EXCITING

Yes, excitement is a bit overrated; however, in the case of True University, it was awesome. A number of speakers took time in their presentations to address emerging markets, and the opportunities they are creating for entrepreneurs. One of the speakers even talked about “Big Data” and mentioned a number of Loggly’s competitors, which was quite entertaining. What could be more exciting than hearing Vivek Wadhwa reveal tantalizing secrets from his recent research about the venture capital industry and its players to a group of venture-funded startups?

CRAZY

Well, I think you’re crazy
I think you’re crazy
I think you’re crazy
Just like me
(Gnarls Barkley)

We’re all crazy, in our own way. Entrepreneurs are inherently crazy, and True University reinforced this belief. The buzz created by a group of startup engineers in a room discussing ideas for how to create a server with over 96GB of RAM was astonishing. Why push the limits? Oh, that’s right: because we’re entrepreneurs, and as Stephanie Zolayvar (a fellow TEC-ling) put it, “we can do anything.” If we can find a better way, we will (and we’ll probably play far too many video games in the process).

CHALLENGING

At an event with almost 200 extremely intelligent entrepreneurs, how could I choose who I would talk to? The challenge presented itself, and I fought back: I came up with a system. If someone wasn’t involved in a conversation already, I would start one with them. I started conversations with people I would normally have walked right by, and I think that True University was probably one of the only places where I felt that everyone was networking during the entire event. I have been to trade shows before, but never to an educational event, and it blew me away how open people were to discussing extremely sensitive details related to their companies. I heard about hiring, firing, success, failure, and much, much more – but only through the right questions asked at the right time. I feel like networking is an art, and True University was an event begging for mass-networking. It worked.

FUN

Somehow, in the midst of a flurry of activity (including running back and forth between rooms, fixing AV problems, never answering “I don’t know,” and making sure that everything went as planned), I stopped for a moment and realized how much fun I was having. I had just eaten lunch with Wade Roush on the first day of True University, and had a discussion about the state of Silicon Valley, as well as localization (and how far people would be willing to travel for an event). What could be better than lunch with a reporter from the industry that I will be working in within less than a year?

I can’t wait for next year’s True University – and I hope that I’ll still be able to attend, hopefully as an employee of a True-backed startup, or possibly even as the founder of my own!

Over the years, I have been an avid participant in focus groups, survey panels, feedback forums, and much, much more – and in doing so, I have learned immeasurable amounts about the average consumer. I decided that this week, rather than take the survey, I would give the survey. You are an extremely intelligent person - and you’re looking at the TEC blog, which presumably means that you’re interested in entrepreneurship.

I have a couple of surveys for you to choose from – but it would be awesome if you would answer both (if you think you’re up for the challenge).

Survey #1: “The Entrepreneur’s Book List”
Have a book that you’ve read that blew you away as an entrepreneur? Share it with us – we’d love to know what you’re reading!

We have read a number of books this summer, but likely missed quite a few that would be extremely valuable, and as readers of this blog, it is extremely likely that you know which books we should be reading!

Click here to recommend a book >>

Survey #2: “Awesome Web Tools”
Yes, you may shamelessly self-promote – or you can promote tools that you actually use every day (tools that someone else created).

Each of us has our own set of tools that we love to use, many of which are free (okay, because I’m cheap, all of mine are free – but maybe yours aren’t), but we rarely share our findings with others. Take this opportunity to share the tool you feel is the best, so we can all become a little bit more efficient in doing things on the internet.

Click here to recommend a web tool >>

So, now that you’re done with the surveys, head on over here to get your prize. Yes, that’s right – it’s an awesome bookmarklet. Use your arrow keys to control the ship, and press the spacebar to fire. Yes, you can now blow up the survey(s) you just took (or choose your favorite website and have at it).

Part of what I have been doing at Loggly is posting articles on our Twitter feed – and some of them have had some extremely cool tools/scripts, so I figured that I would use this blog post to show a few of them off:

21 Awesome JavaScript/Ajax Effects Every Web Developer Should Know: http://logg.ly/zoK

Need a break? World’s biggest Pacman game: http://logg.ly/zUX

Wiimote control on a webpage? Awesomeness with wii.js: http://logg.ly/Are

Like to learn? You’ll love this: http://logg.ly/ySu

Despise Flash? Convert to HTML5 with Swiffy: http://logg.ly/yCn

I hope you enjoy the links above – as well as the surveys. Thank you for participating – I’ll be posting the results next week!

