthday to us both, and here’s to another year of better and more organized college groups!

Add WFU Specific Search to your Firefox

Here’s a quickie, but I think a number of Wake Forest students will appreciate it. I’ve programmed a plugin for Firefox to add a Wake Forest site-specific search to the upper right search box. Just click the little arrow next to the Google logo, and pick the “WF” logo, and your search will be restricted to the Wake Forest website. It’s great for finding things like OGB articles and a link to the PDF of the course catalog that you misplaced. Just go to the link below to install it.

http://www.billda.com/searchplugin/

17 Tips for Startup Founders and Employees

I came across a great pair of posts over at onStartups.com titled:

• 17 Pithy Insights for Startup Founders
• 17 Pithy Insights for Startup Employees

There are a few points in each article that I thought were particularly resonant (at least with me) that I’d like to point out and comment on.

Tip for Founders: Startup founders work long hours for a reason. There’s more work than there are people. If you’re seeking balance, seek it elsewhere.

This couldn’t be more true, there are never as many people to churn out your ideas as fast as you think them. However, I think the author makes the long hours and late nights seem dismal, when I think this is the most invigorating part of starting a company. When it’s 1AM and everyone else has gone home, and you have that spark, that great idea that keeps you up ’til 3, that’s the moment you don’t get anywhere but working for yourself, experiencing the entrepreneurial process. Which segways nicely into my other favorite from the Founders article:

Tip for Founders: At the end of each day, ask yourself: “Did the product get better for customers today?” If you don’t have a good answer, stay up until you do.

Haven’t we all felt that satisfaction blended with utter exhaustion after a late night of coding or brainstorming? How many companies have the motto “Better everyday” or “Improving all the time”? How many of those companies do you feel really improve every day? As a small company, an entrepreneur, you have the chance to actually make it happen, to improve everyday. You can make tangible, positive changes for your business everyday – make a new contact, add a new feature, write some documentation (I know you’ve been avoiding that one for months), re-evaluate your budget, have your partners over for some beer and brainstorming. When you turn in for the night, know that you’ve taken a stride toward success.

Now onto the tips for employees (and how different are they than the founders really…we’re all employees at this point) –

Tip for Employees: Startup founders are usually quirky people. Get used to it.

Quirky perhaps, but I think the better word would be driven. Startup founders are usually so excited for the success of his company, so wrapped up in his vision, that they sometimes come off as a bit, er…different. However, it does take a certain kind of obsession to make a startup work…

Tip for Employees: Wear as many hats as possible. Help out where you can.

What a great piece of advice. If you’re a programmer, program. If you’re a designer, make your sketches. But don’t be afraid to chime in with your business advice (as long as you’re ready to take some criticism), or sit down and help revise the business plan. You coworkers will love you for it, and you’ll be glad when they pitch in to help you when your deadline is tomorrow.

Tip for Employees: If you’re not having fun, you’re in the wrong place.

Probably the most important of all the tips, both for founder and employee. One of the best things about working for a startup is that it isn’t your typical 9-5 (as we’ve seen above), there’s a culture of fun and adventure you get with a small company that doesn’t come elsewhere. If you’ve lost that, you ought to quit now and go to work for a bank.

New template

So I went and changed the template here again, to Stephen Reinhardt’s Light 1.0. I think this is the one I’m going to stick with. It’s not as flexible as the one I was using before (K2), but I find it a lot crisper and more professional. I was also able to incorporate the spark into the new layout, which makes me happy.

Any comments on the new layout are appreciated.

Beacon Challenge Kicks Off

The Beacon Entrepreneurship Challenge has begun. At the kickoff meeting yesterday, our group was informed that we would be managing the Major League Baseball section of the new store, which is relaunching at sportsnutshop.com. We will be directly responsible for contacting wholesale vendors and selecting the products that will be carried in the store. In addition, we will handle all baseball related marketing for SportsNutShop, with an initial budget of $500. Our ad budget will increase over the next few months, as we meet the sales goals set by the Beacon Team.

Beacon has also agreed to provide us with help from their top notch advertising, graphics, and search engine marketing teams. So basically this all comes together to a hell of a great time, and some excellent real world experience (and hopefully a large, much needed comission check). Stay tuned here for updates on our progress, and an announcement when the store launches in a few weeks.

AIM Blocker

This program is just a little something I threw together because I was tired of my brothers being on AIM all the time monopolizing the computer. Basically what it does is modify the hosts file (I believe this only works in NT/2000/XP) to redirect all requests for the AIM logon server back to localhost, effectively preventing communication with the logon server, and therefore disabling access to AIM.

When the program is run, it checks to see if the hosts file has already been modified. If it hasn’t, it modifies the file (blocking access to AIM) and exits. If it detects that AIM is already blocked, it prompts the user for the password to unblock. If the password is correct, the blocking entries are removed, if not, the program exits.

Links to the source code (with comments) and a compiled executable are below. Feel free to use them in your own home/office, just please give me credit, or drop me a line saying how helpful this program was at bill@billda.com

AIMBlocker source code (AIMthing.cpp)

Compiled AIMBlocker software for Win32 (AIMthing.exe)

The Case for a Two Round Election System, and an American Third Party

First Past the Post: Holding the United States Back

The Case for a Two Round Election System,
and the rise of the American Third Party

The United States presidential system is the crown jewel of America’s political identity and one of our most cherished institutions. Because of this, we as Americans are extremely reluctant to revise our system, however badly it may need it. In recent years, the weaknesses of the United States’ First Past the Post election system have been exposed, even highlighted, by the election of plurality presidents in two of the last three general elections. This is a large problem for the functioning of the government, not only is the plurality president often ineffective because of lacking congressional majorities; he also lacks the mandate of the people, decreasing the legitimacy of his government.

First Past the Post is an inherently flawed election system because it is a zero sum game. The winning candidate wins absolutely, and his absolute victory is counter-balanced by the absolute loss by the other candidates. This often leads to plurality presidents when more than two candidates are involved in the election. It also ensures that the (often significant) portion of voters that did not vote for the winning candidate are entirely unrepresented by the president elect. First Past the Post works best in a strictly two party system, with two candidates, ensuring that someone will receive a majority. In fact, French political scientist Maurice Duverger argues that a First Past the Post election system naturally leads to a two party structure [i]. Duverger’s argument has clear examples in the United States’ electoral past. In the 1836 presidential election, Martin Van Buren, the Democratic Party’s candidate, won 50.83% of the popular vote, and was elected to the presidency. He was opposed by three candidates: William Harrison (36.63%), Hugh White (9.72%), and Daniel Webster (2.74%), all of the Whig party. It appears that the Democrats handily defeated the opposition (a 14.2% lead over the next closest vote getter). However, upon closer examination, had all of the Whigs consolidated their votes, they would have commanded 49.09% of the vote, leaving the Democrats with a razor thin 1.74% margin of victory. In the following election, in 1840, the Whigs all campaigned behind a single candidate, William Harrison, and garnered 52.88% of the vote, compared with Van Buren’s 46.81%. The Whigs learned an important lesson in consolidating for victory, an example that has been followed by many contemporary political groups that compete in First Past the Post systems. Just as the similar Whig candidates consolidated to achieve victory, smaller political parties are forced to conglomerate to form a larger contingent that can garner an electoral majority. In fact, the 1840 election was the last time in United States history that an election would be (seriously) split between more than two candidates [ii].

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