Soliciting Fame

Months, maybe a year ago I made the recommendation that Nexopia develop a product to “import” profiles from other websites. This was of course brushed off as “hard to do” and “illegal” because it would require the scraping of data from other social networks. There was also the issue of privacy and our lead developer refused to ever ask a user for their password to another site.

Things have changed a little bit since then. Nexopia does friend searches from other services but there isn’t any real reason for someone to come to Nexopia and spend time building a complex profile.
Enter Data Portability. DP is

DataPortability is a group created to promote the idea that individuals have control over their data by determing how they can use it and who can use it. This includes access to data that is under the control of another entity.

With major sites like Digg, MySpace, and now Facebook introducing new methods for data portability it won’t hard to move yourself across domains. Throw in OpenID and you’ve got a good formula for letting new users come to your site quickly and efficiently.

My recommendation for Nexopia to start growing again is to keep an eye on these major players and when they open themselves up you should be waiting with a “1-click sign up” where your entire profile is created without you touching it.

Update: I changed the title to reflect the post and fixed some spelling errors.

Over a TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote a post agreeing with some parts of Jason Calcanis’s post on how to save money running a startup. The two great points Arrington brings up strike a cord with my small startup experience with Nexopia here in Edmonton.

Arrington says that startups must:

1. Watch every penny, and
2. Hire the right people

I’d like to share a few of my experiences with these two points.

On watching your pennies

My first experiences with social networking, doing business online, web 2.0, etc. were both young and brash. I was 18 and I loved working with computers and Nexopia and I was full of huge dreams and couldn’t wait to make a million bucks. I was one of the original employees for Nexopia and in the early days we worked out of Timo Ewald’s kitchen! I thought it was pretty cool that we were so small that we didn’t need an office, yet we daily effected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadian youth.

The first half a year I was with the company I would come up with grand, money wasting, ideas. Of course the brilliance that was actually in charge shot down each one. It took me a while to realize that money wasn’t just sitting in a big vault that we could draw from. Sure the company was making lots of money, but it also needed it for future expansion, not for iMac’s or to send me to some stupid conference in Fiji! Yes.. I literally pitched that…

So Michael is right, startups need to pinch pennies. Timo and his personal advisor’s were very smart to be frugal in the early days. Now that the company is self supporting and doing well there is room for more extravegance. Heck, last year we moved into a nice loft office that houses almost 30 employees. I’m relearning this with my own business. I shouldn’t be buying things I can make myself, for example: a sandwich board or assembling a computer. It boils down to laziness and sometimes I’ve kicked myself for it. Live and learn.

On the flip side you need to spend money to make money. However, this is often misconstrued by us young brash entrepreneurs. What is really means is spend only what you need to make money. So if you’re trying to get your own business off the ground don’t go blowing a thousand dollars on classy fancy business cards or buying top of the line desks for every employee; you should order the cheaper regular cards and use your (free) personality to generate a relationship when you hand a card over. If you need a fancy desk or card to make up for your lack of sincerity and leadership you probably shouldn’t be in business anyway.

On hiring the right people

From personal experience, both in working for other companies and myself, hiring the right staff is like paying yourself more. Again with Nexopia, one of the first things I realized when I was working there is that we made some bad hires. Some people are just hired to plow through data, some as developers, and some as marketing or sales. Regardless of the position, someone who works for such a user driven site like Nexopia should be in love with their job and most importantly the website itself. This is especially true for small companies where everyone’s opinion actually matters.

Now obviously you don’t want to only hire employees who were members of your service. It’s important to draw from your outside resources and grab the best hires you can. However, being the best means willing to adapt to what your customers know, want, and love. In our case this was Nexopia, a Canadian social network mostly dominated by youth.

I realize that I’m not always right, but I firmly believe that if an employee is simply working to make the company as much money as possible then you have a problem. That’s the role management should play, to manage your employees so they work for the right reasons which then bring in the most money for the corporation. Yes, of course the sales team needs to try to make money, but never at the expense of the customer. There were many frustrating times when we would try to do things that were in our best interest, and not that of our young customers who have many social networks to choose from.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Nexopia and the people working there are great. It’s a good company that I hope finds it way through the maze of competition down south.

Today my friend Timo had his unicycle at work. His parents picked it up at a garage sale for $30. It’s in decent shape.

Right now myself and Timo are the only ones brave enough to try it out. It’s a lot of work trying to stay balanced and I’ve only managed to make it about 2 or 3 revolutions before falling off.

We took a video of me trying it out with our new Canon PowerShot S3 IS. It’s a great camera that is currently on sale at Future Shop for CAN $349. I think I’ll pick one up sometime this week.

Here the video of me “riding” the unicycle:

My first try at a unicycle from Eric on Vimeo

First of all a big thanks to Rob Davy over at Cadence Creek Equine Centre for a mention in his blog. Rob is one of my best friends and we both share the entrepreneurial spirit. Rob and his wife Caitlin run a horse boarding and riding lesson facility just east of Edmonton. If you have children looking for lessons please look them up!

Yesterday we spent the better part of 24 hours moving Nexopia headquarters across downtown Edmonton.

We started disassembling desks early in the morning and by around 6PM we were loading them into the big cube van that we rented. It took four loads to move all the junk that we have.

Our new digs are pretty nice, it’s an old building with huge wooden beams and a skylights throughout. Apparently as we left the building at 1:30AM one of us walked through the wrong door to leave and we tripped an alarm. Security paid us a visit today to let us know they were less than impressed.

In other news my business plans are coming to fruition. I received a phone call from the BDC this morning and they let me know that I wasn’t eligible for a loan from them if I was getting one with my normal bank. Apparently my debt to equity ratios would be skewed too far for them to approve it. Don’t worry though I paid a visit to my regular bank again to finalize the loan application and when I was there I maxed my Visa and took a pre-approved loan as a security blanket. I don’t intend to spend either but if need be I technically have access to more money than the business loan I am getting.

All in all today was decent. The extra security money was a pleasant surprise and the move is all finished. Now I need to wrap up these financial statements, negotiate a lease, AND move into an apartment all in the next three days. If this is my last entry then you’ll know all this pressure has killed me.

A few readers may be aware that I am seeking to take something on, be my own man, run my own business.

I’ve been eying a nice cozy Internet cafe on Whyte Avenue since October. With school out of the way things are finally starting to take shape. I’m in the throes of finding a source of financing and meetings are being held. Hopefully sometime next week I will have more news.

This cafe is a means to an end for me. I have no intention of pouring the rest of my life into it, but rather to use it as a source of greater income to accomplish future goals.

If I manage my time wisely I will be able to retain my current job with Nexopia and manage this cafe. Odds are against me so we’ll see what happens.

As Benjamin Franklin said “Well done is better than well said.” I will make an update when I have news.