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The rantings of a serial entrepreneur as he wins, loses, and doesn't pull any punches in describing both...
My First Blog - v. 2.0
Sunday, August 12, 2007 - 3:30 pm 11 comments
(Sun. night, just finished launching, eating first meal of day)
So, my company asked me to write a blog to inaugurate the launch of our new product, trixbox Pro. My first blog, oh goody - the Web needs more of these.
So I sat down and banged one out. I was all proud of it and sent it out to my executive team. It was a big thought leadership muckety muck piece and I was feeling all leadership-like.
Then my phone rang. It was Dan, my VP of Finance, fellow board member, and now spiritual blog advisor.
The conversation went something like:
Chris: Hey Dan, did you love that piece?
Dan: Not really. The writing was good, but it wasn't very interesting. That's not what a blog is, a blog is more personal, more of an experience, more from the heart.
I argued for a minute, defending my prose, and then realized he was right.
[ a link to my first blog attempt ]
It's funny how you can think you know about something, like blogging, and then be totally wrong. In my last startup, a hosting company called Virtualis, which I ended up selling for a gaggle of cash (a gaggle not a google) to a public telephone company, we actually had one of the first (if not first) blogging sites as a customer. It was a friend of mine, Brad FitzPatrick and his little shared server that he called LiveJournal. I don't even think we called it "blogging" back then. I didn't know what it was about. But when his little $50 per month shared server grew into a dedicated server, and then within a year grew to 8 servers, and then outgrew my hosting company, I knew he was onto something.
Recently I read that Brad sold it to Six Apart. I hope he made a gaggle of cash too. He is such a bright guy, having also started freevote - another social site that grew like weeds. I remember, when he was about 20 and still living in a college dorm freevote users were creating 50,000 free voting booths per week. Both of these he started before he was 25. Impressive.
So, a blog is supposed to be personal. How about I talk about how my startup Fonality has been working like a dog - 14 hour days, weekends, everything on this new product launch. We launch tomorrow and this weekend has been real crunch time. I told my girl recently that startups "feel like one long day where Christmas comes every once in a while."
It's funny how even startups get less startupy, and Fonality is no different. This is the first project we needed an...ug dreaded word: "project manager". We are at 100 employees now and don't feel as much like a Boston Whaler as we used to. We can't turn as quickly. You can feel this in a startup, once you start getting HR departments and have to start attending sexual harassment training seminars...you just become, well, less efficient. I used to manically bust into meetings with 8 people sitting there. I would be wild-eyed and ranting:
"Why is 8% of our total company sitting in this meeting? Three of you need to leave now!"
That didn't work so well. These days I try to pragmatically explain to my VP team that if 20% of the company is constantly in meetings, it doesn't leave enough time for us to actually get anything done. They pretend to understand. Sometimes, I think they just humor the maniac.
Couple the pain of this launch with the fact that I had to fight the open source trixbox community *again* just prior to the actual launch. I am used to this treatment from the Open Source community. They don't quite trust Fonality or me yet. To make matters worse, trixbox Pro utilizes a hybrid-hosted architecture, which exchanges some of their control for some more quality.
Actually, Open Source communities tend to naturally distrust the companies that are trying to monetize them. After all, open source is a system that is inherently designed to defeat capitalism, yet there remains a tenuous, albeit necessary, symbiotic relationship between the people in the community and the commercial company that sponsors it. You can't have one without the other. Copyleft that if you like. ;)
This product launch of ours, trixbox Pro, is designed for them - to give them something to resell, and of course this product is something for us to make money on as well. Therein lies the rub. Therein likes the evil corporate marauders Fonality, led by their clucking borg-esque captain of evil Chris Lyman, out to get rich on their backs as they creak through the night donating code and being taken advantage of as I try to buy another Lear Jet to wave at as I pass it in my first Lear Jet.
I don't own a jet. I drive a 10 year old Honda to work.
One day soon, I hope, they will know that this is not our goal. Our goal is to make something great together. We need them and they need us. Together, perhaps, we can both prosper.
--
Chris Lyman
Fonality CEO & Janitor
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Love It
Love the blog. Will the site provide a feed at some point?
Soon!
Yes! In the next couple of weeks we should have an RSS feed and some better blogging software. It takes me three times as long to maintain this blog as it does to write it. The whole process is manual right now (I write raw HTML into SSH windows...ah the joy of non-automation *grin*).
../chris
Brilliant!
Chris,
This is a brilliant blog for starters, well done and your answers also. Having done the startup route before, I appreciate your seemingly impossible and endless task. Including refutation of the doubting Thomases.
Having said this, I just completed my first Trixbox customer installation, and I am pleased to say it went well, your support team is great (Lars, Chris and Andrew!)
