At first we were a bit reticent to talk about it. This was the hot segment at the time. What we discovered was that there are very few people who will steal your idea and do something with it. The important part of that last statement is “do something with it.” Turning a concept into reality is hard. Ideas have their own value but it’s worth exchanging that idea for feedback.

We discussed the product concept with our single friends. What we found was that they supported us because they are our friends. However, the concept did not resonate with them because it did not meet their needs. They would have had to change their behavior to use our product. Techno-geeks would have done this but the majority would not. We wanted a large, vibrant, diverse community. The problem was that many of our single friends had limited leisure time and wanted to spend that time actually talking to their date over dinner instead of playing a video game with him or her. Finding a significant other is haphazard enough so they wanted to get to the essence of it immediately.

Our mobile, social, game was retired and we re-directed our effort into a new direction. We’re still talking to people but this time we’ve made it a little further. Our alpha, Baydin ForONE was released on Thursday. It is open to limited users. If you want to be involved in something great, sign-up and we’ll put you on our alpha testers list.

I was riding the Orange Line en route to our Central Square offices last week, and I saw a sign advertising a study on Social Anxiety Disorder.  They asked if you worry too much about what other people think, worry that people might secretly think you’re stupid, and get more nervous than seems appropriate before meeting people for the first time. 

To be honest, my first thought was that if I didn’t have a company to start, I should go try their study.  But on my second thought, I realized that the same symptoms seem to apply to a lot of startup companies, ours included.

We were very shy at first about sharing our idea – maybe a competitor would get there first, or maybe we wouldn’t be able to deliver.  We got over that one, but it is still terrifying to think that we might do all the marketing right, get press and customers excited about our product, then end up disappointing and/or angering them.  It’s also in the back of our minds that we might “peak too early” and get all of our buzz before the product is ready to impress anyone. 

But the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to think that we shouldn’t worry.  There is so much noise and so much going on that nobody cares what some dinky startup does.  If we put out a product that doesn’t work very well, we won’t get bad press – we just won’t get any press. 

We’re not Microsoft; nobody has the energy or the time to skewer us.  And if they do, nobody has the energy or the time to remember it after they read it.  If we make something subpar, we won’t be noticed.  And if we make something great, then we’ll get customers today.

Some of the evidence from other startups backs this up.  If you tried the first version of Loopt on the iPhone 3G, it was incredibly easy to inadvertently text message every single one of the people in your phone’s contact list with a your location and an invitation for Loopt.  Several of the early versions of Plaxo made it incredibly easy to accidentally email everyone in your address book and ask them to give all their contact info to Plaxo.

Loopt apologized.  So did Plaxo.  Neither of these companies is in the deadpool.  They still have funding, and they still have users.  Aside from a handful of people who make knowing these things their business, my guess is that nobody even remembers. 

An even better example is Hyundai. In 1986 when they released the Excel in the US, it was nothing to write home about. 

Yeah, it looked like that.  I wouldn’t have bought one either.  But by iterating and improving, they’ve turned into an elite car company.  One of our mentors mentioned hearing about how cool the Genesis is on a golf course.  Hyundai really is now a company people associate with luxury cars.  And they had a sense of humor about the whole thing too.

So why are we so worried that our product will fail to impress?  If we make a bad first product, but get better, people will give us another chance.  If our third or fourth version is incredibly useful, they just don’t have time to hold a grudge that our first version wasn’t.  Our biggest problem is going to be apathy, not grudges.  It’s just not personal.  And if we never make the great product that will earn us a second chance, then we shouldn’t succeed.  I believe we’ll get there.

Of course, I have an ulterior motive for bringing this up now.  We’re sending our Baydin ForONE Technology Preview to friends and family on Thursday.  I’ll be honest – it’s not ready.  We have tested it on a whopping two configurations, the results need some work, and the UI isn’t as polished as we’d like.  It also comes with the caveats that it might insult your mother in law, or start crashing some untested, semi-patched versions of Outlook.  Before we’re ready to call it a 1.0 release, we’ll make sure it doesn’t do any of these things.

My arguments about SSAD were only so persuasive, though.  Despite my best efforts to make us a wild man company that releases it to whoever wants it and lets God sort ‘em out, we’re doing a limited release Alpha launch.   If you want to give it a spin, shoot us an email, and I’ll see that you get a download link.