We got to the park about an hour before the first pitch (7:15pm), and bought dinner. Mmm, there’s nothing like a “Crazy Crab” sandwich from the ballpark!

Go figure – seven other people had the same thing. Great minds think alike, eh?

(picture source: http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/N_duEepJN6ZwHyf_s6ZBZA?select=YFtF9F1A2SM3zoRwqlF9RQ)

All in all, the game was a great success, and was definitely a good bonding experience for the group. Final score: Giants 2 – Padres 1. Awesome game, awesome people, awesome experience.

Although the game was fun, I have to admit: I was a bit distracted. On Tuesday, I started working on a new project at Loggly, and I haven’t been able to concentrate on much else since then: codename Hoovalyzer.

What is it? I’m glad you asked!

Hoovalyzer will allow Loggly users to add a simple Javascript snippet to their website in order to collect Google Analytics-type data, but with much more custom functionality (and, hopefully, with more accuracy). I am currently working my way through learning the Google Charts API in order to generate graphs on-the-fly, as well as learning how to send and parse JSON using a number of different methods in combination with the Loggly API.

With a bit of luck, by the end of the day Wednesday, I’ll have an alpha version released on AppEngine, and will have the code up on Github (this will require a fairly large amount of luck though, since I haven’t even finished the backend code, let alone the UI).

Enough geeking out – back to business. I have also been working on a number of marketing projects for Loggly, including SEO/SEM testing, increasing our Twitter following, analyzing the effectiveness of different ad networks, finding industry-related press writers, and much, much more. I seem to pick up new projects each week, and never seem to actually “finish” any of them (which is fine with me – the more I have to do, the more productive I am).

With all of the above in mind, it is hard for me to believe that this program will be over in just three weeks, and that I will be going back to school full time not too long afterwards. Time really does fly when you’re having fun!

Since this week seems to have gone backwards (started the week at the end of a month, now back at the start of a month), I think I’ll write this post in reverse-chronological order.

This week, Loggly moved from 1st and Mission to Bush and Kearny – and that meant two days of solid packing and unpacking. I had expected that moving a startup would be relatively easy, but my experience proved otherwise. Yes, it was a two-day ordeal, but I guess we’re lucky that it wasn’t more than that (although I’m sure we’ll be looking for the bag of extra screws for one of the desks for quite a while). Aside from the griping and random lost articles, the move seemed to be a success. On the second day (Friday), we unpacked and re-built the office from the ground up. Now we’re on the eighth floor of an eight-floor building (without air conditioning), which showed its signs as being a bit uncomfortable at about 76º. I spent most of the day building desks, moving boxes, and setting up computers/equipment – not exactly in my job description; however, it was a good experience to be doing what everyone else in the office was doing at the same time.

I didn’t get anything done from my list of normal tasks at Loggly, so I feel like I have fallen a bit behind (and much of it I cannot do remotely, because it involves scripts/ssh keys that are on the local machines). Hopefully, on Tuesday, I’ll catch back up again.

On the first day of the move (Thursday), instead of coming in for work at Loggly’s old office, I spent the day with my fellow TEClings at the True office, and then for a trip to Alcatraz. On Wednesday, I had thrown out my lower back, so I spent most of Thursday standing and walking around (tried to limit my sitting as much as possible). The weather on Thursday was gorgeous, and I was ready for an awesome day out and about. After a few hours of speakers (both of whom were outstanding), we set out for Alcatraz, first by car, then by ferry. I attempted to video as much of the trip as possible – and that was good, since we learned, once we got to Alcatraz, that the winner of the video/commercial contest would be receiving an iPad 2 as a prize. In the past few weeks, I have learned that using the iPad 2 as a giveaway means that people pay attention (and that people are willing to do next to anything to get it).

