2010 February | Untitled Startup

Daily Videos

07/11/10
A Week of testing Custom Reporting on RowFeeder
We've been testing reports on RowFeeder over the past week or so, and are starting to make some decisions based off our results. For starters, custom reports are definitely in high demand from our customers ... but they're time consuming. We've been offering do-it-yourself templates hoping that people will well ... do it themselves ... but without training, it's simply not happening. So in our weekly meeting we decided to remove the non-do-it-yourself custom reporting from free accounts, slightly reposition the offering to our professional grade customers, and really focus on bringing the feature to our enterprise customers in a complete and scalable fashion. We've also decided to invest a little in even more reports, in the form of add-ons for enterprise customers ... finally adding a much anticipated best time to tweet feature.
07/02/10
RowFeeder Deployment and Blogging Away
We've been busy, busy, busy GFA'ing (Getting Fucking Aggressive) with RowFeeder. Not only that, there's now four of us full time at Untitled Startup. A big welcome to Paul (our new analyst)!At this point, we're releasing updates to RowFeeder at least once a week. Last night we launched a new reports section of RowFeeder and put out a blog post on where social media thinks Lebron James is headed.
05/03/10
We Love Rowfeeder
We've been to silent for the past couple weeks. But it's largely been because we've been busy... with RowFeeder for one. Now that the heads down sprint is ending, let's see how we can hold the momentum.
04/11/10
From 0 to Funded in 124 Seconds
Things have been so crazy around here that we never got around to putting together a video of us going through the funding process -- so we took some time this weekend, and condensed some choice moments into a short video. For those of you who are interested and still haven't read the TechFlash article, it provides a lot more depth into our decision.
04/07/10
Talking Crowdsourcing at Seattle Lunch 2.0
We've learned a lot crowdsourcing our startup over the past few months, and we shared some of our insights at Seattle Lunch 2.0 at Blue Box Group (our most awesome hosting provider). You can find the full video on youtube.
04/06/10
Sailing away from the Whale
After spending some time looking into verticals for Deal Whale and meeting with people in the coupon/discount space, we've decided to put Deal Whale into stasis for a while. We're still interested in the interactive promotion space, and we've learned a ton, but Deal Whale just isn't the right fit for us (right now).
03/31/10
Finding Deal Whale's Market
Deal Whale threw us for a bit of a loop, but after a self-imposed code ban we're feeling on track again. We've even got some crowdsourced logos up for voting.
03/24/10
Take your time. Let it settle.
It's really easy to get excited about an idea. And when it's really easy for you to execute on an idea, you get a dangerous combination. We've learned this (for the nth time) with Deal Whale. So we're stepping back, pulling our heads up, and pretending we're not developers or designers for the next few days.
03/22/10
A business idea is not necessarily a business opportunity.
It sounds straightforward enough, but it really isn't. An idea on it's own, of any kind, isn't much. I always say it, and now I'm living it.
03/15/10
Growing Pains
Today we're facing yet another new challenge, and one that all early stage companies face. How should we grow? We're finding that it's not quite like we thought... At a larger company, adding a new person or a new product is a fractional shift, for a 2 person startup with only 1 fully completed product, adding one of either is a huge change and will be instrumental in how the company evolves. We've made no decisions yet, but it's going to be a thoughtful week.
03/14/10
Lots of progress this weekend but not even close to complete.
We've learned a lot and made a lot of important decisions in moving the Tweet 'n Save forward. More importantly, we've officially moved it into "Current Products" and renamed it "Deal Whale".
03/13/10
Game Mechanics
On to day two, working it out. From our research, we've learned that systems like these are essentially games, and we want to make ours fun.
03/13/10
Pursuing Tweet 'n Save
Making progress figuring out what this guy really is, finding out it's gonna be a big one, but in a very awesome way. We'll pick back up tomorrow morning as we get into some early implementation work.
03/12/10
Whiteboarding Tweet 'n Save
We got so inspired by a great idea today on Backstage of a "Groupon-like daily deal sent via Twitter. Deal gets cheaper the more times it is retweeted" that we decided to whiteboard it immediately and determine the feasibility.
