500 Startups & Geeks on a Plane will be heading to Mexico, Brazil & Argentina May 10th – 20th. APPLY HERE BY FEB 14th to be a Geek on a Plane.

WHAT IS GEEKS ON A PLANE?

Organized by 500 Startups, Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. We travel by planes, trains, and automobiles to the most exciting international startup scenes with the sole mission of uniting geeks and exploring cross-border opportunities. The result: a lifelong bond with fellow travelers, a wealth of new friends and business contacts in exploding technology markets, and a stronger appreciation for the cultural and economic ties that bind us globally. Check out our videos from our 2011 tour of South America.

OBJECTIVES:

> BUILD strategic alliances with the tech + startup community in Latin America

> MEET key influencers driving innovation – startups, investors, corporations, & government leaders

> LEARN about growth markets, challenges, and opportunities

> DEVELOP lifelong friendships and business contacts with other GOAPers

TENTATIVE AGENDA:

05/10/2012 – San Francisco > Miami
05/11/2011 – Miami > Mexico City
05/12/2011 – Mexico City
05/13/2011 – Mexico City > Sao Paulo
05/14/2011 – Sao Paulo
05/15/2011 – Sao Paulo
05/16/2011 – Sao Paulo
05/17/2011 – Sao Paulo > Buenos Aires
05/18/2011 – Buenos Aires
05/19/2011 – Buenos Aires
05/20/2011 – Buenos Aires > San Francisco

Questions:
contact Christen O’Brien, christen at 500startups dot com

Taking Risk
If you’re not putting your balls on the table, what are you doing? Why even bother being an entrepreneur?

Iterations
We probably re-did the user experience for the signup process six or seven times before we got it to a very minimalistic two-step… You iterate and you cycle and you put it in front of people early and you test it as often as you can and use your metrics to see whether or not you’re on the right path.

Post Launch
After showing an about.me prototype at SXSW we took a long, hard look at the product and we realized we hated the version of it that we had built, where we had iterated it to. And in what was one of the craziest periods of the last year, we scrapped 90 percent of [the interface] and started over. Just completely broke it down and built it back up again. We worked for six weeks and wound up with what we have now.

Communicating with Designers
Some people think of design as a utility or a commodity… We used to call it the “shut up and color” mindset. You can take that perspective in a hiring arrangement but I guarantee you, you are going to get crap work. And the reason your design will suck is not because you have a shitty designer, it will be because you’re not interacting with your designer in a way that gets the best possible work out of them. It’s a collaboration. It’s not dictatorial at all.

Entrepreneurial designers
Five years ago the interaction designers were asking, “where’s our seat at the table?” Because in larger organizations, no one gave a shit. No one was doing what was necessary to ensure that customer experience was king. Today, some people are talking about focusing on the customer experience like it just got invented. What’s been amazing is watching this transformation of people’s perspectives around how you can bring a product to the world.

A lot of people are amazed that you can be a designer and an entrepreneur. I read a post by some dude, who’s also a founder, who says in his experience that most designers don’t have an entrepreneurial mindset. Bullshit. Anybody who starts an agency, anybody who tries to build a product, anybody who sketches at home has an entrepreneurial instinct.

I became an entrepreneur by accident… I thought I was perfectly happy being a consultant. I didn’t realize how much I needed to bring something into the world… until I was given the opportunity. Now that I’ve done it, I’m religious about seeing things though. I want to mature about.me to the point where it represents the idea that I had, like a platonic ideal of the product I had in my head the first day I thought about it. Because I think it’s got that potential, and I won’t be satisfied until I get it to that point.

“Stories are currency,” shared Elle Luna, Senior Communication Designer at IDEO at the Women in Design event this past Friday. If that’s the case, the speakers at this event were some of the richest women in Silicon Valley with plenty of stories of how they got started, took risks, failed, persevered, and became who they are today.

“Stories are currency,” shared Elle Luna, Senior Communication Designer at IDEO at the Women in Design event this past Friday. If that’s the case, the speakers at this event were some of the richest women in Silicon Valley with plenty of stories of how they got started, took risks, failed, persevered, and became who they are today.

