Tag Archive for 'Business'

Read: The King of Green Investing

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/11/18
in General
. 0 Comments

As a biologist, zoologist, entrepreneur and techie, this article makes me think we have a fighting chance… incremental changes increase productivity or output, but they don’t make quantum leaps of progress needed to solve some of the real problems of our time, IMHO. Hopefully Vinod and the work he’s doing will affect some of that…
_ The King of Green Investing | Fast Company

Making cement without also making carbon dioxide seems impossible; the basic chemistry of the process releases the gas. But maybe that’s not really true, Stanford University scientist Brent Contstantz began thinking last year. Of course, it was only a theory, he told himself, but the market for cement is so large — about $13 billion annually in the United States alone — and the pressure to reduce its effect on the environment so strong that he sent a 12- line email to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.

“I have an idea for a new sustainable cement,” Contstantz wrote. “I’m sure you are already aware that for every ton of [standard] Portland cement produced, approximately one ton of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. My cement wouldn’t do that; in fact, it would remove a ton of carbon dioxide from the environment for every ton of cement produced.”

Khosla, who knew Contstantz only casually — the two hadn’t been in touch for 20 years — was on vacation. But after a discussion that lasted only an hour, he told the scientist, “I don’t care about the rest of the business plan. You don’t need to estimate costs. You don’t need to do a cash flow. You don’t need to do a presentation. Just hire five people, set up a lab, and go.”

Contstantz was astonished. “What we’re up to,” he warned, “takes balls.”

“Well, you’ve got the money now,” was the response. “Get busy.”

;-)

It’s not about being the most frugal

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/10/29
in General
. 0 Comments

Henrik comments on my Building a Startup You Love (is Hard) pdf / ebook
_ Henrik Torstensson’s Weblog: It is not about being the most frugal

Indeed, frugality is a great trait to have, in my humble opinion, when building a startup. You go and buy fruit and nuts instead of getting food delivered from the Ritz, you use online services with a cheap monthly subscription instead of buying in hardware / software, you start with interns and grow them into superstars instead of hiring FTE MBA grads… there are many examples.

However, I think being sustainable is more important. If frugality is living beneath your means, then sustainability is the bar you set to decide what your means are…. Does that make sense?

Would we be seeing the proliferation of services / apps everywhere, if they all had to make cash from Day 1? Probably not.

We’d be the poorer for it, and have less gimmicks to play with during lunch, but I also think we’d get better quality, and more attention to what is actually useful, as ultimately that is what people will pay for. Anyways, that’s another rant.

Henrik - thanks for the plug ;-)

Shake and bake baby - MyHeritage buys Kindo

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/9/29
in General
. 16 Comments

A few years ago, I think it was October 2005 to be exact, I was leaving Open Box Software, and had decided to go it on my own, for the second time. If someone had asked me then if today was where I was going to be now (start to acquisition in just over a year), I think I would have been hopeful but would probably have laughed.

After all, I had no money, knew few people, and although I was certainly competent technically I was never going to be a Larry Page. Breaking new ground and creating awesomeness is not easy for me, I tried being an artist but didn’t get very far. I’m a zoologist you see, I analyse and optimise, always within the constraints of an ecosystem which has rules and flows. I don’t regret not being a proper zoologist yet, there will be time for that one day.

So here I am 3 years later and what a rush it’s been
Kindo loves MyHeritage
Kindo loves MyHeritage

Full story on the Kindo blog.
Seen on Techrunch UK, VentureBeat, Techcrunch US, paidContent and PHP Kitchen to mention a few of the 130 odd posts thus far.
Here is the official press release.

Along the way, I’ve managed to learn many new things, grow with some fine people, evolve as a person, adapt to changing situations, and almost break myself in the process. Looking back it was brute force until recently. Now I get by on smarts. Hopefully it’ll stay that way.

The chair it all started on
This is the chair it all started on, back in my bedroom.

