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How to Interview an Engineer for your Startup

There has been some concerns about putting our hiring process “out in the open” while we’re still interviewing for our Lead Engineer position, don’t fret — we’ve got plenty more fun case studies like these! If you are looking for your next adventure and want to join an awesome team, shoot me an email: tk@toutapp.com.

Also, there is a great discussion thread going on over at Reddit.

Over the past week, I’ve been interviewing for the Lead Engineer position here at ToutApp. I’ve never been a fan of interviewing. No matter how elaborate the process, we all know it often comes down to that team huddle after the interview and gut-feeling comments like “I really liked her, she had a good vibe.”

I think hiring Engineers is even harder. I personally had to go through the Gnomes problem while at Plaxo and logic problems while interviewing for an internship at Goldman (wth was I thinking), and I hated every minute of it.

So, here at ToutApp, I take a more practical approach. When I interview engineers, I get in front of a white board and ask the person to build me a link-shortening service with an API.

Why a Link Shortener?

It started off as my go-to-example because we built one ourselves here at Tout and got to know the interesting intricacies of it. But the more I thought about it, the more I loved the idea of it because it covers many fundamental concepts behind systems design, service oriented architecture, proper database design and optimizations and even job queues and caching around a very simple and easy to understand use case.

Also, I never thought this would happen (but it did) — if a candidate had trouble grasping the concept around a link shortener, then he or she is definitely the wrong person for the job (instant filter).

Step 1 – Set the Context

The way this works best is to engage the candidate in a way so that he or she starts to draw out the overall architecture, database design, interactions and even certain parts of the code right on the whiteboard.

So, to get things started, I start off the diagram on the whiteboard listing out the key use cases I want my link shortening service to support.

  1. I want a Link Shortener with an API that I can call from my web-app. I want to pass in a URL and I want the Link Shortener to give back a shortened URL that I can present to my user
  2. When the shortened URL is visited by my users, I want the Link Shortener to redirect to the original URL
  3. I want an API where I can query stats around a particular shortened URL giving me details about the users that have visited that URL with as much information as you can give me about each person

I want the candidate to be drawing the design, architecture and code on the whiteboard, so I always start off by drawing out a simple web-app box with two endpoints, one representing the request for a shortened URL and another representing the request for stats around a URL.

Step 2 – Start Drawing

At this point, you want to have the candidate pick up a marker and start talking through how he or she would go about designing the service. The key things you want him to write out are:

  1. The routes your web-application should support
  2. The models that you’d create for the web application and the database tables
  3. The controllers (don’t get into pseudo code just yet)
While he is drawing things out, I like to challenge his/her thinking on a few things:
  1. I like to make sure they get detailed enough in terms of route names, url paths and model names. I’ve found that the way an engineer names objects and the conceptual model they create to organize their code base is a tremendous indicator of how good they are.
  2. The other key thing I like to probe into is how they create their routes. Do they require a POST vs a GET when accepting a short URL request? Challenge their thinking around this, obviously you can go either way but the considerations they took to get to the decision will tell you how much they really know about the HTTP protocol and building a RESTful API.
  3. Look out for the things you think are obvious. I had one candiate talk about how he would store the tracking data in the session and save on a database call (which made no sense). So even on the simple stuff, make sure you get them to explain how they’d handle the key aspects of the use cases.
  4. Lastly, always link back to the three use cases you started by writing out. Those are three very loaded sentences — keep an eye to see if the candidate remembers to track the redirects, if he or she thinks about authenticating the API calls from your web service, and other things that aren’t obviously spelled out but an experienced hacker would know to think about.

Step 3 – Get into some Pseudo-Code

Although we’re primarily a Rails shop, we’ve interviewed people with backgrounds in Java and .NET as well. I figure that if they are truly strong programmers, they’ll be able to pick up Rails and Javascript fairly quickly. So at this point in the interview, I like to dig a little bit deeper into their coding abilities.

I ask them to write the pseudo-code for the controller action that addresses Use Case #2 – the redirect.

If  the candidate has trouble with Step 2, I always make sure I give them the benefit of doubt and help them along with the design to get them to this particular step. So at this point, assuming that he or she is not completely confused, they should be able to churn out some pseudo code like this:

def redirect
link = Links.find_by_short_url(params[:id])
visitor_information_from_header = parse_http_request_for_user_info(request)
LinkVisit.create(visitor_information_from_header)
redirect_to link.original_url
end

By this step, you’ll really be able to figure out a candidate thats pretty much full of shit and a candidate that understands the basics of programming. If you want, you can make the example more concrete and have them write real code (e.g. in Rails) so that you can test their understanding on how a framework like Rails encapsulates query strings, http headers, and how ActiveRecord works.

Step 4 – Test their knowledge on Architecture Patterns

At this point, I like to throw them a curve ball. I go up to the white board, and start to mark up the calls in their pseud-code with how rough estimates on how long each call would take. I try to use a red marker so that it stands out, and it looks something like this:

def redirect
link = Links.find_by_short_url(params[:id])  [60ms]
visitor_information_from_header = parse_http_request_for_user_info(request) [1ms]
LinkVisit.create(visitor_information_from_header) [60ms]
redirect_to link.original_url
end

I then say that user experience is of utmost importance to us, so we want to make sure that these redirect calls are done in under 20ms. I ask what he could do with this design so that we can accomplish that.