The intention behind the event’s storytelling format was to strengthen the sense of community among women designers while inspiring the next generation (e.g., several high school and college students attended).

Here are a few highlights of the speakers’ journeys and tips for fellow women navigating the world where design, technology, and entrepreneurship intersect.

One of Kate’s first design gigs was photoshoping abs onto muscular men for a Herbal Supplement company. She shared how years later, she turned down the position for Director of Design telling Facebook’s recruiters they needed “a young guy” (not a mom) and gave them a list of five recommendations. They persisted and she finally said yes, when she realized she was in fact the right person for the job.

Tips:
Learn how to code.
Design with purpose (which your portfolio should reflect).

Kate Aronowitz, Director of Design at Facebook by womenindesign

Nancy was a dancer for many years before she realized it was a great hobby but a “sucky” profession. She then become a museum curator and had to move back in with her parents when she met a freelance developer who showed her what an html tag is. Surprised by how simple it was, she delved deeper into computer science and has been working in the design/tech field since then.

Tips:
Don’t mistake knowing your tools with knowing your business.
Have a mission statement.

Nancy Broden, Design Lead of User Growth at Twitter by womenindesign

Janice cut straight to the gender issue after making the audience dance to Beyonce’s “Run The World”. Is it true that there is a gender bias in the world of tech startups? It doesn’t matter because the effect remains the same whether or not there is a bias. She referred to “stereotype” threat, a concept validated in social science research, which is when perceived bias (as a result of being the “other”) makes one physiologically anxious and want to leave the situation.

Tips:

For women in tech/design/business fields:
Change internal narrative by owning what you do.
Don’t flirt or play the little sister!

For others:
Aim for 50% female representation. If not, get at least 33% of women in design/tech/startups, which is the critical mass proven in research to reduce stereotype threat.
Neutralize language. Example: “We believe you would be great to write this piece in Tech Crunch” (note no mention of gender).

Janice Fraser, Founder of LUXr & Founding Partner of Adaptive Path by womenindesign

Elle started in a film program before she realized she was most attracted to storytelling, and transferred into graphic design. She submitted her application to IDEO through the website, the good old fashioned way (no networking) and was hired two weeks later. As a Texan she drew a risky (and awesome) parallel between Texas Debutantes and women in design.

Tips:
Design your story.
Ask yourself: What makes me happy? What gives me meaning? Orient your life around these two answers.
Find someone who is 2-3 years ahead of where you would like to go and take them out to lunch.

Elle Luna, Senior Communication Designer at IDEO by womenindesign

Sasha had started working at Google for a couple of months when she heard a rumor that it was acquiring YouTube; she told her manager “I want to go there.” She was soon the first user researcher at YouTube where she helped make user research an integral part of the design process.

Tip:
Don’t overthink. Go for it.

Sasha Lubomirsky, User Experience Researcher at Airbnb by womenindesign

As a history major destined for law, she caught her college roommate playing with photoshop which sparked her interest in a completely different career track. She bought the book “HTML By Example,” and started building websites for friends and family until her first paid job as a web designer making education sites for kids. During her graduate school in instruction and technology, she fell in love with startups.

Tips:
Accept risk and you will open yourself up to luck.
Get out there and meet as many people as you can.

Christina Brodbeck, Founder of TheIceBreak by womenindesign

Karen was one out of ten women and ninety men who earned a Computer Science degree from her graduating class. Since she had a strong technical background and loved to solve problems, her move to design felt quite natural. Though she had never designed hardware before, she took a leap and accepted an offer from Jawbone as the Principle Device Interaction designer.

Tips:
Stand your ground.
Get outside your comfort zone to move forward.

Karen Kaushansky, Principal Device Interaction Designer at Jawbone by womenindesign

Jenn and Abby met at Stanford and Culture Kitchen SF grew out of their masters project. After working in corporate world, Abby knew she wanted to build products that wouldn’t end up in a landfill. Jenn shared that she never understood how her parents, who were Hispanic immigrants, thought they could hold the whole world in their hands. Like Abby, she felt destined to create meaningful social impact in the global community.

