Week 9

Day 57: Strategy

Monday, 19th January 2015 22:03

You’d think it would be easy to get the team together for an ‘all hands’ Rainbird meeting, but the rather hectic schedule of Techstars meant that our planned breakfast meeting tomorrow morning wasn’t going to happen. In fact the only time we had left this week where we were all free was tonight. This realisation was made at about 5:30pm.

30 minutes later and we were all ensconced in the ‘management suite’ solidifying our current thinking. Since the onslaught of conflicting advice that was Mentor Madness finished we’ve been a lot more focused in our thinking. It seems that thinking may have been a little off. This in itself isn’t an issue. Techstars isn’t about magically determining the correct strategy on day one, it’s about testing hypothesis and iterating. We had a hypothesis, we tested it, it didn’t quite hold up. So we’re modifying it, although not drastically.

I have to admit that this area isn’t my forte, so I’m happy to take more of a back seat and follow the lead of others who know more about it than I do. I am taking the opportunity to ask dumb questions and make notes though as it’s a fantastic learning experience. In the meantime the rather abrupt and early end to the day at the office has meant some time to kick back a bit at the flat, something we’re taking advantage of.

Day 58: 1 Month Left!

Tuesday, 20th January 2015 19:41

Only 1 month left on the Clock Of Doom

OK, that’s a scary thought. 1 month left until Demo Day. That’s 30 days and change given sleep is going to erode that time by a few more hours.

While Demo Day isn’t the be all and end all for us, it’s still a milestone. It marks the end of being at Techstars (although, importantly, not the end of being a part of Techstars), and the start of returning to normal life.

Despite the odd off day I’m hugely enjoying my time down in London. I’d liken the countdown to the end of a holiday. You know, once the time is up, it’s all over and you’re back in the real world. I suspect that it’s precisely because there is an end point that I’m happy to endure the long hours and the hard work. I’m not sure I’d be so happy if it was an indefinite situation.

The shine is also beginning to wear off a little, and while I will always be a little saddened to leave I do suspect I will start feeling like I’ve had enough come the end. I miss my family, I miss my gaming rig, and my bank account can’t really support too much more of me being here without me becoming really careful about what I spending - something I’d like to avoid.

Meanwhile we’re embracing the build phase of the process and knocking out tons of new code. I’ve got something like five and a half thousand lines of code, tests and documentation waiting for final review which represents the last 6 weeks of my life. That’s a rate I’ll probably never match again.

Day 59: Big Knowledge

Wednesday, 21st January 2015 22:56

The Techstars Clock of Doom

The ever present Clock Of Doom did the inevitable today and clicked over to 29 days left. That’s a big psychological thing because the number now starts with a 2. It’s not going to a huge amount of time before it starts with a 1, and then we’re down to days before demo day.

We’re still working out how to pitch Rainbird, but made big progress today courtesy of David Cohen¹. David was able to understand what it was we were doing and come up with the basis of a great elevator pitch, all over a video chat while he was feeling under the weather. He’s clearly done this before.

Ben is now fleshing out a rough outline that some of us helped put together tonight so that we’ll have a workable version 2 of the deck for tomorrow. We think it’s a big improvement on last weeks deck. It has still got flaws, but if we can keep the rate of improvement up it’ll be outstanding come demo day.

In the meantime Nathan has termed a new phrase: “Big Knowledge”. This has come off the back of us joking about exa-scale knowledge. It’s an utterly meaningless term, but it sounds great.

Day 60: I pledge allegiance…

Thursday, 22nd January 2015 22:43

Today we had an afternoon off-site at Fried Frank² regarding expansion into the US. This was a bit of an eye opener for me. I was always aware that the whole tax law thing was a bit convoluted over there, but once you chuck in visas, employment law, and the litigious nature of doing business it just becomes a complete nightmare. In fact I spent most of the session thinking that it would be an ideal problem for Rainbird to solve since there is a lot of complex knowledge that you need to unlock if you’re thinking of expanding to America.

The key takeaway for me was that, as a SaaS business based out of the UK, we won’t be facing US tax implications. Apparently if we have American customers using our platform that’s running from The Cloud with the servers based in the US we’re golden, just as long as we don’t open an office out there. This is good because the changes to the tax laws in Europe are hard enough to understand without having to worry about a different continent on top of that.

Ben also did his second attempt at a demo day pitch at tonight’s All Hands meeting. It was definitely an improvement on last weeks and we’re pleased we’re moving in the right direction, even if there is still a way to go. I’m filming these so Ben can review his performance, but also so that we can track the progress over the weeks towards the final pitch. I also have a rather fun idea for a quick video once we’re done that just highlights the progress being made.

Day 61: It’s Friday - release!

Friday, 23rd January 2015 19:00

So in theory we don’t release on a Friday. To be fair, I should have done the release yesterday, but basically forgot. Instead I punted the new version out this morning while getting ready to go to work… and then rolled back to a previous version when it all seemed to go a bit pear shaped.

Now, I know the rationale for not releasing on a Friday, however, I’m reasonably happy doing them as long as it’s early. Our infrastructure, while far from perfect, gives me a high level of confidence that I can roll back successfully. The combination of Docker and Git means I can get back to the exact configuration I was running before the release. Worst case scenario is you need to roll back and try again Monday.

Actually, technically the worst case scenario is that it breaks and never ever works again. But even then I can just hook up our staging environment to our production database and be up and running again in a fairly short time. Hell, I can rebuild the entire thing from backups in under 20 minutes if really pushed. Basically the questions you need to ask yourself are:

• Do you have time to fully test the release to be sure it’s good?
• Do you have time to rollback the release if the tests show problems?
• Do you mind having to log in tomorrow to perform a rollback when something you’ve overlooked is found?

If you can answer Yes to all three you’re good to go. It also helps to have a Beta tag you can hide behind.

Ironically enough the more worrying Friday release was my technical blog post for Rainbird which, thanks to some rather deliberate hashtags, garnered a fair amount of attention.

Day 63: The Model Commuter

Sunday, 25th January 2015 19:26

I’ve enjoyed being back in London. It turns out the reason I was getting fed up with London when I lived and worked there was the commute. Commuting in London is hideous unless you can walk.

I’ve had my family down this weekend. My wife is heavily pregnant meaning she can’t walk far, so we’ve been relying on public transport. Turns out that the only thing worse than commuting on the tube at rush hour is using the tube with a push chair, a three year old, and a very pregnant lady.

The London travelling public are animals, to the point where my wife was having to offer to help another mother with her pushchair because no one else would. Unsurprisingly enough the instant this happened a plethora of offers suddenly appeared from the throng of people pushing past us. Seems shame is a useful tool.

When I used to work in London the bile, vitriol and hatred that commuting caused grew to such extends that I ended up writing a regular (read near daily) blog about it entitled The Model Commuter. I was really quite angry back then and it provided a forum to vent. My more usual commute (when I’m not living in central London at the company’s expense while doing stupidly long hours and 12 day weeks) involves seats, and tables, and trains that are usually on time. Living and working outside London has its benefits.