03/10/10
60 Day Plan
In an hour long meeting today we put together our 60 day plan, though only afterwards did we realize that while it made sense, we needed to refocus it a bit to fit into a larger plan. The lesson learned, treat those 60 days as the first of 365 more to come, and not as 60 days alone.
03/09/10
Getting Jiggy with Owly from HootSuite
We had a great time at 140tc Seattle, and an even greater time at the after-after party getting to know tons of great people. Among them was @invoker, CEO of hootsuite, who indulged our desire to have some fun with their mascot Owly, while putting money into a good cause (we're lending $100 on Vittana.com in his honor for bring Owly back out).
03/06/10
Code Crawl! (Featuring Jessie's Girl)
At a startup, there's never a moment of rest. That being said, just because you're working on a Saturday night, in this case on RowFeeder, it doesn't mean that you can't have fun doing it. Especially when you're a true believer in the existence and value of Ballmer's Peak.
03/04/10
Tough Road Map Decisions - Keeping Our Focus
Based on interest from multiple directions, we're having serious discussions about changing our direction up a bit (if only slightly) to productize the Backstage platform. What do you think we should do?
03/03/10
In Life or Business, It's All About The People
In his Koitunes launch presentation today, CEO Tom Damico talked about how it was a belief in their team that got them off the ground, and that echos our own funding experience. A startup is made of people, and at its core that's what people invest in, your team and it's abilities to execute, not an idea.
03/02/10
Launching and Announcing Funding
So there you have it, but PR is an unfamiliar beast, and we're very much learning. More to come in a follow-up post, but our initial reactions as they started to settle in.
03/01/10
It's Launched? It's not Launched? It's Launched.
So we're not promoting it until tomorrow (since we took too long today), but Alpha 3 is released! Notice anything different in the top nav?
02/28/10
Pre-Launch Superstitions
They're all different, and sometimes your cat interrupts you. That being said, as long as your server is not within your cat's reach, your good to go with all that matters.
02/26/10
Talking Startups on Hollow Earth Radio
We spend some time with Forrest on Hollow Earth Radio talking about startups in general and our upcoming launch.
02/25/10
Almost 2 months in, we've still got a lot to learn.
The past week has been a hardcore learning experience, today it largely involved learning about *what* a good launch strategy is, what is *isn't*, and when to launch... oh and that we're continuing to fail early and often.
02/24/10
Our delay comes to an end with the Social Media Hit List.
So our updates to align ourselves better with our intent are almost there. Launch incoming tomorrow (for real this time)... and it's coming with the Social Media Hit List!
02/23/10
How many times have you not met your release date, and why?
We were gonna release today, but decided not to for a variety of reasons. Working with other companies, we've seen this variability (and flexibility) on a regular basis. But we're new at this... and wondering how many of your release dates have slipped? By how much? And how do you handle it?
02/22/10
The next stage of Untitled Startup's journey begins tomorrow.
With tomorrow's release of Alpha 3, we're taking an even bigger step towards transparency than we've taken before. It's going to be a wild ride.
02/22/10
When a Rails Guy Updates to PHP 5.3 at 1 in the morning.
So alpha 3 is up but not quite ready for release yet... but getting everything running on our Cent OS production server took a painful amount of trial and error.
02/18/10
Playing the role you need to and making progress.
So it's been a long week, but we're finally on to bug-fixing mode. The real take-away here though is how we've adjusted to support one another.
02/17/10
A Quick Look at Untitled Startup Alpha 3
So we're still very much heads down on building out the interactive part of the site, and now 2 days beyond our desired launch date, but things are starting to really come together! Have a look for yourself!
02/16/10
Fail Early and Fail Often (Especially When it Comes to Estimating)
So we're really excited for our release, but we're still learning about how well the two of us estimate when working together. Still a bit off when we aren't willing to throw too much out.
02/15/10
We're NOT going to the Finance for Founders event in San Fran tomorrow... But we wish we were.
So they're doing a great session on Bootstrapped PR, and there are going to be some great people in attendance, but we just can't quite justify going down there on such short notice. Oh the joys of limited resources...
02/12/10
Damon talking at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network Breakfast Buzz Event
Busy day today, starting at 7:30 AM at the NWEN event where Damon, T.A. McCann (CEO and founder of Gist), and Bill Bryant of Draper Fisher Jurvetson talked startups and most importantly, being open with your ideas.
