saint-rebel

The dopest T-shity VC wear will never sell

Join myself, Sean Tierney and Andrew Hyde for a complete Train wreck of a panel at SXSW.

PS: grab some biz cards and pimp them for prizes

Popularity: 27% [?]

Welcome to the new year. I have some plans for this year that I am very excited about, allow me to share:

We are making the transition from client services to internal projects at obu web. Building a killer client services company was fun and all, but it had its downside. Chasing client dollars and managing the various dispositions of employees are a near constant drain on enthusiasm. In 08 we will complete this transition to focus only on our internal projects.. those being:

BestPartyEver.com is ready to blow up in 2008. We have invested a good chunk of time, dollars, and energy into this party planning and party ideas resource. It has taken a while to put all the pieces in place, but the response has been great. Traffic and registrations are up week after week, and we still have some great stuff to add to the site still. We are in talks to secure a small angel round to propel bpe forward.  We are also just as committed to building the site and user base organically like we have been.  Takes a bit longer, but we don’t have to give up and control.

MoroPartners.com is a new internet consulting firm that I am working with. Moro Partners is an internet consulting firm that helps businesses successfully navigate the website design, development, and internet marketing process. We are also lending our expertise to established and startup web client services companies to assist them in biz development, strategy and sales. I am learned a lot in the past 5 years and feel Moro is a good avenue for me to share that knowledge to the benefit of fellow industry professionals, as well as companies purchasing web design and internet marketing services.

We will also be making some changes to Flare9 our website builder product, to refine the offering and position it for a possible acquisition.

I will be blogging quite a bit more often on the various blogs I maintain this year as I focus more on the consulting services of Moro.

If you are not in it to Win it, why are you even playing?

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This is not a reference to Obama’s skin color.. but what I would call a Obama/Paul 08 independent ticket.

How come the only 2 candidates that seem to have anything to say worth listening too, have the longest shot of winning?

Ron Paul is too smart for his own good and refuses to play the game of politicking. He does little to endear himself to the talking heads that have their own news TV program, and does even less to play the corporate money game that could easily grease the wheels of his nomination. But you say to me, he doesn’t need corporate money to get elected, he has all that netroots money. No amount of money in the world will get Paul elected, he stands for everything that the current influence and power structure are against. They will not go without a fight, and their pockets are much, much, much deeper.

Now I like the guy, I think he is just crazy enough that if he was able to get elected, and was even able to get 1/4 of his platform passed an impotent and stonewalling congress, we just may have a chance of bringing America back from the brink. I don’t think he has a prayer of getting the Rep. nomination unless his Paulites can somehow how knock off the old RNC guard in some sort of midnight offensive.

Obama.. I like the guy and let me say he has my vote already, but the sad truth is again the status quo is working against him. A blue blood menopausal white wife of an ex-president is as close to a White Male as you can get, and even that is probably too far from the established norm for most of the sheepericans to swallow. Obama has another 15-20 years until the civil rights generation is no longer the “establishment” and then he would have a solid chance of getting elected. When that generation dies, hopefully their prejudices will go with them.

Remember I said he has my vote, but the average American lefty voter is preoccupied with the thought of ol Bill being a first husband, a black man as president may still be too much to process. They can only handle one crisis of consciousness at a time… NASCAR or UFC?.

Since neither of them are going to get their party nominations (I would love to be proven wrong on this) I propose an Obama/Paul or Paul/Obama 08 independent ticket. They have enough support between them, that together they could possibly pull an upset by a slim margin.

So a 3 way run between a Clinton/Edwards for the Dems, Obama/Paul running a middle independent ticket, and 2 god fearing, torture endorsing, over 50 white guys that hate gay Mexicans, for the Reps.

This will be fun to watch.

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What is a sleeper? I think it is most commonly associated with cars. At least that is how I know of it. Imagine pulling up at a red light in your fancy sports car next to an unassuming car that looks like it took one too many trips to the local school PTA meetings, and when the light turns; the car leaves you in a cloud of blue smoke and screeching tires.

