There’s a lot of new technologies breaking on to the scene, especially in the Web 2.0 arena. The press and publicity seems to go to many horizontal players. While these groups have large broad impact, like traditional businesses they can’t serve every niche effectively. A horizontal approach gives you the center of the bell curve, but there are always outliers that have a lot of revenue potential. Look for under served verticals that you can address.

Here’s some examples of recent horizontal players:

1. Facebook, MySpace for horizontal social networking
2. Twitter, Pownce for horizontal micro-blogging
3. YouTube, Revver for horizontal video sharing
4. Google, Yahoo for horizontal search
5. Flickr for horizontal photo sharing
6. Scribd for horizontal document sharing
7. Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon for horizontal bookmarking and site discovery
8. Digg, Reddit for horizontal blog discovery
9. Wikipedia for horizontal information archiving

And I’m sure you can name many others.

With players applying this Web 2.0 community based concept to so many horizontals, it begs two questions for the entrepreneur. One, are there any horizontals left without established players? And two, are there any vertical that are under served by these general, horizontal solutions?

Interesting, I think that there are still large opportunities in the vertical segments. Most of the services listed above do not have broad appeal outside of the technophiles who are in the know. There are millions of consumer and business Internet users who have never heard of some of these companies and services but who can get value.

My suggestion, find an under served vertical, maybe something you already know intimately and see if any of these new technologies can fit. Ask, can I use this for that?

This is a philosophical discussion. In fact, switching barriers are one of the points that are argued during the open vs. closed information debate. Open-ness encourages trial of products and services while closed-ness encourages brand loyalty. As developers and entrepreneurs we have to look at out our philosophical view on information (our software, products, and services) and come to resolution with our business goals.

I was inspired by a comment I got on my post about Microsoft, Linux, and being professionally pidgeon-holed. The commenter brought up the point of “lock-in” when using Microsoft.

I agreed, and responded that people, like myself, are willing to be “locked-in” if the product or service provides some value, real or imagined. For example, look at the recent iPhone distaste about the AT&T contract. Look at the iPod and DRM. Look at your car and any modifications you purchase. Look at your gym membership. Though they create artificial ways of locking you in, all those products and services continue to flourish!
Corporations look to lock you in and create switching barriers to keep you loyal. They do it with termination fees (such as gym memberships), with investments in proprietary equipment (such as digital gadgets), by holding your data hostage (such as iPod/iTunes).

As entrepreneurs and developers we need to make these decisions all the time, do we use proprietary protocols or open standards? Do we use a third party proprietary software because it’s cheaper and faster? Do we follow our philosophical views and stay away from closed software and standards? Do we make it difficult for customers to switch?

Switching barriers are an important part of the competitive landscape. Look for barriers that you can create and figure out how to break down the barriers of your competition. Think hard when developing your business or your software, what barriers are you willing to create? What barriers will your customers tolerate?

This is a nostalgic post for all of those who were in technology in the 90’s. I present a list of things that were great in the 90’s for me as a technophile. Leave a comment about what things you’re nostalgic about!

DJGGP, BBSing, War Dialing, Modems, Math Coprocessors, Coleco Adam Computers, Legend of the Red Dragon, and the Lynx portable; all items that evoke my nostalgia of being a youth discovering technology.

