Over at the Boxxet corporate blog, where I’ve been blogging more, we’ve started the Metrics Series. In this series, we plan to share some fun and hopefully useful metrics around Boxxet.

Posts that are already up:

* Google’s search share is > 90% ?
* Jennifer Aniston vs Web 2.0

Check it out!

Late last summer, my then five-year-old son, my wife and I decided to put up a “lemonade stand” for fun.  Actually, we decided to sell these terrific ice cream cookie sandwiches that we make at home.  Vanilla ice cream sandwiched with two homemade oatmeal cookies, mmmmmmmmm.  MMMMMM….  Sorry, I was distracted there for a moment.

We had a great time.  We made some upfront decisions on philosophy, product, pricing, positioning and go-to-market strategy, but as in any “startup,” it did not go as expected.   Here are some highlights and lessons:

Clear Corporate Goals and Philosophy:

I figured the lemonade stand will help my son learn about cost of goods, the potential monetary profit of work, salesmanship, and responsibility.  I also wanted to do it because (1) I never did it as a kid and (2) I wanted him to get a taste of the entrepreneurship (see my line of work at my startup, Boxxet).

Maximizing profit was not our philosophy that day.  We wanted to learn, have fun and share our great product.

A Unique and High-Quality Product:

I’ve bought lemonade, hot cocoa, cookies and smoothies from kids all over.  I am a sucker for the stand and will stop every time to buy.  But I don’t often buy truly great product from a lemonade stand.  Yes, that is not the point (and why I always stop at stand), but I felt there was room for improvement.

The week before, we had made ice cream cookie sandwiches as a family for a party.  We had fun making, eating and sharing these desserts.  They were fun to make, easy to handle, delicious to eat and were a hit at the party.

It became clear to us that the ice cream cookie sandwich would be a unique and desirable lemonade stand product.

Product Pricing:

This was a discussion between my wife and I about this.  These types of sandwiches would go for $2-$3 at a store or restaurant.  I felt that the lemonade stand needed to keep a $1 threshold for someone to the stop the car and help the kid.  Also, I felt that we need to leave value on the table by giving more to the customer.  We looked back to our Corporate Philosophy and went with $1.

Of course, it was the five-year-old who nailed it when he said, “if they have money, it costs one dollar; if they don’t have money, it’s free.”

Go-to-Market Strategy and knowing when to change it

Our first plan was to market via cute kid and kid-created signage along a high-traffic road in the heat of the afternoon.  We abandoned the strategy after about 10 minutes.  In the end, I believed we would have sold our inventory, but hanging on the side of a busy road was not that pleasant and it wasn’t fun to watch 30 cars pass by without stopping (people are intent on getting from A to B when they drive).

Then we went to the local park where people were hanging.  While we thought we could sell stuff there, we did not want to “sell” to or bother people who are relaxing.  Once again, we turned to our corporate philosophy and we moved on.

So we did what my son wanted to do in the first place.  Sell in front of our house.  It was lower traffic but much more highly targeted: neighbors who were more motivated (guilted?) to buy.   Turned out to be a great move.  We hung out, brought out music, chairs and drinks, had neighbors hang with us and caught up with people who were walking and driving by.  We had access to corporate HQ for freezer needs and potty breaks.  There were a great deal of intangible value. 

Building The Right Team

We knew we had the back-office and operations all handled (mom and dad).  Once the people saw the product and price, they were willing customers. But we knew we had a hole on the sales side.  My son is a great closer but not a good opener.  He’ll engage in a great conversation once warmed up and the customer will want to buy.  But he’s not the “jump up and down and holler at the top of his lungs” type (pretty useful for a lemonade stand).  So this leads me to..

When to Hire Your VP of Sales

At one point, our ten-year-old neighbor came over to see what was going on.  He volunteered to help.  We quickly agreed as we just gotten to our final selling spot after unsuccessful attempts elsewere.  He hopped on his bike and started tracking down cars and bringing them to the stand.  We had our “opener,” some would call him a “hunter.” He insisted on helping for free but we made him take a commission (need to have a “Win Win”).