Tips:
Partner with someone who works hard.
Find someone who can lift you up when you are down.

Jennifer Lopez & Abby Sturges, Founders of Culture Kitchen by womenindesign

Tips:
Learn the lingo of raising money, take a course (e.g., VC 101).
Don’t be afraid to show who’s boss (or use “I” when pitching).

Angela Shen-Hsieh, Founder of Groupvisual.io & Board Member of AIGA by womenindesign

“I like making resources for people. None of the things I have ever made have been profitable. And that’s ok.” She refers to her many educational side projects such as “Should I work for Free?” “Don’t Fear the Internet” and “Mom This is How Twitter Works 2.0.” Projects like these, that showed her passion, earned her the respect of several fellow designers. Jessica is a master of procrastiworking, a term she coined, which means doing that side hobby you love to do when putting off the work you have to do.

Tips:
Place work you would actually want to do in your portfolio.
Find clients as passionate about the work as you are.
Procrastiwork! (when you are putting off the work you have to do, do the side hobby you love to do).

Jessica Hische, Freelance illustrator, letterer, & designer by womenindesign

Liz’ grandfather, a furniture designer, made a saltbox which sat next to the oven throughout her childhood. She overlooked the possibility of being a design educator in the same way people overlook the power and history behind salt. For years, Liz has been an educator on the side kind of how salt is a meal’s best “side-kick.”

Tips:
Don’t underestimate what you do on the side
Think little risks and big rewards

Liz Danzico, Chair of MFA in Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts by womenindesign

1. Develop a Technical Side. Kate predicted the next person with her position at Facebook will know how to code. Learn how to code.

2. Know and Showcase Your Expertise. After Angela’s talk on appearance and perception in the world of venture capital, she still concluded that substance and expertise were more important.

Confidence and Self-Knowledge

3. Don’t Underestimate Yourself. As Nancy put it: ladies, lose the insecurity!

4. Be Genuine and Know Yourself. How did Jessica get 30,000 Twitter followers? She is 100% genuine, often tweeting in her pajamas at 4:00am. It is as simple as it gets: knowing yourself is the key to designing your story and ultimately steering your career path.

Attitude and Risk-Taking

5. Have a Yes Mind. Janice encouraged women to say yes to every speaking invitation they get. An attitude of “yes, I can do it!” emerged again and again throughout the speakers’ talks.

6. Get Outside of Your Comfort Zone. Karen talked about making bold career choices which were often uncomfortable but pushed her forward. “Fear what you do the most!” – Nancy. “Leap and Learn by Doing!” – Christina

Special Thanks

Speakers: Kate Aronowitz, Nancy Broden, Janice Fraser, Elle Luna, Sasha Lubomirsky, Christina Brodbeck, Abby Sturges, Jennifer Lopez, Karen Kaushansky, Angela Shen-Hsieh, Jessica Hische and Liz Danzico
Sponsors: The Designer Fund, Khosla Ventures, Andressen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, 500 Startups, Facebook, Product Design Guild, Jess3, KKLD, San Franola Granola, Farm to Cup and Benchic Chocolate
Organizers: Maria Molfino and Enrique Allen

Brian kicked it off with a presentation on how to engage your audiences online via YouTube.

Among the many nuggets of valuable info in his presentation, this one in particular was interesting. The 4 rules of engaging audiences online, per Brian:

1. Create Buzz
2. Build Loyalty
3. Optimize for the Platform,
4. Cross-Promote

After some caffeine and food, the day kicked off with lightning presentations from each Google speaker. In about an hour, we zipped through the following topics:

Iein Valdez opened the show with an overview of how Google views the Cloud, and App Engine

Pete LePage spoke on Chrome, HTML5 and shared tips and tricks for getting featured in Chrome WebStore.

Reto Meier wow’d us with some amazing stats and tips for Android and Android Market.  We learned there are 200MM Android devices out in the wild, 550K new daily activations, and 10B downloads from Android Market.

Paul Saxman made us realize we spend far too much time watching TV and how developers can take advantage of that with Google TV.

Circles, pages, and hangouts - Timothy Jordan regaled us with info on Google+ and how startups should be using the various features.

