By Kevin Marshall on Jul 22 2008
Last night I caught a quick blog title in my google reader from Nate Westheimer that said nothing but "what would you do with 750,000"...it got me interested so I jumped over to his blog to try and find the meat...but I couldn't find it, and so I emailed him.
He promptly replied with a link and some additional information (turns out the post was about this challenge which I had already seen via the NextNY group [btw, Nate is an active/awesome member of that group too]).
Anyway, my initial thought to the post was that it was related to something along the lines of "what would you do with $750,000"...or more specifically "assuming you could get a small amount of funding for your start up idea, what would you actually do with the funding?".
Being that I've never gone out to get funding, I honestly don't know what my own answer would be (which is also part of the reason I've never gone out to get funding I guess).
Now I know the simple answer is to say you would invest it in growing the business...but what I'm looking for is more an answer along the lines of a quick bullet list, breaking down the distribution...something like:
1. I would use around 50% to hire people...and since we are talking about brand new ideas that haven't been developed, those people would be developers and designers...this money should cover salaries and related expenses for 24 months...
2. I would use around 25% for hardware/hosting requirements...that should cover us for at least 24 months.
3. I would use 5% for office related expenses (paper, pens, desks, etc.) this should cover us for 24 months...
4. I would store 20% in the bank for emergencies and future, yet unknown, expenses.
Now those are all totally fake numbers/ideas that I was just throwing out there as an example of what kind of answers I'm interested in hearing (not that anyone is actually going to respond with answers, but hey you never know).
Anyway, I find it an interesting thing to think about...like I said I've never bothered to explore funding, so I really have no clue. But I would think a big part of asking for the money would be to provide a detailed breakdown of just how you plan to use that money right?
Even though I have been able to build up a few small companies and projects without the funding, I do see a lot of other non-money advantages that getting some Angles or VCs involved could bring (look no further than the recent summize acquisition)...and I would love to give some of my projects those same advantages...
I just don't think too many Angles or VCs are going to let me walk in and say "Hey I don't want or need any money right now, but would you take 5% of my company for free?"...well actually they may be happy to have me do that, but I don't know that they would really give me all the extra benefits just because of it (if you have a free stake in something, do you really have any emotional stake in it? I don't think so).
Since I'm on the topic of funding...perhaps my friends John and Niko will get funding down the road for their newly launched site celebrifi.com (a sort of "digg" for celebrity news)...not really my cup of tea, but I like these guys a lot and I think they've got what it takes to eventually hit the mark (and I love the fact that they keep moving forward and trying - see ourmesh.com)
Of course I could be biased since I've known John for awhile now and consider him a good friend...I sort of have an emotionally vested interest in seeing his projects succeed (honestly I like seeing any project succeed, but hey that's just me).
Comments: 1
By Kevin Marshall on Jul 21 2008
I'm exhausted tonight for some reason (to be honest, I think I'm just a little under the weather)...anyway, I've only got a few small things on my mind to share tonight:
1. 10 Gen made news today with a round of funding and a few really really cool tech. releases. I don't know when I'll have time, but I really want to dig into their open source stuff and see how they do what they do. I don't know if/when I would actually use the technology myself (yet), but it's just one of those things I need to know more about...
2. SQL Injection attacks are so lame. One of my friends/clients got hit with a nasty one over the weekend...and since they have a few thousand files of tangled, mangled PHP code (hacked together over many years from many different projects/people)...cleaning up everything is a bit of a hassle (in fact, most of what I do for them from time to time is help fix/reorganize one tangled mess at a time). Actually preventing the SQL Injection is a very simple thing, but they are going to be working for quite a while to plug the fix into the existing ball of code they have...a bummer really.
3. Porting bad code (see Draftwizard) takes a really really long time...and honestly is pretty boring. It's a good thing I'm very committed to getting all the old code cleaned up and running again or I would have ditched this project long long ago.
That's it for tonight. I'm off to zombie/zone out and then hit the bed.
Comments: 0
By Kevin Marshall on Jul 18 2008
I was just reflecting a bit and thought I would share. I started this blog at the end of 2007 (a month or two after my Pro Active Record book hit book stores)...so that was just about seven months ago.
At the time I started the blog, I was looking to get involved in another writing project (eventually), was thinking about officially shutting down Statsfeed, and just starting to play around with Factor.
Draftwizard.com was heading into another off season and sort of sitting idle in my brain and heart. I had been 'working from home' running my two small companies (Falicon Programming Inc. and Statsfeed LLC) for about the past four years.
I recognized that I was at a cross roads, but I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do next.
It was around that time that I really started to wake up to the rest of the blog world as well...while I had been fairly active in my own little development world, I was also too closed off from what people outside of my two little companies were really doing.