Your candidate should be able to talk through each of these core concepts (from easiest to hardest):

  1. Create a database index on the short_url field in the Links table so that lookups are faster. [+10 points]
  2. Make the short_url the clustered index and primary key for the Links table [+20 points]
  3. Store links created in the past 30 days in an in-memory cache for easier lookup [+50 points]
  4. Create a background job worker + queue that will take the vistor header information and will persist it to the database later [+100 points]

As you can see, even in a simple servie like a Link Shortener, there are a number of things you can do to drastically improve performance. Being able to talk through these simple patterns is what truly sets apart the boys from the men.

I also like to see if they suggest alternate ways of storing the data. Do they say we should use a document-based storage system instead of a Database? Do they want to use the shiny new technology just for the sake of using it and because they just learned a buzzword like NoSQL or can they back it up with sound thinking? This exercise is a great platform to have those kind of discussions and get at the root of his/her thinking process.

Step 5 – Test their knowledge on Software Patterns (optional)

Finally, if you’ve gotten this far, I delve a bit deeper into how he or she would organize the software code. What parts of it would be a standalone library and what parts of it would go straight into the controllers.

This is more to ramp down the conversation but the things I look for is whether they care enough to create a standalone library for hashing URLs, or whether they like to encapsulate the tracking code within the model or whether they prefer to do it all in the controller (and why).

Other things I like to talk about (and In Conclusion)

This exercise has proved to be way more effective than a lot of other styles I’ve employed while hiring in my career. It forces you to interact with each other, gives you a glimpse into their problem solving abilities, how he or she deals with pressure, how they deal with situations and concepts that are foreign and really puts the two of you “in the moment” as if you’re already on a team solving a problem.

In addition to this, I also like to talk through and gauge how much user empathy they have. These days, people that can cross between frontend, backend and design are the true rockstars and exactly what we’re looking for, so I like to get a feel for whether they “just like to code requirements” or they can truly get proactive and help us build product.

How do you interview engineers? Hate/Love this approach? Share your comments below or email me at tk@toutapp.com.

Shameless self-plug:

Want to join ToutApp as our first Lead Engineer? Apply here.

 

57 Comments

Categories: entrepreneurship, my thoughts.

By Tawheed
— March 13, 2012 at 11:07 pm

10 Things an Entrepreneur Needs to Get Started — The Entrepreneur’s Starter Kit

NOTE: For the impatient — Click here to jump to the actual list.

When I was young, I was really into Electronics. I loved taking my toys apart, stripping it down to the motor, lights and batteries and building something else with it. But, I was always limited by the extractable parts in my toys which inherently limited the actual things I could build with these parts. Most of the time, I ended up just making a fan out of the motor, the batteries, and some retrofitted wings.

This all changed when my Dad bought me this 60-in-1 from Radio Shack for my 10th birthday. It was perfect, it had a relay, capacitors, resistors, a AM antenna, a piezo buzzer and even switches to trigger different modes. It came with a guide book of 100+ projects that you could build based on the raw components that the project lab had. And best of all, as you worked through these projects, you learned how you can piece together these basic raw ingredients to create something totally unique.

Starter Kits

Ever since that 60-in-1, I have always been enamoured by the idea of “Starter Kits.” They are an amazing concept that can take any newbie or far standing admirer and figure out a way to spark raw passion in a step-by-step fashion.

Starter Kits aren’t easy to build though, because it takes  a ton of skill to take something essentially esoteric and strip it down to its raw necessary components so that a newbie can learn to engage with it. This is hard to do but the results are incredible and usually disruptive.

I believe that an entire businesses can be built (and has been built) from applying the idea of Starter Kits to different industries.

Why not have a Starter Kit of Entrepreneurs?

This got me thinking. Why not have a Starter Kit for Entrepreneurs? I think we already have the beginning stages of this: Accelerators and Incubators are all about giving the Entrepreneur the initial raw ingredients necessary to get started (and reach success).

I think the best kinds of Starter Kits are the ones that are productized. Accelerators/Incubators always have a financial relationship with Entrepreneurs which although is healthy with vested interest is not one of unlimited support (all the time).

What would be in this Starter Kit?

Here’s where it gets tricky. Interestingly enough, this Entrepreneur Starter Kit isn’t just a set of resistors and capacitors, this Starter Kit requires so much more beyond just inanimate objects. So perhaps its not something a company or an organization can just manufacture and provide, perhaps its not something you can just buy off of a store shelf or even win from an extensive contest.

No, I think this particular Starter Kit is more of a mindset than anything else. Its a mindset and a set of things and relationships that an Entrepreneur must acquire to get started in Entrepreneurship. You may not be able to acquire it all at once, and I’m by no means saying that you shouldn’t “start” until you get these things — but I think it is a thing to have as a “checklist” of sorts.

