Jahnna and Gizmo reflecting on another tiring day in Hollywood.

Enjoy the Jahnna Randall Interview. Oh yes, Gizmo answers a few questions too. So really, this is also the Gizmo interview. I think it’s his first : ) We start here with Gizmo’s questions and then move on to Jahnna. That’s the way Gizmo wanted things to be done, so I complied.

The Jahnna Randall and Gizmo Interviews

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Gizmo, how are dealing with your new found popularity? How has life changed for you? 

I’ve been the center of attention even before being in my first commercial at the age of four months. When I walk into the room people will stop what they are doing and come greet me, I really enjoy my life!

If you weren’t in Hollywood acting, what would you be doing?  

Having my own show in Vegas. I love having all eyes on me, so I would need to stay in the business somehow. The industry serves really good food and I love my trailers!

Does Jahnna ever get jealous of your success? 

Jahnna is a great mom! When I book acting jobs she is proud no matter what and is always on set making sure I am happy!

Finally, if you were forced to work with a cat co-star, who would it be? 

Grumpy cat, because I know I could turn that frown upside down with my cuteness! Woof Woof!

Okay, now your questions Jahnna:

When you first thought of moving to Hollywood, what were some good pieces of advice, if any, you received about making the move? 

I actually received a lot of great advice before my big move to the city of dreams! I was blessed enough to be flown out to Los Angeles for a TV show and got to talk to people that worked in the industry. I was a full time model in Minneapolis, MN and when I got picked up on a TV show in NY and then in CA I realized the acting industry was more what I fancied. After the show wrapped in CA I flew back to Minnesota. I pondered the thought of moving to LA and asked my brother and friends if they wanted to move out there with me. Everyone said no. So I moved onto messaging people on MySpace (yes when it use to be cool) that lived in Los Angeles, that I didn’t know, to see if they could give me any advice on where to live and what I should do to prepare before the big move. Everyone that messaged back explained to save up at least six months of rent just incase I couldn’t find a job. The majority of people said to live either in Venice/Santa Monica area or West Hollywood. After six months of saving money I hopped into my car, packed my whole room with me, typed in West Hollywood into my GPS and I was off to LA not knowing a single person.

Now, let’s go the opposite direction here. Can you share some blissfully stupid advice people in Hollywood have given you since your arrival? Please no names, unless it was really stupid advice.

 Well, I could go with the most obvious advice females receive which is sleep your way to the top but I think I don’t need to recap on those unrealistic notions. The main advice I find irritating is when people say you can’t do that or you need to be born into the industry to be able to succeed in Hollywood. I also don’t agree when people say you can’t write, direct, and act in your films. If you’re passionate and believe in your projects, I think anything is possible! When someone tells me “no you can’t do that” it’s not going to make me stop chasing what I really want in life. The only person who can change my mind about being in the entertainment industry is myself.

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I first met Vova when I began using his WordPress plug in “rating-widget.” I needed some help and he quickly responded to my question. I knew he was a good guy just by the customer service he so promptly provided. We exchanged a few emails and he was so kind to agree to an interview. We’ll of course talk about Rating-Widget and his work at Senexx, but we’ll start today with a few questions on how he got where he is today.

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Thanks Vova for answering these questions which I’m sure will inspire our entrepreneurial minded readers. I want to start off by asking you to recount your first computer memories. What was your first computer? How did you spend your time on it? Tell us what you remember about those first computer experiences of yours.

I got my first computer for my 7^th birthday. It was an Intel 386 PC, I think it had 4K of memory and 32-bit microprocessor. It was a very big deal for me because as I was a  child to fresh emigrants, I knew that my folks didn’t have much money to spend, but they did it anyway.

Like all the other kids in the neighborhood I joined the pacman and digger club. It was exciting times of big magnetic diskettes with very small capacity. I remember myself as a kid, hopping between the neighbors’ houses, copying any piece of data they had – games, programs, just anything. It was a very addictive time of seeing who would have the most  stuff to copy.

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When did you begin to take computing seriously? For example, tell us when you may have said the following or something similar, “I can make a career out of this.”

At the age of 9, when I already had  a Pentium processer. My father’s friend, who was a computer engineer, gave me a C Language programming book as a present. During that time I was hooked to racing and strategy games. Specifically to Dune, World of Warcraft & Need for Speed.

The book laid on my table for a week, and then I decided to take a look. I read, and read, and couldn’t stop reading the first chapter. I was amazed by the fact that it’s possible to run code commands which basically  told the computer what to do – it was magical. I immediately decided to test my skills learned from the first chapter I installed the required Pascal C compiler that came with the book, and wrote a simple program that prints Fibonacci numbers. It worked! I was super -excited and had the amazing feeling of creation. It was an adrenaline rush. I finished reading the whole book in that weekend. I coded several programs and determined that this is what I wanted to do when I  grew up – I wanted to create programs.