I’ve been wondering what this post should be about for a while now, as so much blood, sweat and many tears are tied to this, but I’m pretty sure that getting too personal is not really interesting to most people. Those that know me know what I’ve been through and why it’s something I could get emotional about. Instead I think I’m going to thank the people that have been involved along the way, and leave it at that.

Malcolm – thanks for believing in me right at the beginning, truly, truly appreciated.

Joseph – thanks for all the time we’ve spent discussing things dude, you’re a legend.

Rachel – thanks for all the work you did with me, it’s made a massive difference. I’ll be grateful to you for as long as I live…

Fraser and Cliff – thanks for the first lessons you imparted, your support, and the opportunities you’ve given me.

Debora, Georgie, Andrew, Katherine, Leo – thanks for being so good at what you do, being human, and letting me grow in my own lunchbox.

Alistair, Nick, Tom, Tim and Ido – thanks for taking a chance, I hope you guys are realising the benefits of the stuff we did for you.

Ryan, Gill, John, Dustin, Erin, Peter, Ed, Andy, Hash, Dave, Chris - you guys have given so much support and understanding when I couldn’t find that anywhere else.  More than anything, you understand.  We’re all older and wiser now, lets do some cool stuff, shall we ;-)

Stephen – I don’t know what you were thinking when you carried on past the first weeks of working with me back in the Summer of 2006, but I think we’ve come a long way since then. Thanks for being so reliable. Thanks for your sense of humour. Most of all, thanks to the Hoff. Looking forward to company 3… ;-)

Andrew – like Stephen, you’ve stuck around through thick and thin, which for me is both a compliment and a wonder. Thanks for your calm head, and experienced hand. Looking forward to company 4… ;-)

Demian – I’ve learnt much from you, and have enjoyed the benefit of your experience, it’s almost unbelievable we made it through that cold office and into 38k profiles a day ;-)

Stan, Dmitri, Julien, Thomas, Ali, James, Damon – You’re all great hackers, it’s been a pleasure working with you, even when the office felt like a pressure cooker at times.

Ryan, Adam, Andy – You guys gave us the designs that made us stand out and look the business. You’re all great to work with, and it’s been awesome. Hope we can work together more in the future.

Nils – I was doubtful at first, ‘cos I couldn’t see through your calmness, but now I’m a believer. It is a pleasure, and I’m looking forward to the next chapters. Onwards and upwards.

Mario, Martin, Julia, Alberto, Fabien, Sophiane – Guys, we couldn’t and wouldn’t have done it without you. So many startups forget that the human (read: marketing / pr) side of things is actually what makes progress in the real world. All the code in the world doesn’t matter if people can’t find you. So, thanks for the long hours, dedication and hard work, I hope you guys become giants when you’re grown up ;-)

The day of the announcement
An awesome bunch of people, would go with you anywhere.

Saul, Robin, Stefan, Taavet, Eileen, Peter – Thanks for believing in us, the help and guidance you’ve given, and ultimately what’s rubbed off onto us. I/we couldn’t have asked for a better group of people for backing.

Sarah – thanks for being there when things got tough, I’m gutted you’re not around now ;-(

Marisha – your honesty, perspective and values are appreciated more than you know or will admit to… Thanks!

Tina – thanks for your hard work in the sale process, enough said ;-)

Siobhan – thanks for the advice, even though we didn’t work with you guys…

Morgs – thanks for being so patient, and for putting up with so much of me being unavailable as a brother, and for not throwing my laptop out the window when it would have been expected to do so. You’re the best, almost like a Gillette razor ;-)

Mom and Dad – where do I start? How do I begin? Everything I call a virtue has been instilled by you, so what else can I say?

Michelle – I’ve only known you a relatively short while, but it’s been great. Thanks for your insight, wisdom, and for hitting me on the head a few times – looking forward to the next few years!

Gilad, Sueli, Uri and Nir – great job on MyHeritage so far, lets build something significant to families around the world!