I had a blast during the trip to Alcatraz. Something about pictures of empty prison cells makes me remember how easy it is to transpose someone’s image onto another picture in Photoshop… (this is a hint that you should expect to see pictures that are, let’s just say, “doctored,” on the next post)

Earlier in the week, I continued with my normal tasks at Loggly (which are rather abnormal, as they are a mix of business and product development), and enjoyed my work. With the two other interns at Loggly, I helped to release the first version of Hoovlet (available at http://hoovmarklet.appspot.com/), a bookmarklet that records the website you are currently on to your Loggly aggregated log feed. See a bug? Let me know – we’re still testing it out. Eventually, we’re going to remove the hard-coded login information and re-add authorization using oauth (the engineers at Loggly are still working on getting the bugs out of oauth for the servers though).

I hope that the above was entertaining (and that the backwards nature wasn’t too confusing). I hope that by the time I update next week, we have Hoovlet 0.2 released!

Oh, I almost forgot: GO GIANTS! (we’re going to see the game on Thursday night)

I heard a number of very interesting quotes over the course of the day, and I feel that sharing them will likely make understanding the experience a little bit easier.

“Just do it — entrepreneurs can do anything.”

Said by a fellow TECling (sp?), this quote was an outstanding representation of everything we have learned so far since starting at the True office a little over two weeks ago. Act now, apologize later. If a team puts their minds to a problem, it is likely that the problem will be solved (or, in this case, a group of students will end up playing ping pong in a room separate from the conference). Although we didn’t end up playing, we laughed about it for a few minutes, then got back to work.

“I despise trade shows.”

Two different people said this – and I was appalled. I’m fairly certain that these people are stuck working for companies that they do not like, or they are working in a position which does not suit them nearly well enough. Trade shows/conferences seem to be the hotbed for networking and innovation-sharing. How could someone despise something that provides so much opportunity? I attend a few conferences each year, including the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the Toastmasters International Conference (have attended the last couple of years), and a couple of others which I have attended once or twice. They’re all fun and interesting, and I definitely learn new things all the time from them.

“I’m quitting my job.”

Yes, that’s right. Someone at the conference revealed to me (after a long conversation) that they had decided “about twenty minutes ago” to quit their job and pursue their own startup. I was floored, a bit startled, and then in disbelief. After hearing this, I spent quite a while talking with the person and discussed their startup idea. The person had apparently been thinking about this for quite a while, as they had their idea very well developed already, although they were still missing some fairly major pieces. They had the team in mind, and knew what they were going after for the end-product. If that isn’t initiative, I don’t know what is.

“I’ve worked in the industry for over 20 years.”

20 years in a single industry is quite a while – especially 20 years in an internet-based industry. Considering that today’s incarnation of the “internet” has not been around for much longer than that, it seems to me that 20 years in internet services means that people in this category were easily some of the “founders” of the modern internet. I love talking to people who are in this position, as they have so many stories about early-stage startups, as well as so many stories about their own exploration on the web. I found a number of people in this situation the conference, and hope to stay in touch with them and learn more about their journeys.

That last comment goes for everyone I met at the conference today. I want to learn from everyone, and the more people I know, the more likely I am to learn something new.

Thank you to Om and the GigaOM team, as well as the True team, for allowing us TEClings to experience the Structure 2011 conference!

After Om, the prophet, spoke about the state of Silicon Valley and the “valuation situation,” it dawned on me that much of what I had learned about corporate valuation in classes, as well as from articles, really was a bunch of hoo-ha. As Om put it, “valuation is based on the insanity of someone else.” Beautifully said, and it makes perfect sense. It hadn’t dawned on me that the valuations which had been given to companies such as LinkedIn, Pandora, Solazyme, and others when they IPO’d (all within the last month or so) could be anywhere near what their actual value was. Thank you, Om, for enlightening the group!

Steve Jang, the inventor, spoke about a number of things related to Schematic Labs, a company that is working on developing mobile applications like “Soundtracking,” their first app, which allows users with iOS to “share the soundtrack to their life.” Steve also did something for the group that I had been hoping would happen for a while: he asked everyone in the room to expose their own startup idea as they introduced themselves (elevator pitch style, three sentences or less). The power of a group of entrepreneurs is astounding, and I wish that more groups of entrepreneurs would get together and iterate on startup ideas. Yes, the group could run into a problem with groupthink, but at the same time, I think that the results could be extraordinary. Thank you, Steve, for bringing the group together and teaching us that we all have the power to innovate.