That weekend was definitely a life changing event. I stopped playing my computer games, began coding and decided that was going to be my career.

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You have a very entrepreneurial spirit, how many companies have you started?

I always loved to assemble and create new stuff, puzzles, Lego, woodwork – you name it. But, looking back I realize that I was infected by the entrepreneurial spirit when I was 13. I started a venture called V-Resolution (V stood for Vova J). During that time, iframe-based websites were THE popular structure. The problem in those days, was that screen sizes and resolutions were very poor. If you had a little bit different resolution than the web developer, you found yourself in front of a messed-up website with 3-5 scroll bars. I acknowledged the problem and obviously found a need, I decided to build a special browser add-on button that will act like auto-zoom for the browser, and resize the content to the exact dimensions the web developer meant it to be. Of course  today’s zoom browser is obvious, but back then it was innovative. V-Resolution was an html post-compiler that worked really nice. I showed it to couple of people, even dragged my dad to a totally unrelated computer convention to show it to relevant people – but I was too young and didn’t have the right guidelines, so this ‘company’ failed. It didn’t break my spirit and I learned a lot from the process.

Counting back, I’ve started five different software ventures and two hardware venture (underwater camera case & anti-dust drilling device), only three of the ventures became companies.

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What is most difficult aspect of being an entrepreneur?

This is a very difficult question to answer.  I think the answer varies according to the entrepreneur’s company stage. During the early stage, the most difficult, though exciting, part is the uncertainty. It’s like a roller-coaster, ups & downs on a daily basis. Most of the time you act according to your gut feeling, take chances, try to take advantage of the right opportunity – because you don’t have the money, time nor the resources to chase  more than one direction. In addition, all the statistics show  you practically have no chance to succeed.  – so the odds are against you all the time. Later, on a more advanced stage, the challenge is raise money, grow the team, hire talent, and chase the bigger vision.

Thinking again, there is a common difficulty during all stages. Not having mentioned this before, entrepreneurship is a disease! Entrepreneurs are like professional skateboarders. It’s a way of life. There is no separation between personal life and work because there is no such  thing for us called work. I It’s obvious because the venture is our baby. So why is this a difficulty? Well, think about it, if you spend  most of your time doing something, there’s not much time left for other things. It’s very hard to have any hobbies, it definitely hurts your  loved ones, and you can even lose your personal identity. Honestly, I have no idea how I could have done that with kids – I admire those parents.

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How do you, as an entrepreneur, determine success?

I have three criteria to determine entrepreneur’s success.

1. How fast and efficient he can test hypothesis, and learn from them to improve?
2.  Is his network of connections always expanding?
3. Can and how well does he learns from his failures?

If  an entrepreneur knows how to fail fast and quickly learn from the mistakes, stay persistent and never lose   his spirit, be open to  feedback and his newtwork of connections is exponentially increasing. I would say that this person is definitely on the right track to success.

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On a contrary note, what are your thoughts on failing? Some people say it’s good or necessary, but what do you say?

Failing is part of the learning process. When you succeed, it’s a combination of many variables that come together, including timing and luck. It’s much harder to learn something specific from a success because there are just too  many variables. When you fail, it’s much simpler to isolate the reason you failed and learn from it. It’s definitely necessary! Experienced entrepreneurs have the skill of failing fast, learning and  believing the mantra:

FAIL. LEARN. TRY-BETTER.

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A lot of people know who you are by using your WordPress Ratings-Widget. Was that your first try at creating a plugin for WordPress?

Yes, the Rating-Widget was my first WP plugin. It’s actually a really funny story of how I started the project. By the end of 2010 I was planning to start a blog. I took a pen and piece of paper and wrote all the components that I would like to have in my blog. One of them was a rating system for posts and comments. After searching for a while, I couldn’t find something suitable and user-friendly for my needs. As a geeky developer I just decided to build one myself.. As a side comment, I never had time to publish the blog

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Why do you think it become so popular and successful?

That’s a great question. I guess  it became so popular because of  three main reasons.

1. I made the user experience very friendly and simple. The most unsavvy tech user can set it up in couple of minutes.
2. I was constantly listening to the users. All  new features were added according to users’ needs and requests. I was always asking for feedback, and feeding this feedback back into the product.

Last but not least, I keep doing my best to provide outstanding customers service and support. I think that many great plugins for lack of continued support, and that’s just a shame.

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Since everyone loves Ratings-Widget, do you plan on creating more plugins?

