On Thursday, TEC got locked up. We trekked  to Alcatraz aka “The Rock” for some jailhouse fun. As a San Francisco native, others were surprised to find that I had never been to the island. This is a prime example of how True has opened new doors, and changed my experience of a city I have called home for 21 years. I throughly enjoyed seeing the old cell blocks and listening to the audio tour, complete with expert narration and exciting audio dramatizations. I really did not expect to appreciate Alcatraz like I did. Listening to the many founders talk about their experiences with San Francisco has revealed a new side of the city, and redefined my San Francisco experience forever.

Word of the Week: Proximity. From being in the true office, the offices of Bloomspot of Voxpop, being close to the action creates a total experience. Living and breathing the bay area tech scene has changed me more than any new skill, fresh idea, or amazing speaker ever could. With that said, I’m very interested in how the remote interns connected with their environments, and what impact not being in the Bay Area made on their summer.

Song of the Week: Deadbeat Summer by Neon Indian. not at all descriptive of my summer, I’ve been working really hard. In fact, I did not go to see Neon Indian perform in Northbeach (a neighborhood in SF) this evening because I am working on my various projects.

For the first time, my week started with the launch of a game in sight. Voxpop had produced countless games, but this it the first title that I’ve been a part of. I feel that nothing motivates like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Wrapping up one project also means that I have more time to spend on other projects, so I’ve been doing a bit more trivia writing in addition to compiling game images. I’ve also been given the responsibility of training and evaluating new writers. Assigning tasks and keeping the momentum of the project up has been a primary concern. It seems that any small company like Voxpop must constantly be shifting focuses and juggling tasks. I find myself jumping from one project to another every few minuets. Learning how to transition and keep my priorities in order has been hard. On key element  is understanding what tasks are on the critical path. Sequencing completions and buffering for setbacks is a huge par of running a productive team, the guys at Voxpop are experts.

Thursday, I finally got to see some of the game mechanics that the engineering team had been working on. Also, one of the team redesigned the Voxpop.tv site, and made it look 100% better. There really was a sense of unity in the office, and that morning crystallized the essence of working in a startup into a few great hours. In the afternoon, the founders treated everyone to Jamba Juice. It was one of the best days in the office.

Unfortunately, Friday was very different. I missed out on the TEC meet-up in Palo Alto because I had to have my wisdom teeth removed. All 4 of them. I had put it off for too long, and moving the appointment was impossible. I woke up early, got to the oral surgeon, and that’s pretty much the last thing I remember. Recovering is taking far too long, I’m ready to be back on my feel and making the most of my last 2 weeks at Voxpop.

Son of the Week: Pulling Teeth by Green Day. One of the first albums I ever likes, this track was a skipper. Is it still? You’ll have to listen.

Work of the Week:  Wisdom. Who need it anyways?

Until next time,

-Jacob

In other non-soccer news, we here at TEC have been chatting a lot about company culture. Having read Raising the Bar by Gary Erickson, and reading Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness this past week, maintaining a good culture seems to take constant vigilance. One of the reasons that so many successful startups are founded by friends is that culture may have already been established. Friends don’t need a Myers-Briggs test to evaluate psychological preference, or why people make the choices they do.

The culture at Voxpop is very positive and open. The office layout has the desks situated in a large U shape, so everyone is facing their coworkers. Obviously, as a company grows it becomes impractical to have everyone in the same room. However, at this point in the game Voxpop benefits from the close quarters. Office culture is set by the founders, who arrive earlier and leave later than anyone else. Clearly, the guys are conscious of the example they set and the ethos they create in the office. This past friday we had a Voxpop lunch with everyone in the office that day, all six of us. The bosses treated us to burgers at Grumpy’s, mine was delicious. We talked over the really important issues of the day, like Lebron’s press carnival and the first season of Breaking Bad. I left the meal fully stuffed but also feeling closer to my coworkers. This type of outing is what makes starups great, but is very hard to scale with the company. People like  Gary Erickson and Tony Hsieh understand this, make culture a priority.

On Thursday night I went to Popscene at 330 Ritch street (near the SF True Office) to see Marina and the Diamonds preform. Marina was great, the drummer dragged through every tune. All-in-all it was a good show.

Song of the week: I Am Not a Robot by Marina and the Diamonds. Also, check out ‘The Shoes’ or ‘Penguin Prison’ remixes.

Word of the Week: Stekelenburg. This proper noun would not fly in scrabble, but luckily I make the rules here. Maarten Stekelenburg had the unfortunate honor of giving up the goal that lost Holland the world cup. It was not his fault, and I feel for him. Here’s a little love being sent in his direction.

I just can’t keep on like this.

I must blog about soccer.