So without further adieu…

The Entrepreneur’s Starter Kit

  1. Three years: I’ve said this before in my previous posts, but I thought it’d be prudent to start here. When you’re embarking on Entrepreneurship, give yourself three years. Thats how long it will take for you to become an overnight success (if you’re one of the lucky few).  And that is certainly how long it’ll take for you to bumble around, try enough things, and figure out what actually works.
  2. A Constant: Everyone says this, but you have no idea how true this actually is. You will experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. So, as you’re embarking on this journey, make sure you have something or someone to hold on to. Something or someone that you can always go back to to compare how far you’ve come over this three-year journey that you’ve embarked on. Something or someone that will help you truly gauge whether you’ve made incremental success and something or someone that will help you gauge when you’ve just messed up. Something or someone that will help you truly gauge your progress, because the last thing you want to do is benchmark your progress compared to the overnight successful startup that TechCrunch is writing about (hint: because Techcrunch didn’t write a line about them during the first 2.5 years they were hustling it).
  3. Skills: This may sound obvious, but if you’re going to be doing a tech startup, you better get yourself or someone on your team with tech skills, with business skills and with design skills. No one is telling you that these skills have to be excellent and world class, and no one is telling you that these have to be composed of 3 people (i.e. they can all be you), but make sure you account for these skills — otherwise, don’t bother.
  4. Domain Knowledge: If you’re building a startup for the wedding industry, get yourself married or get someone as an advisor  or on your team that has gotten married. If you’re building a fitness startup, make sure you’re not fat. — its as simple as that. With whatever idea you are bumbling around with, make sure you’re doing it with Domain Knowledge. Even if you can’t find an advisor or team member with domain knowledge, do what Hollywood actors do — “get into the role.”
  5. Money: Suppose you agree with #1 that it’ll take you about three years of bumbling to get to success. If you’ve had prior exits then it’ll be relatively easy for your to get 3 years of runway right off the bat (or so I’ve heard). If you’re brand new, don’t bother, you’re not getting it. So figure out a way to get yourself chunks of time. Now, obviously, seeking funding is not the only way, which is why I call this section Money. Friends, Family, money stashed away from your previous day job are all sources of money. Figure out what works well for you and make sure you can live and have your mind in a state where you can focus on the goal at hand: to build a business.
  6. Someone that often asks you “Are you having fun?”  – One of my investors routinely does this. He’s been through this a number of times before, and whenever I see him, he’s not looking for the PR-version of how things are going. He knows how its going. He just wants to know, “Are you having fun?” — If not, then none of this is worth it.
  7. Someone that often asks you “Have you tried X?” - I’ve been fortunate enough to have more than a few investors/advisors that constantly brainstorm with me on how we can make the business better and get closer to achieve our goal. Truth is, most of the suggestions are things you’ll have already thought of, but it serves as a fantastic prioritization process for what to do next. The obvious ideas that keep cropping up in discussions are often the ones to move on. You’ll have a million possible things you can be doing — picking the right one is important — so make sure you set yourself up for having lots of discussions around this.
  8. Someone that tells you when its time to move on or try something new - I said three years, but I never said three years on the same idea. The key to Entrepreneurship (I think) is to keep an open mind about what you’re working on and how. Being open and trying new things is critical and its important that you always have an outside factor to remind you. For this, I always count on my friends not in the tech industry, Doctors, Lawyers, Account Execs whom I like to hang out with on a regular basis to give me the right perspective and fresh ideas on things we can all work on to make the world better.
  9. Someone that pulls you away from work – I tried the whole work 100+ hours a week. It is a terrible model and it does not scale. Make sure you have someone that pulls you to still stop and smell the flowers. Otherwise, you’ll never survive your three years.
  10. A family – You can’t build a business yourself. You want to build a family around you. This checklist item will probably never get checked off — its an asymptotic thing that you’ll constantly strive for, but it is an important to strive for. Make sure you have people to celebrate with in the end once you’ve won.

In Conclusion

I don’t think this list is exhaustive, but I guess its not meant to be. In my limited experience, I think these are the things you need as an Entrepreneur to get started. That and a whole lot of perseverance. Keep it real and make sure you enjoy your three years. Its only the beginning.

 

 

No Comments

Categories: my thoughts.

By Tawheed
— February 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm

A Year In Review (2011 Reflections)

Today marks exactly a year since the first time I ever pitched a VC in my life. How do I remember? It also happens to be my Birthday. The victim was Bryce Roberts, and to this day, I still apologize to him for having to deal with my shitty pitch.

What a difference a year makes. It feels just like yesterday I finished up that informal meeting. Its one of my most vivid memories from the past year. We finished talking, I helped hail a cab for Bryce, and then rushed to grab a cab for myself so I could trek uptown to a special dinner date my wife had planned for my Birthday.

It turned out to be a surprise birthday party with some of my closest friends…. what an amazing night it turned out to be.

Fast forward one year to today. Once again, it was my birthday, and as with birthdays go, you can’t help but pause and reflect on what has changed over your lifetime and most importantly, what has changed in just one year. 365 days later, countless investment pitches later, after raising a round, building a team, growing a product, losing a team, rebuilding a team, and keeping on keeping on, here are my reflections from 2011.

Looking back on 2011

These days, I have a tough time remembering the actual year we’re in. It still feels like last year was 2009, except its 2012, and 2011 was probably one of the most transformative years in my life — even though when I reflected on 2010, I said the same thing.

In 2011, I stopped doing a whole bunch of things:

In 2011, I took all the new found free time and funneled it into ONE thing.  I: 
  • Doubled down on Tout and decided to put all my heart, soul and sweat into making it a real business.
  • Wrote a blog entry about how Tout came to be and won a whole bunch of stuff.
  • Joined the 500 Family.
  • Raised $350k from Esther Dyson, Dave McClure, Eric Ries, Venture51 and some more seriously awesome angels most of whom have proved to be seriously awesome mentors.
  • Built a team around Tout, lost the whole team, and then started to rebuild the team once again.

In 2011, I also truly learned what it means to be completely consumed by ONE thing:
I kissed my wife goodbye, said goodbye to my friends and moved from New York to Mountain View for the summer accelerator program. I was even able to convince a friend to move for the summer and join Tout. It was an amazing and intense few months and it followed a few months of being completely burnt out which made me question whether it was worth it in the end.