Relying on Friends and Family:

In a startup, you often rely in friends and family to help get the company started: financing, the first few sales, moral support.  No different here.  Our neighbors really put fuel in our tank.  One came over and bought seven (for his extended family who was having dinner later but had no dessert planned).  In fact, it turned out that two party goers would buy about half of our inventory.

The Sweet Feeling of Momentum

Startups are a struggle, but there is nothing like the feeling of momentum.  And we had it as people stopped, bought, and enjoyed.  We sold about 22 of these things.  After a few discounts, commissions to the ten-year old and paying $5 back to mom/dad for COGs, our son netted about $10.   My wife and I had a great time, we hung out with neighbors and I think our son learned something.

And, of course, we saved a few ice cream cookie sandwiches left over for us to eat for dessert that night.  We enjoyed our day and our treat, and that turned out to be a great exit strategy.  

I am a daily reader and a big fan of the Wall Street Journal paper. Over the past few years, the Journal has not been hesitant to make changes. They redesigned their layout a couple years ago. They added a Personal Journal section. They started a Weekend Edition. With each major change or addition, I held my breath and wanted to know how my experience was going to change. The redesign of an icon is not to be taken lightly.

I’ve liked the changes they have made in the past. Surprisingly, I read the Journal as much for pleasure as for business. If you had asked me if that were possible ten years ago, I would have said no.

So when the Journal made a huge design change on Jan 2, I once again braced myself. There were a lot of initial thoughts that were negative. Some thought the smaller paper felt less substantial (I did too, at first). Others felt that profits were trumping experience (print newspaper are facing so many challenges that I expect papers to try to cut costs).

I did not want to come out with an immediate judgment. People generally are uncomfortable with change.

As the two weeks came to pass, my blog post was supposed to say something along the lines: I am fine with the redesign. I do like the smaller size for convenience reasons; I still feel that it gives ups an intangible heft-ness. It felt easier to read; the content remained good. Basically, no harm, but no great breakthroughs. Summary: boy, it must hard to redesign icons.

But earlier today, I read a front page article in the Journal (subscription needed, sorry) titled: “An Immigration Raid Aids Blacks — For a Time.” This article documents the changes in a company town when federal immigration agents chased out a mostly Hispanic workforce and made opportunities for local African-Americans.

It was a fascinating read. Uncomfortable at times, revealing, stark, worrisome, maybe even inflammatory. But it was brave and it was IMPORTANT. I encourage people to pick up today’s Journal and read that story.

After reading that story, any post on redesign seemed small. So tomorrow and next week and next month, I will pick up the Journal, not because of its width or font or layout, but because of its proven ability to publish important stories.

[Image from the terrific site newsdesigner.com]

By now, I’ve been part of many dozens of product launches and it hasn’t been boring yet.  It is my pleasure to announce the public availability of Boxxet. Dan and I spent today smashing down a bunch of bugs today, talking with bloggers and press and generally making everything presentable.

You can read more about the launch and the product at the Boxxet blog and you can experience Boxxet yourself, may I suggest: The Amazing Race, Green Day, New York Yankees, The Office, Second Life, Supernatural or Ultimate Fighting.

So the race planning is behind us (product design), warmups are done (beta) and now the marathon has begun.  Thanks for watching.

There are stories that need to be told because they are great stories.  The Blackberry orphans story is one of them.  This is the Wall Street Journal article that depicts kids whose parents are so addicted to their Blackberry and email that the kids are essentially orphaned.  Great story: innocent kids, parents who just can’t help themselves, technology run amok.

Well, I am a Blackberry Dad (actually, I use a Treo, but let’s stick with the Blackberry theme).  And I confess to doing some of those things mentioned in the article.  I sneak many peeks on my Blackberry, sometimes at inappropriate times.  I like to stay in touch and not fall behind.

But technology has made me a better dad.   Here is what I know: I am a hard worker and very focused on work.  My dad was this way; I am this way.  Earlier in my career, it made for tough going with friends and girlfriends.

