Girls In Tech

In my last post, I talked about a nightmarish experience of outsourcing the design work for HowLegit? Recovering (quickly) from this experience, I went on a hunt for my engineering team with two things in mind : I would go on referrals primarily, and I would prefer to work with a legitimate company over an individual. Too risky to have someone build your code and then disappear all of a sudden. I posted on Rent-A-Coder and Elance, two sites which allow vendors from all over the world to bid on your project, potentially allowing for great cost savings.  When you are flooded with 10-20 bids as I was, it can be a daunting task to decide on the right one. In the evaluation process, it is as important to assess communication ability and style, as technical skill, especially if you are thinking about working with developing nations like India and China. Also pay attention to the vendor ratings that will give you a sense of customer satisfaction. I ended up going with a firm based out of China, whose CEO worked out of Silicon Valley and made customer service a priority. I had my engineer adviser quiz his engineering team, and I was comfortable with the fact that they were dedicated to getting the work done and that customer satisfaction was very important because they were just starting out and were looking for referrals. (Email me for their name – happy to refer you to them, as I have been very happy and continue to work with them on Phase 2 of the work.)

In the contract phase of outsourcing to a partner, I would say “scope creep” is the biggest concern, in that when you delineate the vendor’s responsibility, make sure to state things you think they will need to take on, in addition to things you know they will. Although this may have the potential to drive up your costs at the start, it will more likely prevent a renegotiation in which the vendor believes that you have underestimated the work and will charge you more going forward. It is also very important that you understand the resourcing: Who will be your project manager? Engineer? QA? UI?  Are you paying lump sum for a combination of these services or will you be billed hourly for each group that is involved. For example, although I had my designs created by another vendor (see my last post, Outsourcing: Lessons Learned Part I , )turns out I still needed UI assistance in refining the pages, building out ones that were incomplete, and converting the whole lot to html (an absolute essential final deliverable for any UI designer). So I ended up buying a combination of engineering services (project manager, engineer, QA) on a monthly basis, and a one-time UI fee for the initial development of the pages.

When dealing with non-English speaking countries like China, make sure you are not paying too much of a premium for English speakers, as you can find them dime a dozen in India and Eastern Europe. It may just take you a little longer to sift through all your options. It is also worthwhile to agree on a “trial period” of a small piece of the project so that you can evalute the technical ablity and communication style. In an outsourced world, not being in the same room or city as your partner makes it much harder to know what’s really going on. Insist on documentation of everything in the form of daily or weekly work reports, bug tracking lists, project plans, etc. You’ll be glad you did.

A final word to the wise on special “social networking” engineering such as Iphone and Facebok apps. As the technology and information around these evolve every day, your regular engineering shop may not have the expertise to develop these, which means that you either have to spend a lot of time teaching your developers how to build one, or you may need to outsource to a specialist. (Silicon Valley is full of them). Before you do that though, make sure you have done your cost-benefit analysis – some platforms are not very developer-friendly, and unless you have something truly outstanding, it may get lost in the sea of others trying to do the same thing as you.

Next Time: Getting Started: Building the Site

Kaamna Dhawan had a colorful career in corporate America before realizing that the intersection of technology and human interaction is where her passions lie. And no one makes human interaction as fascinating as celebrities do! As the founder and CEO of HowLegit.com, she brings in experience from running 4 successful social networks and a continuing restlessness for learning and entrepreneurship. Kaamna is now seven months pregnant, and just moved across the world to Sydney, Australia, proving that technology has truly removed all barriers against productivity and connectivity. She misses the Bay Area and her interactions with Girls in Tech and secretly stalks the organization through the website and Facebook!

Tags: engineering, entrepreneurship, howlegit?, outsourcing
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In my last post, I talked about developing the Business Case and Marketing Plan for my celebrity news site, HowLegit?. Once the academic part was done, it was time for the rubber to hit the road and to make the site happen. Out of thin air, it felt like!

Having worked on social networks before, I was familiar with the general framework and basic elements of a web community. In a most un-Web 2.0 way, I sat down with a piece of paper and drew out each page I needed on the site with its general purpose and features. I listed everything that came to mind from “User Profile” (obvious) to “No user search results” (less obvious). This un-techy scrapbook became my guideline for the functionality of the site for our first launch. I realized that it’s impossible to think of everything, and that I would  inevitably be modifying what happens on a particular page as I go into design or development. This is where speed needed to compensate for 100% accuracy.

