You may already know (and love) timehop, a simple but deeply powerful daily email answering the question “what did you do this day last year?”

In a world focused on real time, we believe there’s an untapped opportunity in the past. We’re building timehop into the best way of recording, remembering, and reconnecting around our digital histories. The data exhaust of today’s services can tell your life story, but so far this data remains disaggregated and silo’d across devices and services. Timehop is a powerful product that brings together all your content into a single re-experience moment.

Timehop started as 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, a fun hack that Benny and I built at foursquare’s first ever hackathon back in February. For several months, the product was on autopilot as Benny and I went through Techstars focused on our core product, Friendslist. But each morning I’d wake up and check the tweets and emails about 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo and curse myself at the money we were paying to send all the emails with no end in sight. Eventually, we started to realize there was something “big” in this “small” product.  Long before the internet existed, people have kept diaries and taken photographs. They do this to document their lives and acknowledge the passing of time. Timehop taps into that same powerful deeply human desire for self-documentation and the resulting nostalgia.

I’ll give more of the backstory of how this all came together at a later time, but for now let me just say how happy I am to be working with two of the best tech startup investors: Bryce Roberts from OATV and Andrew Parker from Spark Capital.

These two firms complement each other perefectly. OATV’s focus on data and self tracking is exemplified by its investments in Foursquare, RunKeeper, bitly and chartbeat. And Spark’s focus on content is exemplified by its investments in Twitter, Tumblr, and Foursquare.  Timehop is about both: content and data.

Bryce and Andrew are each amazing in their own ways. Bryce is super smart (and all that other good stuff) but what I truly love about Bryce is this: he’s a person first and an investor second. That’s a rarity and I sleep well knowing he’ll be by our side through thick and thin. Last but not least, Andrew is a razor sharp product thinker with a rare mix of academic intelligence and human intelligence. He’s truly a pleasure to work with.

We also have an incredible collection of angel investors: Dennis Crowley, Naveen Selvadurai, Alex Rainert, Steve Martocci, Jared Hecht, Rick Webb and Kevin Slavin.

I could write a novel about each of these guys and why they’re awesome. But for now I’ll leave it at this:  I couldn’t be more psyched about the amazing group of people backing us and the exciting opportunity that lies ahead.

Right now we have a small team of hotshots: Benny Wong (our CTO) came from Gilt Groupe where he single-handedly build the entire Gilt City product and then built the engineering team around it too. He’s a true Ruby on Rails master. Rachel Nash (our lead designer) came from The Barbarian Group and before that Big Spaceship. And then there’s me (handling business/press/product/taking out the trash etc) who was formerly doing product management for a bunch of awesome startups and launching awesome subway apps. 

With this funding, we’re looking to add two or three engineers to our team. If you’ve ever wanted to join a small and passionate team building a product that people love, let’s talk. Digital history hasn’t been done right and we’re the team to do it. We’ve got a knack for making awesome products, backing from all the right investors, and a giant opportunity in front of us: a chance to define an entirely new product category.  Let’s blow this out of the water. Get in touch:  jwegener@gmail.com

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• All accelerator programs are not the same
• The Three Types of ‘Computer’ People

[continued from chapter 4]

A recap: We came into Techstars convinced that our MVP (minimal viable product) was just a rebuild of Facebook’s Group feature with the right messaging/landing page on top of it to make it fit the classifieds use case.  If Janelle’s List worked once, all we had to do was find a thousand Janelle’s to host their own list on our platform and we’d quickly be at a massive scale.

And in theory the most beautiful part about the product is that it should be viral! Connector type people who want to play Craig will sign up and invite hundreds of friends into their list.  ”Why will they do this?” people asks.  ”Ego, pride, wanting to play God, wanting to help their friends, wanting to be a big deal”

But it quickly becomes clear this wasn’t going to be as easy as it seemed. Nobody identifies themselves as a “connector” and few people seem interested in doing the heavy lifting of running their own marketplace site. So it’s back to the drawing board. What are we building, and what are we trying to accomplish?

Several folks identify with the pain of playing the middleman. We hear the same thing over and over “I get so many inbound opportunities and emails for people…i’m constantly playing middleman, I’d love a tool to help me with that”

Which brings us to chapter five.  We start sketching out that tool — a tool to help middleman better connect their friends and solve crowded inbox syndrome.

Maybe we build the “tripit for opportunities” — you forward things to another email address and they sit on your “shelf” where you can figure out what to do with them next. Of course this means we’re building a workflow enhancement tool, which isn’t really exciting or clunky. And it seems clunky — I’m not sure the medicine is better than the disease.

