Socrata

Apple recently announced a software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone. It also announced support for users of Microsoft Exchange by licensing Microsoft’s phenomenal ActiveSync software. If you are unaware of ActiveSync, it’s the faceless software that pushes email from an Exchange server down to a plethora of email clients, including Outlook on the PC and on Windows Mobile devices. Apple also announced that no announcement regarding support for Adobe Flash Player 9 would be forthcoming.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t believe they’re unrelated. Here’s my thinking.

First, Microsoft has worked tirelessly to promote Windows Mobile as a Blackberry killer. It’s been at the battle for a decade. Microsoft scratched and clawed its way up to #2 in the market, only to be knocked down to #3 in less than 6 months by the iPhone. To concede defeat to the iPhone and allow iPhones to access Exchange is a huge blow to Windows Mobile and everyone working on that team. I was in a board meeting the day the iPhone SDK was announced and the 2 Windows Mobile + 1 Blackberry users in the room immediately announced “That’s it. I’m finally getting an iPhone.”

Second, Microsoft is gearing up for a huge battle with Adobe over the next frontier of web apps – rich internet applications (RIA). Web 1.0 was about HTML and CSS. Web 2.0 was about AJAX. Web 3.0 or whatever it ends up being called is about RIAs. Adobe’s Flex Builder 3, Flash and AIR have emerged as the most mature and viable platforms for RIAs. Microsoft has made dramatic progress with Silverlight and wants desperately to win this battle. The winner of this effort – either Flex/AIR or Silverlight will likely enjoy for the next decade the equivalent of what .Net provided Microsoft for the last decade.

So my bet is the deal that got done between the Steves (Ballmer and Jobs) looks something like this: Microsoft licenses ActiveSync to Apple for the iPhone and in exchange Apple agrees not to support Flash on the iPhone. We won’t know whether I’m right or not for a while yet. If Silverlight support for the iPhone is announced within the next 6 months, then I’ll be strongly convinced that some kind of deal was struck last month when the iPhone SDK was announced by Apple. Then again, if Flash 9 support is announced, then I’m clearly wrong.

Let’s hope I’m wrong. I’m loving the iPhone. But like desktop versions of Windows and OS X, it needs to open it to allow it to run both Flash and Silverlight.

What do you think? Was a back room deal struck between Apple and Microsoft to artificially keep Flash off the iPhone?

This blog runs on a virtual private server from Slicehost. We set the blog up more than 6 months ago and it’s never had even a hiccup. Tonight I tried to login to the blog admin site and couldn’t. The blog site responded to pings but not much more. I’ve never had to reboot the slice before, so I’m new to the Slicehost admin tools. In a matter of a few minutes, I was able to log in and figure out how to perform a soft reboot. I did, but nothing came up for a minute or two. I became a little nervous but then found the web console tool within the Slicehost admin site. I launched it and saw the familiar Linux bootup messages. I watched for another 30 seconds or so and then finally saw the shell prompt. Then I tried to access the blog site from my browser and all was fine and normal again.

Very nicely done Slicehost. I’m a believer. Great stability and great management tools. I love it when stuff mostly just works and when it doesn’t I can solve my own problems.

Unbelievably a year ago today our first employee, Justin, joined me at blist. Justin is a savvy, smart software engineer who helped vet the technology stack, evaluate the development tools, designed the schema, built the early prototypes and even built his own furniture. (Yes, our first employees built their own desks from Ikea).

Since then, nearly every day has been a joy working with Justin. He’s methodical, precise, punctual, quick to laugh and as dependable as they come.

I didn’t know Justin before founding blist. I found his profile on Linked In and sent him an unsolicited note inviting him to lunch. His quick and matter of fact reply was “Who are you, how did you get my name and how are you funded?” A few weeks later he accepted my offer and we started working together out of sublet space in Kirkland.

Over the year the team has grown and the product has evolved. Justin has been in the thick of everything. He’s part of the fabric. He’s part of the culture. I’ve really enjoyed working with him.

We had a little celebration this morning. Nothing too fancy. Just some Krispy Kremes for the team including one with a single candle for Justin. I look forward to needing a sheet cake that can hold 15 or 20 candles someday.

It’s great working with you, Justin. Thanks for having the courage to join me.

Act I. Last week I had breakfast with a successful entrepreneur, the CEO of a company which has raised two rounds of capital, retooled once or twice and prospered. Unsolicited, he reached out to me and invited me to breakfast. Without qualification I accepted. What the heck? I eat breakfast anyway. Why not do so over stimulating conversation, right? During our breakfast our conversation wandered in a number of directions. Silently I thought to myself, “what’s his agenda?” and “Where’s this going?” It went everywhere and nowhere.

Act II. A young entrepreneur invited me to lunch. He prefaced it by sharing that he was wrestling with the decision to stay in Seattle vs. moving to silicon valley and wanted my advice. I accepted, honestly with a little anxiety that I’m so constrained for time that I didn’t know if I even have an hour to give another entrepreneur. We had a great conversation over lunch. The discussion wandered all over. We found common ground in a number of areas. We found areas where we differed. We both left respecting and understanding each other a little more.

