I want to make a public apology for writing this post a few days ago. Stressful times but no excuse. I understand what happened now and this was a misunderstanding on my part. For anyone that cares here’s exactly what went down:

• I had pre-ordered Eric’s book before SXSW and just assumed I had elected to receive the digital version.
• I didn’t realize that his book was included in the AppSumo bundle I purchased at SXSW (cool). AppSumo apparently mistakenly advertised it as including the digital edition.
• Eric’s email a few days ago was clarifying the mixup and just getting mailing addresses from the people that purchased the AppSumo bundle. I interpreted it as him just changing his mind and choosing not to make a digital edition that had been offered via his site and that I had purchased.

So basically I’m an ass for making that post earlier and jumping to assumptions before doing proper fact checking. Now that I understand the situation I feel bad and sincerely apologize. Eric, I’m sorry. Looking forward to reading your book. It’s an important work.

Apologies for the rant in advance but this is a bigger topic than the title implies.

I had pre-ordered Eric’s book many months back because I’m interested in the lessons but also largely out of sheer support for CustDev/Lean startup movements. These are important concepts. The mysterious art of entrepreneurship is finally getting codified into a repeatable framework. IMO this is one of the more promising developments in terms of advancements that has the most potential to restore our economy from the shitter.

So I was surprised this email from Eric this morning:

Now arguably this is a trivial thing. Being nomadic & virtual I’m trying to slim down and have less physical stuff so I’d prefer the digital version I ordered, but barring the existence of that, I’ll take the hardcover. The stance taken here though seems pretty absurd. If somebody pre-orders a hotdog from you and you decide not to make it for some reason, you can’t simply insist that they accept a burger. What’s worse, it’s not even like he ran out of hotdogs, he just seemingly decided not to make them.

Again, in the grand scheme, not a big deal and I’m far more interested in the content so we can apply the relevant lessons to our startups. But what’s troubling is I’ve noticed a theme developing (Eric sorry to call you out personally as the example here) where founders are so immersed in conversion funnels and A/B testing and cohort analysis that they forget the basics of running a hotdog stand. This is the guy who (2nd to Steve Blank IMO) is in a position to massively influence the next generation of entrepreneurs and he has this approach to something as fundamental as basic customer service??

Here’s a novel idea Eric: explain the situation and why you’ve chosen not to make the digital edition and realize that 98% of people will be fine with the hardcover. But give folks a choice for a refund if you can’t deliver the product they purchased. To insist that they accept a substitute with a 2wk ultimatum that they’ll otherwise forfeit their money – not how you do it dude.

So I’m reviving a tradition I had many years ago on here called “Kernel Dump.” It’s a periodic brain dump of everything I’ve been up to. It’s basically like declaring blogging bankruptcy for all the little things I’ve meant to write posts on and a way of clearing the buffer with a single catch-all update. This will be admittedly tl;dr for strangers and is more intended for friends and family that want to check in on me and see what I’ve been up to. Here goes as close to chronological order as possible starting from back in April timeframe:

A new startup

After almost five years at a company I helped start, I was providing little new value and it was time to move on. My cofounder continues to run it and I remain on the board but have since transitioned out of the day to day to pursue a new music-centric startup. We just closed our first licensing deal last week for the Scratch Audio technology with a company out of LA and are in process of proving out a niche application musical artists that utilizes our own platform and lets them enable fans to make and purchase remixes of their music online.

Shortsale

Facing a growing amount of debt on my home in Scottsdale and a disappearing income source, I investigated the options of foreclosure and shortsale. I was fortunate to meet a solid dude in Phoenix via my friend Bill Ramsey who successfully navigated the short sale waters on my behalf and achieved a favorable outcome. I’ve been meaning to post a summary of what all was involved in that process. Before this past Christmas I had never heard the term before and in the span of one evening bouncing amongst three holiday parties, it came up in conversations at every party. I investigated it and determined it made a ton of sense given my situation. It’s an insanely useful option if you’re heavily under water and I believe if more people understood how it worked, more would take advantage of it.