Another mentor wants a tool that lets him send opportunities to his portfolio companies.  Right now, he is using a hack. He’s using several different yahoo groups to send around resumes/jobs to different groups of people.  Friendslist should be the “platform for sharing opportunities” => well that sounds compelling!  If foursquare is a vertical social network for location, and foodspotting is the same for food photos, and plancast is for plans, then our site is for opportunities!  ”I don’t know how it’s a business, but I’d use the product” he says.

A third mentor wants us to automatically figure out who to send inbound opportunities to (automatic friend groups) and says if he has to do any work or go to another site, that’s not useful.  Yet another wants to define his audiences carefully when sharing opportunities — essentially google circles. And another mentor wants to opt-in to hearing about certain people’s opportunities (a la twitter follow), not have information thrust at him like email today…so how the heck could that work?  A double opt-in follow model?!

Somewhere along the way one of the investor mentors gets really excited too: “This is BIG guys..this is the opportunity graph”. And we spend hours discussing whether the headline for the site should be “We help you share great opportunities” or “We help you find great opportunities.” It sounds completely absurd in retrospect, but we were too far down the rabbit hole to see it.

Weeks fly by and we’re no closer to releasing a product or having a solution we’re confident in. We meet with Nicole Giaros, who runs the adminstrative side of Techstars out of Boulder. It’s one of our most important meetings because we know she’s a down to earth “normal” (ie not an early adopter) which means she’ll have a good perspective.

Nicole listens intently as we explain everything. And then she says the smartest thing we’ve heard in weeks: ”It sounds to me like you’re making a something for somebody to do something.” 

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• All accelerator programs are not the same
• The Three Types of ‘Computer’ People

When we last left off, our protagonist’s existential crisis had taken a turn for the wor… oops, wrong story.

To recap: conversations with Techstars were going strong. I was more excited than ever about Friendslist (the build-your-own craigslist that would kill craigslist). And also about the Techstars program thanks to an inspiring conversation with an alum.

In early December, Benny and I got invited in for our final Techstars interview with David Cohen and David Tisch. We met at the Empire Hotel in midtown on their enclosed rooftop which proved to be, um, rather chilly. As we gathered in a small circle to chat with the Davids, Bloomberg TV’s lights shone brightly on us and the boom mics hovered intrusively from above. WE did my best to ignore them as we laid out everything about Friendslist — the inspiration, the concept, the execution, the someday press headlines announcing the product launch.

At some point, the Davids excused themselves to hold a private huddle in the back. When they returned, the conversation drew to a close and Tisch asked nonchalantly “Do you want to do TechStars?” “Yeah, of course.” And then Tisch shot back “Well then you’re in!”

HOLY S***. YES! The next few weeks were a blur as Benny and I wrapped up our previous engagements and prepared for the start of the program. Benny gave his two weeks at Gilt Groupe, and I let GroupMe know that I’d be finishing my contract work with them at the end of the month. Benny and I were super excited, especially following a conference call with all the other teams.

TechStars began in January and things quickly got busy. Each day was packed with mentors meetings, lectures, Bloomberg interviews, and group dinners. And lots and lots of pitching. TechStars puts a massive emphasis on delivering a good pitch, a concise explanation of what your product and company does. Mine started as something like this: “Friendslist helps connector types build their own craigslist to let their friends share jobs, employees, apartments and more.” After my first pitch, Tisch stopped me and said “How many people in here are connectors?” Zero hands went up. “There are people in this audience who are your target market. And none of them are identifying with your pitch” he said bluntly. It was a harsh, but necessary grounding.

Now, TechStars does a great job of helping refine a pitch to focus on two main things: the value you’re promising, and how that value is delivered. For example OnSwipe’s pitch might be “OnSwipe makes content look beautiful on the iPad. We do so by giving powerful tablet friendly publishing tools to publishers of all sizes.”

Our pitch eventually evolved to “Friends come to you looking for things: jobs, employees, apartments and more. Friendslist helps you help them.”  People identified much better with this messaging. Although nobody self-identified as a connector, everyone had experienced the friend asking about an apartment. Or sending them the resume of a friend looking a new position.

But our refined pitch still avoided the real issue at heart: what is the product that delivers on that promise??

