Billions With Zero Knowledge

I’m very excited to be able to post that we announced our angel financing at Akoha today.

Raising angel financing in Canada has unique challenges that I’ve written about here before.   Part of what was most fun about raising this round was the number of incredible investors I was able to meet.   Many of them joined us in this round, but throughout the process I was impressed by the growing strength and sophistication of Canadian angel investors.

Completing a $1.9 million dollar round for a stealth project had its unique moments, but the confidence and support that our investors have shown for the project has been great.

I’d like to welcome all our investors to the Akoha project and thank them for their support.

On Mon 28 Apr 2008. No Comments

We are starting to post some more details and information about Akoha on the project blog.

If you are a reader of my blog, I encourage you to also subscribe to the Akoha blog since I will be posting more often on this blog as well as here in the coming months.

Two new posts are up

• Video interview with me on Gift Economies by Tara Hunt
• Whuffie and Social Reputations

On Wed 9 Apr 2008. No Comments

My readers know that my partner Alex and I’ve been working on a company called Akoha with a great team.  We’ve been working in quiet on something that that we’ll be launching later this year.

The entire Akoha team are proud to be able to start to pull back the curtains on some of what we’ve been up too. We’ve just launched a new website for Akoha where  we introduce our team and are starting to do some blogging about some of our influences, ideas and technologies.

We have begun some private application dress rehearsals this week and will be working towards a growing private invite list, public dress rehearsals and ultimately full opening launch as we get the right feedback and community built.  Please sign up for the beta if you want to get an invite and be one of our first community players.

I’m going to be blogging here more frequently, as well as blogging at the new Akoha blog.  If you are a subscriber to this feed, I think you’ll want to also subscribe to the Akoha feed as well.

We’d also love for you to join our Facebook fan page, where we’ll be discussing some details on the project over time.

I’m most proud to introduce the members of our team.  Our team has been hard a work  on a number of cool technologies we’ll be releasing to the open source community and a service that we are really excited to start building a community around.

They are a fun bunch of people and we are really proud of them.  Check out our team page to meet some of them.

On Thu 7 Feb 2008. [5] Comments

I liked it so much, I bought the company.

- Victor Kiam

Ok, well I didn’t buy the company, but I am an investor and co-founder of Standout Jobs. At Akoha we are also proud customers of Standout Jobs.

My involvement in the company was based on my own experiences with hiring, promoting jobs, managing the difficult task of finding great people and building a talent base to hire from.

There are a lot of great productivity tools including on of my favourites which is the browser bookmarklet that allows us to source & track the many great candidates I research for contract, intern and employment opportunities @ Akoha.

When hiring, our team spends hours on LinkedIn and Search Engines checking out candidates online portfolios, blogs and public work (such as contributions to open source & community projects). 

Instead of a spreadsheet of candidates being emailed around and having 30 tabs opened in my browser we can now collaborate, share comments on candidates and maintain active relationships with people we might work with in the future.

Akoha today launched our own career site powered by our sister company Standout Jobs.

We have some intern positions open for web and python developers (Apprentice Ninjas in Akoha speak) - we will be updating the site with new positions in the coming months so subscribe to our site.

On Thu 7 Feb 2008. No Comments

Akoha is looking for an apprentice python developer who can charm the python language like a master snake charmer.

You don’t have to float or be able to play a Pungi. (In case you were wondering what Snake Charmers played, it’s a Pungi or Been according to Wikipedia)

If you have experience with Python and are looking for a great team to join and share your skills & passion for development please introduce yourself.

The job description is up at the Akoha site.

On Tue 28 Aug 2007. No Comments

Akoha is looking for a talented graphic artist & illustrator to join our team.

If you have a passion for illustration and design, an interest in Web applications or gaming and strong creative design skills then please reach out and contact us.

The job description is up on the Akoha.org site.

On Tue 28 Aug 2007. [2] Comments

Whenever I get into a new business I study it pretty extensively. I read everything I can get my hands on and spend time with a lot of experts to be able to make new connections, form my own opinions and re-think how and why things might work once a new product or service is introduced. A lot of my opinions of the social media industry is based on my research of community, economics and anthropology.

My study of gift economies started with the work of Marcel Mauss and formed a lot of my thinking of how our social economies work. The participatory nature of our social playgrounds are powered by reciprocity. By social playgrounds I refer to places such as Flickr, Facebook, blogs, Digg, MySpace, Last.Fm, Twitter, Wikipedia, Second Life which are just a few places people gather to express themselves and interact. Reciprocal exchange power each of these communities. This act of reciprocal exchange is described in a concept called ‘total prestation’. This is from the Wikipedia entry on Mauss theories.