The same concept can be applied to a new web startup.. one that slowly does its thing under the radar.

Our startup BestPartyEver.com is sort of like that. We are bootstrapped up to this point and have leveraged our other talents to slowly build our presence. We are opening a seed round to procure that first little bit of outside capital that can help us move things along a bit faster, and in doing so I really started to look at the strategy of some of our neighbors in the space are using to launch their own product/service.

Here is the most fascinating takeaway. If you look at their media “buzz”: all the nifty mentions on the important tech blogs, the articles in the webzines, even the mentions on TV, etc.. They do not have much more of a presence than we do.

Looking at alexa.com and compete.com and comparing our 2 sites, I find that yes they have a slight advantage on us in traffic, reach, and a few other metrics, but here is the difference: we have done it without spending more than $500, vs. they are clearly dropping hard $ on getting the word out.

I think their play is more about getting on the radar of the investment crowd, then building their business. Which makes sense cause they just pulled down some cash.

Maybe it is 2 ways to the same end.

I am also likely consoling myself right now, knowing that without spending any real money, on a razor thin budget, we have built a platform/system that can hang with the “cool kids with money”

And here we are now looking for money ourselves. Yet with an injection of cash, I still think I will play the role of the sleeper. Let the other guy spend money saying how good his service is, I will spend the money on making my service better., and so far it seems to be working. All stats are trending positive, more first time traffic, more repeat traffic, more pageviews, more time on site; week after week after week, and still my only cost is servers and labor.

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Thats right I said it.  I first heard about this guy when reading someone else’s blog, then I saw him the other day on Steven Colbert, and must say this guy is a true blowhard.

Thats all I am going to say, no need to waste bandwidth on him.

Popularity: 21% [?]

It’s been a pretty crazy summer for myself.. people ask me what I have been up to and how things are going, I rarely deviate from my standard answers: “Fantastic”, “Another day another dollar”, “Great”, etc. The answers seem pretty plain and un-descriptive. But I choose them on purpose for a couple reasons.

• Nobody “really” cares what you are doing and are asking just to be polite
• If they do care the certainly don’t want you to “throw-up” on them
• By stating my position as positive, regardless of the details, it further reinforces my reality of things being good, great, fantastic - and the business(s) doing well: making money.

Well there is certainly more to it than that.. so I present to the world some more details…

Our main business, obuweb, is chugging right along doing it’s thing. About 6-8 months ago we (Sally and I) made the decision to steer the company away from hardcore client services and more into internal app development. We do enjoy working with clients, but gain quite a bit more satisfaction working on our own stuff. I had the idea way back when I found obu (2003), to build a company/brand in which I could leverage the assets (human and dollars) to build other web businesses. And to that end we have intentionally kept the client list small these last few months, and have been directing our energy towards bestpartyever.com and flare9.com.

Also we recently segmented the SEO services provided by obu and moved them into more of a stand alone operation at obusearch.com. This was a business strategy decision as SEO is a very different animal than client service based web design.

Also we have been approached a few times in the last few months by other entities looking to acquire obuweb. This is fine by us as it is in line with our exit strategy, but we have really yet to receive any sort of offer/proposal that makes real sense to us. It is really hard to contemplate letting something go that you have have lived for the last 4-5 years, My identity seems to be a little wrapped up in the brand. Also the potential suitors have not been what I would call avant garde, in that they don’t quite really “get” what the web really is and where it is going…

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BestPartyEver.com is in a very interesting place in that we are getting ready to push a new version live. Whats there currently works, and our seo marketing REALLY works, but it is all just the tip of the iceberg for what we have planned. Sally is considering seeking a small angel round to move things along faster.. but has not 100% decided if that is the best course. Will be interesting to see what happens in the next 5 months..