“Friendslist is a platform that lets you build and run your own classifieds site. Your friends will join your online community and post their needs there! It’s like a private Craigslist where you play Craig!”  But nobody really understood why they would want to do that. “It’s just like running a meetup group” we’d explain, “and just like meetup, 1% of our users will be superusers and run groups that help the other 99%. They’ll do it for ego, pride, a desire to play God and own a corner of the internet, and of course a desire to help their friends!”

It was still a tough sell. “How can I use this to sell a couch?” asked Naveen from foursquare. “Well, um, you’ll create your own marketplace list and you’ll invite all your friends to it, and um, then you’ll post about the couch and then someone who wants a couch will see it.” It felt like a terrible explanation.

[to be continued]

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• All accelerator programs are not the same
• The Three Types of ‘Computer’ People

“Sa-ke Bomb!  Sa-ke Bomb!” shouted the coeds at Miyake, the popular Stanford hangout.  I poked at my sushi and tried to not think about the news that would arrive any second. Finally my pocket vibrated.  ”I’m sorry to say we decided not to fund you guys.” read the email.  ”Ultimately what put us off was that it seemed to us that the functionality of this app wouldn’t be different enough from Facebook to overcome the advantage Facebook has in having all the users, already on the site.”

The rejection was painful but expected. To be honest, ‘painful’ isn’t even the right word.  Frustrating. YC claims to pick teams over ideas. But this decision certainly didn’t feel like it aligned with that mantra.  It felt like ten minutes simply wasn’t enough time to explain the concept fully and they rejected us based on the concept — and that was frustrating.

I feel asleep that night in a bad mood and woke up a few hours later and pecked out a lengthy rebuttal to Paul Graham.  I knew the decision was final, but I couldn’t resist. I flew back home a few days later and celebrated Thanksgiving with the family.

Meanwhile all hope was not lost, as conversations with David Tisch, the managing director of TechStars NYC, seemed to be going well.  We first met in September at Grey Dog, his usual coffee shop in Union Square. I told him I was considering applying to TechStars and had an idea I was excited about — and he got excited.  I described the idea for FriendsList as best I could — I think I described it as somewhere between an Aardvark and a Craigslist and walked him through an early deck [below]

“Great Team, Solid idea, Big market.  I like you guys.” he said as we parted ways.  And I liked him.

We sat down again with Tisch in December at Joe the Art of Coffee.  Walking into that meeting, I wasn’t sure TechStars would add much value for us. I personally didn’t feel like I needed the validation from an accelerator program. And besides, I already knew a lot of the advisors in the program, so would the ‘network’ really benefit me all that much?

The most compelling part, for me personally, was the structure — the 13 weeks of intense focused work and progress.  I also liked the idea of a class of peers all working out of a shared office to get their startups off the ground.  And I recognized that the program’s structure would provide the cushion and encouragement that Benny needed to quit his job at Gilt Groupe — and that was really important.

Tisch sold us hard on the value of TechStars — and he did a fantastic job.  We came out of that meeting more pumped than ever before — both about TechStars and about FriendsList.

To understand what happened next, you’ll need to know that at the time, I was working with the GroupMe team helping design their version 2.0 iPhone app.  Two things are special about GroupMe. First, GroupMe’s founder Steve Martocci, was formerly at Gilt Groupe with Benny. Second, David Tisch is an investor in the company. That meant Steve had a unique vantage point on both me and Benny. And equally important Tisch greatly trusted his opinion.

When I arrived back at the GroupMe office following our coffee meeting, I found Steve on the phone with…you guessed it, David Tisch.  Steve happily gave his opinion on Benny and me. I believe his words were “You can’t pick a better team”

Over the next few weeks, I found myself continually bumping into TechStars mentors like Eric Litman and Steve Cheney.  I was impressed by the reach of the program and the loyalty and excitement of the mentors.  But to be honest, what really tipped me over the edge was a brief interaction with an alum.

At the time there were only two TechStars companies in New York. So when I noticed someone with a TechStars sticker at Nightowls, I introduced myself.  Sam Herbert is the CTO of ADstruc which had been part of the Boulder TechStars program. Sam and I talked for a while and he had truly great things to say about the program. But I’ll never forget the last thing he said as we parted ways that evening: “TechStars is just really, really fun” — and a mile-wide grin spread across his face.

I was sold.

[to be continued]

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• All accelerator programs are not the same
• The Three Types of ‘Computer’ People

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• The Three Types of ‘Computer’ People

There are three types of programmers.

Nope, this isn’t the beginning of a joke about binary numbers, I promise!  Instead it’s the conclusion I reached after a great discussion with my friend Ben Fisher about programmers and technical co-founders.

