1. name (check)
2. company (check)
3. address (check)
4. read the Acceptable Use Policy, Beta Agreement and the Terms of Service… uh, oh

Beta Agreement:

2.  You will not disclose any Confidential Information to a third party, including without limitation a GoGrid Competitor, or use it for any purpose other than to facilitate beta testing.  However, you may disclose Confidential Information to the extent required by law, provided you give GoGrid advanced notice reasonably sufficient to allow it to contest such disclosure.  “Confidential Information” refers to any information regarding the Service unless such information is: (a) provided at the GoGrid Website (http://www.gogrid.com) and made available to Internet users without an account or password; (b) already publicly known other than through your act or omission; or (c) made available by GoGrid to customers of the Service after beta testing and after the official public launch of the Service.

3.  You agree that violation of the provisions of this Beta Agreement might cause GoGrid irreparable injury, for which monetary damages would not provide adequate compensation, and that in addition to any other remedies available, GoGrid will be entitled to injunctive relief against such breach or threatened breach, without the necessity of proving actual damages.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger. At GoGrid’s sole discretion, they can go after me for lots of money and high-legal fees. According to a strict reading of this agreement, my balance and usage information is GoGrid’s confidential information.

It gets worse with GoGrid’s Acceptable Use Policy

A. The following activities are expressly prohibited:
2. Intellectual property infringement, including violations of copyright, trademark, and patent rights, and use or distribution of pirated software.

B. Disruptions & security:
GoGrid may suspend Service in whole or in part if it reasonably suspects an AUP violation. Customer will reimburse GoGrid for any expenses resulting from Customer’s violation of the AUP, including attorneys’ fees. GoGrid may also disable Customer’s service if GoGrid suspects that such service is the target of an attack or in any way interferes with services provided to other customers, even if Customer is not at fault. GoGrid does not issue refunds for terminating service due to any of the causes above.

So if GoGrid gets any sort of DMCA notice, legitimate or not, GoGrid can decide to take company’s website offline without compensation. If an Amplafi user is abusing the service, GoGrid will shutdown our entire service.

This arbitrary exposure to business disruption is unacceptable. If any corporate officer agreed to these terms I would fire them.

GoGrid’s (unacceptable) Terms of Service:

4. Acceptable Use.

(ii) Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in this Agreement, and without limiting any of GoGrid’s rights or remedies, GoGrid may suspend Service in whole or in part in the event that GoGrid reasonably suspects an AUP violation. Reasonable suspicion pursuant to the preceding sentence includes, without limitation, a third party notice or claim that Customer’s use of the Service infringes on third party rights. GoGrid will make reasonable efforts to notify Customer before any such suspension, unless the AUP violation calls for immediate action to prevent injury or liability, in GoGrid’s opinion and at its sole discretion. Suspension pursuant to this Subsection 4(a)(ii) may continue so long as GoGrid reasonably suspects an AUP violation. GoGrid is not liable for any Service suspension authorized by this Subsection 4(a)(ii), or for any related loss, even if the suspected AUP violation did not occur.

GoGrid will shutdown Amplafi’s website for any reason at all. “Reasonable effort to notify” is not defined and is highly subject to interpretation.

6. Maintenance & Security.
GoGrid is not responsible for providing physical access to or copies of software, data, or content stored on GoGrid’s equipment under any circumstances and is not required to provide network access (i) after any termination or suspension of Customer’s Service or (ii) in the event of hardware failure, abuse by hackers or other third parties, improper administration by Customer, or other interruption of network access.

GoGrid will shutdown an account for arbitrary reasons and then discard all customer data…. if this is a day that ends in a ‘y’.

8. Warranties, Disclaimers, & Limitations of Liability.
(b) GOGRID WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR MULTIPLE DAMAGES, EVEN IF ADVISED IN ADVANCE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. GOGRID’S MAXIMUM LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT EXCEED THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF FEES PAID BY CUSTOMER DURING THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE INJURY GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.

And you can’t do squat about it.

Sorry! No sale!

We decided to go with Rackspace.