But the Blackberry and its tech cousins have made it possible for me to work when and where I want.  I work hard, but I am able to work the hours I want to work in the location where I want to work.

So I wake up late, work hard during the day, grab my 6-year-old son in the late afternoon and we spend a lot of time together.  We have a great time: we play spies, we cook dinner, we go shopping, we design all sorts of stuff, we have a family meal, we do some math and reading.  When he goes to bed, I read him a story and we talk for a few minutes.  We talk about the day and that’s when we talk about the “why’s” (why it is important to treat everyone well; why bullies bully; why being afraid to lose means you may not get the chance to win).

After he is tucked in, I spent an hour or two with my wife and a little relaxing.  Then I work late into the night (don’t ask how late I go) on my next big thing.  Before the Blackberry, I would be putting in my long days at the office, since that is the only place where work can be done.   I would probably run through the door hoping that he was still awake.   It would have been Cat’s in the Cradle for me.

[By the way, I know I am lucky to be able to do this.  Technology has not given everyone this choice.]

And while only time will tell the ending of this story, I am thankful, truly thankful, that technology has allowed me to try to be the kind of dad that I wish to be. 

I am a San Francisco Giants fan and we are now in a seven-game losing streak (6 of those loses against two last-place teams). And over the last seven frustrating games, it was clear by the first third of each game that WE WERE GOING TO LOSE. There’s the foreboding feeling and, even if things start to turn our way, you got the feeling that team was going to find a way to lose. And we did.

Now, businesses can fall into that trap as well. You do something that backfires. Next time, you think twice. Then your colleagues lose confidence. And then, pretty soon, nothing goes right. All bad things are to be expected. The good is nice but won’t last long. It can be a terrible place. See poor Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees.

The good news is that the opposite is true as well. Players and teams and companies can win when they don’t seem to have the talent or resources to do so. Call it faith, the Red Pill, stupidity, luck, or gumption. In this place, losing is not an option, setbacks are merely obstacles for us to exercise our excellent jumping ability and those who snicker at us are, unfortunately for them, a few steps behind.

Bottle up that confidence and let’s give it to my poor Giants.

I am a loyal reader of Brad Feld’s blog. He not only has thoughtful posts, but he does an incredible service to entrepreneurs with his Term Sheet series, where he explains many of the crazy terms that you can find in a Term Sheet.

Earlier today, he had a post titled When Does An Entrepreneur Need “Experienced Help”. Give it a read. I left the following comment:

From the wording of the question, I would have guessed that your friend has not had success working with entrepreneurs. The obvious clue was the judgmental “real smart ones that know when to bring [him in]“.

And his lack of success says to me that he has come into his COO/CFO roles with the wrong attitude. If I can rephrase the question as an entrepreneur with his similar wording, I may say this:

“I was interested in your thoughts on when experienced Series B executives realize they are part of an existing team and culture that needs to bring an additional perspective to the ones the entrepreneur and other executives have at the company. The real smart ones that understand know that they are bringing their experience to an existing table and are not the next great hope of the company.”

It is the very difficult job of the entrepreneur to create and the equally difficult job of the “experienced help” to come into a startup and have the entrepreneur and the rest of the team want to listen and follow. The “real smart” entrepreneurs do not roll over and the “real smart” experienced help do not expect a handover.

So how to avoid? Your advice to your friend is fine, but that may test the social interaction of the participants rather than their working style. While it does not always work, I try to set up a few business scenarios (from mundane to difficult) that we can discuss (say, how to launch a difficult product, how to turn around a difficult but loyal executive, the merits of a particular go-to-market strategy) and see how the discussion goes. Do we reach the same conclusion? Do we reach different conclusions respectfully? Does one person always give? Do we give build on top of each other or do we debate?

It is unlikely we will be friends, but we must become great business colleagues.

Bringing “professional” executives into a startup is the one of the most delicate stages of a startup’s development. I have not seen a consistently good best practice for this. If anyone else has, please share with the world.