When hunting for a technical co-founder, don’t assume that anyone who writes code is a good fit to build your product. There are many variations in skills, attitudes, and risk appetites among programmers and getting the right person on board from the start is really important.

So with this in mind, let’s discuss the three types (but don’t forget these are simply broad generalizations):

Computer Scientists

Ever meet a programmer without a personal Website — or any online presence whatsoever?  Perplexing, right?

These types of programmers generally dislike gadgets and mainstream technologies. Instead, their interests run narrow and deep: they enjoy solving really tough technical problems. It’s possible they’ve never done Web development, instead focusing on engineering research or things like machine learning, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and vision detection. They’re probably heavily entrenched in academia or an R&D environment.

The Good: They’re really really smart people and they have excellent pedigrees that might impress investors. If they have experience with Web development, they’re probably focused on very specific back-end engineering challenges like search, scalability, storage, or latency.  In which case they’re probably working at Google, Microsoft, or another large technology company.

Computer scientists seem like natural fits for co-founders. After all, if they’re smart enough to build an image recognition algorithm then building a social networking site should be a cinch, right?

The Bad: Consumer startups rarely face interesting technical problems in the early days.  Instead, they take lots of grunt work and repetition.  And these types of programmers will be bored to death at the thought of doing mundane tasks like building a signup process, dealing with forgotten passwords, or dealing with session management.

These types also tend to be risk-averse folks who just want a stable paycheck.  And they may lack a strong sense of how to design a product that people will actually want to use.  This means they’ll need to be managed by a person with a strong design sense.

Software engineers

These are programmers who pride themselves on writing beautiful code. Sounds great, right? But remember that your end users will never see the code behind your product. A coders who prioritizes beautiful code is serving the wrong customer: s/he is making things for himself or herself (of which there is one) rather than for the end users (of which there are hopefully many many more). The goal of a startup is to build something people want, and writing beautiful code is of secondary importance.

The Good: They’ll write great code that lasts a long time.

The Bad: Several times I’ve seen developers so obsessed with writing beautiful code that it lead to the detriment of the product experience; they often have perfectionist tendencies that will slow down progress. Early stage startups need to rapidly iterate until they find product-market fit, which often means neglecting to finish that last 10% (which naturally takes 90% of time). Perfectionists have trouble cutting corners.

Remember, the most important product a startup can make isn’t pretty code.  It’s a product people use.

Hackers

These are programmers who have a strong product focus. They see programming as means to an end: ‘hacking’ stuff together to fill a need in the world and serve people.

The Good: These types typically have a solid online presence with lots of projects, hacks, and experiments that they proudly display.  As one friend put it, these are “people who do open-source stuff.” They’re usually dripping with product sense, and always sharing their thoughts on which products they love using and which they hate.

The Bad: Often they no have formal computer science training but are instead self-taught.  In many cases their work may be quick and dirty — prioritizing progress over polish.

Which Make the Best Co-founder?

As always, it depends.  If you’re a first time entrepreneur, you may not even have a choice – beggars can’t be choosers!

But in general a hacker is best because they’ll rapidly build prototypes and iterate. Quick and dirty is fine at the beginning.  Then when you raise money you can hire software engineers to focus on writing good code.

Computer scientists can also be a useful part of a founding team if your startup will rely on a strong technology advantage (such as a unique algorithm or processing engine). But even then, you’ll want to complement these folks with hacker-types who understand how to make a usable product.

In an ideal world, you’ll find a hybrid Hacker / Software Engineer. These talented folk will be able to rapidly hack together your prototype, then architect and build the real version, and then build and lead a technology team.  They’ll write both quick-and-dirty code and well-written code — and they’ll perfectly balance progress and perfection.

If you find one of these, grab hold and don’t ever let go.

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• All accelerator programs are not the same

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• All accelerator programs are not the same

The book’s title caught my eye instantly.  ”Visual Literacy”  Intriguing.  I took it home, and over the next few days, I learned just how blind I was to the art of visual communication. Completely illiterate.

The book begins with exercises: “By using four black squares of the same dimension, create a graphic image that best expresses the meanings of each of the following words:

order

increase

bold

congested

tension

playful

I gave it my best shot and then flipped the page, revealing sample answers from students at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Suddenly I realized just how illiterate I was.

I’ve since appreciated design more.  To further explore the importance of graphic design and visual communications, I dug up a few Exit Strategy NYC graphics.  I show our initial design attempts (done by yours truly).  At heart I’m a science/tech geek, so I’ll explain my inherently scientific thought process.  And then I show how a professional designer approached the same problem.

