This is a mental reminder of an idea. More so than anything, I hope someone builds this soon.

At Goodsmiths we use the following products: 

1) Github - Its freaking brilliant. 

2) Basecamp - who doesn’t love getting a team collaborating all together..easily. 

3) Desk.com - customers contact us, it funnels through Desk and appropriate channels. A great product that was so very well designed. Thats why Salesforce bought them for $50,000,000 in cash.  

4) Trello - project management. We use it for releases. Won’t ever use another project management software again. 

Here is the problem. 

Scenario 1: A customer emails in a bug that needs to get reported to the dev team. This comes in through Desk.com. First, its forwarded from agent to developer team lead. Dev team leader enters it into Github so dev team can keep track of it. Bug gets fixed. Resolved in Github..but the agent on Desk.com isn’t notified to let customer know. Automatically. There are easily 2 extra steps to notify the agent. 

Scenario 2: Bug is entered into Trello with multiple steps to completion with no way to integrate with Github..and vice versa. 

Scenario 3: New card in Trello is built for a new feature. Trello is the “Twitter” of project management in my opinion. Short cards..short descriptions. Sometimes they need more detail- thats where Basecamp comes in. There needs a better “More information” on Trello to keep the heavy details off long card descriptions (which I do all the time) 

My point is that there are many, many scenarios in which every single one of these products needs to be combined together. Do some of these products have API’s? Yup. But some of them don’t. For obvious reasons.

You combine the cost of all of these products it is well over $125/month. Building a full scale solution (and trust me, this will take a long time to create) charge min $89/month- its potentially a game changer. It disrupts.  

Now back to using all these products to build the first badass product. 

There have been multiple articles written about incubators and startup organizations that are being created to push Entrepreneurship onto people, young and old. I won’t discuss that argument. But I will tell you my story and how I define who is a Entrepreneur. 

When I was a sophomore at The University of Iowa I became very frustrated in school. I thought the classes were stupid. I thought I was smarter than all my professors. I wasn’t really into the flow of the educational system as a whole. It didn’t help that I was at a school that is described as one of the most liberal schools in the Midwest (if not the Nation). 

I wasn’t the kid who started a Lemonade stand. 

I wasn’t the kid who picked flowers from a neighbors yard and sold them back to the neighbor. 

I was always the kid who found interest in how people reacted to certain situations. Purchases. Troubles. Triumph. And many more. This ultimately drove me into the field of Economics at The University of Iowa at the end of my Sophomore year. After contemplating dropping out- I pushed through. 

Part of my frustration with school was that there was no direct line of communication between the student and the teacher. Other than boring office hours. Waiting in line with the other students. 90% of them didn’t need help, they just wanted the professor to put a face to the name. I was there because I didn’t understand something in the class. There was no other outlet. 

That summer (around 1999), a company called Blackboard was gaining traction and I read a article on them in the Wall Street Journal. Three months prior to that article and before I had ever heard of Blackboard, I had written up a business plan and sent it to my father. That business plan, in large part, solved the problem that I was experiencing. The same problem Blackboard had solved and created.

A lightbulb moment occurred to me. I was the type of person who either sees opportunity through my own eyes or through the eyes of people struggling or succeeding. My passion is in finding a solution to those struggles. My passion is in finding a alternative to a already successful market. Never give in to not following your passion. 

That is a Entrepreneur.

As a entrepreneur it is always interesting to see the fads come and go. 

The newest fad? Taking a beautiful product like Pinterest and turning a clone into a piece of shit. 

Ben from Pinterest spoke at ThincIowa last year. One of the most interesting things he said was that it took them months to come up with the clean design of their frontpage. Spending months on a homepage that just shows pictures? Yup. They care about their product because it was their vision.

Clones spending hours to copy the process of bookmarking a item in a specific niche, displaying them on a page exactly like Pinterest does in order to drive traffic because “apparently there is demand for it” is a joke. 

You have no passion in a product if all you do is copy a design and/or concept from someone else. Case in point: every single daily deal site that tried to copy Groupon’s success. Nearly every single one of those daily deal clones, are no longer in business. And those businesses actually had a revenue stream.

It’s a natural process of entrepreneurs to find a successful product that has a few holes in it. Is it the assumption then that Pinterest has holes that need to be filled? Just because they are drawing a female audience doesn’t mean that they aren’t working on new ways to curate content for a specific audience.

Until they do that, we will just have to watch the clones come and go. Seeing that they have plenty of money in the bank, a tremendous team and a keen eye for beautiful design- I have a feeling they will continue to take their time creating a product that consumers will appreciate. 