I am uploading an Excel file into the new Google Spreadsheet.  Of course, I am sending it a big, bad-ass, complex Excel file.  And, as it is slowly uploading, I started to think that we are now trying to do pretty unnatural things inside the browser.

Yes, I am a fan of minimizing the page-loading experience in a browser, so I generally like using AJAX.  But is the browser a robust enough operating system to support productivity applications? 

At Boxxet, we are asking a lot from the browser, with a fair bit of AJAX-y interactivity.  And we think it’s the best way to build web apps.  But when I look at a web-based spreadsheet, I wonder if we asking way too much from a browser.

So here’s what happened.  Google Spreadsheet would not accept my killer Excel file.  It accepted my simpler ones but not perfectly. 

But the application is pretty snappy and may change my mind about how far we can go with the browser as a platform for productivity apps.

For now, I will try Google spreadsheet for light spreadsheet duties that need sharing: timesheets, to-do lists, project plans.  But for financial modeling and interactive spreadsheets, I’ll stay with Excel.

But small steps in making unnatural acts more natural is how big changes start to happen.

This post is a departure but I think it is worth getting the word out. Since my son was born five years ago, I had to make sure that my wife Mary was taken care of on Mother’s Day. There had to be a gift from both me and my son. I found a terrific gift that you can do year after year.  A photo book.

With tiny digital cameras, I find it very easy to take lots and lots of photos. I, however, still have the problem of too many photos and not enough uses of those photos. A photo book helps take care of that. Mary looks forward to it. I like it because it has become the family’s “year in review.” And now my son is old enough so he can contribute to the creation of the book.

The structure of the book is pretty straightforward: fun things we did with mom over the course of the year. Lots of photos, a caption here and there. The last two years, I’ve scanned in one of my son’s drawing so we can watch his own writing and drawing develops. Overall, it is a fair bit of work, but it has been worth it.

So how do I do it?

Of course, take lots of photos. When I am ready to produce the book, I choose the photos I want (I’ve done as few as 12 and as many as 100) and, this year, I used Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/) to “fix” the photo (they have a “I’m Feeling Lucky” one-button fixer that goes a good job 80% of the time) and they really made the photos look better.

Then I use one of the photo-book vendors out there. I’ve tried a bunch over the years; I am sure some of these have changed, but I will give you my impression on each:

A hardcover from: MyPublisher
The photobook looks very nice and I like the linen cover. Will stand the test of time.

A PocketBooks from MyPublisher
The pocketbook is inexpensive and easy to get started.  You can even do multiple copies for grandma, etc. It is also very basic, but it gets the job done.

Snapbook from Shutterfly
Like the PocketBook above, the snapbook is casual and easy.  I like the feel of the Snapbook and would go for this one for a durable product.

Photobook from Sony Imagestation
I did this last year. The book looked good when we got it but the pages are starting to curl after only one year. The software was hard to use and buggy and it was pretty pricey. I would probably skip.

Personalized Book from Blurb
I used blurb for this year’s gift. They are in beta and the software was problematic.  Crashed a lot, wasn’t as flexible as I wanted and had a few bugs that caused printing problems (which they are fixing for me: their customer support has been very responsive).  It was also the most expensive book of the lot. However, the final product was the most impressive of the lot.  The photos are gorgeous and the layout of the book was very professional. This book makes the others look amatuer-ish.

No matter what service you use, I highly suggest this gift. I expect to do this with my son for many years to come.

A few weeks past, I returned from a trip to Shanghai. This was my first trip and I was very anxious to go. With all the talk about China and the explosive growth, innovation and opportunity, I was feeling left out. And coming from Silicon Valley, which looks like it is going through a new boom, I have high standards for excuberance.

Hurdle cleared. Take Silicon Valley in 1999, New York City, Hong Kong, the Jetson-like 50s optimism of the future; mix it up and you’ve got Shanghai. It isn’t that Shanghai is the city of the future. Shanghai is the city with the brightest future. Construction cranes dot the skies; every block was bustling; the people were walking with a purpose; there was real excitement in the air.

Get yourself over there.