Cabin move

With summer approaching and 110 deg days on the horizon I convinced my folks to let me move what few possessions I have up to their cabin south of Flagstaff. I’ve been living there since and have been lucky to have a rent-free temporary setup. My buddy Bryan who got me onto the Paelo lifestyle has been rooming there as well so I’m not a complete hermit at this point ;-) This is a guy I had met years ago who also ran a party bus business at the time. We share similar mentalities around CustDev and I’m 100% sold on the Paleo lifestyle at this point having lost 27lbs and 4 belt sizes. I could write for days on the back-to-basics life changes we’ve implemented with barefoot running, composting, chemical-free existence, organic-only diet and now with beginning to hunt our own food (Zuckerberg barely beat us to the punch).

Public Speaking

I was lucky enough on May 20th to have opportunity to speak for Ignite Phoenix as well as at the Arizona Disruptors Pitch Day. We ended up being extended an offer from Disruptors but graciously passed and opted instead to align ourselves with NACET, a technology incubator in northern Arizona with a great track record for helping companies commercialize their technologies. We still have huge respect for what Hamid and his crew are doing in Scottsdale (so great to see someone step up to the plate and incubate startups) but NACET was a better fit and has been a nice homebase in the pines. The Daily Sun had a pretty good summary the other week of what I’m doing there. I’m speaking tomorrow to a group of high school sophomores as a part of their YES week intro to entrepreneurship.

Microconf

Last month I got a windfall free ticket to attend MIcroconf in Vegas at the very last minute from the host Rob Walling. It was a conference I desperately wanted to attend but was precluded purely by cashflow. So of course I jumped on the opportunity and made the 4hr drive on I-40 from Flagstaff. Glad I did because I met a few incredibly badass people there. Some people are just bright stars, there’s no other way to put it. I wrote up some thoughts on Microconf afterwards. If you’re trying to strike out on your own with a small business in the web realm it’s absolutely something to put on your calendar for next year.

Going carrierless

So this is something I’ve so wanted to do for awhile and finally just pulled the trigger on last week. I killed my AT&T account and am now running Skype mobile on my iPhone over Verizon EVDO. I have the Verizon Mifi mobile hotspot which gives me mobile connectivity for my laptop and phone (I’m grandfathered in under an unlimited data plan for $60/mo so it’s tough to beat). I ported my cell number to Google Voice and have it so it rings my Skype on both my phone and computer. I now have a phone bill of only $3/mo. Calls are flaky at times but it’s 90% of the phone service I had before for about 2% the cost. I do important conference calls via the landlines at the NACET facility. And Verizon coverage is definitely superior to AT&T – before on the I-17 drive down to Phx my iPhone would cut out at various spots along the way. Over the Verizon card it has continuous service the entire way. Extremely happy with this setup. I plan to write-up a post exclusively on this topic once I hit the 30 day mark so I have enough context to comment intelligently on how adequate it is and what to know before switching.

Useful apps I’ve discovered

I moved my todo list to Things and have been very happy with it for GTD. It has native iPhone and Mac apps with a beautiful UI on each. My only complaint is it lacks OTA sync – it has sync over wifi so it’s not a huge deal but would be great if they offered it. Tungle has been a delight for scheduling calls. Those guys were recently acquired by RIM so I’m not the only one who feels this way. I was introduced to the iPhone app Fast Customer when I met its creator, Paul Singh while staying at Noah’s place for SXSW. Without question for $2 this app has the best ROI of any app I’ve ever purchased. Actually now it looks like it’s free so it technically has infinite ROI. It’s basically like having an assistant call a big company on your behalf and ring you once they have the CSR on the line. GroupMe is something I discovered at SXSW and it’s basically like an adhoc listserv that runs over SMS. It’s similar to Beluga only it doesn’t require that users have a smartphone since it uses SMS as the interface. Super useful for coordinating an evening with a loose-knit group of strangers. Glympse is another neat one. Almost like a more frictionless, temporary Loopt this app lets you publish your location via private Google map to select people. Similar to GroupMe it’s a useful tool for coordinating amongst groups moving around in an area.

Can of Awesome interviews

I made a New Years’ resolution this year to start podcasting interviews with people I admire. I did the first four starting out with the most influential mentors in my life prioritized in order of influence. I haven’t done one in awhile because I’m trying to keep with this trend and doing so mandates that I interview Jason Barney next. I hope to have that interview soon and may soon after open it up so it’s not impeded by this constraint. My intention in doing these interviews is to share wisdom from the coolest people I know. This is maybe a morbid thought but I want to pay tribute to incredible people while they’re alive and not wait to say nice things about them after they’re dead. Anyways, these are worth a listen. I know podcasts are an investment time-wise and I promise to not waste anyone’s time with these- there are already some incredibly interesting/valuable lessons shared by the guys I interviewed.