In his classic work The Gift, Mauss argued that gifts are never “free”. Rather, human history is full of examples that gifts give rise to reciprocal exchange. The famous question that drove his inquiry into the anthropology of the gift was: “What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?” (1990:3). The answer is simple: the gift is a “total prestation”, imbued with “spiritual mechanisms”, engaging the honour of both giver and receiver (the term “total prestation” or “total social fact” (fait social total) was coined by his student Maurice Leenhardt after Durkheim’s social fact). Such transactions transcend the divisions between the spiritual and the material in a way that according to Mauss is almost “magical”. The giver does not merely give an object but also part of himself, for the object is indissolubly tied to the giver: “the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them” (1990:31). Because of this bond between giver and gift, the act of giving creates a social bond with an obligation to reciprocate on part of the recipient. To not reciprocate means to lose honour and status, but the spiritual implications can be even worse: in Polynesia, failure to reciprocate means to lose mana, one’s spiritual source of authority and wealth. Mauss distinguished between three obligations: giving - the necessary initial step for the creation and maintenance of social relationships; receiving, for to refuse to receive is to reject the social bond; and reciprocating in order to demonstrate one’s own liberality, honour and wealth.

Gift economies typically manifest in cultures that enjoy economics of abundance and who have rapidly climbed Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. If you are looking into the future, our technological advancements will add more power to these changes and will start to affect more industries.

Tara Hunt who stopped by Akoha for a recent visit while she was in Montreal, wrote a great post on how gift economies are helping her build Citizen Agency.

These are interesting times and we have only just begun to see what kind of services and new opportunities will be created, as old economic models based on scarcity are replaced.

On Wed 18 Jul 2007. [13] Comments

Being part of a startup includes a mandatory ride on an emotional rollercoaster that will  find ways to break your nerves and patience, straining every relationship you have at various times throughout the ride. 

Startups are powered with emotional rocket fuel, but never seem to lift off in a vertical fashion.  Your emotional rocket fuel is actually powering a crazy up and down rollercoaster ride that can make lesser people pass out.

Recently I’ve been caught underwater with three large transactions occurring at the same time, two of which were unplanned resulting from some events outside of my control but need to be tended too regardless of what I had on my schedule.

Each are complicated and carrying lots of small moving parts, differing personalities, large expectations, opportunities for profit & loss with the corresponding communication problems that tend to arise and need to be worked out.

In each case my relationships with my partners, and the outside parties we are doing business with have been tested in positive (in the case of my partners) and some negative ways.

I like what Marc Andreessen recently wrote in his post on Why Not To Do Startups

First, and most importantly, realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced.

You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again.

Over and over and over.

And I’m talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs.

There is so much uncertainty and so much risk around practically everything you are doing. Will the product ship on time? Will it be fast enough? Will it have too many bugs? Will it be easy to use? Will anyone use it? Will your competitor beat you to market? Will you get any press coverage? Will anyone invest in the company? Will that key new engineer join? Will your key user interface designer quit and go to Google? And on and on and on…

Some days things will go really well and some things will go really poorly. And the level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify those transient data points into incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude.

Sound like fun?

Marc’s a smart guy who gave me some great advice the couple times I met with him when I was building Zero-Knowledge Systems.  He’s been doing some great blogging sharing his considerable experience on startup life which is worth checking out.

The fuel that drives startups and any growing company is passion and intensity.  The day to day decisions may affect the navigation, but you need this startup fuel to create the momentum to face the daily challenges of startups and to achieve escape velocity.  

This startup fuel (Mix equal parts passion, intensity, and relentless need for getting things done) is volatile and needs to be mixed and handled with extreme care. In my experience it takes at least 2 co-founding partners to both create and safely handle this startup fuel.

I advise lone entrepreneurs I work with to get some sort of co-founding partner before they go any further for two simple reasons.

#1 Reason you need co-founder

• If you can’t convince someone else to jump into the startup void and join you on your adventure then odds are you aren’t a good enough personal sales person to do what it will take to build a company without a co-founder creating a no-win situation.   Creating companies takes team building and millions of moments of convincing (sales, financing, hiring) and if you can’t find a co-founder who is better than you at something and convince them to join you in your adventures then it doesn’t bode well for your abilities to build a company. 

In the Valley it’s easy to find a co-founder and the environment is incredibly supportive in teaching smart people how to operate startups and navigate the industry.

Finding startup minded people in Canada is more challenging, since we don’t teach or promote risk taking and entrepreneurship as a career option. Culturally we have many smart and successful people, but we don’t have an abundance of risk orientated startup minded people compared to other countries. 