I also re-launched the development blog for bestpartyever.com to document the process as well as provide some glimpses of things to come. It is always a good idea to try and engage the tech crowd and early adopters, “prime the pump” as David Daniels says.

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Flare9.com is in an interesting space.. I think our initial plan of going to other design shops and pushing flare9 as a alternative to doing the low-cost/low-yield websites themselves is not where the money it at. Everyone we have spoken to likes the system but has expressed interest in white-labeling it, in that they want their own branded flare9 solution. So that is the direction we are going with it. The core is just so flexible that doing so makes sense, and if that is what your customer wants, then why not.

It is making some money with a dozen or so users on it, but nowhere where it should be. Mostly due to the lack of energy I have put behind it in promoting it..

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Focus: This has been my biggest hurdle of late. I have so many projects and interests going on that none of them seem to get the attention they need. This is pretty much related to capital resources on hand.. anyone have a few $million they want to provide.. I got some money makers…

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Pete the Dog.. Pete is our Dalmatian who is now getting close to 11 years old.. This dog has more personality than 80% of the people I meet. He’s is slowing down and I am beginning to come to grips with the fact we only have a few more years left with him. Sally and I joke about stuffing him in some interesting position and keeping him around the house.

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My Grandparents: they are getting old. My Nana on my moms side is 92 or something.. and as feisty as she is, unfortunately the years are getting to her.. My sister says she is has early stage alzheimer’s. My grandpa on my dad’s side, his health is also starting to go with bad kidneys. I guess the end is inevitable for everyone.. here is a quote from one of my favorite cheesy movies (Talladega nights) “With advances in modern medicine and my high level of income there is no reason why I shouldn’t live to be 200, 250..”

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We have been trying to sell our house for quite a few months now. As most people know that market in PHX is “interesting” at this time. We want to move back to Scottsdale, closer to the office, and closer to the business community. We love our house and our neighborhood but I personally think we took ourselves “out of the action” by moving to a bedroom community in the burbs before we had kids, and before we were even 30. I feel like we gotta be in the scene, and in the action.

I have not been pursing much in the way of real estate investing as it just takes up a good chunk time to research everything, and I feel my time is better focused on our other projects

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Racing.. Man this is my new drug. In high school/early college is was snowboarding, in late college it was Rugby.. now I am absolutely addicted to driving really really fast.. I cant get enough of it. It is a daily battle not to run around and drop $$$ on the bigger turbo, or grippier tires, or some other item that will make the audi go faster. I am telling myself to hold off as there will be plenty of time to for this over the next 40 years.. and it will be even more fun as I got more free time and a fatter wallet to indulge myself with.

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Life goals.. I decided to drink the kool-aid and picked up a moleskin to keep track of personal thoughts a bit better. Seems everyday I have some new idea or 15 that should be written down. When I was 25 I set a goal to “retire” at 35 with at least a $10 million net-worth. I got 5.5 years to go and even though I have and are continuing to make some HUGE strides in that direction.. I feel like I have to turn it up if I am to get there by 35. Getting there is no longer good enough for me, I want to arrive in style.. $100 million is the number I am focused on now.

I want to get all this work stuff out of the way while I am young and have the energy to do it.. I see myself and Sally “retired” in a few years and starting a family, traveling, and focusing onto our primary goal of helping people and especially helping kids. What good is all that money of you don’t help people with it. Speaking of which, I think it is getting close to the yearly MDA charity thing obuweb does every year.

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Personal development: Take a long look at yourself 10 years ago.. and take another long look at yourself today.. did you grow as much as you wanted to?

I have been on mission the last 5 years (started with reading a Rich Dad Poor Dad book) to “get my head out of my ass” as one could say. I can report that I have successfully extricated my cranium but there are still days that it just seems impossible to get out of my own way. So I have gone back to the fundementals and have been listening to some personal development CD’s during the long drive to and from the office… this week it was Tony Robbins, yea that guy..