Ah and also, In 2011, my wife and I made the decision to pack up our lives and move to San Francisco. Therefore, I  moved Tout and the entire business to San Francisco as well. And with that, I moved to rebuild the entire Tout team in San Francisco as well.

And finally, in 2011, I took something that started off as a simple weekend project to solve my own problem and turned it into a real product that thousands of people use to run and grow their businesses in amazing ways.

Lessons Learned from 2011

2011 was an intense year of growth, learning, joy, thrill, FUN, and pain.

Everything they say about Entrepreneurship is true. It takes you through the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, and tests your courage and challenges you at every single moment. If you’re going to do this, think twice, and then grab on to something that can ground you — because it is going to be an intense ride.

If you aren’t having days where you start off with “What am I doing with my life?!” peak the day with “Holy shit, we’re going to be a billion dollar company” and go to bed with “God, there’s so much to do, please help me” — then you’re probably doing it wrong.

With that said, I think the single biggest lesson learned from 2011 for me is to learn to be more self-aware: As you take on bigger challenges, and bigger goals, and grow your team, it always becomes inevitable that your own voice, your own gut, and your own instincts start to get drowned out compared to all the other (sometimes more experienced) voices. Don’t let it. The biggest mistakes I made in 2011 stemmed from my failure to stop and hear my own voice. If you feel pain, figure out why. If you feel overwhelmed, hit the Pause button (force it).

Figuring out the perfect balance between being open minded, self-reflective, and confident is the secret to being a great Entrepreneur. And its one balance that I plan on continuing to perfect in 2012.

Looking Forward to 2012

It takes 3 years for a startup to become an overnight success. Each year brings its own set of challenges but the goal stays the same. So unlike previous years when I had a full on game plan on how the coming year would be different, this time around, its really more of the same.

I plan to continue to focus on two key things in 2012:

  • First and foremost, continue to grow ToutApp into a truly awesome business, and,
  • secondly, continue to contribute and advance the art of Entrepreneurship by sharing my learnings.

In Conclusion

Photo Credit: Mark Zuckerberg
Stay Focused & Keep Shipping.

6 Comments

Categories: my thoughts.

By Tawheed
— February 9, 2012 at 2:49 am

3 Lessons I Learned From Hiring in 2011

I did quite a bit of hiring (resulting in both successes and failures) through 2011. As I’m gearing up for continuing to build our core team here at Tout, I thought it would be prudent to write down some lessons learned based on the things that worked well this year and the things that didn’t.

This is not meant to be a huge world-changing post by any means, just three simple things that I know I want to be more mindful about in the coming year. No big deal.

#1 – Growing the team does not necessarily mean you can do more things

Every time I brought someone on this year, I made them responsible for a specific “area” of the business and held them accountable for it with specific goals and metrics. Sounds great right? Well yes, it does if you’re in a larger well established company (where I got all of my management training).

The interesting thing with Startups is that while we are doing a lot of things and wearing many hats — we’re not doing any of those things very well. In fact, we’re barely grazing by, applying the 80/20 rule to the best of our abilities.

So what happened when I hired? I essentially spun up yet another thread thinking that another person is inherently growing the capacity of the whole organization.

Wrong. In 2012, each hire I bring on is going to be designed (atleast initially) to help us do what we’re already doing better.  I’ve already started to apply this principle with Amy, our new Happiness Officer, and I think its shaping up very nicely.

#2 – Saying something does not necessarily mean the other person agrees; Get in “hard sync”

I say this all the time: even with all the technology we have today, even though we’re more connected than ever before, we still suck at actually communicating.

Far too many times, we had issues where the conversation stalled at “Oh, I didn’t realize thats what you meant.” This happens when a team works out of the same office; but it happens 10x more often when a team is distributed.

The truth of the matter is, human beings naturally like to think what they want to think. They like to stick to their respective mental models. As a manager, unless you force the conversation to get into hard sync on what each person is saying and what they mean and what that looks like almost to a pedantic level — you’re guaranteed to have miscommunication.

In business, especially in Startups, you get a small handfull of do-oevers. So don’t risk miscommunication — get in hard sync.

#3 – There is only one expectation: Excellence

There are two ways of managing a team.

    a) Get into a trap of micromanagement where you constantly have to set short term expectations and assign tasks.
    b) Set a goal. Demand excellence. Enforce independent thinking.

Obviously you want the second. However, it is all to easy to degrade, get stressed, start thinking short term and move back to the first mode of operation.

I oscillated between the two through 2011 with different members of the team and finally realized that either I get each person in the team to operate in right way or we die.

This brings forward some hard decisions because you may find that while certain members of the team can do great things when micro-managed you literally can’t scale the company and take it to the next level if you have to do that — ergo, they are not the right fit.

I am far from cracking the recruitment puzzle or the building the team puzzle, but I think this insight helps: Hire people that can operate at the goal level and deliver excellence. If you can’t find those people, then keep looking — don’t just hire for the short term.

As a Startup Founder, do you have any big lessons learned from 2011? Share your thoughts below.

6 Comments

Categories: my thoughts.

By Tawheed
— December 28, 2011 at 4:27 am

Experienced Hires at Startups: Don’t Forget The Prime Directive

 

Bringing in an experienced hire into an immature organization (such as a startup) is a seriously delicate endeavor. I saw this first hand at my previous job when a company that traditionally hired smart kids from Ivy League schools started to hire seriously seasoned professionals to get us closer to “excellence.” Ignoring or perhaps conveniently forgetting what I had learned during that time, I did the same as I started to hire in Tout. I wanted to bring in someone seriously experienced in Sales so that we can build out our systems and processes and you know… sell more of Tout.

