Disqus - Latest Comments for shedd

Re: Twilio Launches in Europe, Opens Office in London

Robert Shedd — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:19:09 -0000

Here's another vote for Ireland!

Re: Dear MBAs who want to work at startups – from This is going to be BIG!

Robert Shedd — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:54:01 -0000

Hi Paul,
Thanks for letting me know that the link is broken. It looks like this is the URL to the page now:

http://www.thisisgoingtobebig....

Re: We’re Getting Application-centric!

Robert Shedd — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:56:04 -0000

Could you make the older layout available as a tab in the nav bar? I also have multiple applications running per environment and the new layout is very difficult to see what is where. For instance, now to find out which environment needs to be updated with EngineYard updates, you can no longer see that from one page. You need to keep clicking into each application and it gets confusing very quickly. Until this point, updates to the cloud panel have been great, but I think this update needs to be reverted...

Re: Getting Accepted

Robert Shedd — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:25:54 -0000

Your technical co-founder is a really critical position. Sure, you can keep some progress moving forward by outsourcing or using part-time development help, but at the end of the day, you need the ability to iterate your product rapidly, as well as owning the actual expertise to build and operate your product. None of this is really that easy to do without a key technical person on your team.

And yes - make sure you can work well with the person that you select and that they'll work as hard as you, alongside you to make the business successful. Making sure you have those attributes in your technical team member + all of the necessary technical skillsets is hard, but it's an extremely critical and important role.

Fortunately, there are increasing numbers of engineers and technical folks that are interested in working with a startup. See who you might be able to get connections from within your network. There might be a good fit in there somewhere.

Re: Getting Accepted

Robert Shedd — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:18:55 -0000

Glad it was helpful! Good luck with the DreamIt interview! It's a great program!

Re: Resolving the MySQL Homebrew Install Issue

Robert Shedd — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:42:42 -0000

Pull request to Homebrew master created: https://github.com/mxcl/homebr...

Re: Resolving the MySQL Homebrew Install Issue

Robert Shedd — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:32:17 -0000

Because it sounds like others are running into these issues, I've gone ahead and forked the Homebrew repo and pushed a change to help clarify these additional options.

Commits here: https://github.com/shedd/homeb...

Hope this helps others get out of mysql_install_db no-man's land!

Re: Resolving the MySQL Homebrew Install Issue

Robert Shedd — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:11:49 -0000

Thanks for letting me know the post was helpful, Chris! It's good to know that it's possible to create a root user via MySQL Workbench, too.

Re: Exciting FanGamb Changes, Moving to Europe

Robert Shedd — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:57:59 -0000

The primary reason for the move was because our partner is based in Europe. And sure, you can always run things remotely, but after years of dealing with remote contractors, I assure you there's no substitute for being onsite, in-person, day after day. It's too hard to build relationships via a speakerphone.

Re: Resolving the MySQL Homebrew Install Issue

Robert Shedd — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:42:14 -0000

Glad it helped, Mark! Thanks for the comment to let me know this was useful!

Re: New Surroundings

Robert Shedd — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 07:18:31 -0000

I just submitted a support request with Disqus and they updated their DB to change the URL. There wasn't any way for me to do it myself, at the time.

Re: Is there a shortage of engineers or a glut? — Please comment.

Robert Shedd — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:28:56 -0000

We moved our startup from Pennsylvania to Dublin, Ireland, this summer and had a tough time finding engineering talent. I also know of entrepreneurs back in the US who struggle to find engineering talent. From a startup perspective, it's hard to find good engineers, despite what the stats may say.

Just because engineers are graduating, or there are engineers on the bench with decades of experience, this doesn't immediately solve the issue that a startup CTO faces in trying to staff their team. At the start, an entrepreneur is looking for a driven technologist who can come in and partner with them to translate their vision into reality. If you're making hire #2 or beyond, you're looking for specific needs - startups often don't have the luxury to train someone into their technology stack and are looking for folks who can hit the ground running and get stuff done. As a result, simply having an engineering degree or decades of experience from BigCompany clearly does not make an engineer an immediate fit.

Try to find an engineer with the right experience and the ability to get stuff done -- this is what entrepreneurs are struggling with and is what drives the entrepreneurs and investors to complain that there isn't enough talent in the market.

If you're an engineer, what can you do about this, especially if you're looking to make a career move or enter the market place? Update your skills yourself to the languages and frameworks that are in demand today. Show that you get stuff done (code on GitHub, contribute to open source, blog!). Make your decades of experience relevant when you talk to startups (and make it clear that after all your time in BigCompany, you're still going to be able to make a difference in startup world). Get in touch - startups don't have big recruitment search budgets (or a lot of time) - if we can't find you easily, we can't hire you.

Re: has_many :bugs, :through => :rails

Robert Shedd — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 17:51:08 -0000

Thanks for posting this! I had success using this when placing the monkey patch at the bottom of my test helper.

Re: Thoughts on Current State of Entrepreneurship at Penn State

Robert Shedd — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:53:38 -0000

Hannah, thanks for the comment! Yep - I certainly agree that the question of how to better involve alumni isn't limited to PSU. I just think that it's incredibly germane to the topic of how to better encourage entrepreneurs at the university level. All of the seed-stage accelerator programs around the country focus on providing mentoring as their primary means of helping the participating companies. Universities have an incredible resource with their alumni networks to provide even more expansive mentoring.

What site did you launch to help PSU alumni re-connect? It would be interesting to learn more about what you think would be effective to improve connections with alumni.

Thanks for the thoughts!

Re: Can We All Succeed?