And last but certainly not least, the good guys that have kept my feet planted firmly on the ground, in no particular order:
Anne, Scurry, Wazza, Georgie, Wagon, Sean, Snorkes, Biff, Cone, Dunners, Tim, Penguin, Pete Z, Worville, Strola, Hobbo, Steel, Deano, Brettie, Mark, Phil, Lazza, Irish, Miles, Richy, Frances, Russ, Hollster, Matt, Trish, George, Brett, Lisa, Jen, Shev, Debsk, Benno, Edge, Jon, Tina, Stoner, Charlie “Heart like fire, Mind like Ice” Reville, Charlie “Richard” Charlesworth, Cookie, Jim “The Legend” Sayer, Badman, B Hanlon, Charlie “Yeah!” Howard, Charlie “C-F” Theux… and more to come as I think of them ;-)

TECH4FRICA conference postponed for 2008

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/9/8
in General
. 1 Comment

I’ve been delaying this blog post in the hope that one or two avenues would change things, but unfortunately they haven’t and so it’s time to face reality ;-(

In short, unfortunately I/we weren’t able to raise enough money through sponsorship to cover enough of the costs needed to make the financial risks tenable, which effectively means no conference this year. The majority of responses were along the lines of “we’ve already allocated our budget for this year”, or “it’s not our business focus so we won’t spend money on it”.

*** Please spread the word ***

So, the obvious course of action is to try get into next years budgets; and keep plugging away at people to get at least a yes/no. Based on that, it’s either a yes for sometime in 2009 / 2010; or give up on the idea having tried, failed and learnt from it. I’m not convinced that giving up is the only option just yet though!! ;-)

That said, a few good things have come from the efforts so far, and they are:

  1. a few people have stepped forward to offer sponsorship in the last week or two, unfortunately it’s not enough to cover costs, but it is a good sign.
  2. word seems to be spreading, I’ve been amazed at how many emails have come in every day, from all over.
  3. Most of the speakers have committed to staying involved, which means that we’re still able to speak to sponsors with such a great lineup

Bottom line:

  1. My sincerest apologies to you all.
  2. If you have any questions or comments, please comment.

You can read the blog post and comments here.

Thanks, and will be blogging soon with more news!!

SxSW Panel Picker; vote for my panels if you like ‘em

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/8/27
in General
. 0 Comments

So it’s almost time to start thinking about making our way over to Texas for SxSW…

Earlier this year I did a panel entitled Building a Startup You Love (is Hard) - download pdf - which I think went down pretty well. So for next year, I’m hoping to expand on things by going into more detail and adding a bit more content.

Additionally, I’ve also submitted a proposal for another panel, which I think is also pretty interesting, given that the web is no longer dominated by English.

Here are the details:
Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ and create an account - 1 minute.

Visit:
Building a Startup You Love (is Hard)
Lessons Learned Building Global Apps with Multi-Cultural Teams

If you think that you’d benefit, please vote for me! ;-)

So this is what blogging again feels like? ;-) Lol…

Can Social Networking be a real business?

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/7/4
in General
. 10 Comments

Martin sent this around the office this morning, pretty interesting reading…
_ Technology Review: Social Networking Is Not a Business*

Social Networking Is Not a Business*
Web 2.0–the dream of the user-built, user-centered, user-run Internet–has delivered on just about every promise except profit. Will its most prominent example, social networking, ever make any money?

I keep going back to this with what we’re doing - you have to offer real value to your users over and above the quick thrill, social pull, or fleeting curiosity that most social stuff offers. Why do people go back to Starbucks? It’s convenient and the coffee is mostly good. Why should people come back to your site? Cos it’s easy to use, and there’s something there that they want/need/desire, that you can give them now. Advertising is not a silver bullet for scaling a business.

Get an online personal assistant, it will make your life easier

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/7/3
in GTD and Productivity
. 3 Comments

The shorter version:
Checkout Online Personal Assistant. I recommend it, it’s saved me time and made my life easier. Best part is you can use it from wherever…
Try it, tell Ed you got there from here, and he’ll treat you nice ;-)

The longer version:
OK, so I’m the first to admit that I often find myself with too many balls to juggle. I find that having more to do actually makes me more productive and when I get in the zone, things happen and it feels good.