While a lot of things went well with the engagement, a lot of things didn’t and it caused pain for both parties. I saw it in my previous job and I saw it here in Tout. And so, I’ve been giving this a ton of thought to figure out what can be learned.

After much reflection, I think it comes down to one thing. Experienced Hires need to keep “The Prime Directive” at the top of their mind.

What is The Prime Directive?

For you non-trekkies out there, here is the official Wikipedia version of the Prime Directive:

In the universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive, Starfleet‘s General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal development of alien civilizations.

It has special implications, however, for civilizations that have not yet developed the technology for interstellar spaceflight (“pre-warp”), since no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or the existence of extraplanetary civilizations, lest this exposure alter the natural development of the civilization.

The Prime Directive by Example

Much like early civilizations, early stage startups are at the stage of asking “What is water? What is air? Why do we exist in this universe?” On the other hand, advanced civilizations and on that note experienced hires are well beyond that and are now asking “What is particle X? What is particle Y?” — you know, stuff well beyond the basics.

Interestingly enough, this does not mean that the early civilization is sub-par or the experienced hires are better off . A member of an early civilization can go up to an experienced hire and ask “What is air?” — and while the member of the advanced civilization can give a succinct explanation of “Particle X” they may still utterly fail at truly communicating and defining “What is air?” — a definition they’ve learned to take for granted and have internalized.

Essentially, this means is that both members of different civilizations are working off of two very different abstraction layers.

Now, finishing up on that parallel, what if the advanced civilization felt sorry for the early civilization and just “gave them” all of their technology? What then? Would the early civilization leap frog ahead? Ofcourse not. That civilization would basically be screwed. They’d fail to go through the natural progression and learnings that are inherently important to mature in a healthy way. Meaning, they may leap ahead but eventually they’d stall out and die or even worse, lead an incredibly dependent and blind existence off of the advanced civilization.

Connecting the Parallel to Startups, my advice to Experienced Hires

I think the same essential principle (or directive if you will) needs to be applied to Startups and their natural growth cycle. Meaning, if you are an experienced hire, my experience is that your natural inclination will be to sit down and start going down your laundry list of things that are “missing” from the current immature organization which were “obvious” things to have in your previous mature organization.

My advice? STOP.

Yes, the previous organization had a CRM. Yes it had an automated system for scoring leads. Yes, it had Food Replicators that made whichever food you commanded and it would make it appear out of thin air. However, don’t forget what that organization had before that. They probably had an Excel spreadsheet. Before that, maybe a piece of paper or that one marquee lead.

That was the progression, and through each of those progressions, that organization learned valuable lessons, instilled values, established principles and matured their DNA. Those steps were equally important to get them to their success, the success that afforded them great innovation and more importantly: survival.

And most importantly, its important to recognize that while that last organization eventually reached certain conclusions or established certain designs, it does not mean that thats the best design for this particular civilization/organization/company/startup.

What this means is that all the experience and success you bring to a new organization is only valuable if you learn to put it into the context of the Prime Directive, that is if you learn to harness that knowledge and learn to apply it at the right time, in the right way, and most importantly, in tune with the natural progression of the startup’s maturity.

Connecting the Parallel to Startups, my advice to Startup Founders

I know how it is. You’re living in your straw hut. And then you see into the sky a bright and shiny flying saucer. And you think, dude. I want that. Its natural as a Startup Founder to want to find ways to get that competitive edge; to raise the maturity level; and undoubtedly — to get that shiny gadget that sets you apart.

My advice? Pause.

While a competitive advantage or finding that edge is important for your business, nothing beats a strong and fundamental understanding of your business and doing the things necessary to get that. So when you are bringing on experienced hires, or even thinking of investing in that expensive piece of technology — make sure it doesn’t violate the Prime Directive.

 

 

2 Comments

Categories: my thoughts.

By Tawheed
— December 27, 2011 at 4:04 am

Take It Easy

One of our investors, Ben Li, keeps a private wiki for his portfolio companies. It is a place where we can ask questions, have discussions, and just exchange ideas. As I was going through my backlog of emails today, I came across an email from him about one such discussion.

It said:

Subj: Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy passes away at 22 

Hi TK,

I hope you are very well always.

http://wiki/wiki/display/general/Be+relaxed

When your time allows, you may share what you think about it in the wiki. Thanks.

Ben Li

I had no idea someone had passed away in the startup community. That too, someone so young.

Truth is, I probably missed a lot of things over the past few months as I’ve  been heads down building the business. However, over the past few weeks, I have been thinking hard about how I can be more present even while running my business.

I achieved a lifelong dream in 2011: I’ve been able to focus my time on one thing, one product, one company. It’s always been about college + startup, or day job + side project, or consulting projects + startup dream. And then, in 2011, I was able to ramp down on everything but Tout and it felt great.

Working Non-Stop Does Not Scale

However, to somewhat of a surprise, it came with a huge responsibility. It meant that while before there was a forcing function governing how much time I had on something and away from something, there was nothing there now. To make matters more extreme, even more forcing functions went away when I moved 3,000 miles away from my friends, family and wife and set up a space in Mountain View to live+work 24/7 on Tout; even worse, I managed to convince Derek to do it along with me.

It felt amazing at the time, and needless to say our efforts paid off in many different ways to get us to where we are today.

However, only a few months later did I really realize the downside to doing such things. I felt burnt out, pulled in different directions, living on a plane straddling both coasts, moving forward on a product to get the next group of customers while keeping our current paid customer base happy.