Rackspace (reasonable!) Terms of Service

7. Law/AUP. You agree to use the Services in compliance with applicable law and our AUP, which is incorporated by reference in the Terms of Service. You agree that Rackspace may, in its reasonable commercial judgment consistent with industry standards, amend the AUP from time to time to further detail or describe reasonable restrictions and conditions on your use of the Services. Amendments to the AUP are effective on the earlier of our notice to you that an amendment has been made, or the first day of the next Renewal Term. You agree to cooperate with our reasonable investigation of any suspected violation of the AUP. In the event of a dispute between the parties regarding interpretation of the AUP, our commercially reasonable interpretation of the AUP shall prevail.

Wow! A ToS requires that the Customer be proactively notified!

8. Your Information. You represent and warrant to Rackspace that (i) all information you provide to Rackspace for purposes of establishing and maintaining the Services is accurate; (ii) if you are an individual, you are at least eighteen years of age; (iii) you will not use the Services for the development, design, manufacture, production, stockpiling, or use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, weapons of mass destruction, or missiles in any country listed in Country Groups D:4 and D:3 of Supplement No. 1 to Part 740 of the United States Export Administration Regulations, and (iv) you will not provide access to the Services to any person (including a natural person or government or private entity) located in or a national of embargoed or highly restricted country under United States Export Regulations, which include as of June, 2008, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria. You agree that Rackspace may, without notice and without liability to you report to the appropriate governmental authorities any conduct by you or any of your EUs that Rackspace reasonably believes violates applicable law, and provide any information that it has about you and your EUs in response to a formal or informal request from a law enforcement or government agency or in response to a formal request in a civil action that on its face meets the requirements for such a request.

Notice the last line, the request must be official — not just some sort of automated DMCA notice generated by a spambot in Hollywood.

12. Suspension/Termination.
(a) Suspension of Services. You agree that Rackspace may suspend the Services if: (i) Rackspace reasonably believes that the Services are being used in violation of the AUP; (ii) you fail to cooperate with any reasonable investigation of any suspected violation of the AUP; (iii) Rackspace reasonably believes that suspension of the Services is necessary to protect its network or its other customers, (iv) as required by a law enforcement or government agency, or (v) if the Card cannot be charged for payment in accordance with Section 5. You agree to pay a reasonable fee for reinstatement (“Reinstatement Fee”) following any suspension.
(b) Termination by You. The Terms of Service may be terminated by you at any time as long as all Fees then due together with unpaid Recurring Fees for the remainder of the Initial Term or the Renewal Term, as the case may be, are fully paid on the business day following the termination date.
(c) Termination by Rackspace. The Terms of Service may be terminated by Rackspace prior to the expiration of the Initial Term or any Renewal Term without liability as follows: (i) upon seventy-two (72) hours notice if you are overdue on the payment of any Fee; (ii) you materially violate any provision of the Terms of Service or the AUP, and fail to cure the violation within ten (10) days after receipt of a written notice from Rackspace describing the violation in reasonable detail in our sole discretion; (iii) upon twenty-four (24) hours notice if the Services are used in violation of a material term of the AUP more than once, or (iv) upon twenty-four (24) hours notice if you violate Section 8 (Your Information).

Notice the explicit difference between GoGrid’s termination policy and Rackspace. Rackspace says that they will suspend unilaterally. GoGrid goes right to termination. Rackspace explicitly lists out timeframes. Rackspace imposes a 10-day advanced written notification requirement upon themselves. Furthermore, Rackspace requires that the violation be material ( i.e. significant ) and repeated.