It can be done if you work at it.  My partner, Fred Ngo started to organize Barcamp in Montreal specifically to help meet other people interested in startups.  That’s where we met alongside with Ben and started the discussion that led to the creation of Standout Jobs.

My buddy Marc Chriqui at ILovetoPlay also just announced a co-founding partner, Sandy. - Congrats to Marc since this is a big step in building a company. 

#2 Reason you need co-founders

• More importantly, startups are emotional rollercoasters and they are only fun when you have trusted co-founders and partners to ride the ups and downs with you.  Your partners and co-founders talk you down when you are angry, and up when you are down.   Then you swap sides as you take the lead in talking them up when they are down and you are riding high.   Many times you are both looking at a shitty situation, sigh together, suck it up and know that you both will fix whatever problem has occurred. This becomes easier because you know you’ll be in it together.  Would you try to lift an 800lb. weight without a spotter? 

The ability to bounce ideas off each other and act as emotional cushions while riding the startup rollercoaster is essential to the success of the company.   Teams that bleed together, succeed together.   Because at the end of the of day, it’s the tough times when peoples real characters are tested. You will always be learning about the characters of your partners at the same time you are judging the characters of all the people you will be dealing with in your daily startup adventures (financing, sales, hiring).   Many of the characters you will meet aren’t worth your time and will suck the energy out of you and you need your partners to help you ride that out and help you both learn from the experiences. 

The most important thing your partners help you realize together is at the end of the day it is just a ride.   Although it may not feel like it, the situations are never as bad as they seem and the intense twists and turns are just normal by-products that come from mixing any intense activity with a highly volatile amount of passion, piss, and guts poured on for fuel.

I am very lucky to have some great partnerships with my various co-founders that have all come in handy this last couple of weeks. 

Despite weeks like I just had, I love what I do including all the ups and downs - and that is only because of the partners I have.

Startups are adventures made fun and enjoyable because you share the experience with people you enjoy riding rollercoasters with.  Not because you have any real control of which twists and turns you will be riding on any given day.

Thanks to my co-founders who help me keep my perspective and my activities intense, rewarding and always full of adventure.  

• Alex and my team at Akoha have been pulling together some great stuff for an upcoming team offsite.  Alex works with me on all aspects of my business affairs and he and I talk throughout the day about all our decisions to help each other balance our ideas and activities.  We have been friends for more then a decade and can talk each other up and down any situation.  We keep each other in check.  (I’m looking forward to introducing the whole Akoha team once we come out from behind our curtain for our premiere.  They are all co-founders in our project.).

• Ben and Fred my partners at Standout Jobs are incredible in their level headed and practical way of tackling day to day startup adventures.  We each have had the fun and nerve racking moments tackling some curveballs in the last month. As these curveballs come faster and more erratic Ben and Fred have been incredible to work with.  We discuss how we tackle the issues of the day and move on to the next thing.

• My father and brother, who I have been working on some exciting Radialpoint business with. This required us to work through some complicated financial and business decisions. Working with family comes with a unique set of advantages and challenges.  One of the benefits is that you can pretty much always trust that family will figure out ways to make things work, which is what took a lot of time to work out this week but we sorted it out in time for some tough deadlines since the transaction needed to close quickly.

• Todd (our financial Analyst & Spreadsheet jockey), Katherine (my executive assistant) and Rosalie (our bookkeeper & admin assistant) at Brudder Ventures who have been helping me deal with juggling all the various meetings and financial aspects related to each of these transactions. Knowing that I have a strong financial and administrative teams to compliment my skills on creating companies is a great piece of mind.

• My greatest co-founder in my projects is my partner at home, Kelly.  She has been incredibly supportive by taking care of so many life details allowing me to focus my time effectively on the projects on my plate.  Many of my early startups were done without a relationship in my life.  I would always date after the startups were in revenue generating mode because I couldn’t handle the distraction from work.   At this point in my life, I appreciate having a loving partner at home who reminds me to take breaks and is the ultimate anchor of what is important.   Thanks babe for all your help & support.

If you have the right friends along for the ride, I still can’t recommend a more satisfying experience then working for a startup. Whether you are part of the founding team or an early employee there is an incredible amount of pride that comes from contributing to the fuel that creates something new and of value.

On Sat 30 Jun 2007. [8] Comments

I spent last week in Toronto where I had the incredible pleasure of doing a keynote discussion at the Mesh Conference with Tom Williams of GiveMeaning and our great friend and Mesh organizer Rob Hyndman.

Our panel was on social change and charity online, and I was a little nervous when I accepted the invitation because Akoha, my main project and current startup, is still under development and has yet to launch anything.