I was at a talk, recently, where the speaker mentioned “a lot of data driven people fall into the trap of wanting more information to make a decision. The problem is that the world does not always give you complete information.”

I thought about my own experience. I remember at times presenting a new product idea and getting the feedback, “we need more *fill in the blank* information.” Usually, they asked for more market information. The product concepts we were proposing were in a burgeoning field. We could only show the customers we visited or contacted who demonstrated interest, the competitive solutions out there, how much customers currently pay and the total available market.

Now that I think back, I think I would have had much better luck if I took the decision-makers on strategic customer visits. I remember traveling to several medical accounts with one marketing manager. He was exposed to our customers’ challenges. Enthusiasm would have been an understatement for his reaction. He understood the problems that our customers faced because he stood in their shoes, albeit briefly. When we got back to our headquarters, I didn’t even have to pitch the concept anymore. He was telling everybody that we should build products for that application.

Now that we are pitching products at Baydin, these little experiences bubble back up to consciousness. If I can’t show market numbers because it is nascent, I can at least help investors stand in our customers’ shoes.

So getting back to that talk. Baydin can’t help someone who is not ready make a decision. But we are thinking about and working on the problem of giving you more complete information.

While a bad resume can knock a candidate out from even getting an interview, a good resume does not guarantee that said candidate is a master programmer. Since we are on a limited budget, Alex came up with a nifty way to see if a potential intern has the right stuff.

On the phone we delve into the details of the candidate’s experience. This is important because it gives us background information. It can tell us if the candidate has experience working with a team, leading a team and how he or she contributes in a project.  It also tells us whether or not the candidate can communicate complex technical information.

We then ask some basic programming questions to see how he or she approaches the problem. Thus far, we’ve had a great experience using EtherPad. The candidate and we can write on a “virtual whiteboard” simultaneously. This allows us to see in real-time how a candidate frames the problem and solves it. We’re looking to see if he or she understands fundamental concepts. In short, it was an effective way to give a technical interview without flying a candidate to our site.

We’ve only posted openings for a week and we’re psyched at the turnout we’ve received thus far. There are some great candidates applying. If you are interested in interning on the ground floor of an exciting startup, then drop us a line.

For most people who work in established companies, these tasks are divided and parceled out amongst numerous specialists. One of the chief complaints I heard from the younger engineers at our old company is that they don’t have a good view of the overall business. What I think they mean to say is that they don’t see the interaction of all the components that make a company run. I was an applications engineer, where I would meet customers, help solve their problems, sometimes at their location, define products and characterize them in end-applications. I thought I had a good view of how the business ran. Boy was I wrong.

There’s a lot of “small” organizational tasks that I took for granted. For example, we had a closet full of pencils and notebooks. We had an amazing field engineering team. We had a healthcare plan. I learned that when you are The Man, you need to know when to take advantage of the sale for a 24 port 10/100Mbps switch. You need to implement a successful distribution system and understand how to deal with healthcare for you and your employees. By the way, Microcenter, has a great deal on a 24 port D-Link switch.

I see PR in a whole new light. At our previous large company, I authored a fair number of webinars and articles. I contributed to ad campaigns for product releases. But at a startup, there is this visceral sense of the direct linkage with the bottom line. It’s where the rubber meets the road. Our web page ranking and the press we get will clearly affect how Baydin takes off. We’re working on a kick-ass product but people need to know about it to buy it.

To our friends who have been writing in to ask us how things are going. The protective cocoon has come off and we’re experiencing the internal clockwork of business. We’re beginning to see things as they are.

Knowledge that’s instilled or discovered over time is conveyed quickly without context. I copied my entire hard disk and passed the external drive around so that everyone could store the information. I gave a few presentations and some explanations of typical problems and what to look out for. 

Although I work with some of the smartest, most talented people around, they do not have the full context of each of these projects. I mean, how could they? I worked on it for years. They have had three weeks to ramp up before I leave.  

What we’re working on at Baydin will have huge ramifications on getting up to speed and transferring knowledge. Our software will give people the necessary context to most effectively understand and learn. In addition, it will show only what is relevant. No more. No less. 

I see examples of the need for Baydin everyday. It’s going to be exciting. Stay tuned!