14. Confidential Information.
Information that is developed by a party on its own, without reference to the other’s Confidential Information, or that becomes available to a party other than through violation of these Terms of Service or applicable law, shall not be “Confidential Information” of the other party. Each party agrees not to use the other’s Confidential Information except in connection with the performance or use of the Services, as applicable, the exercise of its legal rights under these Terms of Service or the Order Form, or as may be required by law. Each party agrees not to disclose the other party’s Confidential Information to any third person except as follows: to its respective service providers, agents and representatives, provided that such service providers, agents or representatives agree to confidentiality measures that are at least as stringent as those stated in these Terms of Service; to law enforcement or government agency if requested, or if a party reasonably believes that the other party’s conduct may violate applicable criminal law; as required by law;
or in response to a subpoena or other compulsory legal process, provided that the disclosing party must give the other party written notice of at least seven days prior to disclosing Confidential Information under this subsection (or prompt notice in advance of disclosure, if seven days advance notice is not reasonably feasible), unless the law forbids such notice.

Wow, once again a reasonable time to hire legal talent to address a legal issue.

Rackspace Acceptable Use Policy:

Copyrighted Material
You may not use the Rackspace Cloud’s network or Services to download, publish, distribute, or otherwise copy or use in any manner any text, music, software, art, image or other work protected by copyright law unless:
• you have been expressly authorized by the owner of the copyright for the work to copy the work in that manner; or
• you are otherwise permitted by established copyright law to copy the work in that manner.
It is the Rackspace Cloud’s policy to terminate in appropriate circumstances the services of customers who are repeat infringers.

What a difference the lawyers can make! GoGrid’s ToS, AUP, and Beta agreement are completely one sided and read like some free consumer service, not something that should be entrusted with any serious business. Rackspace’s agreement is balanced. Gives everyone an opportunity to seek legal advice. And more importantly, treats the cloud services as running serious business applications.

Its worth noting that under GoGrid’s AUP, ToS and Beta agreement — Facebook, YouTube, and many other popular legitimate services would be shutdown.

No thanks, GoGrid.

Rockets blow-up.
Servers crash.
Regressions happen.

How you handle the setbacks is critical. Blame is a useless response. Blame is negative. After blame has been assigned, the rocket is still in pieces, the server is still down, and the bug still exists.

Hire people that take RESPONSIBILITY for finding SOLUTIONS. Hire people that look to HELP others shoulder the RESPONSIBILITY to fire the problem. Hire people that look for ways to prevent a duplicate of the same problem.

Once the problem is fixed, do you and your company spend time praising the “firefighters” only? Do you spend any time praising the person who caused the fire but was RESPONSIBLE enough to step forward, admit the problem, and help fix it?

Do you take RESPONSIBILITY as a manager to give your people time to build a “sprinkler system” to put out a similar future fire?

The first “fire” might be caused by someone else’s carelessness. But the second fire is YOUR responsibility if you didn’t budget time and money for that “sprinkler system”.

If you work 100-hour weeks, no one (investors, co-founders, employees) can blame you if things don’t work out, right?

And I like to think I’ve worked a lot smarter since then [missing dinner with spouse].

The life of an entrepreneur can be rough, but at least it’s a life of your choosing. The same can’t be said for your family. Give then a chance to make their own choice.

In other words, it is the default choice in the valley and in the technology sector. And its a stupid choice. 168 hours in the week. 100 hours at work. Allow 8 hours/day for sleep. Drive-time to/from work of 1 hour. This leaves exactly 13 hours for the employee to do *anything else*.

A few years ago, I had a job with the best work-life balance. This start-up had with only 7 engineers with 30-ish total people. Between November and January, we built a Paypal integration and a major piece of functionality that got the start-up their first bits of solid revenue. Everyone took their normal holiday vacation. Every programmer worked 9-5. No weekend work. We completed the project on-time.

The company is LinkedIn. We achieved this because Jean-Luc Vaillant was fanatically about knowing exactly what was to be built and automated tests so he knew exactly where the code was. Those tests had to pass each and every night. No new work was to be done until all the previous night’s failed tests were fixed.

Every later employer had to live up to this reasonable bar. Sadly most fail and most projects are late.