Paid acquisition works! Carl Damerow from the AdWords team shared several examples of how to effectively use AdWords, including putting 500 company Switchcam in the hot seat.

Nick Mihailovski of the Analytics team talked about how to use Google Analytics in your day-to-day operations.

40MM active users and 4MM+ businesses can’t be wrong. Ryan Boyd covered building for Google Apps and Auth.

Brendan Kenny of the Geo team shared best practices for the Google Places API.

Money money money! Mihai Ionescu delivered an overview of ways you can monetize your apps with Google.

Finally, Derek Slater from Google’s policy team ended the morning with a BANG talking about fundraising regulations in the U.S., EngineAdvocacy, and putting an end to SOPA/PIPA.

After an educational morning, we were treated to a 5-star lunch at Nourish, one of Google’s many cafes. Great food and great 1:1 Q&A/discussion with the speakers ensued.

Thanks to the Google DevRel team for making this happen!

Jeannie Nguyen (@omfgjeannie) is a designer for Lexity (@lxty).

What up. Jeannie here, designer at Lexity.

So, you know our current site?

Yeah. Definitely not what we first designed.

We took a couple of months to design and build our new site, and threw it all away at the last minute – building what you can see now at lexity.com.

In fact, we were going to launch with this:

Totally different! So why did we scratch this design after we took a lot of time building it? I’ll start from the beginning.

5 months ago, when I was still an intern, I randomly made a very rough draft of what I thought our site could look like:

I wanted to have a park as a background, which gave Barry (our User Experience Lead) a whole vision of a city. We imagined a whole different world for Lexity, and about a month later from the first mock up, we finally started to create a new design for our site:

We decided to get rid of the bridge, and to focus more on the city. We wanted a friendly tone, bright colors, and really wanted Sophie to drive a car. We wanted a video of Sophie giving a tour of the city which would represent our product. We wanted our images to animate in each slide. So 20 days later, we created a new design, and made what you saw earlier in this post:

One day, we had a copy meeting for our four slides. Barry wrote out the copy on a glass board in large text so we could all clearly read what was on the board.

Suddenly, a new design idea hit me. Big white helvetica. A colored background for contrast. And that’s it. So simple.

But I wondered if it’d be crazy to scratch up all the work we’ve been doing for the past month, and to start over again. To just throw away the time it took to make all the drawings and for Kent (aka our Web Guy) to build all of this. I pitched the idea anyways.

It brought us back to the idea that our company is built on 3 columns: affordability, effectiveness, and simplicity. It made us rethink our site design. Did we really need all the festive colors? Did we really need our pigs to fly and animate? Did we really need Sophie to drive through the city? Then we realized our website design should reflect the third column our company was built on: simplicity.

So we got rid of many colors. We got rid of the animated images for the slides. We got rid of the buildings, the trees, the road, and took away Sophie’s driver’s license. We stripped out many things. Then we came up with the design you currently see on our site:

Simple. : )

This wall was blank until we showed up. Now it's #500Strong!

Cat Lee, Facebook Platform team and 500 Mentor, kicked it off with an overview of the Facebook platform and Operation Developer Love. The rest of the afternoon was filled with great speakers on Open Graph, Facebook Ads, mobile distribution, and more. 500 Mentors Luke Shepard, George Lee, and Brian Rosenthal were also in attendance. (Brian spoke about Ads)

Cat Lee welcomes the 500 gang

All in all, it was an awesome field trip and the first of several for this batch. Next up – Google and YouTube.

We heart Facebook!

Thanks Facebook! We had a great time. Hope we can fill up that wall with more 500 company graffiti.

Jeff is the CEO and cofounder of Daily Aisle. It’s the only place where engaged couples can search for their wedding venues based on date availability, price and head count. Prior to Daily Aisle, Jeff managed the Brokers Web insurance affiliate program and was an investment banking analyst.

Despite the semi-negative tone of this post, this is not a cautionary tale against entrepreneurship. Things are hard, but what you are experiencing is “normal.” Everyone around you is experiencing something similar. It’s part of what makes the journey so rewarding.

