In early November, Jen and I took a long train ride adventure from Washington, D.C. to sunny Savannah, Georgia to speak about our entrepreneurship endeavors at the first annual Geekend 2009 event. The event was pulled together by the lovely team of Jake & Miriam Hodesh of New Moon of Savannah. With one of our old AOL pals also speaking and helping to pull the event together, we were extremely excited to be a part of the festivities.

We made an absolute geekend of it, enjoying our trip down, meeting lots of folks and speaking on Saturday in a session titled “I’m My Own Boss. Now What?” In the session, both Jen and I shared our different perspectives on starting your own business. I shared some insight on how to balance a full-time job at AOL while getting my dreams started on the side, pulling from my experiences with TECH cocktail, Somewhat Frank and Shiny Heart Ventures. Jen shared her experience of leaving a full-time job to develop a focused, day-to-day routine as a full-time entrepreneur. We shared stories and anecdotes of what we’ve learned so far in our various ventures, which includes Thankfulfor.com. Here’s an edited video clip from Geekend 2009, highlighting some of our talk – it’s about 10 minutes taken from an hour long session.

"Open" by Flickr user ChipGriffin

Great news – today we opened up the first version of Thankfulfor and we invite you all to come in and get your Thanks going!

When you get there, just click the Sign Up button or sign in with your Twitter account. By default, all your posts are public, so visit your settings page if you want to make your posts private. Once you are in, it’s pretty simple – just post what you are thankful for!  We suggest posting 3-5 things each day. Stick with it and pay attention to how you are feeling. Seriously, writing down or expressing gratitude on a regular basis is key to happiness and well being. Try it out for yourself! By the way, this is our beta release, so there are many more features coming down the pipeline – we’d also love your feedback and suggestions.

Today we are most thankful for the Interwebs, Bill our developer, Tia our designer and of course, all of YOU, our very first Thankfulfor friends and supporters. And if you like what you find, we’d be delighted and most thankful if you’d share it with your friends far and wide.

Grazie, Merci, Mahalo, Danke, Arigato, Xie Xie, Thank you!

Shiny Heart Ventures Announces Thankfulfor.com

The Shiny Heart team has two projects in the works:  one is more involved and it’s still in development (more about that later), and the other is just about ready for launch. It’s called Thankfulfor and it’s all about gratitude. We’ve talked with a few close friends and family about it and the first question we usually get is, why?  Well, why not?  As Jerry Maguire once said: “We live in a cynical world. A cynical world.” It’s the easy and expected path to resort to sarcasm and snark nowadays. But our mission is not to build products that remind people of jaded attitudes – it’s to build products that remind people of the joys of life. What better way to do that than to provide a way for people to take stock of the things – big and small – that they are thankful for each day. In my experience, when we are feeling thankful it’s just a hop and a skip away from feelings of happiness – and happiness is contagious, particularly across social networks. We have a perfect medium to take advantage of this and maybe do the world some good.

So, back to the point.

What is Thankfulfor?

Thankfulfor is a micro-blogging site focused on gratitude. You can enter up to 140 characters about what you are thankful for and post them to your personal “journal” of thanks, which can either be private or public. You can also choose to send each Thankfulfor post to your social network on Twitter (and soon Facebook), spreading the good vibes far and wide.

Thousands, maybe more, practice gratitude globally, many using gratitude journals where they write down a few things they are grateful for each day. Most of those people will tell you it’s more than just a journal – it’s a key to happiness and well-being. Thankfulfor promises to take the resources available today and develop tools for a growing generation of people interested in journaling their gratitude as well as expressing and sharing their thanks with others.

While we haven’t opened up the site to everyone yet, we’re very close. If you are in the DC area and want to be one of the first to see it, we will be demoing Thankfulfor at TECH cocktail DC at the LeftBank in Adams Morgan tonight, August 27.  Out-of-towners, sign-up for our email updates (above) and follow us at @iamthankfulfor on Twitter.

We are so thankful for all of you who are here and supporting us in your own way. We hope you’ll give Thankfulfor a try. More to come soon!

We’ve been on the road quite a bit in the last month, and between the two of us we’ve hit Maine, Milwaukee, Chicago, Taipei and New York in just a few weeks, with a few more trips on the horizon. We like to consider ourselves digital nomads and have a goal of being location independent in order to experience as much as we can – definitely a lot more than when chained to an office desk. Thanks to the developments of wireless technology and lots of devices, we are always connected. While many people love working at larger companies and thrive on daily office camaraderie and a certain level of stability, we like to feel the freedom of unrestricted mobility. Whether we are jumping on a Skype call via our iPhones while reviewing new devices in downtown Taipei, sending our developers daily feedback from coastal Maine or responding to an email thread while watching our favorite Chicago baseball team rally to pull out an exciting win, we remain productive from virtually anywhere. Not that life is always that exciting, but with family and friends scattered, global tech events and lots of frequent flier miles, we like to take advantage of any change in scenery.