They fail because the managers listen to the siren song singing the lies:

• that says that automatic tests are optional;
• “trusting” the developer to adequately test by hand is good enough;
• that there is more time to do-it-again than to do it right
• that documentation is optional and it better to have team members figure out anothers work than it is to demand that the creator document;
• and that long hours are better than sane hours

While Chris does touch on the work-life balance with his wife, he misses some key points. If the team is working 100-hours/week:

• the team has no reserve capacity – if a short-term sprint is needed to wrap up a project – forget it
• the team starts to waste time at work: web surfing and game-playing. So while physically there, they are neither productive nor getting a break from the work environment.
• as soon as there is any corporate setback – moral collapses. When it looks like the company is going to be the next Google, employees will justify to themselves that working ridiculous hours will pay-off. This illusion is dispelled at the first severe setback.
• someone outside of work is always telling the employee how stupid they are to work such long hours. The wife, the husband, the kids, the mother, or just the friends who are going up for that most excellent ski trip to Lake Tahoe.

So my advice to employers:

• Get rid of the game room. Make employees have fun outside of the building.
• Cut the power to the employees computers at midnight. Make them sleep so they can think and not make silly mistakes.
• Do a postmortem on every crisis. Without blame and with automation ONLY, look for ways to make sure that the crisis can never, ever repeat. Working “harder” or requiring greater “perfection” is NOT the answer.
• Reward employees – not for working harder, freeing up ‘capacity’. Did some developer, IT person, or janitor do something or automate something that freed up 20 minutes/person/week? In a 30-person startup, those 20 minutes saved is the same as hiring a full-time person for 3 months! Get everyone to look for these “small” time-savers. Work now becomes less onerous, more enjoyable, and your headcount stays down.

Expanding on the last point with some examples:

• Automatic tests — avoids developers acting like monkeys do manual tests.
• Buy the absolute fastest machines. My latest machine took me from 15 minutes builds to 1m30second builds. I started running the tests all the time!
• Virtual assistants to handle the random shit that an employee might have to do during the day
• Every 6 weeks, a mobile oil change service so that no one needs to run to Jiffy Lube
• Outsourcing human resource issues

Spend the time to discover those “small, annoying” things that seem to petty to complain about — but that impact a significant percentage of the company.

Remember for a small 30-person startup saving 1hr20m/person/week ( i.e. 16min/person/day ) is the same as hiring another person. And in the process, enables everyone to step back from the brink.

Google has their famous 20% “free” time to work on new projects. Every startup should have 20% “free-up” time to make existing projects less painful.

While I am working hard at amplafi I am working even hard on making sure that my family knows I much rather be with them than coding.

Also read Steve Blank’s post on the Lies told Entrepreneurs.

Strongly, strongly agree with:

Ask me what I see lacking most in startups in Europe and I’ll say hunger, drive, and lofty goals.

For me my hunger and drive come directly from wanting to change the world for my children.

So I equally strongly DISagree with:

worked four jobs for the money to launch their venture, without giving a second thought to “quality of life” or “spending time with the kids.”

For me sacrificing the hours between 6:30-9:30pm that I spend with my kids is a false choice. I sacrifice that time only when absolutely necessary and never more than 2 days in a row. Once I have those 3 hours with family, I am emotionally recharged and able to focus completely on building my company, Amplafi.

I am not alone in this. Chris Yeh and Steve Blank : Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves share my feelings.

My personal reality is the least successful company demanded the worse and longest hours. And the most successful startup asked the most reasonable hours. We work from 9-5. No weekends. No missed holidays. You might have hear of it. Its called Jean-Luc Vaillant did his job and managed his people well.

Shitty long hours is not a badge of honor. Its a sign of bad prioritization and resource management. Sure some times the long hours are necessary… just like a sprint is necessary at the end of a marathon. But you don’t sprint the entire length of the marathon. And unlike a marathon in a startup, there is no rest after crossing the first finish line – just another finish line in the distance.

A startup that is sprinting constantly better hope that they get bought before exhaustion sets in. Otherwise their competitors that have paced themselves better will pass them up and their best people will burned out and quit. Any little stumble, any sign that success and glory are a few months away… and the startup starts spending time looking for fresh blood.

• Say nothing about the team
• Be an asshole about how worthless the team is and their mothers should have had an abortion.