The team from Kiip, the three musketeers, exposed their deepest darkest secrets about the company, and about its founding. Brian, now 20 years old, is probably the most exuberant entrepreneur I have ever met. His energy level is off the charts, and he claims that the energy is his “superpower.” (and I don’t doubt it!) Courtney and Amadeus spoke about the importance of role designation and final decision-making power in a founding team – probably one of the most important pieces of advice thus far. Working with friends is great, but only if a team can actually be productive and make game-changing decisions. Thank you, Brian, Courtney, and Amadeus for exposing the inner-workings of Kiip (as well as your experiences working with a team of friends).

My week at Loggly was awesome – I started off the week generating a spreadsheet of keywords to optimize for Loggly’s new website (SEO), and worked my way into coding both a Google Chrome extension and a “bookmarklet” by the end of the week (both in Javascript). I am realizing more and more that I love to code, and I love to create things, and that the internet is the perfect playground for me to do so in. I used to spend a lot of time coding, but I stopped when I started my Junior year of high school (because of the workload from school). Now that I have started again, it is very hard to stop. Over the next few weeks, I will hopefully be able to continue to stretch my coding knowledge and learn more about jQuery, JSON, and possibly even a bit of python.

In a couple of hours, I’ll be leaving my house to head to Chinatown to get Dim Sum (and then continue eating all afternoon, hopefully) with a group of TECers. Yes, there will be video. Yes, it will be hilarious.

I have a challenge for everyone who reads this post (in the spirit of Steve’s exercise): post an idea for a product/service that has not yet been created as a comment (this could be as simple as an automated squirrel-catcher, or as complicated as an algorithm to accurately predict how much someone will spend on a product, so that a company could capture 100% of their customers’ consumer surplus).

My name is Richard Berwick, and I am a senior in the Haas School of Business Undergraduate Program studying to receive a BS in Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley. I am a San Francisco native, and I grew up in the Inner Richmond district (apparently a rare trait).

First and foremost, I am an entrepreneur – for the past eight years, I have been running my own business buying and selling computers and parts, making websites, and doing local computer and electronics repair.

I have been a full-time student for as long as I can remember. I attended The Nueva School in Hillsborough for nine years (1995-2004), Lowell High School in San Francisco for four years (2004-2008), City College of San Francisco for two years (2008-2010), and then transferred to U.C. Berkeley in Fall 2010.

Over the years, I have served as webmaster for a number of organizations, traveled to Mali, Africa to help build a schoolhouse, received the Call To Service Award for community service,  and volunteered as a mentor for the Young Entrepreneurs at Haas high school program.

Why did I apply for TEC? That’s easy: because it looked like a life-changing program where I could learn about Silicon Valley from the inside (and meet some really awesome people in the process). Also, one of my long-term goals aligned with one of the goals of True: long term substantive positive change for the world.

Enough about me – the information you are probably interested in is my first impression of Loggly.

Yes, the reason I took this position is because I was offered a collector’s item: a t-shirt from Loggly with an x-ray image of Hoover (the beaver, their mascot).

(source: loggly.com – note that this picture does not have me in it)

During the first three days (okay, actually two and a half days), I was introduced to a completely new medium which I previously had refused to adopt: Twitter. I never thought that 140 characters could be as influential as they turned out to be. For the next eight weeks, I will be working on increasing Loggly’s social media presence, as well as learning a bit of programming (probably python).

The Loggly team is outstanding, and Kord Campbell (the Geek CEO) has an amazing sense of humor. Think about dead-pan sarcasm, then double that a few times, and you’ll get his personality in the office.

By July 29th, my last day in the TEC program, I hope to become “best buddies” with my fellow TEC interns, the True Ventures team, and the Loggly team, and to make life-long connections with the entrepreneurs I get to meet on Thursday afternoons at the True office which I will be able to use later in my career as an entrepreneur.  If I can learn enough python to be able to code a couple of scripts, I will be ecstatic.

Oh, and if Hoover comes down to San Francisco from his native Canada (according to the map in the office), I would love to meet him too!

If this post was interesting, I hope you will read next week’s, which should prove to be even better (and even harder to write).

Eagerly awaiting tomorrow’s session at the True Ventures office,
Richard Berwick

http://richardberwick.com