I had plenty of ideas to talk about. I’ve spent the last three years studying and thinking about ideas on how the Internet can be leveraged for social change, and how the emerging gift economy of social media creates new structures for collective action.

Tom was incredible telling his story of how he came to be working on social change & philanthropy and the great work he is doing at GiveMeaning. Someone later that evening would tell me they felt awful for me after Tom spoke first because they felt that no one could follow such a great opening. (He did go on to say that we complimented each other incredibly well and loved our panel)

I also spoke publicly for the first time about how the loss of my brother Morgan after his battle with cancer and my attendance at the TED conference a week after his funeral was a turning point in my life.

Tom’s write up of the panel say’s it all when he mentions we were both grounded and authentic and I think the fact that neither of us were selling anything, just sharing our experiences that shaped our careers and how we are choosing to be entrepreneurs is what resonated with people.

The panel was an incredible discussion that Tom and I continued throughout the next two days with the attendees and other speakers. Tom and I are kindred souls and I think out shared passion for these issues came through on the panel.

There were a number of people who wrote about our panel, including some liveblogging that gives you some feel for how the discussion went. Here is a round up of some of the posts about the panel from Google Blog Search & Technorati. Here are some photo’s I showed up in from the conference. (Yes I am going bald - blame genetics & 15 years of startups :)

I have tons of other Mesh stories that are deserving blog posts, including some thoughts on the incredible number of young entrepreneurs I had a chance to meet. There was an incredible energy in the hallways where I found myself hanging with old friends and new.

The conference was different from many I attend in that there was a large diversity in the types of attendees with entrepreneurs, social media experts, investors and venture capitalists, technologists, programmers and corporate representatives from large and small companies. This created some unique conversations, as people were sharing lessons and ideas in a very co-operative discussion that wasn’t just focused on who acquired who that day.

I want to thank my friends and Mesh organizers, Mathew Ingram, Mark Evans, Stuart McDonald, Mike McDerment and Rob Hyndman.

They did an incredible job hosting a great conference. Thank you all for inviting me to be a part of this fun event.

On Mon 4 Jun 2007. [3] Comments

I’ve been spending a lot of my time on recruiting lately.  It’s long and hard work to find and assess how great people will fit within our culture. Even though it’s hard, I love to recruit. Creating great teams is part of what I love doing as an entrepreneur. 

At Akoha we hired 5 developers in the last month including a python wrangler, human cannonball, javascript ninja, drunken master and UI jockey.  We have an incredible team shaping up at Akoha. We are still getting everyone familiar with our tools and experienced at releasing software together, but I think this is one of the best teams I’ve ever put together. We’ll be introducing the team in due course over the summer.

Recruiting takes a lot of time to do right.  Throughout my career I’ve been involved in the recruiting and hiring of hundreds of people. Having recently used most of the recruiting tools, and jobs boards out there I can say honestly they pretty much all suck.   I’m not the only person to notice this. 

Based on my experiences, with the exception of LinkedIn, most of the money spent on online hiring tools is ineffective. 

Companies pay to use these services because they don’t know what else to do, and they are so desparate to find people they throw away a lot of money on postings that don’t work.  They rotate from niche job boards, to big job boards.   From contract recruiters, to in-house recruiters.   The entire time many of the best people never appear on the ‘job market’ as friends, recruiters and referrals drive the best people to the best jobs.

During all of this huge sums of money are wasted, and the entire process is repeated each time a new search is started.

At Zero-Knowledge Systems we were pretty infamous for our approach to hiring and recruiting.  Our old recruiting site showed the personality of the company and the people who worked with us.

The video job ad we did for our python wrangler and my blogging were two very effective tools that helped tremendously in our hiring.

There is a big difference between recruiting top talent and advertising a job opening.  One treats humans as resources looking to fit people into narrow and boring job listings.  The other focuses on people, culture and personal relationships.

Announcing Standout Jobs

I’m really proud to announce that I am a co-founder and investor behind a new startup founded by, Ben Yoskovitz and Fred Ngo.  Standout Jobs will be bring a new concept to recruiting that I believe will help companies change how they find, and hire great talent.

There is a funny story how I came to be involved in the project, but for now I can say that it had just as much to do with the chance to work with Ben & Fred as it did our joint belief that there is a great opportunity to change how recruiting is done.

We will be announcing more details over the summer.  Ben posted his announcement on his blog.   Fred has the announcement up on his blog as well.

Look forward to more news from us in the coming months.   If you are a CEO, or hiring manager interested in working with us to fill a critical position feel free to contact me or Ben.

On Tue 8 May 2007. [2] Comments