I think only idiots actually think that Startups are actually easy. I knew that none of this would be easy. In fact, to the contrary, I knew this would be hard. Anyone I talked to reiterated that this would be hard, that there would be pain. And I think that is probably what made me ignore my own pain and made me keep forging ahead.

At the end of the day though, this doesn’t scale. And with startup founders everywhere trying to iterate fast and build businesses that scale exponentially are in fact, ironically, doing it all in a manner which does not scale. Any successful startup takes 18+ months for a medium sized exit (non acq-hire) and atleast 3 years to become an overnight success. 

I came  to this realization about two months ago and since then have been spending a lot of my time simplifying my life. No more bi-coastal team. No more straddling both coasts. Less hectic, more zen. More focus, less open threads.

Bottom line? Take It Easy.

What it means to “Take It Easy”

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. “I saw your tweets TK, you worked through Christmas on that Year In Review thing, this post is bulls*it.”

Not quite. There is a method to my madness. What I’m suggesting by “Take It Easy” is not to go all “lifestyle business” on your startup; but what I’m suggesting is to keep the biggest picture in mind as you’re killing yourself to build your company.

As I reflected over the last 15+ years of me being an Entrepreneur (both in traditional businesses and in high-growth startups), I’ve tried all different ways of working. 100 hour work weeks, multiple projects/jobs at once, and even this past summer where I lived and worked in the same space. After having tried these different things, I’ve come to believe in two key principles to reach peak performance:

Principle #1 – “Time away is just as important as time on the job”
Being completely engulfed in one thing almost always is a disaster. It almost always diminishes your perspective, makes you lose sight of the goal and most importantly gets you to reach a local maximum at best. So the next time you think you’re adding value on your 80th hour on the job — think again.

Principle #2 – “Choose 1 thing, don’t end up neither here nor there”

This one took some time to figure out for me but I think is quite profound. On any given day, you’re going to have a million things you HAVE TO AND SHOULD get done, but in reality you’ll probably get 3 of those things done. That is just a matter of reality. The worst thing we do as Entrepreneurs is ignore that reality and try to accomplish it all. Where that leaves us is the dreaded “neither here, nor there” state. You accomplish nothing, you’re stressed at the end of the day, and worst of all, you lost a whole day only to feel the same way the next day. You’re neither here, nor there. I think for cases like these, the best thing to do is to embrace reality and choose the one thing you’re actually going to do. And yes, that 1 thing could very well be to go to the beach, because you’re tired and burnt out and you really can’t produce anything better.

–

This is hard. But that does not mean it has to be painful. Let’s be present in this beautiful moment we’ve all been given as an opportunity to change the world and let’s do it without killing ourselves in the process. Take it easy.

16 Comments

Categories: my thoughts, Principles, self improvement.

By Tawheed
— December 27, 2011 at 2:37 am

Customer Service at Startups

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately as I build Tout as a business is how we deal with Customer Service. It’s the natural progression of things, you first figure out how to build a product that people give a damn about, then you get them to actually use it, and then you come to the realization that a) people aren’t perfect and b) software isn’t perfect. Enter: Customer service, and the pursuit of “Great customer service.”

“Great Customer Service” is not a real goal

After nearly a year of growing Tout, I went from doing all our customer service via email — to getting a ticketing system — and then to hiring someone for “owning” community management. Through this time, I’ve come to learn one thing: there is no such thing as great customer service.

Naiively perhaps, I always figured that there was one true way to do customer service. You give the customer what they want, as fast as possible and they’ll be happy, they’ll pay you, and everything will be fantastic in the world. Simple, right?

Wrong. It turns out much like most things in business, what you define your Customer Service experience to be is determined largely from a series of tradeoffs that you determine based on the goals of your business.

As we’ve grappled with the different challenges around meeting our customer’s needs within the natural limitations of a Startup, here are the key principles that I’ve followed to guide my decisions so that we can get to providing “Great Customer service.”

#1 – Know your Priorities

This may be obvious but in practice we tend to forget this all the time. When it comes to your customers, and taking care of them, know where it falls in terms of Priority. When it comes to choosing between handling the 100 E-Mail tickets that came in today vs. Releasing that 1 feature that will get you another 5,000 users, know which one is more important.

The idea behind prioritization should bubble upward and downward as well. Meaning, you should know how you want to prioritize your 100 tickets (priorities bubbling down), and you should also know how important customer tickets are on a given day, week or month with respect to your higher level (bubbling upward) business goals.

You have X number of hours in a day, by explicitly prioritizing, you can atleast tell yourself the truth. There is a huge difference between working on your next killer feature while worrying about your customer tickets in the back of your mind (you know that nagging feeling) VS. working on your next killer feature and NOT worrying about your customer tickets because you’ve made an explicit decision in your mind.

I don’t think there is a cut and dry prioritization here — which is the basic truth everyone should come to terms with. Just know what YOUR prioritization is. Given the stage of your business, your customers may not be #1 — and that is OK — as long as it is explicit.

#2 – Know the different ways you can say “Yes” to a customer

This one took a while for me to realize and define. The goal of a customer interaction is not to give them what he or she wants immediately regardless of what your company can afford to do — the goal is to make the customer feel “good” or even “Ok” with the situation if you cannot get to “Great.”

We often think that the best service organizations are the ones that always give the customer exactly what they want or go above and beyond. Not true.

I think the best organizations know how to make the customer feel good about the situation where they may have been originally feeling bad, and then work with the customer to solve their problems on a timeline that is realistic for everyone.