My eBook: Cart Drawn Horses

This is a work still in its infancy but I’m pulling together a small eBook that will contain everything I’ve learned about practical how-to for CustDev, rapid prototyping & validated learning. CustDev and Paleo are probably the two most life-changing things I’ve ever learned. There are great conceptual resources about CustDev but there seems to be a major void right now in terms of scarcity of practical guides “this is how you actually implement it.” I’m giving away the first 100 copies so if this is the type of thing that interests you be sure to sign up for a rough cut.

Music

I haven’t written much of any new music lately but a buddy and I and I have been playing a bit with our cover band Conjugal Visit. I attended a concert by The Glitch Mob in SF about this time last year and was blown away by what they were doing musically. That led me to start tinkering with a piece of software called Ableton Live. I now run the Ableton User Group in Phoenix and have met a bunch of people way smarter than I am who have been teaching me all kinds of stuff. I’m blown away by this software- it’s rare that something comes along and rewrites the rules for a field but this app is single-handledly changing what’s possible in a live performance with one or two people.

Travel

Other than Vegas I haven’t been traveling at all – been in cash conservation mode until I get some steady income from the various projects I’m working on. Two startup buddies of mine Chase and Josh just completed a month in San Francisco and I had really hoped to be a part of that but sadly it just wasn’t in the cards from a cashflow perspective. I’m hoping this latest deal we did for Scratch Audio will give me an excuse to make it out to LA next month. I met a ton of great folks last time I was there for Startup Weekend and have kept in touch with some. If you haven’t yet played with Namesake this is an interesting “Quora meets IRC” community. It seems to be still pretty heavily LA-centric but they opened it up to the public recently and it’s been getting a decent amount of growth.

Books

I’m about 2/3rds through Black Swan and have revised my opinion that it does actually have some value. Initially I was surprised why it got so much good press given that it was the equivalent of the falling rock sign for unpredictable catastrophic events. I read a new agey one recently called “Power of Now” – it’s a bit on the crystal-hugger side for me but it did one simple idea that has altered my thinking. The premise is that too often we live in the past or present (by hours, days or even years). There’s nothing wrong with planning or reminiscing in moderation but living in either means we’re missing an immediate opportunity. Life takes place in the present only. It’s such a cliched and simple concept but something about this book hammered this idea through and I’ve been consciously pulling my attention back into the immediate presence since reading it.

I got to review an advance copy of Derek Sivers’ book which is now out and it’s definitely worth reading (he even put me in the credits!). This is a guy who created a company from scratch and sold it for $20MM but then, more incredibly, put all the money in a trust for musicians. It reminded me a lot of Rework by 37 Signals- it’s a fast read packed with wisdom from this guy. I’m a week into resuming a course on speed reading that I had done ten years ago. This thing works if you stick with it. I believe being able to digest written information either 5x more or 5x faster than your competition is a huge advantage and this is the best resource I’ve found for increasing one’s reading speed. The other business one I’m reading is the 2nd edition of Solution Selling. I’m a horrible sales person and admittedly need to get better. Of all the books I’ve read on sales the first edition of this one had the most useful advice in terms of a framework and I’m looking forward to reading the updated version that has revised practices for software companies.

Fun Gadgets

I haven’t bought many toys lately but I’ve been getting a huge amount of enjoyment from this slingshot that we converted to shoot arrows. We haven’t used it to hunt yet but it’s absolutely capable of bringing down small game and given that compound bows start at $600 this $20 weapon is an awesome value. Chris Dumler in LA turned me onto this gravity-fed tea strainer and I use it daily. If you’re into loose leaf tea it makes it so much easier to make. My best friend gave me a mini RC helicopter for Christmas last yr and you just have to try these things to understand how cool they are. They’re about $25 on Amazon and gyroscopically stabilized so they’re super easy to fly. Lastly at the suggestion of this CNET review I got Klipsch noise canceling in-ear headphones. They make working so much better when you need to tune out background noise and zone out (great also for reducing travel fatigue on plane flights). BTW if you use Rdio for music, I have a great mix for zone out work music.