Comment: I'd love to learn more about your hybrid model. Reading the pages is fine, would love to hear more about strategy.
I look forward to more blogging from you, it changes the selling mindset in a very positive way when you feel "the man" is willing to drop the bullshit and talk straight. More power to you
Thanks
dcd -- thanks for the encouraging words. Today I did a podcast with Rich Tehrani, which I will post to my blog in a few moments. In that podcast he asks me directly about hyrid-hosted. Listen to it and see if it answers some of your questions about such.
../chris
Why?
Why don't I trust you still? A hosted architecture? Do you understand that this will take the rights established in purchasing a product and throw it right out the door? Now I'm buying a service. But what is that service except a chance to establish growth and additional rights to manage a product you already own and take more cash from my clients.
I noticed a lot of interesting things in the time since starting to use trixbox and one of them was your 2.2 licensing architecture. I immediately then gathered a fishy feeling in my chest and reluctantly went along with your software. I probably shouldn't have. On a side note, do you know the trouble I have to go through in convincing clients that Fonality isn't out to rape and pillage? Now what do I say. And yes, I've already thought of the few things you would reply to that comment with and not matter which answer you use it still sucks.
I have already spend a few bucks using your support, too, which was great except it was based on software-compatibility flaws with my hardware. Understandable, it's open source. And I gave in to the upsells that lie within hudlite and sugarcrm. AND I gave into the necessity of finding my own backup solution. AND I trusted you would maintain the model that I so reluctantly gave in to. Sheesh, I think as of a few days ago I trusted Fonality more than my girlfriend.
Now I especially don't trust you. If you'd like a simple analogy of how I feel, you've taken Ubuntu and turned it into Novell. Thanks a bunch.
PS - On a very confidential side-note, as of this point I wish there was a better open source LAAMP out there or else I would never use your stuff again. :)
Fishy Feeling
Well, Eric, it certainly is hard to talk to someone who already knows what you are going to say. ;) So, all I can say is: our new paid product is optional. Don't use it if you don't like it. Keep using the existing premise and full open source product! We are continuing to fund it big-time, just launching 2.4 into beta two weeks ago!
I will also say that fundamentalism and zealotry, when applied to any religion, race, or industry (even open source), tends to be an isolations' strategy. I love the open source movement, but I don't bash anyone that tries to make a business out of it.
Ok, one more comment. You used to trust Fonality more than your girlfriend? I am honored, but *that* more than anything gives *me* a "fishy feeling in my chest". ;)
../chris
Fellow Entrepreneur
I am myself a young and not yet prosper entrepreneur from Montreal. We are running a lead generation business since many years now and VoIP is a big chunk of our concerns. Last years, we spend more than 15 K$ on some of your actual competition's Asterisk based products for absolutely nothing in return. Fonality was at the time in our three choices, but we decide to go at the next door. I even flew to California to assist to server management training. 1 year later, this server is sleeping on a rack after month of lost of time trying to manage this wrong choice!
This morning, I have download, install and configure a first Trixbox Pro application in less than 2 hour. Never before, I had been able to do it by myself, every time a VoIP specialist was needed. HUD, Click-to-dial working. WOW! Web panel is more than easy to use and very easy to navigate. I can't wait to restart an installation on our production server.
Great Job to all of your team, and you can count on me to become one of your top reseller in a near future.
Good Luck
Hugo - I am thrilled to hear you like the new product. I also love that you call yourself an "entrepreneur". That is a bold word and anyone brave enough to call themselves an entrepreneur *is* an entrepreneur. It's that simple (but oh so hard). Good luck with your new business!
../chris
Thanks for Sharing
Inspiring blog for a second attempt. Where do I sign up?
Thank you for sharing your story. It gives great hope to those just starting up, have started up, and up starts among the suits. It is clear that a natural tendency towards creating something beneficial to mankind exists within the entrepreneurial spirit of each and every one of us.
I look forward to reading all about Fonality's successes. I hope you and your team make a google, not a gaggle of cash. Many cheers!
Nicely Done
Congratulations on completing your first blog. Not bad for a second attempt. You should thank your Finance VP for the good advice.
It's nice to hear about young companies boldly fighting their way into established markets with romantic notations of building great things, all while overcoming the trials and tribulations of their internal growing pains and over zealous HR departments. Allows us big 9 to 5 corporate types who sold our souls to the machine in exchange for the promise of a ride on the company Lear Jet to see that there's a brave new world out there... one that extends beyond our employee stock purchase plans.
Nicely done. And nicely done your successful product launch as well. I like the green. Good luck with all of your pursuits.
Idetrorce
very interesting, but I don't agree with you
Idetrorce
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