It was supposed to be easy. I keep hearing and reading that Amazon and Rackspace were making it easier and cheaper to build web apps. Social platforms like Twitter and Facebook make it easier to acquire customers. Angels and VCs are throwing money at seed stage companies.

That’s all true. But unfortunately, it’s not easy.

My co-founder, Kim Dowd, and I had a good laugh yesterday reading Michael Arrington’s new blog UnCrunched.

We’ve recently had a tough couple of weeks. During a server migration, our dev accidentally deleted our bridal dashboard, which set us back a couple of days. We also decided to switch to a new CSS/HTML toolkit from Twitter called Bootstrap. It made our site look better, and it should save us time in the future, but it set us back a week because we had to backward integrate our existing pages.

Personally, I feel a bit demoralized. I find it entertaining observing other startup founders. We all ask each other how everything is going and we all answer “GREAT” and then like a PR firm, we spew the latest good news spin. I then go grab drinks with a few close founder friends and we order stiff drinks, stare off like zombies, and talk about all the things going wrong with our companies:

“I yelled at my co-founders and called them all idiots yesterday. I think they are still mad at me.”

“I can’t close. XYZ VC won’t invest unless we have a lead and our lead wants to give us super pro rata rights.”

“No one likes our CEO.”

“My co-founder won’t talk to me.”

“I have no idea how we are going to make money.”

“My co-founder went home with the guy I brought out to the bars… WTF!”

Those are all real quotes from founders I know, whose companies are perceived by the tech press to be doing well. That’s why reading Arrington’s post was so comforting.

We thought this was written by someone at 500 Startups this year:

Well the kids went out to get drunk, or rather, more drunk. I think they might have actually gone out to a strip club again. How classy is that?

Oh good, the kids are back, and they are well hammered. None of them can walk properly, and they keep bumping into the cubicle walls and making everything on my desk shake. Since I’m not drunk, the impedance mismatch makes it impossible for me to carry on a conversation with them, so I’m just trying to block them out. But now they’re all playing networked DOOM at top volume, so in order to concentrate, I have to wear headphones with music on at top volume, and even that doesn’t quite work. Since, as I mentioned, they keep making the mistake of trying to walk, and they’re making all the shit on my desk bounce around.

It’s a saturday night, and I’m in my cubicle surrounded by a bunch of drunken farmboys from Illinois who haven’t been more than two miles from our office in scenic downtown Mountain View in four months.

My ears are going to be ringing after this. Fuck it, I’m going home. (Check that — my ears are ringing.)

But this was written in 1994 by a Netscape employee. It’s kind of funny to think that someone as brilliant as Jamie Zawinski had similar experiences to ours but only 17 years earlier.

The past 2 months have been pretty difficult for me. We were close to raising $1M twice but couldn’t quite cross the finish line. We decided to put off fundraising until after our product launches. The product has taken longer than expected and feel helpless, watching my cofounders kick-ass, and wishing I had learned to code (we are launching the private beta sometime this week!).

My relationship is on the rocks. She’s in Boston and I’m in SF, and we’ve been doing long distance for as long as we’ve been dating in person. I didn’t mail her anything for her birthday and she’s pissed. We both want her to move here but she won’t move here without a ring. I can’t blame her. Her entire life is there and moving for someone is risky.

The problem is I can’t afford a ring, and I wonder if I’m mature enough to take care of someone else. I can barely take care of myself, eating 1.5 meals a day. I’ve taken up the same time sleep schedule as the engineers, waking up at noon… on a good day.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I don’t want to be another startup founder that tells you that everything is going great. We are funded by 500 Startups and most recently participated in Lightspeed Venture Partner’s prestigious summer program. Things are still hard. My professional life is hard and so is my personal life. I can relate with you.

The problem is, most people who are not founders don’t care how hard it is. Investors don’t care, my girlfriend don’t care. I don’t tell my parents how hard it is because they would probably just tell me to quit and get a real job. No one really cares.

Which is why I think about Ben Horowitz blog post almost every day “Just win.”