VCs seem to be a sound system with two settings for volume: “mute” or “max (a-hole)”. We live in an analog world. Lets try a little moderation.

How about this VCs? If you perceive the problem as the team, give feedback that is:

• specific
• actionable
• non-personal (not impersonal)

Example dialog:

VC:

I like the concept. However, I don’t have confidence that the team as it exists can execute successful. My reasons are because:

1. executing requires a deeper knowledge of neurosurgery. I need founders or a board of advisers with this expertise
2. the team seems to be overweighted with business-types and underweighted in technology
3. in order to sell into the companies you are targeting you will need a C-level person with the needed credibility
4. you were disorganized for this meeting which makes me question your ability to manage a company.

If these barriers change, we may be interested in this company.

Possible response from the entrepreneur:

Thank you for this feedback.

1. We have felt that is gap in neurosurgery is not as significant as you apparently do because we have 20 surgeons in other specialities. Perhaps if we refocused our product away from the neurosurgery aspects, it would be a better match to our skills? Perhaps you have some suggestion about who we should approach?
2. We agree. Joe and Paul are helping us get started but they plan on returning to school once their time is no longer needed. Currently we are using all the help we can get.
3. Perhaps. Right now, we have not yet found that person. My goal is to grow with the company. I have discussed this with the team. The agreement we have is that if I cannot get 1 customer within 6 months, the CEO role will be transitioned to another. Currently we are actively looking for advisers and a COO person that could act as a potential replacement support for me. However, who could imagine that Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerburg could manage the responsibilities that they now have?
4. Thank you for that feedback. I did not realize that I gave that impression. If you talk to the rest of the team I think you would find that their opinion is different. Would be willing to do that?

Notice that the entrepreneur is not just agreeing with the VC. And the VC may be unsatisfied with the entrepreneur’s response. The VC may not wish to proceed further no matter what. But at least the feedback is out there in a cordial matter.

Background:
I have a pitch that works very well when talking to customers. Prospects get and understand Amplafi and can’t wait to use it. VCs and other techno-philes types (who are *not* our target customers) hear the same pitch, their eyes glaze over and they tune out. Clearly a bad match if the investor does not understanding the customers!

I am seeking angel level investment ( > $1M ) and would really like to turn a set of happy customers into investors.

My ideal situation would be 20 customers investing $10K each. So a customer council with skin in the game. These customers would be non-traditional angel investors. ( not the Ron Conways of the world )

Obviously, I would be then taking on a investor expectations management project. But compared to managing a traditional investor’s lack of understanding of my target market, how can it be any worse — at least they are customers!

[Update: also posted to LinkedIn]

1. Interconnection with bookmarking services
2. Browser back button support
3. Rich interaction
4. Selective Memory
5. Show different video ads
6. Limit the ad selection

Interconnection with bookmarking services

You’ve interrupted me. The ad is interesting. Well-targeted. Good job. I am interested. But not right now. Right now I want to finish reading page 2 of this article.

Why are you demanding that I follow the ad link now? Interact with delicious.com, xmarks.com or simply my browser bookmark ability. Let me bookmark the ad link as a private bookmark for later. Bookmarking services have simple APIs. Spend the 13 seconds. Do the integration.

In the “old” print advertising medium. A prospect could tear out the ad from the magazine or newspaper for later. Why can’t the “new” media do this?

Browser back button support

You wanted to sell to me. I am ignoring your ad. I click on a link, not your ad. I then notice your ad. Mission accomplished…. too late. The page refreshes. The ad is gone.

I click the browser back button. The browser shows the previous page.

Except for the ad I wanted to read. Your ad. No clicks for you!

In the “old” print medium, the ad on page A3 does not change and disappear just because I have flipped the page. I can go back to not just the article, but to the ads!

Rich interaction

Hat-tip to meebo.com for breaking the old model. But for everyone else, why is the only interaction with the ad, a link?

• If the ad is related to an event? Make it so someone can put the event on their calendar. Generate the ical file
• provide sales contact information as a vcard that reminds the user of when and where they saw the ad. Maybe even a link to the ad itself!
• Add the ability to email /forward the ad!