It started about 6 months ago when Levi and I would constantly think; “We need a really good rockstar designer”. We had worked with designers in the past for different client projects or even for our own internal projects. I am not saying they were not rockstars- everyone has their positives and negatives when it comes to everything- what I am saying is that when you meet a designer who “gets” it. You have to jump at the chance to have them involved. Sometimes you aren’t able to bring them on board, and sometimes you are. As the opportunities present themselves you have to be patient.

Several articles and resources highlight the importance of design in your startup. Dave McClure kicked it off early 2010 with The Value of Design to Startups. The Next Web chimed in recently with “For startups, great Design is more important than ever” and just a few days ago Cameron Koczon wrote “An Important Time for Design” which is probably one of the best articles I have ever read in a long time. Take the time to read it.

We announced today over on Goodsmiths that Rachel McClung is our Lead Designer. When I first met Rachel it was during our initial hiring process for a designer on Eliason Media’s client work. What really sold me was on Rachel’s process for discussing and building out our image and design for Goodsmiths. How she listened to what we were looking for in the Goodsmiths design and what it meant to have a clean design in this niche. Her response to the initial challenge of finding what that design would be, sold me right away.

Not only do we take time in hiring people that can contribute to our team. We take time and preach patience on finding individuals that value and contribute outside of our office. In our hiring of Levi as CTO, we brought on a individual who is not only incredibly talented- but someone who is active in the development and startup community. In hiring Rachel, not only is she talented - but she also is a member of AIGA. In 2007, Rachel was elected to AIGA Iowa’s board of directors as the web director. She served as chapter co-president from 2009 to 2011 and is now a chapter advisor.

Our announcement of our advisors last week, and now the announcement of Rachel coming on board has me excited about the future of Goodsmiths. We look forward to building and growing this company in Des Moines.

Its funny how I began Twittad with the owner of Twitad (one T) threatening me that he had the right to Twittad (2 T’s). I did research. I found that whoever it was who owned Twitad looked unprofessional. The site looked terrible. A simple Google search showed that whoever this was wouldn’t withstand a simple letter sent from my lawyer. A few thousand dollars later, I owned Twitad.com. And away we went.

In early 2009 sitting across from teams at Sears, WPP, Omicom and flying out to New York City for a 40 minute meeting and turning around and flying back to Des Moines- I realized that advertising on Twitter had potential. What we were working on had the potential to be the next biggest form of advertising. 10% click through rates on every single ad campaign. The one problem: It wasn’t our platform.

You see, API’s are a funny thing. It’s like an outdoor advertisement really. Are you just renting the space? Or do you own the pole in the ground, holding up a huge blank billboard, waiting to be filled with a McDonalds advertisement. Does McDonalds own those billboards? Do they really control that ad space? Not really.

Did Twitter control anything in 2008? I believe they didn’t. More so than anything, they had no idea what they were doing. It was so incredibly early in their business that advertising didn’t matter. The fail whale mattered. VC money mattered. Trying to find a business model mattered.

Twitter was formed with two Co-Founders sending a message to each other. Groundbreaking? Hardly. But the next thing you know- a business was formed. The business you ask? It’s the business of psychology + technology.

People love knowing or thinking they know what people are doing. People love the outlet of putting something out there..maybe someone responds. If not, who cares. It’s something that is difficult to understand. Once you see it, you become part of it. Facebook was built to be a part of an exclusive club. Starting just in colleges, and moving beyond the mainstream, across the world and now includes both my Mom and my Grandpa.

But, my Mom and Grandpa aren’t on Twitter. Why is that? Because Twitter hasn’t dumbed down their product to the simplicity that it should be. The greatest thing Twitter could do right now is to implement a login with your Facebook ID. Twitter hasn’t accepted the fact that they will never, ever be able to get as much demographic data on consumers as they hope they can. And to me, it will inhibit their ability to grow.

Since I joined Twitter, I have sent 6,930 tweets. Many go unanswered. But many carry a crazy amount of data. I tweet about the Chiefs, Iowa State, BBQ, startups, my own companies and other random things. What does that data or what do my tweets really do for Twitter, Inc? How on earth could they use this vast amount of data to make my experience better? Or more importantly, how could Twitter use my data + my friends data to bring a true social experience into Twitter?