Developing a good WordPress plugin takes time, persistence and constant maintenance. In addition, the WordPress plugins market is very mature and it’s very hard to innovate. I believe that there are other rising platforms with ‘young’ apps markets where there are more opportunities to innovate. This is exactly why sixth months ago I released the Rating-Widget for Blogger Gadget and three months ago I also released the Rating-Widget for WiX App which was chosen  as one of The 10 most Popular Apps on WiX App Market, I’m also proud to announce for the first time that we’ve just released the Rating-Widget for Shopify App.

Just to answer your question simply – YES, I’m definitely planning on creating more plugins, but not necessarily for WordPress.

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What was the most difficult part of creating the Ratings-Widget? Were there any bugs that took a long time to correct? (be as technical as you need to be)

The architecture of the Rating-Widget WordPress plugin is very different than most of the other plugins. All the ratings’ data is stored remotely on our servers. The reason for that architecture is because the Rating-Widget was actually designed to be a standalone rating widget, a Copy-Paste style widget, which would work on any website. Only later, I  wrapped it into a WordPress plugin solution. This architecture raised some technical challenges during the way, most of them regarding cross-domain communication and cross-browser rendering issues. Once the project became popular, the biggest challenge turned out to be scaling. Suddenly, the service suffered from slowdowns and people started to complain about it and stopped using  the plugin. I was never expecting the project to be so popular and the backend + DB weren’t well designed for scalability. Modifying the backend structure was the hardest part and required many changes. I’ve improved the DB indexes, configured replicas, added Memcached for caching and added CDN for the static files delivery. All of these modifications changed the availability of the server to 99% of the time.

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As for me, I will be using the premium version of your plugin and I love the Google Rich Snippets feature. Can you explain that feature to my readers and why that feature is so valuable?

Sure. Rich Snippets are small pieces of special code in the html of the website. It’s metadata that explains about the structure of the website. It’s a collection of hints for the web crawlers. On May 2009, Google announced that they’ve added support for Rich Snippets to their SERP (search engine results page). Among other cool Rich Snippet elements, Google added a support for ratings.

The Rating-Widget WordPress plugin premium package supports the Rating Rich-Snippets. Which means that your posts’ ratings, will be automatically  seen in Google search results. Why is that important? This will make your blog’s SERP more attractive and eye-catching! This results a higher CTR (click-through rates), which means more traffic to your blog.

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Can you share some well known companies that use Ratings-Widget?

I can’t share the exact numbers, but there are a LOT of blogs and websites using the Rating-Widget. Two big names are Loreal which  is using our WordPress plugin on their Makeup.com blog, and Asus which is using our WiX app on their support website.

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What was most satisfying about having created a very popular WordPress widget?

The most satisfying part is knowing that the Rating-Widget project is helping so many users every day to  make their ratings experience much better. It’s a great feeling creating a product that people love and use.

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You are not only a plugin creator, you are the CTO of a very successful company called Senexx. Can you give our readers a summary of your work with Senexx?

I co-founded Senexx with my university buddy, Zeevi Michel. We started Senexx in Mar 2011 and we are now have eight employees. Senexx is an internal Enterprise Q&A platform which helps employees solve   work related questions faster and seamlessly. We’ve built an innovative technology using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning algorithms, which leverage organizational unstructured data. Being part of Senexx is exciting and technologically challenging. It’s a B2B product which is very different from the ratings-widget.

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So, it’s all about saving companies time. When it comes to the services you provide your Senexx clients, what have your clients raved about most?

From our observation for the last 18 months, our email integration is the most raved about service we offer. Users can simply email their question to a designated email address (e.g. ask@microsoft.com for Microsoft) and our sophisticated engine will analyze the email and make sure to forward it to the most qualified employees within the organization that can help with the inquiry.

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What are some near future plans you have for Senexx? Are there any new features or services that will improve the lives of current or future customers and make their work even easier than you already make it?

We’ve just recently launched SolvePath, our new product web platform. It has many exciting features like semantic search, following capabilities, rich-content question threads and more. We’ve put a lot of effort on the FTUE (First time user experience) and added a leaning center. We are constantly working on the platform and the technology. Improving the UX and the quality of our classification and routing engine.

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On a personal note, your LinkedIn profile shows you have many interests outside of tech. These include but are not limited to photography, sports and movies.

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What kind of camera do you use?  And is there someplace on the web to see your photos?

I’m an amateur photographer, I love to capture moments from life. I have two cameras Canon Rebel i3 DSLR and Canon SD-630. I mainly use the Rebel i3, but when I scuba dive I use the small SD-630 with my underwater case. I prefer underwater photography. You can find my albums on Facebook (e.g. Scuba diving 31.07-01.08)

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Your favorite sports ( to watch and participate in) are?