Somehow, I have made it this far without even mentioning the WC. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a huge soccer fan. I follow professional soccer year round every year, every major league, every tournament, not just the World Cup. This World Cup has been nothing short of incredible. All anyone can hope for, on top of the success of their country’s team, is for some good soccer and some good drama. I am happy with the way the US team played, despite our exit. Good soccer has been provided by the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and a host of other nations. And oh, the drama.

First, we have the French (who only got to the WC because of a blatant Henry handball) repeatedly embarrassing themselves on and off the field  heading home disgraced. The paper  L’Equipe called it “A State Scandal” and President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to investigate the failure.

Next, the reigning champions Italy were dismantled like the aging machinery they are. Unable to make it out of the group stage, I could not be happier. You think the acting and whining has been annoying this world cup? Just imagine if the Italians were still involved.

Another highlight was the most overpaid Simpson’s character ever, Christiano Ronaldo, failing to have any impact on Portugal’s games. Hopefully his blimp-sized ego will deflate and allow the poor people of Madrid to once again see the stars in the night sky.

Then there’s Brazil. The Samba boys were bounced by the Dutch, and the showed their class by diving, whining, and stamping on their opponents. They might have been the most anti-football team of the tournament, as least when it comes to fair play. I hope the Brazilian soccer superiority myth is seen to be officially debunked, or at least makes it on to “Mythbusters” (I love those guys)

The English did about as well as they should have. The English have an inflated sense of importance in world soccer because of the high-profile English league and unmatched star power (why was Becks there again?). A small nation, they will never be a dominant world cup team. That said, the English press and fans will continue to hold the England team to unreasonably high standards, so every tournament will feel like a failure to them.

The Germany-Argentina game presents me with the opportunity to contrast two stylistic approaches to soccer. The German team is a nice mix of youth and experience, full of stars but balanced and without an egomaniac (ie C. Ronaldo). They built a successful campaign by melding a group of youngster (who had won the u-21 world cup) with players who had played in 2006, and creating a team. They are more than the sum of their parts.

Argentina had a rough qualifying campaign, but they they were fantastic when the tournament began. Most impressive was that they were getting goal from everyone except Messi (probably the world’s best player). Maradona looked at over 120 players for years to fill the 26 spots in South Africa. Owing to that, there was very little squad continuity over the qualifying games, and they did not really ‘gel’ as a team. But no one could fault Argentina’s credentials.

Having a lot of great players is wonderful, but at the end of the day a soccer team has 11 players on the field. No team has 11 players like Messi. Perhaps coach Maradona chose players of supreme skill (like himself) to build a team of technically brilliant footballers. Without a brilliant right back, he chose to play someone out of position rather than have a less skilled player at that position.

The two approaches, organic team formation vs a patchwork of brilliant pieces, provide an example for all teams. Both play a role in crating and scaling a company. Time and time again I’ve heard speakers at TEC, including Tony Conrad and Toni Schneider, speak about founding companies with friends or former associates. At Voxpop, two of the founders have been lifetime friends. This falls under the organic formation category, and ideally  these people would be the creme de la creme too.

As a team grows in size, it requires people who fit the system. Often times the best credentials don’t mean the best fit. Patching a five star player into the fabric of the team may look great, but not hold up under pressure. Jared Kim of WeGame explained that in the hiring process it’s best to pass on someone if you sense that they aren’t right, even if they have an impressive resume and loads of experience. There is an art to building a functioning and efficient team.

With the semis and final still to come, I can say that this has been the best world cup of my life. The three best teams and Uruguay have made it, and I couldn’t be more excited to be a soccer fan.

Song of the week: Einmal In Der Woche Schreien

Saluting the demolition of Argentina, here is a song by German artist Siriusmo. It translates to “Yelling once a Week” or something. Look it up, I don’t know German.

Word of the Week: Goal

I’ve got a very concrete goal in the office this week (And no, it’s not to sneak out and watch the semis). In soccer like in life, the goals are always there. You can see them, plan how to get there, but it’s always takes a lot of hard work and a little luck to get a good one.

Until next time,

-Jacob

I can’t promise the latter, but here’s what I’ve been up to:

At Voxpop, I’m taking on more responsibility. I’d say it’s hit and miss. While sometimes I’m completing tasks correctly (10/10) other times I’m more like a 4/10 on the ‘intern success-o-meter’. If you want the truth, ask the Boss. One major new responsibility I have been given is training the temporary offsite help Voxpop requires. As a small startup that can fit all of its employees in the same room (or even the same elevator), outsourcing is essential for meeting deadlines. I’ve found that it is incredibly important to put the effort into step one when directing other people’s work. A clear and precise powerpoint with examples and screen shots wherever possible, coupled with a thorough phone conversation is the way to go. Even if it means that a project takes more time getting out of the starting blocks, the overall speed of an efficient team will more than make up for the slow start.