Exit Strategy Fans: enjoy this behind the scenes look!

Train Illustration.  How I approached the problem: Exit Strategy NYC shows subway riders which train door to use.  So each door needs an ‘on’ or ‘off’ state.  The MTA’s trains can be 10 cars, with 4 doors in each car.  That means 40 doors in a train.  We want the train to run vertically on the iPhone screen which is 460px high (it’s 480px minus 20px used by the time/battery/service strip at the top).  So dividing 460px by 40 doors means each door gets about 11px of space to indicate on or off.  With padding, there’s probably 5px of height for each door and 5px in between the doors.

Where I got stuck: 5px for a door isn’t large enough to stand out, even if it’s red and a few extra pixels wide.

How a graphic designer solved it: By making the train have a ‘slant’ to the side which increased the swatch of the door, allowing the red color to ‘pop’.  Also she made it 3D and beautiful.

Splash screen.  How I approached the problem: We wanted to communicate subway transit combined with the notion of exiting quickly. Inspired by an ‘exit’ sign, I attempted to overlay a transit like system on top of it. It’s hideous.

Where I got stuck: Everywhere! How could we possibly communicate something as intangible as “Which is the correct train door?” while keeping a transit theme.  Time to call in an expert.

How a graphic designer solved it: Sheer brilliance.  The zig-zag of the colored lines communicates subway lines.  These lines dump out at a subway door.  The ‘correct’ door is open with a silhouette of a running guy.  An arrow helps indicate that this is the right door. The entire image is done with bright and bold colors.

So if you’re wondering whether you really *need* that graphic designer — always lean towards ‘yes.’  They’ll bring a perspective to the product and the messaging that will pay for itself many times over.

Readers — have any embarrassing early design of your products you wish to share?

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• FriendsList is dead (but we’re very much alive!)

Many of you might have received an email about a birthday party scheduled for tonight.  Hopefully you’re not planning on coming because the party isn’t mine — it’s actually a humorous misunderstanding caused by an overly aggressive planning web service.

Perhaps you’re familiar with Plancast.com – ’foursquare for the future.’  Well, last week I received a facebook invite to my friend Madeline’s birthday party. The event was titled “My Birthday Extravaganza (i.e. Maddy boops is an old lady).”

When I RSVP’d for the event, Plancast scraped the event and added it to my profile.

Then it e-mail blasted this to all of my friends:

And at some point Plancast also announced the event from my twitter account.

Five different friends emailed me to ask about the event. Some were disappointed they weren’t explicitly invited (“no party invite? i’m hurt”)  Other expressed their regrets that they couldn’t make it.  And some were just confused (“I completely got all the way to adding the party to my calendar in outlook, when i finally realized that it wasn’t your birthday party and you’ve never once been called maddy boops or whatever in my hearing”).

This is partially a result of the confusing name of the event.  But it also caused by Plancast’s lack of focus around who actually planned the event.  In fact, on my Plancast profile page it proudly announced “You planned this!”  This isn’t an issue for large scale public events where the host doesn’t matter, but for private events the system is a little bit broken.

Regardless, I’ll be sure to let you all know when I have my own birthday extravaganza!

(P.S.  Did you notice the awesome picture at the top?  They’re binary candlesticks!! “The only birthday candle you’ll ever need. One candle with 7 wicks that you light depending on your age. Works for birthdays 1 through 127.”)

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• All accelerator programs are not the same

It’s been over six years since I graduated from FCS, a small and intimate Quaker high school near Philadelphia’s Main Line.  In that time, the country has been through several presidents, wars, terrorist attacks, and a recession.  In the technology world, dozens of startups have grown from idea to multi-million dollar acquisitions, and thousands of others have faded into obscurity.  In my own life, I’ve moved to NYC where I started and finished college, I’ve met thousands of people, cycled through different apartments, jobs, and friends.  My world view has changed radically.  But somehow FCS hasn’t changed a bit.

In a world where two years is considered a ‘long’ time to hold a job, FCS seems like an anomaly.  The place seems ageless.  The same faculty has been there for decades.  The same photographs, plaques and decorations are on the walls.  The classrooms look the same — the chairs and desks are in the same arrangements as the day I left.

In a world that seems to move a mile a minute, it’s nice to know that some things never change.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past)
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 5]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 4]
• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 3]
• All accelerator programs are not the same