Billions With Zero Knowledge - Austin Hill, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor

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. [9] 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

The number one job of any leader is talent development.  Recruiting, retaining, equipping and developing the talent in your team is the not only the most critical part of creating a successful company it is also the hardest.

Raising financing takes time. Dealing with customers, partners and earning revenue takes time. Working on product and getting any of the millions of tasks done that need to be accomplished to be able to afford to employ anyone takes time.  Once an organization has accomplished all these tasks and has enough money, or business to justify hiring it is often hard to switch gears on your plans and go slow enough to allow you the time to do hiring well.

Hiring is the item that most companies don’t plan for or make enough time for.  It takes a lot of time to do well, and there are always areas to make changes or new talent that needs to be developed to fit the businesses changing needs.   Scouting, developing and nurturing top talent is something that is a full time job of the the entire senior management team. 

Just like sports coaches are constantly working on finding the right mix for a winning team, there are constant tweaks and changes that need to occur and a huge payoff for finding the fit that allows a great winning team to begin to form.

Despite the payoff it is surprising that many times hiring gets pushed back as a priority, often being delegated completely to 3rd parties or outsourced entirely by using offshore contractors to build core intellectual property.  

Management personally spending time in recruiting top talent is the best investment any leader can make.  Hiring top players, who have the intelligence, passion and are a cultural team fit in the right positions is the single biggest leverage a management team has in building a successful company.

In addition to taking the time to record a video for one of our job postings (others are coming soon) I’m spending a lot of time personally scouring the worlds campuses, local technology firms and the Internet for top talent.  A huge percentage of Zero-Knowledge’s staff moved to Montreal to work with us because we recruited across Canada, globally from Silicon Valley to Europe and throughout the world.  When looking for talent, I spend a huge amount of time searching for top people regardless of where I have to look to find them.

Top talent loves to work with other top talent.   For Internet web software companies in Montreal there is an incredible number of great people working in the video game & graphics industry, creative agencies, corporate marketing departments and throughout the world on University campuses that are interested in great Montreal opportunities if you reach out to them.

Often time great people are being unrecognized in their current jobs, or have a life long passion for working for a small startup company, or on a product that can make the world a better place.   The only way to find this out is to meet a huge number of people and see if your dreams match with theirs.  Top talent is never looking for jobs.  Jobs need to hunt out top talent.  That takes time, and requires every tool in the shed.

Internet video is a tool that offers great promise to help in recruiting online. It allows for the hiring team, and company to put their message out there and start a conversation with candidates.  It is just another tool though.  The companies top leadership needs to love recruiting the best people and be willing to invest the time to reach out in every way possible to meet potential candidates. 

The company needs to make recruiting top talent a top priority. It takes putting some of your companies best sales people out there spreading the word about why your company is the place for top talent to come work. It takes hiring with your heart on your sleeve with passion.

Here is a little video I shot recently while driving to UC Berkeley on a recruiting trip.   Just some random thoughts on recruiting while I was driving.

If you are a Web Developer/Integrator (Javascript/HTML/XML) , Flash developer, Graphic Artist, Illustrator/Comic book artist, Python Developer or Web Application Architect available for consulting or full time positions then please introduce yourself. 

An interest in or experience with Internet startups, online multi-player games, game development, online web communities, social media or so called ‘Web 2.0′ tools and technologies is a great plus.  Akoha is recruiting for a few positions right now, but we are hiring throughout the summer and into the fall in these areas and are interested in meeting talented people.

On Fri 23 Mar 2007. [2] Comments

I’ve heard the process of naming a company is often compared to naming a child.

I don’t have any children yet, but I’ve been through the naming process with more then ten companies (including spin offs, rebranding, as an investor, founder or advisor) and in the last six months have been involved in the naming of 4 more.  I hope when I do have kids, that I don’t use the same method as corporate branding and wind up calling them Zero Knowledge

Sometimes names are easy (Total.Net), but recently it has become harder to find proper names that have available domains, search engine uniqueness and provide meaning or a story that people can identify with.

I am not a fan of names that don’t embody some story of the mission of the company. Made up names that combine vowels and consonants to create a five letter words that don’t mean anything except that they are unique and the domain name is available is not my style.

It took some time for us to develop our story and find a proper name for what has until now been called Project Ojibwe.

On behalf of my partner Alex and our incredible team, it is my pleasure to announce that our new project which will launch this summer is going to be called Akoha.

There is a story and meaning behind this name, but you’ll have to wait a little while longer to hear it.

Project Ojibwe is dead. Long live Akoha.

Ultimately names are important. They embody the passion and effort of the product creators and provide a container for our team to pour our creative energies into. It is our hope that when we share our community project with our members they will see our passion and start to share some of our love for what we are working on.

We look forward to sharing more of our story with you in the coming months.

For now, if you’d like sign up on our mailing list and we’ll let you know when the Akoha blog and community preview trailers are ready for launch.

On Fri 9 Mar 2007. [5] Comments