View From the Office

Outside of the office, the major event of the week was GigaOM’s ‘Structure’ on the campus of UCSF Mission Bay. I was completely blown away by the presentations and panels, and I reveled in the professional tech environment. It will be impossible for me to convey the breadth of ideas or the depth of understating on display at the event, so I’m going to merely outline of the most relevant points. Please note that I’m barely skimming the surface of my notes.

Not that Kind of Structure!

• Legacy apps will be unlikely to move into the Cloud
• Big Data problems are and will continue to be a problem for the Fortune 1000 companies.
• Acording to Erich Clementi, General Manager of Enterprise Initiatives at IBM, the Cloud’s arrival is akin to the beginning of the Web in terms of impact. (It was a cloud computing conference after all)
• Jonathan Heiliger of Facebook says to startups “you can never thin about scale to early”

My general impressions (shocked and awed) held true for all of the many speakers. ‘Wow, these guys really know their stuff’ was constantly going through my head. Before going into the conference, I knew a fair amount about cloud computing and had a general idea of the stature and capabilities of many of the speakers. But gee-whiz are they smart. Much of the technical jargon was over my head, but the astounding level of intelligence in the hall left a permanent impression.

One other major happening of my last week was getting to spend time with my good friend Justin White. A phenomenal athlete at Bard college (very rare), Justin is doing a ‘West Coast’ tour of SF and Washington state before heading back to New York city to begin work guiding underprivileged youth towards college and beyond. Best of luck to him.

Song of the week: you might have been able to guess..

Word of the week: Cloud. Yea I admit a laps in creativity. But I would like to evaluate if the cloud will truly make computing easier for the common user, staying behind the scenes, or come to the fore and just make things cloudy. We’ll see.

Until next time

-Jacob

Outside the office, I had a personal victory in the “Bike Wrappers” scavenger hunt. The event went down like this: at 7:30 on Tuesday night, @BikeWrappers sent out GPS coordinates via Twitter. Hints for the locations followed, suggesting that swag was being stashed at several locations throughout San Francisco. The hint I followed said “for Location #3: House has eight sides to it. Check up on the stairs…” After looking up the location on google maps, and figuring that there weren’t too many octagonal buildings at Lands End, I hopped on my bike and raced to the location. Boy did my quads burn! I can’t believe Tony Conrad swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles, and then ran a marathon. These True guys are nuts; I barely made it 5 miles on my bike. But luckily that was as far as I needed to go for my event, and no one beat me to the punch. To see me claim my prize, check out the video (I was a little out of breath) Bike Wrappers Scavenger Hunt

This week’s word is ‘Grey’

In many ways, the startup world is a world of grey (not unlike living in the Richmond District). It helps to be comfortable with the undefined, thrive while striving for a hazy and variable goal. Oh, and “grey haired execs kill startups” – anonymous

Song of the week is “Empathy” from the most recent Crystal Castles album. The second self-titled album has more of a pop aesthetic than their debut, while retaining the distorted drums sound, glitchy synth bleeps, and occasion frantic scream.

Until next time,

-Jacob

My name is Jacob Hartog, and I am extremely excited to begin my TEC adventure. As a student of psychology at Bard college, I have taken a different path to TEC than many of my colleagues. I grew up here in the City, and my interests in technology and innovation has always seemed as natural as my love of good burritos. And yes, we call it ‘The City’ because we’re smug.

My first week went by in a flash. Not so long ago I was bored, waiting for the 2 major events of the summer to begin: TEC and the WC. I am a huge soccer fan, during the year I captain the Men’s team at Bard. Those who know me will understand that I’ve been eagerly awaiting the chance to see some team (any team!) dethrone Italy since 2006, and that nothing could possibly supersede the World Cup. But then I walked into the offices of Voxpop…

Voxpop.tv creates flash based pop-culture trivia games for big time publishers. These games reside on Facebook, and are part of the growing social gaming phenomenon. From a publisher’s perspective, Voxpop allows an established print or online publisher to access a new space, and keep up with the evolution of media. For the user, the games are light, fun, and seemingly endless. Imagine my surprise when, after a couple hours of training, I was already working on the same tasks as the founders of the company, and being useful!

The all-hands-on-deck attitude at Voxpop engenders a unified team spirit, and the kind of team in which no person is above or below any task. Never have I found myself doing busy work, or just slogging though boring tasks. The incredible opportunity to learn from experienced entrepreneurs means that I need to listen hard and strive to see the bigger picture of the company.

To wrap up my first post, I want to leave you all with a word and a song.

The word: Pivot

Repeated many times this week, pivot refers to the ability to react and change. This is based on a being nimble and flexible, adjectives that do not describe large companies nearly as well as they address the startups.

The Song: “Dance Yrslf Clean” by LCD Soundsystem. The gradual build and eventual ‘drop’ gets me jazzed every time, I listened the album all week to and from Voxpop

Until next time,

-Jacob