However, when you’re starting a business, or working on something important to you, and you decide that it is the highest priority in your life, then other things slip down the priority order, and they simply don’t get done.

Cases in point:

  1. I’ve needed to get a UK drivers license for at least 3 years now
  2. I’ve needed to renew my South African passport for over a year now
  3. I’ve been serious about taking up Kendo, or a Japanese Sword Art, for at least 18 months
  4. I’ve needed to sort out health insurance for a long long long time
  5. I wanted to organise a birthday bash for myself this year, for precisely the reason why it didn’t happen last year

I think you get the picture…. Basically you keep your life together somehow until something threatens to break, then you mend it so it doesn’t break in the short term, then you go back to being focussed. I know not everyone is like that, but I am, hence this post! ;-)

Anyways, I’m not really into recommending or plugging services that I don’t have a lot of exposure to, mainly ‘cos I get too many emails so it’s hard to decide whom to spend an hour for getting to know a service, and also ‘cos people don’t really read my blog for that reason ;-) I’m not Scoble or Arrington or Kirkpatrick, and neither do I want to be.

Back to the point - a while ago my friend Ed setup a service called Online Personal Assistant, and after a bit of nudging I decided to give it a try. My @Inbox was overflowing, and I really just needed to clear some stuff that was important, but not that important it could go above Kindo.

So I sent a list of stuff to my personal assistant Kevin:

  1. Book Geek BBQ venue for summer in London
  2. Book karting venue for my birthday delebration
  3. Book bowling venue for my birthday celebration
  4. Find me health insurance
  5. Find me Tai Chi schools close to where I live
  6. Find me Kendo schools close to where I live

As you can see, they’re all time intensive tasks that would mean me spending a few hours online for each one, at some point, getting to a place where I can make a decision and then do some actions… Getting my passport and drivers license require me to be somewhere in person, so I needed to do that.

Where we are now is that Ed’s team (thanks Kevin!) has spent about 9 hours doing all that stuff for me, for which I’ll pay an hourly rate. Everything is documented and tracked in an online workspace (not Basecamp), and I’m happy with the results. I have a few things to tie down now, but basically all the research is done, and all it requires is another booking, or an action on my part.

Bottom line - I’ve saved 9 hours of my time (which I value more than what I’ll pay for it), thereby enabling me to focus on things more important to me now, so as far as I’m concerned I’m a happy biologist.

I happily recommend the service, and am going to continue to use it.

Carsonified:- Matt Week - Day three and where we’re at

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/7/2
in General
. 0 Comments

I’m a bit skeptical about this, but anyways I think the results will be interesting… ;-)
_ Carsonified » Blog Archive » Matt Week - Day three and where we’re at

Day three is upon us. We have had a few challenges along the way but all of the team are making progress.

There is a bit of an air of pandemonium, but all the team are weighing in with a tremendous effort. We are getting an enormously valuable insight into what web development companies have to go through day in day out.

From an email:

As you may already know the Carsonified team have set ourselves a challenge this week - to build a web app in four days (32 hours) and we’re launching tomorrow at 5:30pm GMT.

The app is called Matt and it helps people post to multiple Twitter accounts (Multiple Account Twitter Tweeting). We know the idea for the app isn’t going to rock the world, but we’re going to share everything we’re learning in the process - so hopefully that’ll be valuable for other people.

What do you think?

Tips for landing a php job in London

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/6/30
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

OK, so I’ve not got long so will be brief and to the point with this one, in the hope that it will help some of the people that read this blog, and maybe even some of the folks that are looking for devs to join their teams.