Learning

So aside from speed reading, I’ve committed to learning Rails and some basic development stuff. I figure at this point I’ll likely be involved with various web applications and dev teams for the foreseeable future and there’s huge value to understanding development from a low-level perspective. I met the Ming.ly guys in LA and Tyler pretty much sold me on Github, Rails, Hipchat, PivotalTracker & Heroku. After waffling on Python vs. Rails I’ve decided in favor of learning Ruby & Rails. I committed my first project to GitHub the other night. It’s a stupid simple Coldfusion app I wrote to be able to read Hacker News the way I like. My plan is to rewrite it in Rails and use that as a practical excuse to learn Rails. The Heroku deployment sounds awesome and I’ve already been tinkering w/ Pivotal Tracker which is very cool for agile project management. Lately I’ve also been tinkering w/ Agile Zen and actually did a makeshift Solution Selling pipeline using their free proj mgmt tool.

Plan for Q3

So as far as what I hope to accomplish this quarter:

• I’d like to see us land another licensing deal for Scratch and ideally get it to a level of revenue that supports at least myself for now (as Bill Ramsey would say “a one-man boat”). Eric, my co-founder starts a new full-time job tomorrow and the ultimate goal will be to get revenue to a level that we can afford to have him full-time on it.
• I’m very excited about testing this MixFork concept with musicians and proving that businesses can be built ontop of our technology platform.
• We’re taking Paleo to a new level and I hope to have more to report on this front soon.
• Really looking forward to incorporating Ableton in our live performances and writing some new original music.
• On the side I’m pulling together a question answer site for people contemplating short sales. This is the resource I wish had existed when I was going through the process and my goal is to give people a solid resource to educate themselves on what’s involved and take advantage of it as an alternative to foreclosure if it makes sense.
• Lastly, you can’t time this type of thing but I’m hoping to meet someone. The solitary cabin existence has been super useful for getting a bunch done but it would be killer to meet another great girl at some point. I went on my friend Lyndsie’s show Valley Catch a few weeks back but no bites so far ;-)

Anyways, that’s the TL;DR update from Sean. If you’ve read this far and we haven’t chatted in awhile hit me up and let’s catch up. Santa Monica peeps: I hope to be back out there in September, if you’re around at that time let’s hang out.

I don’t usually use my blog for this type of thing but if you’re in Phoenix, AZ and are in the market for computer equipment, musical gear or furniture check out the virtual yard sale below:

I recently moved my office and residence and have a ton of stuff that I’m selling cheap. I’m out on the 1st so as the cheesy sales guys on TV say “Everything must GO!” Some of the more noteworthy stuff that might interest fellow nerds:

• 300lbs of technical books (that’s right, measured in lbs not qty – O’Reilly and many others)
• Guitar gear: Line 6 150W amplifier and a Lexicon effects processor
• A pair of Klipsch computer speakers with sub woofers
• Brand new pair of Audiotechnica noise canceling headphones
• Cannon MP500 multi-function printer/fax/scanner and HP Photosmart 7960 printer
• Wooden slatted futon with cushion
• Matching maple desk, file cabinet and bokshelves
• Maple full-sized bed with mattress

There’s also a mountain comprised of every computer and sound cable ever made plus plenty of other house and office items I didn’t have time to photograph. I’ll be camping out there playing car salesman tomorrow so call if you have any questions and make an offer if you see something you like – 602.492.4218.

Not that their site is even relevant anymore but the Tucows review team is apparently way understaffed – this is just too funny not to post. Below is a note I received a full 2 1/2 years after submitting our very first product to the Tucows download directory. In short, we were rejected because the download file was no longer there. do ya think? ;-)

from	Sean Tierney 
to	developer@tucows.com
date	Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 10:46 AM
subject	Re: Reject Letter for JumpBox for the vTiger CRM System

well yes that file was submitted 2.5 years ago. it would be surprising
if any vendor's download was in the same place after that long. if we
resubmit now I can pretty much promise you the file will be in a different
location 2.5 years from now. we'll pass. thanks.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:38 AM,   wrote:
> Dear author,
>
> Thank you for submitting your software for distribution on www.tucows.com.
> Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your program at this time for the
> following reason(s):
>
> 1)  The download file URL was unavailable.
>
> You must provide a direct link to the file you would like us to host.
>
> Please resubmit your program once this issue has been resolved.
> Further information on our policies and review criteria can be
> found in the Author Resource Center.
>
> Thank you for choosing Tucows.
>
> Sincerely,
> The Tucows Review Team

So this is a different kind of hacking and not introspection in the programming sense but here’s a riff that’s been stuck in my head the past few days:

And Happy New Years everybody. Here’s to knockin’ whatever you do out of the park in ’09!