02/11/10
From whiteboard to web browser.
Our days are still largely heads down, but we pulled them up today briefly to review our progress and make sure we're still on target.
02/10/10
Somedays are just about going heads down and getting work done.
Looking forward to a Monday release... but still SOOO much to do before then.
02/09/10
Just another day. Customer needs, payments, and an nPost bar crawl.
Tons more heads down time as well as dealing with customer expectations... and after all that Damon headed off to the nPost bar crawl while I continued working on the new UntitledStartup.com.
02/08/10
Consulting is out and apparently 5 meetings in a day is in.
So we've decided NOT to look to consulting as a revenue stream (at least for the next 60 days). It simply came down to bandwidth... though perhaps scheduling fewer meetings in a single day might help with that...
02/07/10
A heads down weekend comes to an end.
Damon's deep in payments and I'm cranking along towards the new UntitledStartup.com. We're also looking for interns!
02/05/10
The Future of Untitled Startup (Coming Soon)
Still 10 days to go, but we're really excited.
02/04/10
Talking payments and startups with Lance Walley of Chargify.
Think you're customer obsessed? Measure yourself against Lance Walley of Chargify.
02/03/10
New designs, new problems, and new lessons learned.
Today was an outrageously eventful day. From new spec work, to meetings, to scrambling to point people towards the old untitledstartup.com, it's simply been nuts. Not only that, Lance Walley of Chargify is flying up to see us and whoever we can wrangle from the Seattle startup community about payments/startups tomorrow.
02/02/10
After a trial by fire we picked our payments provider! (sort of)
They aren't our perfect solution, but they think like us, and we trust that they will become what we're looking for. We'll keep you posted on how we implement their solution. And the winner is...
02/01/10
Transitioning from builders of products to builders of a business.
It's one thing to be good at building products that people enjoy, but it's another thing to build a business around those products. Once again we look to Andy Sack to help us navigate the treacherous seas that are the early days of building a startup.
01/31/10
Disappointed by the inflexibility of recurring payment solutions.
Epic and informative blog post is forthcoming... but it's been an infuriating although informative weekend. If only we had a simple use case...
01/30/10
Making Mistakes and Working with Spreedly
Sometimes you just make mistakes and all you can do is learn from them. More info here.
01/29/10
Flashdance Fridays
It's been a long week and we've got a weekend of heads down work ahead of us, but we're ready for Startup Drinks tonight before then. It's been meetings, presentations, coding, and designing... and apparently flash dance.
01/28/10
Making Tough Business Decisions with Andy Sack
So we built Row Feeder to learn about how Damon and I work together as a team and to try out the oneforty payments API. But it's gotten such a great reception that we're reevaluating the way we look at it with the help of Andy Sack.
01/27/10
Pitching Our Deck
It's hard to believe that 4 weeks ago we didn't even have a deck, and now we're pitching and learning. Time flies when you're busy as hell.
01/26/10
SMC Seattle and Networking ROI
We had a great time tonight at the Social Media Club Seattle 1 year anniversary and met some fantastic people. Turns out they loved our ticket stub business cards (which offered 1 free week of Row Feeder to people who followed up with us). Now if only I had brought the camera...
01/25/10
We're supposed to have business cards?
So it's 11PM and we're unwinding after a long day... only to realize we have no business cards going into the SMC Seattle event. Brainstorming ensues...
01/24/10
Parents' Weekend
We love our parents, but weekends are no longer days off. See you guys again in a few years!
01/21/10
Networking Achieved
Had a great time at the Cold Pavement event. Met a ton of great people and sparked some business relationships that could become very important to us going forward.
01/20/10
The Next UntitledStartup.com
We're all about feedback driven design ... within reason. Really looking forward to getting the new version of the site out.
01/19/10
Finding a startup balance with your loved ones.
Our relationships are starting to feel some strain. We're optimistic though. We've got to be more realistic and open about our time and priorities.
01/18/10
Whiteboards, Whiteboards, Whiteboards
It's been a fun few weeks, but we can't lose focus. We need to stay focused on our goals and stay rested enough to keep the quality of our work as high as possible.
01/17/10
An Untitled Weekend
A lack of sleep can lead to absurdity... and dancing.