So, remember that saying “yes” is not the only currency you have. Figure out what else you can offer the customer that can alleviate their concern until you can solve the root of their issue.

One example of this is telling the customer “I’m sorry, but we can’t help you immediately because of X but I’m going to keep you updated through the process, and in the mean time, we’re going to comp you for X months.”  – giving your product gratis is a form of currency. So is sending them a hand written card, or giving them a phone call instead of firing off another Email.

So to summarize, figure out all the different things you can do for your customer — it’ll give you a lot more flexibility and remove a lot of stress for you.

#3 – Know whether you’re going to for “quick fixes” vs. “systematic fixes”

This principle actually doesn’t just apply to Customer Service, but can apply to any function in your business. As you’re working through your tickets, it can get very easy to just “do” them. In fact, thats what us human beings love doing — we love to “do.” It feels good.

Well, pause and take a step back. Its important to figure out what strategy you want to follow as you’re addressing customer issues. For any given customer problem, you always have the option of “going into the database” and “doing a quick fix” by “flipping that field.. or deleting that record” — OR — taking a step back, figuring out how many tickets are of this same nature and seeing if releasing a quick bug fix or feature enhancement would solve the problem for not only the tickets from today but will have a serious impact on your ticket volume overall.

Quick fixes are easy, fast, and gets your customer to a happy state. Systematic fixes preemptively solves the next 10 tickets that are going to come in.

Given the amount of development resources you have and the time cost of the person doing tickets — figure out which strategy you want to be following.

#4 – Try to be more “Proactive” vs “Reactive”

Over here at Tout, we think of anyone we hire around Community and Customer Service more as Content Creators and Communicators rather than “Service Reps.” In fact, I hate the term “Service Rep,” “Customer Service Associate” or anything of that nature — it is boring, uninspiring, and it just plain sucks to be in roles like that.

With that said, most Startups (and companies) take a more reactive approach to Customer Service. They wait for tickets to come, they resolve them, and then they move on.

We hate that. We hate the idea of only interacting with our customers when something goes wrong — and even worse, waiting until they write in about something going wrong.

So, our Tout Happiness Officer (we’re hiring one more by the way), not just responds to tickets, but is responsible for developing content for Tout University where our new customers can learn how to use Tout to be successful. She’s responsible for proactively reaching out to customers so we can learn how they are using Tout and feature them on our blog, and even flesh out our Knowledge Base where customers can go for quick help.

This principle reminds us that solving just this customer’s problem today is not success, but success is putting the systems and resources in place that can help the next 10 customers.

In Conclusion…

We have all these misconceptions and frustrations around Customer Service. I think it has become one of those phrases and roles that we take for granted without stopping and thinking… well — “What does it really mean?”

Our team works and thinks hard about customer service every day. There are things that frustrate us, there are things that we work hard on, and there are things that are working quite well. It ain’t perfect but atleast with these principles, we’ve started to get an understanding of how we want to serve our customers and how we can get there.

In fact, the next thing we’re doing to make our service more excellent is to hire our first full-time Tout Happiness Officer. If all these principles and the things I’ve talked about here are interesting to you, drop me a line.

 

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Categories: entrepreneurship, my thoughts, Principles.

By Tawheed
— November 16, 2011 at 9:02 pm

We are moving to San Francisco

It started about two months ago. Mahrin and I sat down and reflected on our life and career goals. Then, I sat down and reflected on my goals for Tout. Finally, it ended in a simple Facebook update a few weeks ago, slowly letting our Friends and more importantly Family know: We are moving to San Francisco.

Now, this isn’t going to be one of those deeply reflective and analytical posts about how I came about this decision. There isn’t much more to it than “it just felt right.” It actually has very little to do with the ongoing Silicon Valley vs. New York debate (which I hate). In fact, I truly believe location has very little to do with how successful a company is, in fact I think it has more to do with how the location makes the Entrepreneur and Team feel.

Simply put, I just felt more at peace in San Francisco while building Tout. And so, I’m going to be spending the last three weeks of October in New York, making sure our extremely valued NY Sales Team can continue to function with me in SF, saying goodbye to our dear family and friends (whom I’ve known for 18 years of living in New York, and Mahrin has known through the ~3 years we’ve been married), and enjoying as much of my Mom’s home cooking as possible. And then, Mahrin and I will be buying a one-way ticket and flying to San Francisco.

Consider this our way of staying hungry and being foolish.

4 Comments

Categories: my thoughts.

By Tawheed
— October 10, 2011 at 10:24 pm

Everything you can learn from Steve Jobs via Youtube

Steve Jobs’ death impacted me emotionally in a way that I didn’t expect at all. To cope, I’ve been watching a ton of his videos off of Youtube. Maybe its just to hear his voice, maybe its to extract all the “genius” I possibly can out of him while his energy is still strong in this world, or maybe because I need him now to build Tout (my startup) more than I ever have before.

Either way, these videos have been helpful for me and I thought I’d share them in one blog entry. Now that he has passed on, here is everything you can learn from Steve Jobs via the magic of Youtube.

Steve Jobs on Branding

The Apple brand is recognized across the globe, it stands right up there today with Nike and Coca Cola. However, it wasn’t always that way. Here is Steve Jobs talking about what needs to be done to bring Apple’s broken brand to the likes of Nike. I love this video because here, Steve talks about the essence of Branding and Marketing. He teaches us the core lesson he consistently applied to make himself a great salesman: don’t sell the product, sell the dream.

