Socrata

Please forgive this slightly more personal post; it’s Saturday. It highlights an important issue for startups – having good life balance and weighing opportunity costs.

blist is my second startup, so my family has lived through the long hours and dedication it takes to get a successful company off the ground. My wife, Karen, is phenomenally supportive and manages our busy household with 4 kids between 3 and 16. Three of our kids are starting at new schools this year. Karen asked me on Thursday morning if I would be able to go in the evening to the fall harvest party with Bryce, my kindergartner. I asked her for the details. “It’s from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The kids are going are going to carve pumpkins. It’s designed to integrate dad’s more into school, as mom’s are there all the time. It’s optional. Not all the kids are going. Bryce hasn’t asked if you are going to go. So think about it and let me know.”

I was out of the office all day Thursday with important back-to-back meetings. My last meeting was in Seattle and was to end around 5:30. I’d been skipping the Seattle Tech Startups meetings on the 3rd Thursday of the month, but wanted to go this time because the topic – scalability – is one I’m deeply interested in. Not to mention, I thought this talk might attract other folks who are interested in this topic and I could do some casual network-based recruiting.

As much as I wanted to go to the scalability talk, I knew it would mean more to Bryce for me to go to the fall social. I called home in between meetings and talked to Bryce. I asked him if he wanted to go. Of course he did. He was bursting with excitement. I chatted briefly with my wife and told her my schedule was tight and that I’d pick him just before the social and asked if she could have him ready when I arrived. Of course she could.

When I pulled into our driveway, I could see Bryce standing on the sill of my office window, in full Halloween costume, eagerly waiting for me to arrive. I wouldn’t have known it was him except for his unmistakable ear-to-ear smile and his always-happy-to-see-you wave. It was instantly clear I made the right choice.

Karen had Bryce ready to go and had pre-packed a big grocery bag with a pumpkin, carving tools, paper towels, snacks to share, etc. These are the kinds of small, devotional acts she does every day for all 6 of us.

The fall social was a blast. The kids were up on stage and sang 5 or 6 Christmas songs, but with the lyrics rewritten with fall themes “5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on Gate…”

I was wrong about one thing though. Initially I thought it would mean more to Bryce if I went to the fall social. Actually it meant more to me.

Once you cross the line and become an entrepreneur, there is no more dualism separating a work sphere from a personal sphere. You get 168 hours a week and they all come from the same pot. Driving a startup to success requires long hours and a lot of sacrifice. But it also depends on a healthy, happy loving and supportive family. Manage your time and priorities wisely.

Next week I’ll be at the Paul Allen Center at the University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering department at a recruiting event. One of my two objectives is to meet a few top notch computer science students who might want to come work for blist as summer interns next May. To a startup, May 2008 might as well be June 2044. They seem equidistant. Why would the CEO of a fast charging startup take a day from a frenetic schedule to hang out in a conference hall with college students?

The short answer is threefold:

1) They can code
2) They can contribute meaningfully
3) Hiring them as interns may be our best shot to attract them when they graduate

Some of you may have an impression that a 20-year young adult isn’t good for much more than making photocopies, filing, picking up lunch for the team and perhaps click-the-mouse circa 1992 testing. You’re so wrong if that’s your impression. The reality is, a 20-year old computer science student likely has 5 to 7 years of programming experience and at least two years of formal education to reinforce (or relearn) core constructs. Actually, they can probably out-code a lot of professionals in terms of pure coding speed.

But you only get them for four months, right? Four months is a long time in software engineering. At blist, we run 2-week sprints. Typically we work on 50 to 60 projects in two weeks. A summer is plenty of time for an intern to make really meaningful contributions.

Aside from the meaningful contributions and the great energy and enthusiasm interns bring, it’s important to recognize that top students are going to be heavily recruited in their senior year. By engaging them with meaningful work earlier in their academic careers, we’re hopeful these interns will consider blist after they graduate.

If you’re a computer science major at UW or perhaps another school but you plan to spend the summer in Seattle, blist is talking to interns now for next May. Our internships are paid, of course. Drop me a note at kevin.merritt _at_ blist.com if you’re interested.

This morning was fun. I was interviewed by John Cook of the Seattle P-I, who tracks the Seattle VC and startup scene. He wanted to dig in and learn a little more about blist now that we are starting to share more detail about what we’re doing. You can read his write-up here.

Sooner or later reporters will want to interview you in order to learn more about your startup and share their insight with their readers. I thought it might be helpful to share some tips for conducting yourself when being interviewed by reporters:

1) Be honest. I wish it didn’t need to be said.

2) Recognize that the reporter is a professional interviewer and you are an amateur interviewee. His job is to get you to answer questions he thinks his readers will want to know.

3) Prepare for an interview like you would for any other important meeting in which you are representing your startup. We’re not yet represented by an outside PR firm, but if you are, by all means rely on them to help prepare you. Think about the 2 or 3 key points you want to convey. Prepare to answer the 2 or 3 hard questions you think he’s going to ask.

4) Realize that anything you tell the reporter is fair game to be printed or posted. You might sometimes be granted an exception, in advance, by asking to answer a question off the record. If you think that’s what you want to do, just answer the question with “We aren’t ready to divulge that yet.” My point is that answering off the record doesn’t give the reporter anything, so you might as well not answer.

5) Don’t immediately answer any question. We’re programmed to believe that answering questions faster makes us look smarter. Have you ever seen an article in which the reporter disclosed how long it took someone to answer a question? Me neither. Being fast just means you might not answer as thoughtfully as you’d like.

You’re also competing against a lot of background noise to have your message heard. Work with the media – old and new – to help get the word out.