On to resourcing: Depending on the skill level, time availability and interest of your team, (and depending on whether or not you have a team), you will need to figure out who is doing what. In my case, I had a team of advisers, including an engineer and a marketing guy, who would meet with me weekly, but I needed to outsource the actual work. From how I saw it, I needed a UI designer first and  a team of engineers to start building the site. Because this was a celebrity site, and because the visual elements were tantamount to the site’s success, I wanted to find a designer I could work closely with and meet face to face on a regular basis. I hopped onto our beloved Craigslist and posted a job for a UI designer. I whittled down the project to the pages that would need distinct designing (homepage, submission page, article page, registration, user profile, and template for other pages) and figured the development team could take it from there. I didn’t post a price initially but waited for interested parties to contact me, and give me an estimate based on the project I described to them. Each potential vendor was asked to sign an NDA before we discussed the project in length. A good generic NDA is easily available on the web. I entertained about 6 proposals, and finally settled on an individual, rather than a company, for the price of $2000, to design 5 pages, and deliver the project within a month.

I went with him because of a gut feeling that he understood the look and feel I was talking about. However, it is imperative to support that gut with an iron-clad contract at the start, stating the complete nature of the work, timelines, milestones, payment schedule, and recourse for incomplete work. Most companies will  have a contract,  but when dealing with an individual, you have to make sure you have something that will hold up in court. I didn’t (Mistake number 1). We agreed over email that that the payment would be made in thirds over the month, and we signed a sheet of paper (prepared by him) stating that he had received payment for the expected portion of the work. It didn’t cover me at all for what would happen if he decided he just didn’t want to do it, and changed his phone number and ignored my emails. But I was so wrapped up in the “vision” of the site, that I didn’t think about sealing all the legal holes at the time.

Fortunately, it didn’t get to that. I found that this gentleman was fun and creative, which is exactly what I wanted, but a little irresponsible when it came to deadlines. I played along, believing that these arty types were erratic and giving him the benefit of the doubt since I liked the way the work was going. The real red flag came up when he asked for an advance on the last payment because he needed to pay his rent. I admit to trying to wonder why a man with a family was incapable of planning ahead to make sure basic payments like rent were taken care of and I can’t deny that the thought of his young daughter influenced my decision to help him out. BIG MISTAKE (Mistake number 2). It was extremely unprofessional on his part to ask me to consider his personal problems in our hitherto professional relationship, but it wasn’t necessary for me oblige either. Whether it was out of the compassion that is the plight of women, or what any good human being would have done, I agreed and wrote out a cheque when 1/3rd of the work was yet to be done. Naturally I was concerned that he would take the money and run, leaving me with 5 incomplete web pages and a very bruised ego. He showed up to the next meeting, and the next, but when it came to the delivery of the final product (files converted to html that could be translated by the developers into web pages), I had to chase him up for a month because 70% of the files he sent me didn’t work, and eventually ended up paying someone else to do the final conversion off of a pdf prototype of the pages.

Lesson learned was not “don’t help people out when they need it”, but “make sure that you have covered your own a$$ by documenting what has to be delivered and when”. When I wrote him that final cheque, I should have had him sign a document acknowledging his receipt, laying out expectations of deliverables and timelines, that would hold water had I needed to take legal action. Instead, all I could do at this point was write him stinker emails and contemplate putting my story up on Yelp! (I didn’t, but am willing to share his name with anyone who believes they might be in danger of  hiring him or someone like him).

Next up: Outsourcing – Lessons Learned Part II.

Kaamna Dhawan had a colorful career in corporate America before realizing that the intersection of technology and human interaction is where her passions lie. And no one makes human interaction as fascinating as celebrities do! As the founder and CEO of HowLegit.com, she brings in experience from running 4 successful social networks and a continuing restlessness for learning and entrepreneurship. Kaamna is now seven months pregnant, and just moved across the world to Sydney, Australia, proving that technology has truly removed all barriers against productivity and connectivity. She misses the Bay Area and her interactions with Girls in Tech and secretly stalks the organization through the website and Facebook!

Tags: howlegit?, NDA, outsourcing, vendors
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In my last post, I talked about how the idea for HowLegit? came about. While I was very excited and could see it all in my head, I knew I would soon have to tackle the onerous task of translating into a physical site on the web. This meant taking a number of steps that I could never even have dreamed of understanding. So, first order of business: Eradicate all intimidation. Step Two: Call in on old friend, common sense.