01/15/10
Pioneer Square: Center of the Seattle Startup Scene
It's great to have a friend's startup be at the same stage as you are. Great opportunity to learn together and minimize mistakes.
01/14/10
Talking to people who know their shit.
Carlos Del Rio is an SEO expert and all around wise man. Meet him, learn from him, and enjoy him. We sure as hell did.
01/14/10
I've never signed my name that many times in my entire life.
We're officially a Washington State Corporation!
01/13/10
Startup cat can't climb a ladder.
One big bonus to always carrying a video camera around is the ability to take advantage of unexpected lolcat opportunities.
01/12/10
Putting yourself to the test and delivering.
It may have taken us longer than 48 hours, but we got it done, learned a lot about each other, and even got our first customer!
01/12/10
Startups, Deadlines, and Girlfriends
Life can get in the way of building your startup ... and we refused to ignore it. I'm hoping we can keep that balance going forward.
01/12/10
Bylaws! It's time to connect the pieces.
RowFeeder is finally almost finished, but we're learning how you many distractions there are in building a company... we need to factor administrative tasks into our estimates going forward.
01/11/10
Why we're building RowFeeder.
In short, we're exploring the oneforty payments API and more importantly learning about how we work together under pressure without risking much. Again, fail early and often rather than later and epically.
01/10/10
It's now called RowFeeder ... and it's not that simple.
Things are looking good. It's definitely a lot more complicated than we realized, but it's still in scope without cutting anything.
01/10/10
Our Simple Weekend Project - SpreadFeeder
So we're putting ourselves under pressure and building a product this week in 48 hours. Follow along as we fail early and fail often.
01/08/10
Advice from a friend.
The best advice is often the simplest... and unfortunately also a Nike trademark. Just do it. If it's keeping you up at night, if it's what you dream about when asleep, just do it.
01/08/10
Advice from a former boss.
Staying on good terms with your former employer can be a challenge, but it's not impossible, especially if you're open about your decision to leave. I'm fairly certain my former company's CTO Chris Hahn still likes me.
01/07/10
Press is great, but it can distract you.
We got our first media coverage today, and it went better than we could have expected. However, we couldn't stop refreshing the comments -- concerned about what people thought of us. We need to grow past that.
01/06/10
Pitching an Untitled Startup
It may make sense in a deck, but describing yourself on the fly in a conversation can make you pretty tongue-tied. Practice, practice, practice!
01/06/10
Intellectual Property - A Man with over 130 Domain Names
It's interesting to actually put your intellectual property on paper. You might be surprised at how little you've done in the important places ... and how much in others.
01/06/10
Administrative Day!
About to take a crash course in setting up a new company in Washington State.
01/05/10
You have to talk to the crowd.
Who knew that there was more to building a company than just building a product and selling it?
01/04/10
You can't touch this meeting with a well known blogger.
Lesson: You may think that you have the most interesting thing in the world to pitch, but you have to learn how to pitch it before anyone cares.
01/01/10
Feedback on our Deck
It's amazing how overwhelmed you can feel so early on. Prioritizing is a definitely at the top of our list as something to work on.
12/31/09
Almost Ready to Launch www.UntitledStartup.com
Pretty exciting times, we've got our teaser site almost ready to go and it's about time to announce ourselves to the world.
12/30/09
Building a Deck is Hard
So we've both built decks before, but when it comes to actually finding the numbers to justify what we're doing (beyond just a gut feeling and talking to prospective customers) we're having some issues.

We're a transparent startup founded by Aviel Ginzburg and Damon Cortesi building solutions in the social media and public relations spaces.

Follow along as we share the ups and downs of building a startup.

Tweeps Who Like Us

Pre-Launch Superstitions
Feb
28
They’re all different, and sometimes your cat interrupts you. That being said, as long as your server is not within your cat’s reach, your good to go with all that matters.
Talking Startups on Hollow Earth Radio
Feb
26
We spend some time with Forrest on Hollow Earth Radio talking about startups in general and our upcoming launch.
Almost 2 months in, we’ve still got a lot to learn.
Feb
25
The past week has been a hardcore learning experience, today it largely involved learning about *what* a good launch strategy is, what is *isn’t*, and when to launch… oh and that we’re continuing to fail early and often.