That might be the best CEO advice ever. Because, you see, nobody cares. When things go wrong in your company, nobody cares. The press doesn’t care, your investors don’t care, your board doesn’t care, your employees don’t care, even your mama doesn’t care. Nobody cares.

And they are right not to care. A great reason for failing won’t preserve one dollar for your investors, won’t save one employee’s job, or get you one new customer. It especially won’t make you feel one bit better when you shut down your company and declare bankruptcy.

All the mental energy that you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one, seemingly impossible way out of your current mess. It’s best to spend zero time on what you could have done and all of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares, just run your company.

Meet Professor X, aka 500 SuperMentor Hong Quan (@hongdquan). An entrepreneur and recruiter building cars and startups, Hong has even hired a real honest-to-goodness rockstar (#3 on Billboard charts).  He uses his superpowers of recruiting and abilities to read and influence human minds to bring young Startupers in to the 500 Institute.  After hand-picking a game development team for John Romero, Hong worked in Corp Dev for Gazillion Entertainment, resulting in the Lego Universe game and an upcoming Marvel MMO. Similar to his namesake, Hong rolls around in a vehicle of his own creation and is going bald working on Outgrown.it.

Over the past year I’ve seen 67 startups in the accelerator program,  ~25 co-working at 444 Castro and another ~25 Clients for Quantum Startups. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1) Dave makes starting a startup easier.

I’m not going to rehash how it’s gotten cheaper to start now versus 10 years ago. I ain’t talking about how gender and race play into who gets funded or Uncrunched. I won’t mention the proliferation of incubators, accelerators, hairy angel investors and startup weekends. But I will say that Dave is a one-man army making startups as egalitarian as possible, funding anyone and everyone from anywhere and everywhere. No longer do you think “nerd frat house” at a gathering of Founders, now it’s more like United Nations junior council at 500 Startups. Dave’s not practicing affirmative action or anything like that, but he’s as close as you get to a meritocracy in VC.

Now everyone can play the game and no one has any excuses.

2) Dave makes hiring for startups harder.

The biggest downside of point one is point two. You can’t hire anyone. You can call yourself a hustler until the cops come, but technical talent is still the demand-side. While the money flow is going to dry up (maybe soon) it’s still easier to raise money than to hire talent. Sean Parker calls it a “diffusion of talent” – too few Developers spread amongst too many startups. VCs on Sand Hill are (meta alert) staffing up their recruiting teams to recruit recruiters to join their portfolio companies! Any Engineer worth her GitHub account is starting a company. Why should they join your startup and take 1% when they can go on a 48-hour coding binge and call themselves a Founder? Forget the fact that the first 12-18 months till funding is the HARDEST part. It’s more fun to call yourself a CEO! I did this (again) the first quarter of this year. I had a decent idea, had a team building it and even got some money committed. But then I quit. Why?

Because I’d rather be part of a winning team than be the captain of a sinking ship.

3) Dave makes being a VC really hard.

When planning out my second decade in Silicon Valley, I would earn a desk on Sand Hill Road in years 17-20. It seems like such a cushy job, talking to Founders all day, passing judgment on their foolhardy “visions” and cashing fat checks from the “2 and 20”. Turns out Dave is one hard working motherfather. I bet that no other VC puts in more hours than Dave, and the dude travels like a Lonely Planeteer on crack! I honestly couldn’t keep the same schedule. I also lack the knowledge and experience that Dave brings to bear when evaluating Founders. And I have to be on my best behavior when I hear some of these ridiculous “Entrepreneurs” pitching unimaginative copycat startups. No wonder the guy curses so much.

Great VCs work their butts off for Founders. Maybe I’ll stick to recruiting.

I don’t mean to sound like Eminem professing his love for Dr. Dre on the Chronic. I’m trying to learn this game like everyone else. But looking back on this past year, in comparison to the decade before, why am I doing so much better?

All I can tell myself is this: It’s the people stupid.

Work with amazing people. Surround yourself with the best people you can. You will become like them. Don’t hang out with wannabes and whiners. They will drag you down. Stop playing startup and build stuff people actually want. Make things of value. Build companies of consequence. Stop wasting time. Have fun!