Starting to blog motivated me to start following what other people were doing...and got me to start following groups like NextNY
Since that time:
1. I started and built this blogging software (including a small tangent to support both MS SQL and MySQL and incorporate semantic hacker technology so I could enter their semantic hacker challenge [and control my spam])
2. I started and built storyrank.com and integrated support for it into this blog (don't forget to rate my posts!)
3. I started and built www.botfu.com (including building a facebook application)
4. I started www.fubnub.com thanks to inspiration and help from Charlie
5. I took a full time gig with Bowker.
6. I continued to do consulting for www.reviews.com (usually between 5-20 hours a week)
7. I began to dust off and clean up some really old and deprecated Draftwizard code (I've got a handful of really big features 90% fixed up and about ready to re-release).
8. I participated as an 'expert' in the Fantasy Football Index magazine again (once again being one of the most controversial 'experts').
9. I started http://bar.ackoba.ma but haven't done much with it yet (I even forgot to add this to the orig. list of things I've been doing and had to come back to update the post!).
and probably a handful of other things that I'm just forgetting about right now...
I guess my point is that even though I don't feel like I'm accomplishing a lot day to day (none of my goals from seven months ago have been accomplished just yet)...I am doing things.
Of course, I didn't say I'm accomplishing anything of value or interest to anyone else...but at least I'm having fun right!?
Comments: 0
By Kevin Marshall on Jul 17 2008
Here's the thing about being a 'computer' person...people just assume you know everything there is to know about computers or anything that has anything to do with computers...but in truth, nobody knows all that.
It's sort of like going to someone that builds houses and saying "Hey you build houses...my house has a lawn, can you do my landscaping?". Sure some builders will be able to do it (just like I probably can fix your printer or help you install some rare bit of software), but the reality is that it's not their normal expertise.
The other related thing I'd like to rant for a second about tonight is the lack of specifications that people seem to think is acceptable.
Let me say it this way, if you give me crap on the way in, you are probably going to get crap duct taped together as a project.
Going back to my house builder metaphor for a second, it's like saying "Build me a really cool house."...then responding to most all questions (like how many rooms, what size, etc.) with "whatever is standard, just do the normal thing" or "What did the builder who built the Empire State building do? Just try to copy that."
Then going back and being really upset to see your new house is shaping up to be a 30+ story, gray, steel structure (because you wanted a 4 bedroom colonial house that was as structurally sound as the Empire State building).
OK - I'm generalizing, rambling, and ranting a bit here but hey in my defense I didn't get much sleep last night [but the Billy Joel concert at Shea rocked!] and it's been a long day of fixing issues mostly thanks to a lack of blueprints (I wasn't around for the blueprint phase, but that's a whole different rant).
At least I feel better having purged that ball of unorganized min-rant points from my brain.
As always, thanks for listening!
Comments: 0
By Kevin Marshall on Jul 15 2008
There's a reason that google became a house hold name, they are amazing at a pretty hard problem - search.
As simple as it sounds to write a good search system, it's just not. Not if you want it to scale, and not if you want it to be full featured with fast response times.
Take the reviews.com search...
On the backend:
On a predefined schedule Perl hits Oracle to build text files, which are passed off to a verity indexing program (all running on relatively closed Unix systems).
On the front end:
Coldfusion (on a Windows box) accepts a query string from an html post, parses the string to build the proper Verity query syntax, then sends an http request with the newly built query string to a verity web service (hostd on a Unix box), which in turn responds with an XML document back to Coldfusion. Coldfusion then parses the XML document and generates the proper HTML page that is displayed to the user.
That's a lot going on (with a lot of different languages, systems, and processes), for a simple little search of a fairly small data set...oh and before you ask, no it's not all that willing to scale, full featured, or fast -- but it's got more features than a pure SQL implementation could easily accommodate (and to be fair this is the same search process that reviews has been running for almost 8 years now!).
Anyway I bring this up, because tonight I'm doing a little updating/debugging to this process and find the biggest challenge simply in tracking down the right spot to focus on. As Indiana Jones once said...X never marks the spot (except when it actually does).
Of course this jumping between various languages and systems is one of the things that helps keep me interested in this career (I'm jumping through many of the same type technology hoops at Bowker during the day light hours)...but there are times when I have to step back, take a breath, and wonder just how I ever get any of this stuff done 
Comments: 0
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Latest Comments »
Kyle brady wrote » Yeah, you're right about the "what do you need money for?" thing. We tried to get funding (not VCs, ... read more »
Kevin Marshall wrote » Hey thanks for the link...I tried out wordpress for awhile back at the end of 2007 but had enough problems ... read more »
Kyle Brady wrote » In response to your concerns about Disqus...
I actually emailed them abou this yesterday. I use Wordpress, ... read more »
Charlie wrote » I have a feeling there will be meaningful projects in your future!! ... read more »
Kevin wrote » Sorry - I updated the post now...also it's funny but my semantic spam filter is working too good right ... read more »
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Kevin Marshall - Who's that?
I'm just your basic programmer. I can't spell to save my life, I'm not the greatest story teller, and I often ramble on about nothing. This blog showcases all of that!
Believe it or not I wrote a book (Pro Active Record) for APress and a PDF (Web Services with Rails) for O'Reilly.
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