I think that Twitter is close. Several of my close friends are just now signing up on Twitter. And they do so because they follow their interests. What I think Twitter needs to do is take advantage of the other networks. Note to Twitter, 140 characters and sending out “updates” isn’t rocket science. I can send updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Chat and many other outlets. Your success is in matching what I tweet with my interests + my friends = spitting out to me content that is relevant to me. I am sick of seeing stupid hashtags that trend. You have a chance with the #Discover tab. Allow me to tailor the discover tab, or display to me content relevant to what I tweet.

After the lawsuit that involved our trademark- I have thought a lot about the Twitter business. I just want Twitter to start being aggressive. Be as aggressive as you were towards us. Be as aggressive as I was towards the Twitad owner. Don’t stop short of becoming the best social platform available. You are so, so close. I realize you are making your money on advertising- but you can’t just let the product be stagnent. It’s time to bring the members a new feature monthly. It’s time to start grabbing the social graph that other companies have formed well before you.   

It has been seven years since I took a dive into being a Internet entrepreneur. Quite honestly, I think it is a miracle that I have made it this far. Distractions are a big part of a entrepreneurs every day life. “Well that would be cool if this product did this”- “Why didn’t they build this on top of this app”- “Pretty stupid this startup with zero revenue just raised $20mil at a $200mil valuation” 

I am obsessed with startups. I am obsessed with building, finding niches, solving problems, and putting a team together of really talented people. One thing I am becoming more obsessed with is how you can create and develop on top of existing platforms/ideas and products. 

Roughly 1500 B.C. in ancient Egypt some crazy cats invented these

Pretty interesting use of piece of metal cut in half and fused with a metal loop. I am sure that really cut through some interesting things back in 1500 BC. But man..how uncomfortable. There has to be a better way. 

Some entrepreneurs obviously thought the same thing and low and behold more and more scissors were created in different shapes and sizes, all built and formed for the same reason. To cut shit.  

I am sure more and more people began to have fingers in serious pain, bruises and scrapes caused from these old scissors. Well..I guess that means it is time to innovate. In particular a certain profession, hair stylists were probably the first ones to complain about their hand pain. And so..

The little nobby thing added to it? Genius..helps the hair stylists cut comfortably, helps them cut more hair and ultimately do more business.

But there has to be just one more thing that someone is forgetting right? I mean people are still incredibly uncomfortable with using metal looped scissors. Enter Mr/s I Made Plastic Lopped Scissors entrepreneur.

Comfortable, yet they do the same exact thing as the scissors from 1500BC. Problem solved. Took forever to figure out, but someone figured it out.

Thats a lot like being a Internet entrepreneur. Where is society headed? What features are we as humans constantly asking for in products? How can a product make our lives easier? You have to be obsessed with your product.

For me it is a big turning point to focus solely on one thing. I am passionately tied to several products and startups right now and I feel like my calling is to focus on one thing. That one thing is Goodsmiths and I hope you stay tuned to what this amazing team is creating. 

A lot of people may or may not know who I am. And quite frankly, I am fine with that. I am not a public speaker by trade. In fact, the thought of getting in front of people to tell my story scares the shit out of me. Why? Because I feel like I haven’t done anything. Everything that is happening now with Eliason Media, Craftly, Gordilla and a few other properties is all the extremely hard work of people that understand how to build things. I don’t necessarily enjoy telling people In 2008 I came up with this crazy ass idea to pay Twitter users to send out a Tweet. Look where that got me.  But what I can tell you is that Iowa is by far the greatest place to be right now and in a very short time (3 years) the dynamic, the culture, the available resources and the entrepreneurial spirit around Des Moines has exploded.  Every single person involved in decision making from community, to government, to corporations needs to wake up and figure out that what we have done, has been done by ourselves. Think about that. Every single thing that has happened in Iowa to grow the entrepreneurial community, was actually a startup themselves. 

Recently at the ThincIowa conference several speakers were impressed with this community. I do not believe they were full of shit and just saying it either. They genuinely believe that there are good things happening in Iowa. Paige Craig from Betterworks, who looks like he can drink anyone under the table and still beat the crap out of terrorists (one of the greatest moments was during his Q&A when someone thanked him for his service to a rousing applause), was impressed with the community we have created. Jerri Chou from Lovely Day came to Des Moines from New York- took the stage and said “Wow- everyone is so nice here”. I mean what sort of miserable place is New York if she was pleasantly surprised with a room full of 300 Iowans- welcoming her with a standing ovation? Do people in New York literally not like their lives? Do they just wake up everyday and think to themselves “man, I am sure glad I have to go kiss up to a bunch of assholes today, fight traffic with millions, pay for overpriced real-estate, what car? then come home from work at 9pm, wake up and do it all over again?” Seriously, what is wrong with that picture. Iowa we nailed it- we have the best place to grow businesses. Do NOT forget that while building your startup.  