The first thing that needed to be done was validating the idea, and making sure there was no one else out there already doing this, better. This process, better known as “market research” resulted in a 25-page slide deck that became my “Business and Marketing Proposal” for HowLegit?. It included all the pertinent information about the environmental context into which this site would be launched and the internal steps we would need to take to make it successful. The business plan starts off with a very simple explanation of the value proposition of the site. It is easy to get lost in big, fluffly words (like “value proposition”) when writing a value proposition,  but the gist of it is: why will users use your site? If you can articulate this, and stay true to it during the course of your development, there is a good chance you will be able to avoid issues like “scope creep” in the future.

Other key elements of the plan are the audience (demographics such as age and gender, where will you find them, what do they like) and the competition. Using tools like Compete, Quantcast and Google Trends for websites, you can get a very thorough overview of your competitive landscape: who the biggest players are and how big your market is (unique visitors, pageviews). You may go back and refine your value proposition after you have studied the market to ensure that you are indeed providing some unique value.

The less fun bit of the Business Plan is the business part for us non-finance types. Who is funding all this creativity, and on what terms? If it is a team, is everyone working on equity or is there going to be some paid resources (and who is paying for them?). Legalzoom is a reliable way to incorporate a new company online. Their fees are reasonable (about $500), and you have access to all your documentation online. A person lawyer may cost you up to $5000, so weigh your pros and cons and decide if it worth it for you.

A tip on resourcing: If there is more than one of you involved, make sure to agree on the equity split, compensation and roles up front. There is always room for modification later on, but you don’t want to be negotiating a $10 million sale of your highly successful website, and finding your team in disarray over who is entitled to what share.

Kaamna Dhawan had a colorful career in corporate America before realizing that the intersection of technology and human interaction is where her passions lie. And no one makes human interaction as fascinating as celebrities do! As the founder and CEO of HowLegit.com, she brings in experience from running 4 successful social networks and a continuing restlessness for learning and entrepreneurship. Kaamna is now six months pregnant, and just moved across the world to Sydney, Australia, proving that technology has truly removed all barriers against productivity and connectivity. She misses the Bay Area and her interactions with Girls in Tech and secretly stalks the organization through the website and Facebook!

Next Week: Outsourcing: Lessons Learned

Tags: business plan, celebrities, entrepreneur, startup
Posted in San Francisco | 1 Comment »

After working on social networks for a successful startup that recently got acquired, I decided that it was time to strike out on my own, but with no real engineering knowledge (I am a Psychology major and Human Resources Master), was unsure how to take the first step to getting there. I got my break when I joined a group of illustrious men, founders of Skewz.com, who needed my social networking skills to complement their engineering and marketing expertise. Skewz is about democratizing the media and more specifically, about revealing the political bias in the media. No better time than an election year, I say! I made it a point to sit next to our lead engineer at every meeting, and as we got chugging along in our late night pow-wow sessions, my vocabulary became populated with words previously known as “tech talk” or “geek stuff”. While I was undergoing this character change, it also occurred to me that the idea of media democratization could and should be applied to several fields – but the inspiration was yet to come.

One day, my husband came home from the supermarket, energized by his weekly consumption of celebrity trash at the checkout line, and revealed that Lynne Spears, Britney’s mum, was in the thick of a roaring affair with Kevin Federline, Britney’s ex and father of her children. As if we didn’t have enough to talk about (we had just found out I was pregnant and we had signed up for a 2 year assignment to Australia), we ended up debating the legitimacy of his claim for 45 minutes, and then as all Silicon Valley loyalists do, we jumped on the internet hoping for a final verdict. Google revealed nothing, People.com was mute on the subject, and Perez Hilton was obsessing over Lindsay instead. Then it dawned on me: “How do I find out if a curious bit of celebrity news is legit? By starting my own site, of course!”. Thus was born HowLegit.com on the foundation of a very simple idea (and slightly caustic marital dispute): users should be able to read and submit celebrity news articles and vote on which ones they think are true (“Totally Legit”), and which are false(“Full of Sh*t”). The wisdom of the crowds has a chance to prevail over the sensationalism of journalists, yet again. Three months later, the site is up. Check out www.howlegit.com and tune in here for next steps on how it came to be.

Kaamna Dhawan had a colorful career in corporate America before realizing that the intersection of technology and human interaction is where her passions lie. And no one makes human interaction as fascinating as celebrities do! As the founder and CEO of HowLegit.com, she brings in experience from running 4 successful social networks and a continuing restlessness for learning and entrepreneurship. Kaamna is now six months pregnant, and just moved across the world to Sydney, Australia, proving that technology has truly removed all barriers against productivity and connectivity. She misses the Bay Area and her interactions with Girls in Tech and secretly stalks the organization through the website and Facebook!

Tags: celebrity, entrepreneurship, new skills, startup
Posted in San Francisco | No Comments »