DJGPP	DJGPP is a port of the GNU development tools for C/C++. It included a compiler, various IDEs, and various libraries. Favorites of mine being RHIDE for the IDE and the Allegro graphics library. The web page is still here. These are the tools my good friend Tom and I used to learn C/C++ and develop some of our personal projects.
BBSing	Who here has dialed into or still does (gasp!) dial into BBS’s? Who here doesn’t know what a BBS is? Look at BBS on Wikipedia. Remember the days of discovering phone numbers with your friends, private messaging systems, file sharing, doors/games, and even access to the web throuhg a BBS? Those were the days, huh! I was even a sysop of a BBS I ran from my parents house at night over our primary home line… during the day it had to be available for voice, but at night… TGS BBS as alive! TGS=The Good Stuff.
Legend of the Red Dragon	If we’re going to talk BBSing then we have to talk about my favorite door. Legend of the Red Dragon or LORD by Seth Robinson, here’s the official page. For lots of fun with your friends, this was the game to play as far as I’m concerned. And remember when we got RIP graphics, for that matter, remember color ANSI! Oh man! BTW, my handle was HellSpawn.
War Dialing	This used to freak me out in middle school, dialing all those numbers that would show up on the phone bill. Fortunately they were all local. I did come across some unprotected Unix boxes though. Anyone still doing this? Anyone know what war dialing is anymore? Now do we all just use StumbleUpon to find interesting things to do?
Coleco Adam	This is a computer that my dad had in his office to word process with and for me to play Donkey Kong on. Countless hours wasted and princesses saved. Who remembers storing data on tape cassettes?
Math Coprocessor	With all the fast hardware acceleration we have today, especially evident in monster video cards, who remembers the math coprocessor? Remember with the Intel “DX” chips had the FPU on board? What is a coprocessor? Think of it as the first step towards the SLI nVidia cards you have running your desktop.
Lynx	I remember the first time I saw an Atari Lynx at my friends house and went nuts… so did everyone. Portable, color (the first portable with color), it could flip around, there was a surfing game. What’s not to love?
USRobotics 56K Modem	Well, I started with a 1200 baud Hayes modem that was some funky plug into the wall integrated thingie doohookie. Then we had the steps up and up and up. The fastest modem I owned was a 33.6K modem that got speeds of my friends 56K modems so I never upgraded. It was a nice external one. But, remember the ultimate in modems. That picture better bring up memories about USRobotics. I wonder what they’re up to now?

With all this stuff, I can’t say I miss the technology too terribly; messing with jumpers and IRQs, 100lb computers and 10lb cell phones, MSCDEX.EXE, HIMEM.SYS, and TSRs, and spending $400 for a 16MB SIMM. We’ve come a long way and things are very cool now. But, like my parents talking about the 50’s, these products remind me of “better times.” A time when things were simpler…. I do sound like my parents, huh! :)

Here’s to a time remembered, the 90’s, where we went from B.W.W.W. (Before the World Wide Web) to now, Web 2.0. And here’s to exploration, discovery, and the pursuit of knowledge: then, now, and in the future!

So, startups are hard, scary, and statistically doomed to fail or underperform. But what is it that makes the experience worth while whether you succeed or fail financially? What is it that gives you the best chance at success? Well, it’s LOVE!

Here’s the lovingly way to approach your startup venture, whether it’s been started-up or not.

1. Love yourself. So I say the most important thing is to love yourself. You have to go in positively, confidently, with personal conviction and drive, and with an outlook that you’re doing this for you and not for any external reasons like fame and wealth (not that you shouldn’t expect and want those things, but they can’t be the only things). When you love yourself it saves your mental health, it draws in other people, employees, customers, investors, and it keeps you focused while getting bombarded with everybody’s 2 cents… figure out how to take those 2 cents times a few million people a month and that’s not a bad revenue stream. :) Love yourself, it’s contagious.
2. Love people. “People are your greatest asset.” I think I’ve read that in a few dozen business books. Well, at the end of the day it’s people who are going to keep you growing strong. Your partners, employees, investors, bankers, attorneys, and customers. People like to be loved. Love people and you set yourself up to be loved. Do it through positive interactions, through compliments and gestures, through bonuses and team bonding. Every small way you can find to love people the more you will get in return. And the most important part to loving people… be sincere.
3. Love technology. We’re talking tech ventures here. Find a technology, application, or problem you love. Use the technology, create the application, or solve the problem. Create a product or service that you adore. If you love what you do, if you love what you’re offering is, and if you love the technology you will stave off burn out and increase your longevity. If you build a product you love, it gives your customers a chance to love it to. Why would I use your product or service if you, the creator, don’t love it yourself? Keep loving technology, it’s what got us started in the first place.
4. Love life. So while this is at the end, this is definitely not the least important aspect. Why do we start startups? Why do we embark on these venture adventures? Hopefully it’s because we love it and want to find a fulfillment out of it. Hopefully it’s because we want a better quality of life. Hopefully it’s because we want to make some positive mark. During it all, remember to love life. Remember that life isn’t just work and work is not your only adventure. Keep perspective on yourself, on your family and friends, and on the world at large. There are lots of things to love about life, and creating an imbalance of work is all to easy. Love what you work on, but be sure to not deprive the rest of your life… it needs love to.

And, maybe these lovely rules apply to any professional life: employee, volunteer, intern, or other. Maybe they work in other industries. It’s just more pronounced in the high stress hi-tech startup world.