 

Steve Jobs on Passion and Persistence

In this short video, Steve talks about what it takes to be successful. Although what he’s saying here isn’t anything profound or original, maybe more startup founders will actually listen. The key to success is Passion and Persistence. If you don’t love it, you’re not going to succeed — even if you pivoted into it and your customers say they’ll pay for it — if you’re not IN it — you won’t stick to it long enough to truly succeed.

Steve on Giving a Demo

One of the things I noticed about Steve is that when it comes to giving demos, he moves at about 10 miles per hour (a.k.a. slow). There is no feature too minute, no detail to graze over, and no person that is unimportant enough when it comes to giving a Demo. Although we are used to seeing his presentations during Keynotes, I thought this video of Steve giving a demo of a new Apple Store is a great way to exemplify this point. Just watch how he takes his time, starts with the overall conceptual model of the whole store and then slowly starts to go over “features and benefits” all at a 10 mph pace as if he’s talking to a 5 year old.

Steve on Customer Development

Thanks to Eric’s Lean Startup Movement, “Customer Development” is one of the key phrases often being used constantly. However, I think very few people actually know what “success” looks like when you’ve truly done proper customer development and when you truly have an informed hypothesis about your target market. In these two videos, Steve talks about the customer development they did at NeXT and lays out bit by bit how the entire company’s product development and marketing will be planned based on their learnings.

As a separate note, I’d like to reiterate another point: take a look at how much effort Steve is putting into spreading the knowledge throughout the entire company. He’s takin the time to do this “chalktalk” and walk each and every person in the company through the thinking process he is using to make critical decisions for the company. There’s only one other person I’ve seen do this in my career, and he was a billionaire too.

Steve on Life

I left this one for last because a) this is the best video of Steve and b) this is probably the video you’ve already seen. In his commencement address, Steve talks about his life’s story and talks about his philosophy behind life. Best of all, he doesn’t claim to have known all this all along, he gives this advice as a synthesis of what he’s learned so far based on his life’s journey. If you haven’t watched this before, this is a must watch.

And that is all. That is pretty much everything you can learn from Steve, atleast via Youtube. We’ve lost a tremendous person, but I am thankful that we live in a time (partly made possible by him) when we can spread the knowledge he imparted on the world faster than ever before.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

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Categories: my thoughts.

By Tawheed
— October 9, 2011 at 9:42 pm

Death

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve Jobs died today.

I offer my most sincere condolences to his family, friends, and coworkers.

There are no words that I can say to even begin to express what I feel or how I felt toward Steve. He is a man that I have never met and yet he impacted both my physical world and my spiritual world in such a profound way.

In fact, the only thing I really can comment about is “Death.”Here’s a re-post of an entry I wrote when I first truly learned about what Death feels like — it was when my Grandfather died in 2003.

Steve Jobs
1955 – 2011
Rest in peace…

Below is the repost (from my original Xanga blog)

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Before January 9th 2003, I always believed that I did understand death, but boy was I wrong. Its such an amazing thing when you really think about it. Something that can only be compared to its counterpart: birth…and something that makes everything else seem so weak, feeble and inconsequential.

At the same time, it has the power to glorify ones life and has the ability to bring out the best in people surrounding the deceased.

On January 9th, I had perhaps the biggest epiphany of my life when my grandfather died. It wasn’t like I’ve never known of a person to die…you hear it all the time on TV, distant relatives pass away… but this… this was different. That day, I realized I found out the true meaning of death.

It made me think twice about all the things I obsess about in my day to day life, all the things I aspire for, all the thoughts that run through my head about my future….Needless to say, it was one of the most painful things for me, to have him pass away.

At the moment I found out, I had a part of my life flash through my mind, the days I used to spend with him when I was a kid…we were incredibly close. When I was a kid, I didn’t have too may friends my age, I used to spend a lot of time alone and just being bored out of my mind. But all the time, my grandfather was the one that used to come to my rescue to spend time with me and teach me all different things.

I feel that before this, I never really felt real pain, or sadness… And even today, a good couple of weeks later, I’m convinced that the pain never really goes away, but thats really the nature of death.

Death is permanent….read that again….Death is permanent….I don’t think I ever really understood the word permanent before like I do now. Death is permanent in the way that I can never call up Bangladesh and hear my grandfather’s voice on the phone…Permanent in the way that I can never go to the airport and give him a hug and welcome him to New York. Permanent in the way that I can never e-mail him again telling him about how school is going..Permanent in the way that I can never introduce him to the woman I love. Permanent in the way that only a day before January 9th, I was having a wonderful phone conversation with him but now I can never call him ever again.

Even amidst my sadness, which I still feel today, and even through the random times I remember him and still come to tears, I feel proud and happy for him. He was a truly great man, through his life, he went against the odds, and helped countless people and accomplished so much that I can’t even begin to tell…After all of that, after living such a fulfilled life, he left this world with nothing but a smile on his face…with hundreds of people at his funeral remembering him and his life……what more could a man ask for?

After his death, I really started to take a long hard look at myself…and in my college years, as I’m constantly changing the person that I am and turning to be…..I came to some conclusions about what I want to do in life and what kind of a person I want to turn out to be……and as I did so…I constantly found myself turning to look at the life of my grandfather and how well he did it all….

Borrowing from what my brother wrote in his xanga about all this..

See you at the crossroads, so you won’t be lonely..
See you at the crossroads, so you won’t be gone..

K.M.M Abdul Kader
February 1st, 1924 to January 9th, 2003
Rest in peace…

2 Comments

Categories: my thoughts.

By Tawheed
— October 5, 2011 at 8:59 pm