In real-estate the emphasis is always put on “location, location, location!” and thanks to ever-evolving technology we can now be productive from almost any location – the devices and connectivity leave us no excuse. And while we understand that there is no place like home, we like to think we have many homes – the primary one being the World Wide Web. So we embrace our unrestricted mobility as much as we can, allowing us to experience more in life while continuing to move the ball forward. Who needs vacation?

When all those comments get me a down, I look for inspiration.

So, a few weeks ago I happened across Dave McClure’s tweet about scrappy startups, and just reading it gave me another boost of “I know we can”. Which reminds me that I also have a copy of Little Toot on my shelf somewhere… But seriously, it’s a link to a blogpost by the team behind UserVoice and I love their focus and dedication – and seeing how they’ve made such great headway in one year. I’m really glad they shared because stories like that get me pumped.

Dave's Tweet about scrappy startups

It also turned me on to this fun mini-post from BusinessWeek.com (scroll down past the pirate articles) which made me think of all the other things we’re doing to make this work, yet enjoy this amazing time of freedom and creativity. And since I know that we’re not the only ones thinking that now is our time, I thought I’d share some additional thoughts for all of our spunky comrades in bootstrapping.

• Clearly, cutting down on expenses is essential. I’ve changed many habits and have even changed my living situation because making this work is absolutely my top priority. I even told my landlord I needed to cut my rent down a little or he needed to find a new tenant. He was amenable.
• Don’t get lured into buying full solutions. The bizdev guys seem to love us and want our non-existent money – they’ll make you think you can’t succeed without them, that they’re the only solution. Until we have a full proof of concept and start building an audience, we can only spend money on the essentials – and even for that, we’re looking for the best deals for everything.
• Bartering is our friend. Already we’re finding ways of trading services. Actually, we’re broadening our options by leveraging our own personal skills as well as future product opportunities. For example, we can help busy professionals with SEO and social media in exchange for their services. Win win.
• Searches on the web may make you think that bootstrapping is synonymous with ramen noodles and junk food. JUST SAY NO. For the same money, buy fruit, nuts and dark greens in bulk and live off that. It will keep you healthier and give you more brain power – seriously. Eat food that is going to work for you and FUEL your creativity and stamina. If you’re 22, I suppose it doesn’t matter. But we’re not – so there’s no messing around. Here’s a great article about how to stay healthy while starting your business.
• Have laptop, will work from anywhere. It’s almost summer and to me, there’s no reason to do this venture if I’m not going to enjoy it. Finding places with free wifi, particularly if they have outdoor seating, is pretty easy (at least in the cities where I tend to hang out) so it’s a great opportunity to change scenery, which is also great for creativity. Plus, you never know when you might meet some interesting, new person. Here – find a Jelly near you!

There’s more but I’ll save them for a rainy day. Here are a few other posts I’ve found recently on the topic – thanks to everyone out there sharing their experiences and offering up new ideas and resources.

⁃ How One Small Scrappy Startup Is Surviving (And Growing) During The Financial Crisis by SocialMedian.com
⁃ 8 Things Bootstrappers Should Know by Andew Warner
⁃ Bootstrapping Your Startup by Entrepreneur.com
⁃ Bootstrapping a Startup by BusinessWeek.com
⁃ Bootstrapping Tips by BootstrapMe.com
⁃ Top 10 Reasons to Start a Business in a Recession by Entrepreneur.com
⁃ Bootstrapping Your Startup – 12 Rules of Bootstrapping by RyanSpoon.com

Got more words of wisdom to share with us? Leave them in the comments or drop us a note at friends@shinyheartventures.com.

]]> http://shinyheart.com/2009/06/just-another-scrappy-startup/feed/ 1 http://shinyheart.com/2009/05/inspiration-in-small-medium-or-large/ http://shinyheart.com/2009/05/inspiration-in-small-medium-or-large/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 02:42:40 +0000 Jen Consalvo http://shinyheartventures.com/?p=88

Whimsical offices of SkinnyCorp

In one of my last posts, I said we wanted to use this space to talk about companies that inspire us, so, this first company is one that we have both admired for awhile and have had the good fortune to meet – skinnyCorp. Maybe you’ve heard of them or their most awesomeness product/website Threadless. Here’s what we know and like… and hope to copy the hell out of (not their products – just their awesomeness).

• They have a great mission that really defines who they are and what they’re about.
• They take fun seriously – it’s consistent in every single thing they do, especially in their offices (they have an airstream IN their office!)
• They are creative problem solvers. For example, they’ve created systems and invented their own solutions when no others could be found.
• They honor the communities they’ve built – online and offline.
• They care about how they do business; the design, the experience, the quality, the people – they all matter.
• They make money. For real.

Check out Frank’s video of his office visit with skinnyCorp last year.

Here are a few more links where you can learn more about this inspirational company:

• 7 Reasons Why Threadless Rules by 37Signals.com
• My Visit to skinnyCorp (threadless.com) by EricJohnOlson.com
• Visiting the Threadless.com Office in Boulder by SomewhatFrank.com

We have several more companies in the queue that we’ve been checking out. If you know of any that you think we’d be interested in looking at, please leave them in the comments or email us at friends@shinyheartventures.com. Thanks!