And I have to say that one of the coolest things I have come accross this year was “What the Bleep!?, down the rabbit hole“. Talk about a mindf*ck.. great stuff in that movie.

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I think thats enough of a brain dump… time to go wash the car.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Have you ever noticed that when some paradigm shifting event happens people lash out against it. Their instinct is to resist it. They have gotten comfy in their little world and kick and scream against anything that threatens it: Our biggest enemy is the status quo..

Here is a classic example of defense of the status quo.

Our home is up for sale, and frankly the market sucks. So I am speaking with my Realtor as we were signing the papers for the listing, and I mentioned zillow.com as another avenue to gain exposure for our listing. The energy in the room changed faster than fast. Her face went pale and she about fainted. We conversed a bit about it and this is the jist of it.

She played the ‘It is not the MLS’ and a ‘website cannot give you the service I can’ cards. What she meant was “I am scared of it, because it threatens my job, and I have not or am not willing to figure out how it will help me”

My response was something like: “The more eyeballs the better right”, and “I paying you to find a buyer, and therefore should you not use every angle to find a buyer?”

In the face of her disgust, I dug at her a little bit saying something along the lines of “The web is the future of real estate, it is already happening, and if you don’t jump on an embrace it, you will be left behind”… her feathers were a bit ruffled, but maybe she let a little bit of it in. I added it to zillow myself.

So then a few days later I start noticing the television ads ran by the National Assoc. of Realtors harping the same point: “A website cannot replace our personal service” or some line of shit.

So check this out.. my industry “THE WEB” is being outsourced like nobodies business. Keep this thought for later in the post, I’ll tie it in.

So back to the Realtor’s that are doing everything they can to ‘protect’ their business model. The thought of some old farmer in 1908 with his horse and carriage bumpin down a dirt road and mutttering “Fools, That thing will never replace my horse” when a Ford Model T passes by springs to mind. Do you see where I am going?

I would venture to say that the SMART Realtor, the one that has any prayer of being a Realtor 10 years from now better pack up and jump on board the Real Estate internet bandwagon, fast.. To dig your heels in and fight the oncoming wave is foolish.

So lets broaden the scope here a little bit. Look at the American auto industry, Why is it in so much trouble? Because while the Imports were getting better, cheaper, and more economical, Detroit was kicking and screaming, lobbying Congress to not make them change. They “froze time” for a few decades and now look where they are, getting soundly beaten at the auto game THEY invented.

Here is the bottom line, technology is changing the way we do things, and changing it faster than people would like. Resist all you want, it is not going to stop the wave of innovation. The pace at which ‘it’ is changing is accelerating. Take 3 points of time. 1900, 1980, 2007. If you could measure the gross amount of “change” between them, I bet the 1980-2007 portion would be 10:1 greater than 1900-1980. And it is only moving faster.

What’s the moral of this long winded post: Adaptation.

The outsourcing of Tech jobs overseas is a topic on at least 1/3 of the news shows everyday. There is severe downward pressure on the price I fetch for our services, I probably “lose” hundreds of web design contracts to low cost off-shoring or offshore firms a year. Rather than raging against India or trying to unionize (I did read an article once about web designers getting organized): We adapted, we changed our business model, we went up market, we shifted focus to internal product development rather than a service model, we hand pick our clientele, hell we raised our prices.. alomosr triple, we did everything BUT try to resist the wave. And we are prospering.

Had GM spent those hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D over the last 30 years rather than Washington lobbying firms, They would still be the #1 car maker in the world.. (If you did not know it, Toyota is #1 now).

How many MORE clients could my Realtor serve, how much BETTER quality of service could she deliver, and how much MORE exposure could she gain for her own business if she adapted to the changing marketplace rather than deciding to build a wall of sticks to hold back the flood?

Protectionism is stupid. Adaptation and Innovation is smart.

Popularity: 40% [?]