I’m a busy guy. Time is my constraint. Both times I accepted a meeting that “on paper” I probably shouldn’t have. Both times I was rewarded for taking the time to listen and work through what was top of mind for someone else.

Since my breakfast and lunch with these two gentlemen, they’ve both emailed me about ideas about how blist can improve. They’ve introduced me to people who can help blist. They’ve reciprocated disproportionately to the time I invested.

My point is that sometimes if you keep a predictable, rigid agenda, you get predictable, rigid outcomes.

One of our awesome blist engineers, Paul, and I are excited to be heading down to Sunnyvale to the Hadoop Summit later this month. Yesterday we had our first post-financing board meeting and the conversation meandered to “Who’s using Hadoop in Seattle?” That’s a great question. If you’re in Seattle and you personally or your organization are using Hadoop and/or HBase, drop me a note. I’d love to get to know you. You can reach me at kevin.merritt (@) blist.com.

A pad of Post-it notes here. A couple of pens there. A notepad. A coffee cup. It happens every day. Low cost office supplies seem to be accidentally pilfered by employees, stocking the junk drawers of many American homes.

“Where did our salsa dishes go?” my wife asked.

“Oh, I needed those for candy dishes for our board meeting” I told her.

I’m sure I’ll bring them home someday.

“Where did the paper towels I bought at Costco go?”

“Oh yeah, I needed those for the breakroom. And while I’m ‘fessing up, I took all of our plastic forks and spoons, too. Can you get some more next time you’re out?”

You know you’re an entrepreneur when the pilferage flows the other direction.

Every once in a while I thought I’d share a little about the software business itself. It’s a fun and intriguing business. The software industry loves its acronyms and vernacular, oftentimes borrowed from other industries. Today I’ll tell you a little about triage.

For those of you who remember M*A*S*H, you’ll recall that triage is the process that trauma doctors employ to figure out which patients to treat. As callous as it sounds, patients are divided into three groups:

A) those who will survive regardless of what the medics do

B) those will survive only if provided appropriate medical treatment

C) those will die regardless of what the medics do

Before a big launch or release, software companies will sometimes employ triage. All of the outstanding bugs are divided into three groups:

A) those bugs that are minor enough to ignore for now

B) those bugs that are severe and should be fixed before launch

C) those bugs that can’t be fixed before launch even if you wanted to

Often the bug buckets are labeled “won’t fix,” “should fix” and “can’t fix” respectively. Each day the bugs are triaged by a small group of people – usually the scrum product owner and one engineer.

The engineering team focuses on fixing all of the bugs in the middle “should fix” bucket. If they drain the “should fix” bucket, then they’ll move on to the “won’t fix” bucket.

In November blist moved into a nice new office suite in Pioneer Square. Before that we subleased some office space in Kirkland. We took our first office 2 weeks after incorporating and 2 weeks before our first employee joined. The company was entirely self-funded by me.

There’s a lot of talk that startups can and should operate virtually instead of taking an office. I couldn’t be more strongly opposed to the idea. In fact, I think an entrepreneur should take an office even before the first employee is hired, or worst case coincident with the first employee joining. I know my opinion isn’t unanimously supported, but I thought it’s worth sharing my thoughts as both an entrepreneur and angel investor. Here are some of the reasons why I think taking an office should be an early priority:

*) Paying for an office is a forcing function that clearly draws an end to the pre-startup “I’m thinking about it” phase and commences the “I’m all in” phase. There’s something about having your name on the roster in the lobby and a sign outside your door that says you’re serious about making a go of it.

*) There is no substitute for face-to-face collaboration. Yes, tools like email, IM, Skype, cell phones and Basecamp are great. They play a role in startups, but they can’t replace in-person collaboration. I can count somewhere between 5 and 10 entrepreneurs who started virtually then took an office who have shared with me “We should have taken an office much earlier. It was such a boost to productivity.”

*) Your ability to attract key people is limited by not having an office. Sorry, we’re not all wired the same. Some of us don’t want to work out of your spare bedroom. I don’t have any evidence to support this, but I think this is an even bigger issue when trying to attract the opposite gender into your startup.

*) Your ability to capitalize your business is severely hampered by not having an office. This opinion isn’t anecdotal. A number of VCs have flat out told me they won’t invest in virtual companies. Remember, an office visit is part of the process for raising capital from a VC. For angels, I think it’s more along the lines of my first point. “How serious are you if you still won’t even spend $1,000 a month for an office?”

*) Finally, the ROI on an office pays for itself. I simply believe that you get more than $1,000 a month of productivity gains by spending a $1,000 for a small office.

OK, so I’ve convinced you. Now what? How do you go about finding an office? I’ve successfully subleased twice before and highly recommend it. It’s a great way to find affordable space with very flexible terms. Avoid executive suites. They are a horrible value and they nickel and dime you for everything. For blist, I found an 8-month sublease on Craigslist which I negotiated down to about $10 per square foot. The going rate for a direct lease in that building is $32 per foot. For MessageRite, I called a friend of mine with a consulting business and learned they had 4 or 5 empty offices. I worked out a deal to pay $600 for the first one and then $300 for each additional one as we grew. We were able to use the conference room and have some space in the computer room for our equipment. It was a great.

If you’re serious about building a real business, start by getting a real office.