Get creative with the interaction!

In the “old” print medium, ads have a phone number and a physical address. How is this any different than a link?

Selective Memory

Consumers know that ad networks track them. Acknowledge this. Let the consumers edit your memory. The user’s only alternative is deleting cookies so the ad network know nothing. Allowing consumers a choice, gives the ad networks a chance remember something.

In old print media, there is an advertisers index on the magazine back cover. How come websites don’t have the same functionality? Maybe not all advertisers, only the premium advertisers get listed in the advertisers index.

Show different video ads

For christ’s sakes guys, how come consumers have to suffer from watching the same pre-roll 10 second ad repeatedly. I hate CNN, FOX, etc. Every 5 video clips I get shown the same pre-roll ad for the same product. My ears bleed. Even if I am interested in watching more videos, I run away! Fast!

Limit the ad selection

It is well known that it takes multiple impressions to reach the consumer. For the time the visitor is on a website, increase the number of ad impressions. Make it so that a visitor sees the IBM ads 8 times rather than showing 8 different ads for 8 different companies.

Hopefully someone like Frank will do something about this!

If you don’t like the Canadian system, then come up with your own. But our Health Care “system” is anything but a system — it is a disaster.

Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web: Listen to Your Customers not to the HiPPO

Experiment!

• Run A/A tests — make sure the variation you are seeing isn’t just natural variation
• Beware Coupon Codes — too prominent and people abandon shopping carts to go look for that discount code
• Two step feedback requests result in better feedback than the stars and the textarea presented all at once.
• Need to experiment across every user to get meaningful data
• Multiple experiments rarely interact — so run multiple experiments (even on same page)
• Drilldown on data — could discover that one browser is having a javascript bug

Today I can get:

• PHP
• (some) webserver to deliver the content
• MySQL
• Zero DBA experience required.
• Zero SysAdmin Knowledge needed(you don’t get a commandline anyhow)
• A just-upload-and-run-experience
• ~$10/month

Why can’t Sun deliver the same thing only running Java 1.6?

Why is that a hosted java application costs a minimum of $80/month? This is so wrong.

Moderator:
Vineet Buch, Partner, BlueRun Ventures

Panelists:

• Charlene Li, VP & Principal Analyst, FORRESTER RESEARCH
• Jason Oberfest, VP Business Development, MYSPACE.COM
• Sergio Monsalve, Principal, NORWEST VENTURE PARTNERS
• Deborah Shultz, Strategist, DEBORAHSCHULTZ.COM

Charlene:
10million uniques/month for general advertising models.
marketing plan can’t just be PR

Jason:
You have to prove engagement. Repeated interaction.

Deb:
Need to measure consumer touch points ( how many im message, email to customers)

Sergio –
Measure the lifetime value of customer. time * usage discounted over time.
net lifetime value of customer ( subtract out acquisition costs)

Vineet –
to get a large audience — go broad.
to get an engaged audience — go deep.

Sergio:
subscription model really works where there is an urgency (dating, job posting)
depth of value proposition.

Vineet:
is a 1m users on a facebook widget good? not so — very short half-life of engagement with facebook apps.

Charlene —
with facebook apps – there is not a strong corrolation between user inviting friends and actual satisfaction with app.

whats to see value in the applications that are valuable.

Sergio -
we have not yet penetrated to the Gen X and Baby Boomer — so hugging and poking is not very useful.

Charlene –
Things there is space for a company to move a review from facebook to amazon.

Deb –
getting and extracting reviews is an issue.

Jason –
apps in myspace are requiring apps earn the ability to reach larger audience based on how initial users react.

Charlene –
Walled Gardens don’t survived — Apple is only sustained exception.

Good business model example–
Sergio -
Affinity Labs – unusual business model — they make money with lead gen. (military.com – stay connected with fellow soldiers, retraining, and jobs)

Charlene –
MerchantCircle – SEO zero aquisition cost. – small business SEO – they get a president of a local chamber of commence to act of a sales person

Deb -
etsy.com
Blogher.com