Amazon did me dirty

I want a second monitor, one that is light and portable. This weekend I did some research and identified a few possible solutions. Also I did some price comparison on Amazon but didn't buy. Then this happen yesterday...

Thought: This reminds me of how difficult it to keep quality customer service as a company scales and grows. Process and procedures start to rule decisions vs doing whats right for the customer. That is customer support reps become company advocates instead of customer advocates. It's about the value of completing the customer experience and if the customer is right, own up to it and make it right. The balance of processes and employee empowerment play a key role in maintaining quality support.  I hope Amazon starts practicing what they write on all support emails "Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company."

Connecting the Unconnected

Today CloudRail, a current Bolt Capital portfolio company, announced the the closing of a €540k seed round of VC investment from a terrific set of value-add partners in Leonardo Venture, Beteiligungsfonds Wirtschaftsförderung Mannheim GmbH, and strategic angels.  This funding round provides an opportunity to highlight why Bolt Capital is excited about CloudRail.

1. Large Problem.  CloudRail is tackling the interoperability facing the Internet of Things (IoT) industry. This problem has plagued many technology sectors before, forcing developers to hard code stitch applications and devices together; or use expensive, bloated middleware that 'never really works'. Interoperability issues are going to be 1000's times more complex in IoT due to the number of vendors, different data formats, and lack of standards. Vendors and software developers alike won't be able to realize the value for users until they can dynamically and automatically connect multiple ecosystems together.

2. Real Pain. Creating a vibrate ecosystem around a product can be an essential requirement in driving growth, sustainability, and market share. While the ecosystem is critical it is not the core features of a product. Thus the problem lies is deciding how to allocate engineering resources to support the ecosystem versus core product features...on initial release, future releases and sustaining engineering.  

This was one of the major issues faced at the last company I co-founded called PacketTrap Networks (acquired by Dell). PacketTrap's customers required a connected ecosystem of products so they could truly automate IT service delivery. But vendors considered the integrations a checkbox feature not a priority feature. Thus many of the integrations were hacks in hopes of satisfying the customer need. But customers were never happy with the integrations. They broke, were incomplete, and barely maintained.  Vendor on the other hand felt they spent way too much engineering time on with one off efforts building and maintaining the connections. No standards, poor communication amongst vendors, no incentive. It got to the point where 50% of PacketTrap's development team was on fixing and maintaining 'incomplete' integrations. (This is pain!)

3. Talented People. Co-founders David and Felix graduated for the local university in Mannheim, Germany. Prior to CloudRail, Felix and David learned the ropes at various technologies companies including Deutsche Telekom. In addition they have built a product called licobo that attempted to aggregrate and organize contact information from multiple address books. The licobo product had very similar challenges we faced at PacketTrap. Connecting disparate applications and ecosystems together. After many meetings and whiteboard sessions on the technology, I realized they had a very unique approach to the problem. These guys are smart, think outside the box, and think big. 

Bolt Capital is proud to be working with CloudRail, helping them connect the unconnected.

Read more about the funding here.

Winning with Winners

A new post from CBInsights about the 'Recycling of VC Dollars' sparked me into action to pen a blog post I've been meeting to write..... 

Silicon Valley is a false economy. Many companies have an interesting idea, raise capital, launch product, get buzz, get early customers, and then fizzle like a flat soda that’s being sitting in the refrigerator for months. Why is this?

Because many of their customers are also startups themselves. They feed off each other. Startups as customers use their VC capital to buy the latest and greatest software packages, helping create website 'logo' noise for each other. In reality many of the products don't solve real needs, don't apply to a broad base of the market, and promote wrong business decision behaviors. Most of these companies fail with short-term winning.

It is critical from the early stages of product launch that a company finds real, linchpin customers that will be customers for a lifetime. Build your customer base with real companies. Your first customers should be your longest tenure customers in the years to come. 

This was also one of the points made in my favorite product management book called 'Inspired - How To Create Products Customers Love' by Marty Cagan. (I'm sure I'll reference it more).

Win with winners. Don't fall into the Silicon Valley trap of shift VC money from one startup to another in something called ‘revenue’. It's really a false economy. 

I’ve fallen in love with SquareSpace

I love SquareSpace. It’s the most complete ‘company’ I’ve ever interacted with: starting with how I found them to learning about their solution to starting a product trial to becoming a paying customer to being a happy active user.  

One of the main requirements for the Bolt Capital website was a 'for dummies' system that I could easily manage. I learned about SquareSpace from a photography website called FroKnowsPhoto.  Jarid Polin aka The Fro recommended the solution.  I reviewed SquareSpace.com and quickly got the feeling they were talking to me, so I took the plunge for a 14-day trial.

The product is so intuitive and easy to use. I mean really really easy. I had a website designed with an hour, even with a custom logo thanks to their logo generator. They have taken a 'true' design philosophy to the product. While there is a ‘template’ framework, they kept it flexible so each customer can have their own unique design. You can make your site not feel like the others.

Next I got addicted.  I started sampling with the design template inventory, which allows changing an entire site's look and feel with a few clicks. I created new page after page in minutes to play with ideas, layouts, graphics and so on. To top it off, all the templates are designed to run on mobile devices. Awesome!

Finally there is support. I’ve had a few questions along the way and every time I got an answer back within an hour. Not only that, one answer provided me with a video showing how to solve my problem and another was answered by creating a sample page for me in my website admin console.  Absolutely rockstar customer service.

I also mention SqaureSpace at some point during my work day. My experience has been that amazing that I refer to them on how it should be done. Hats off to the team at SquareSpace. Great product, fantastic support! . 

Update: I came across an interview by Google Ventures of SquareSpace CEO Anthony Casalena. Listen to minute 17 about customer service.

There is a first time for everything...

There are many first in our lives: first words, first steps, first day of school, first time driving alone in a car, first kiss, first paycheck, first presentation, and so on. But I must say that nothing has been as intimidating to me as writing my first blog. It's not because my writing skills are pedestrian at best, but the truth is that I know 'once you blog you never go back'. You get addicted to expressing yourself, even if it's for your own sanity. And a blog is a living creature that must be fed daily in order for it to grow and mature. You are committed to it. (this is the exact reason why my wife lets me look at pictures of english bulldogs but not own one). 

Well I guess this means I have officially published my first blog. I promise to feed it often.