My advice, look at this list often for some perspective. Maybe write down the things that are important to you, work related or not. Look at this list and your list at least once a month. It’s so easy to get sucked into the startup world that it can be hard to see that you’ve sacraficed too much… too much because you forgot about the things you do love and the things you should love.

Good luck with the adventure!

I am a victim of hi tech burnout and I want to share some insights I have on it. It’s the common story right, 60-80 hour weeks, multiple all nighters, lots of caffiene, and a drive to get that software written. After years of the physical and mental stress you hit the wall.

I think there is a common denominator for this burn out. I mean, if we’re working in a field we love, technology, then why do we get burnt out?

I am recovering from this burn out and wanted to share my story briefly in an attempt to draw out some insights.

My Short Story

I was a technophile at a young age… starting in elementary school in the early 90’s BBSing into university systems, developing simple DOS games and the like. Taught myself assembly and C for writing DOS device drivers, bootstraps, and TSRs – in pursuit of developing graphics libraries for a mini-OS a friend and I were working on. In high school I moved into web technologies as well as systems and applications development on the Windows platform.

After high school I was offered a scholarship from the Sacramento State dean of computer science to pursue both math and computer science BS degrees concurrently. I did for two semesters. I was recruited out of the university to become a developer and eventual CTO of WebRaiser Technologies.

WebRaiser is where my first burnout occured. I was part of the founding team that led to WebRaiser being bought by Flextronics Intl. I personally wrote most of the WebRaiser software and was the architect of it all. I also was a key player in operations and a minor player in sales, marketing, biz dev, and all those other hats you have to wear in a small business.

Building WebRaiser through organic growth and non-institutional financing was rough. Small startup, small team, small funding. But we built a hell of a product suite, a million lines of code, and one of the premier software players in the industry… we won the industry awards and reviews to prove it. And selling the company was the final validation of our efforts.

So with such a success story, successfully exiting a startup, how come this burn out still occured?

Note: You can read some more on my About page or at Lowe*Software.

Some Burnout Reasons

I’m a fan of lists, so let me list the reasons I burnt out:

1. Narrow focus. In order to succeed you need to have laser focus. This means limiting yourself to developing within tight guidelines and specifications. Nothing frivolous.
2. Budget based development. Time is money. Engineers like to write software, it’s in our nature. But in business it doesn’t always make sense to build everything and you have to ask yourself that “Make or buy?” question. Often times the answer is buy. Software integration is not as interesting as building from the ground up.
3. Business beckons. Working in hi-tech is not all technology. Whether it’s management and administration or documentation and requirements there is an element of business that you simply can’t escape, even if your title is “Software Engineer”. It’s even worse if your title is “CTO”. Working at high levels and working on the business is fun, but it encompasses a lot of time that a purist like myself would like to use focusing on tech.
4. The time warp. Small business moves fast, technology moves fast, and markets move fast. The speed of these things is often overestimated. It is very easy to get caught to the point that you’re over working compulsively and always feel like you’re behind.

The Common Denominator 

So what do these four points have in common, what is the common denominator? For me the common denominator is I strayed away from my passion of technology and the immersion in that technology. I strayed without knowing I had. I have a passion for technology and I have a passion to learn and discover. My career, even beyond WebRaiser, put blinders on my and forced me to go in a single direction.

The overcommitment of time, the narrow focus, the wearing of multiple hats. All forced me to abandon time for me to fulfill that need to create, explore, and discover; the immersion in technology that I love.

Progressively through my career, for the reasons above, I phased out personal research, projects, and group associations more and more. The time commitment, competitiveness, and drive gave me a skewed view on what I needed to do to succeed (well, I’m sure all the airplane rides also were a part of the lack of time).

I learned an immense amount through WebRaiser and through my career so far. I know I’ll continue to learn. I wouldn’t trade the time spent there for anything; I made some great relationships (shout out to you Dave!) and learned so much.

What do I do now?

So what would I suggest now? Well, I would suggest making time, remembering why you got into technology, and don’t get caught up in the percieved speed of the startup. We need to work hard, but we don’t need to self sacrafice.

If you are going to overcommit yourself to a single cause, it is a great experience, but be cognizant of what’s going on. Don’t get lost. And keep your passions fed, whatever they are.