Robert Shedd — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:02:01 -0000

Thanks for the reply! Good to know RE entrepreneurship at HBS! There's certainly an interesting debate about MBAs for entrepreneurs at the moment, but it's good to hear that for those who do decide to pursue an MBA, there are strong opportunities for them during the MBA programs.

Re: Can We All Succeed?

Robert Shedd — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:09:03 -0000

Chris,
Glad we got on the same page and that you've been enjoying the NVCA site!

What kind of entrepreneurial interest are you finding at HBS?

Re: Thoughts on Current State of Entrepreneurship at Penn State

Robert Shedd — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:45:40 -0000

Hi Linda,
Thanks very much for your comment! I think it's great that you and your team make a concerted effort to make the distance a non-issue. As I've noted many times, I think the key to Penn State really being much more effective with student entrepreneurship is creating what I call a "clearinghouse" for student entrepreneurs. Such a program could provide a consistent, well-known, concentrated resource that students could turn to for up-to-date information on who can help them with where they are in the process. With such a program taking that public-facing, leading role, things like location and distance probably wouldn't matter as much. The other critical programs that play important parts in the process would get connected with students at the right phase of the process from this centralized program. It would be interesting to learn if any other universities have anything like this operating...

Anyway, thanks very much for the comment and it will be great to have your support as we build out the Lion Launch Pad program in the Keller building.

Re: Can We All Succeed?

Robert Shedd — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:29:15 -0000

Hi Chris,
I appreciate the comment!

The post was written based on the Q4 / 2009 Full-Year report, which I can't easily find on the site at the moment. You can find a copy here: http://cl.ly/7b88c211f32f33c4a...

In any case, the stat I pulled was from the top of page 3:

"For the year, Software remained the largest single industry category in terms of deal volume and second largest behind Biotechnology in terms of dollars. Venture capitalists invested $3.1 billion into 619 Software deals, a 40 percent decline in dollars and a 35 percent decline in deals from 2008 when $5.1 billion went into 948 deals."

The report that you linked to appears to be the Q1 2010 report.

The new numbers from the Q1 2010 report are interesting:

"Seed and Early stage investments declined in the first quarter, dropping 30 percent to $1.4 billion. The number of Seed and Early stage deals dropped 24 percent to 299 from the prior quarter. Seed/Early stage deals accounted for 44 percent of total deal volume in the first quarter, compared to the fourth quarter when it accounted for 47 percent of all deals. The average Seed deal in the first quarter was $5.4 million, up from $4.0 million in the fourth quarter. The average Early stage deal was $4.6 million in first quarter, down from $5.6 million in the prior quarter."

Their definition of "seed" appears to be a bit larger than what most seed-stage entrepreneurs I know would define it to be. $5.4m... wow.

Re: Thoughts on Current State of Entrepreneurship at Penn State

Robert Shedd — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:25:57 -0000

Brendan, thanks for the thoughts! I think that there's unfortunately a lot of misinformation about the process of building startups that leads to a lot of this. It's a common misconception that the first step is that they have to run out and find a developer to work on equity. Unfortunately, this ignores the necessity of customer development. Hopefully, as more information spreads regarding lean startup best practices, this will be reduced going forward!

Thanks for the thoughts!

Re: Why I Left IBM

Robert Shedd — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:31:22 -0000

Glad you enjoyed the post! Consulting is certainly a great way to gain experience, but if you're going to go for the entrepreneurial move at some point, there are few reasons why you won't find a better time than now. Certainly feel free to reach out if I can offer further thoughts / perspective. Good luck! Hope things post-IST are going well!

Re: Help for Startups! – A semi-complete list of startup accelerator programs

Robert Shedd — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:53:01 -0000

Thanks for the comment! I've checked out the site and can't find the fine print that you're referring to. Do you have a link? Thanks!

Re: A Different Way to Look At Group Projects – Who Makes You Successful?

Robert Shedd — Mon, 31 May 2010 11:56:22 -0000

Very good point. Certainly it's reasonable to expect it to take some time to ramp employees up in the beginning (after all, they are an investment), but certainly, over time, that should even out and should create opportunities for you to tackle other priorities. Thanks for the comment!

Re: White Bear Yard – home for startups in London

Robert Shedd — Sat, 29 May 2010 17:05:42 -0000

Thanks very much for the link! I appreciate you sharing it and I've updated the post with it.

Thanks also for the email! I'll follow-up shortly.

Re: Quiet in an age of noise

Robert Shedd — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:07:26 -0000

Blake, thanks for the post! I'm also in a struggle to try to balance all of the information flying around. Ever since you launched the auto-responder on your email, I've been interested to hear about the end result, so I'm glad to hear that this is improving. There's also just so much in terms of social media and blogs that one feels like they need to stay on top of to "keep current" that it quickly becomes overwhelming. I think you point to the first step on the process to solving this -- becoming self aware of what's working and what isn't, and where improvement is needed. Our team noticed that there was a lot of duplication in terms of stuff we were all following, so we're piloting an improved process in this regard.

My chief concern with information overload is that we spend so much time just reacting to everything, trying to respond and track everything, that there's very little time to actually think and crank out creative work. As soon as I realized how much time I was loosing to my information routine, I've been trying to improve on it, though it's certainly a long slog. Glad to hear things are working well for you! :)

Oh, and yes - the 12am - 2am period has become my quiet time period, too. As the rest of my day has become busier, I've found this quiet period ending later and later... Have to find the time to think somewhere!

Re: Help for Startups! – A semi-complete list of startup accelerator programs

Robert Shedd — Sat, 15 May 2010 02:13:43 -0000

Thanks for the news and the link! Will add this to the list!