Two forces of nature give talks that are a must-watch for anyone who is looking to change the world:

Steve Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford:

If you ever have an either/or choice of gaining all the knowledge or all the motivation to do something hard, choose the latter because it ensures you will find the former. Both talks put the daily minutiae of stuff like the post below in perspective and replenish the spirit that they sap. Do yourself a favor and take the next 2hrs of free time that you have and watch both talks. Whatever you’re working towards I cannot think of a more productive way to spend that time. Be warned- you will have a tear by the end of Pausch’s talk.

BONUS: The minute you finish the video, when you have the most possible wind in your sails, take another five to open source your goals.

Ahhh just need to vent here- does anyone using AuthorizeNet share an utter frustration with their support? This is a chat transcript after waiting on hold on their support line for over 2hrs and finally getting through only to be disconnected with a “your call cannot be completed as dialed.” I tried their live help system yesterday leaving a chat window open (of course needed to use a different browser because it continuously popped over what I was trying to do to tell me i was #53 in the support queue). Both times their support rep terminated the session due to inactivity when I finally got through because the window was in the background. Today this lovely exchange – and all I want to do is activate AMEX by giving them our AMEX merchant ID:

Matthew B: Hello Sean! How can I help you today?
Sean Tierney: hi Matt, we need to implement AMEX on our acct. i have a merch
id from them but your knowledgebase says to contact you guys to set it up
Matthew B: Right however,
Matthew B: you would have to call us so we can verify secure information to do that.
Sean Tierney: hehehehh your call queue is even longer than the 30min wait time on
your live help. can you call me at 480.967.5897 and we'll do it now?
Matthew B: Unfortunately I can't call you sorry I wish it was possible.
Sean Tierney: wow. okay. will get in line and wait on hold for an hour again-
hopefully it doesn't disconnect again at the end like it did last time. Sorry to
rant but you guys have some major support issues. should focus less on bringing
in business and more on delivering reasonable support... thanks for your help
Matthew B: You are welcome I apologize for the inconvienience. 

I don’t blame Matt but I don’t buy the “I can’t call you” line either- that would have been the fastest way to resolve the issue and me calling them is less authenticated than them calling the number on the account. Would take all of one minute to resolve in that situation. If anyone at AuthNet is listening- your support is very frustrating. Seriously consider halting all new business until you can figure out how to deliver a reasonable support experience to your paying customers.

Thus concludes my rant.

I just got it.

The VZ Access manager software that comes with it was trivial to setup and it worked right off the bat on Leopard OS. It has some performance diagnostics built into it, although it appears to be over-reporting the speed according to the Speakeasy results:

All in all I’m very happy with this purchase. At $60/mo with 30 days to try it out risk-free and $175 to back out of the two-yr commitment any time after that, it’s worth the price to me at this point to have guaranteed internet access wherever we go. I don’t know how it compares to Sprint’s EVDO network but I vowed 3 years back to never give those guys another dime. So far so good Verizon.

I just noticed today is the 3rd anniversary of when I started writing this blog. I’m not going to do a lame recap or any forward looking vision for what this will become because frankly there is no plan- I just write whatever is on my mind. Reading that original post again it’s crazy to think how much my situation has changed and yet how much is precisely the same. It makes me wonder if it’s truly possible to write your way out of a paper bag into the life you want. There’s no agenda here other than to:

I realize that when almost every post is tagged with the category “nerd,” it’s more a statement about the author than anything ;-) If there’s a topic in particular you’d like to hear more about, I’ve added the skribit application on my social page as a suggestions box. Starting this blog was a big catalyst for me to get my $h%@ together and make progress towards my goals. I recommend it for anyone who’s on the fence about writing publicly because you’ll find that the act of writing itself will help refine your thoughts and having it public makes you accountable for what you say (*note- i believe blog as a verb should be banned). Thanks for continuing to follow along and here’s to imagining where we’ll all be in another three years!