I don’t even need to get started on Ben Silbermann, one of the Founders of Pinterest and from Iowa. That dude is legit. I came home from the conference and my wife had to listen to me talk about how awesome he is, and how he went to Roosevelt, and how Nathan T Wright asked what Ben’s statue would be out in front of Roosevelt (which was epic). I took a moment after the conference to introduce myself to Ben, told him my story- in which he said “That is really great that you are doing that all here. Let me know how I can help.” 

Energized after a conference is a rare thing to find. But when it happens (and the community is plenty energized) - we need to keep it going.

I’ll end it with this and something I see taking shape in the next few years. Venture firms from the Valley, East Coast and even Chicago better take note of what is happening here. Once they do, there will be a momentum shift of resources, capital and young people into Des Moines. I met a guy recently who moved from Silicon Valley and he lives on a farm northeast of Des Moines. At lunch he said “This is going to sound arrogant, but I had no idea this was going on here in Iowa” To which I responded, “we like to surprise people”. The greatest investment opportunity, is in the people and the passion of what we have created. 

I am going to find out the name of my UPS driver. I should know it as it has been the same guy coming to our office for the last 3 years. He works his ass off. And I am even more impressed after what happened recently. 

I am obsessed with Overnightprints.com. My fiancee and I decided to print our wedding ceremony programs at Overnightprints and had them shipped to my office last week. Our wedding is this Saturday and towards the end of last week we wondered where the programs were. 

Yesterday we got the programs. Only to find that they were damaged in shipment. More than likely caused by the box being caught in the sorter or dropped. But here is where the story gets good. My UPS driver saw one of our programs lying on the ground at the sort facility and recognized my last name. He went over to the package area for his shipment for the day, and sure enough- our box was damaged. 

He noticed the wedding date, noticed it was HIS client..and took it to his boss. They called Overnightprints and took care of a new shipment of programs for our wedding- arriving tomorrow. Had he not acted, we would not have programs for our wedding. 

My UPS driving loves playing golf. He plays all the time. If you are UPS and you are reading this blog- you need to get this man a membership or a year long pass to the Des Moines Municipal Golf Courses. My address at work is 10605 Justin Drive, Urbandale Iowa. You can surely find his name and get this for him. I plan on getting him 2 boxes of Titliest Pro-V1 golf balls to use on the links. 

I own my own company, and if I ran UPS - my drivers actions would get him a raise, a golf course membership and a week at The Masters. Simply amazing stuff. 

Thanks UPS!! 

After my last rant about airfare prices out of Des Moines. I thought I would check out a new trip scenario for my business travels to Chicago from Des Moines. 

Trip date: April 4th- April 6th. 

Times: early morning on the 4th getting back late on the 6th. 

New idea: Round trip airfare to Milwaukee and a 1.2 hour train to Chicago.

On Orbitz and on all the major airline websites, the price to fly from DSM to ORD on those dates on average is $835. US Airways must be severely stupid. They are showing $1,601 on Orbitz. That is a house payment. You should be bankrupt.

So in total my new idea: 

Flight to Milwaukee round trip on Frontier: $147.90

Train to Chicago round trip: $44 

Hotel for 2 nights: $202.48

Total: $394.38 - Saving my company $643.10!!!

I invite every single business traveler in Des Moines to do the same. We are getting NAILED by major airlines and it has to stop. 

I am pissed. And here is why. I need to go to Chicago for work March 23rd. It’s currently February 17th. My business has a office in Des Moines and in Chicago. I love Des Moines. It is my hometown. I made the decision to open a office in Chicago, and it is one that I will never look back on. It’s been a great business decision. So how can United Airlines tell me that this is a good business decision. Because they just lost a customer tonight- a United Miles Plus customer.  

Des Moines is exactly 307 miles from Chicago. 

United.com is showing the following flights which would be ideal for me on the 23rd.  

Flight 7599 leaves DSM at 6 am. 

Flight 7540 leaves ORD at 8 pm.

Total price: $784. Before taxes and fees. With taxes and fees we are approaching $830.

You tell me how Des Moines can change this. And I will give you 100 reasons why Des Moines can explode (in a good way) with startups, businesses other than big insurance. This is literally a killer for Des Moines. And it must be fixed.