I’ve had to run through a lot of agencies and candidates in the last month or so, recruiting for Kindo, and these are some thoughts in no particular order:

As a candidate

DO:

  • accept there is lots of good competition; you have to stand out to be noticed
  • research on the company you’re interviewing at - it’s polite and will help you with 3, 4 and 5
  • send a cv that is relevant to the job spec - java experience won’t interest someone looking for a php person
  • learn how to sell yourself and articulate your experience - enough said
  • accept you’re going to have to send code to show what you can do - send your best relevant code
  • describe what your code is supposed to be doing to there is context - don’t just send a bunch of methods
  • comment more than you think you should - esp if you’re going to work in a team or be contracting
  • write documentation in the code for something like phpDocumentor - that makes people happy

As a general rule (unless you’re a superstar), your work environment, the people you work with, and the work you’ll be doing, should all supersede remuneration unless you have a specific reason (like a mortgage for example).

As someone recruiting

DO:
Read this first:
http://www.nickhalstead.com/2008/07/01/10-reasons-why-i-hate-recruitment-agents/

  • accept that it is going to take up a lot of your time
  • have a clear job spec and role description in place to send around
  • use your personal network first
  • get your agencies to send some cv’s to assess the kind of candidates they have
  • ask for source code if you like the cv - you’ll do less unnecessary face to face’s
  • expect them to do some filtering and work for you; if not, bin them
  • turn your phone off if you want quiet time to work
  • agree on terms first, or re-confirm them if circumstances change on your end

Hope that helps!! ;-)

Intruders.tv interview on Kindo (about scale/product/marketing/revenue)

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/6/30
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

Was at Open Coffee last week (looking for developers), and did this interview with Vincent and Eugene from Intruders.tv on Kindo. Talked about how we’ve tackled some of the usual web app issues like scaling our userbase, internationalisation, product dev, marketing tricks, revenue generation….
_ Intruders.tv interview on Kindo.com

Kindo.com is a “new take on the traditional family tree”. In this interview, we sit down with Gareth Knight to talk about Kindo and their user acquisition strategy. Gareth shares with us his experience of attracting users to the site and the effectiveness of strategies such as blogging, Google AdWords and PR.

If you’re building a webapp, could be useful ;-)

Ariadne Capital : Entrepreneur Manifesto

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/6/23
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

Found this reading the London paper City A.M:
Ariadne Capital : Entrepreneur Manifesto.

… That Leaders are those people who create trust in society and their businesses, and that trust is efficient. Success is forged through competition and human greatness is possible precisely because people are not the same and they have the option to choose whether they want to lead or follow….

Pretty interesting reading if you’re an entrepreneur - any thoughts?
;-)

Kindo in the guardian.co.uk

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/6/23
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Brief summary of what Kindo is about in the Guardian:
_ Elevator Pitch: Kindo makes a play for the family network niche | PDA: The Digital Content Blog | guardian.co.uk
;-)

Thoughts from recruiting for php developers in London

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/6/4
in Uncategorized
. 6 Comments

I’ve spent the last week or so busy with recruiting, and I’ve learnt some interesting things. So thought I’d post something small just before I take the tube home…. I’ll try not to be too sarcastic.

  1. Most recruitment agents seem to be early 20 something bottom feeders who don’t or can’t read, and have no industry experience
  2. Most of the agents don’t really know the difference between the various technologies or just do a search on language (instead of focus), so therefore send you crud which you still have to filter out - I received a Linux systems engineer CV for a php role
  3. Warning signals include:
    • “I called you earlier”
    • “so you’re hiring a developer, what’s he going to be doing day to day?”
    • “I’m sure he’s great for your social application, he’s got loads of enterprise Java experience”
    • and my personal favourite of today “an excellent web2 ASP Javasphere candidate” (*note, not knocking Java)
  4. There are some gems who know their stuff, who listen, and who actually have good candidates = these are gold
  5. Most developers don’t seem to know how to communicate why you should hire them, so learn to ask good questions that lead to what you want to find out
  6. Your ear is going to get warm, so get comfy
  7. Take water to phone call
  8. Update:Agents seem to get surprised when you contact previous employers to get feedback on candidates (surely this is something they should do??)

That’s it - hope that helps, and I’m wondering whether you’ve had any experiences with agents and recruiting? ;-)