I don’t have much time to watch any TV, but having said that, if I do watch any sports that would be the NBA. In my very limited free time, I’m doing Capoeira. It’s a Brazilian martial art, combining music and dance. It powers me with just the right energy, both physically and spiritually, to continue with  the intensity  of my entrepreneurial life.

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What types of movies do you enjoy? Any classics or do you prefer only the most recent releases?

I love Quentin Tarantino, I think he is a genius. I have extremely enjoyed most of his movies. Including the classic  Pulp Fiction. I also love movies with Tom Hanks. Two of my favorite movies are Forrest Gump, and Saving Private Ryan.

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Finally, what words of wisdom can your provide those who would like to follow in your computer engineer/entrepreneurial footsteps?

I’m only 27 and not wise enough to provide words of wisdom, but I can share some thoughts about entrepreneurship.

Many people think that entrepreneurship is about the money, and that the only thing  which matters is the exit. That’s a very common misconception. If I was working in a big company today, my financial state would be much better.

1. Entrepreneurship is about the process, the learning and the innovation. It’s about the amazing people you meet along the way. It’s about waking up every morning with excitement and high motivation, ready to conquer the world! It’s about doing the thing you love, having your dreams come true and making the world a better place. If you do choose that crazy path called entrepreneurship here some recommendations from my own experience:Find a great co-founder that will complete you. Startups are all about the people.
2. If you can help someone – do it! It’s a karma thing. I’ve adopted this  belief  from the startup ecosystem in the United-States. Everyone  there is super helpful and eventually it pays off for everyone.
3. Find experienced people in your industry and make them your mentors. There’s nothing better than getting feedback from people who are familiar with the industry and who have plenty of experience.
4. Stand in lucks way! That’s a quote of one of my mentors, Gil Ben-Arzy, and I love it. In addition to persistence and hard work, success is a lot about timing and luck – being in the right place at the right time. If you have ways to increase your luck, do it! And When you see an opportunity – pursue it!
5. Stay positive and persist. Don’t ever give up! You’ll have many failures before you succeed. Don’t be afraid to fail – embrace it and learn from it. Fail fast and keep trying!

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Thank you so much Vova for your time!

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I first met Ann Evanston on Twitter, as many of you probably have.  Ann Evanston is a self-made woman. She’s tapped into her most influential self and has helped many others do the same. She is a warrior in the land of entrepreneurialism. She slays any doubts and excuses that come her way.  She can do the same for you too.  Now onto…

I’m very thankful to Ann for her amazing answers to my questions. I’ve really enjoyed reading all she had to say. I know you will too. Now onto…  The Ann Evanston Interview

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Ann, you have a new book out titled The Influence Factor, a great book which helps people become a magnet to others, a compelling force in both their own personal and business lives and your book demonstrates how all that ability is within each of us. Have there been authors who were a big influence on you or your writing style?

Yes! As I looked at my SHELVES of self-help and business books, I realized that the only ones that I had actually read to the very last page where between 100-125 pages long. Short and powerful. Too many of the 250-300 page books I get 1-2 chapters in, figure “I got it” and stop (Bet those authors cringe huh?) BUT, I bet I am not that different than others. So mine is about 100 pages.

I write a little blog and did a video on it where I share some of those books: http://www.warrior-preneur.com/2012/05/31/influence-factor-length-matter/

In addition, the book is very ACTION ORIENTED- I give you things to DO to achieve and learn about your influential voice: assessments, activities and writing assignments.

How has being a social psychologist helped you in the area of social media? Does it give you an edge you might not have otherwise had?

Understanding human behavior, most importantly the intrinsic motivators of others that attracts them to what I have to offer, has helped tremendously. Most entrepreneurs don’t study this, so by nature, they share in social media based on what they are motivated by, and that attracts a smaller population of people. Therefore, your tribe, and customer base is smaller.

I have developed this program over the years called the “Warriors Code” and through the 30^th of January 2013, anyone can get a FREE sneak peek (audio, handout and mini self assessment) if they go to http://MoreIncomeMoreImpact.com (tons of other AMAZING resources available FREE). After that, the course will be offered online, people can contact me for details (and who knows, if you’re in my newsletter, I often allow gifts to those in!).

I think I may know your answer to this question, but I would wonder what your thoughts are on buying Twitter followers or Facebook fans? Are there negative aspects to this practice?

BOOO! HISS! Stop getting caught up in that number, and look at the quality of connections in social media. Honestly, half the time they are “bot” accounts (no real person is looking and reading the stream, so they are a waste of time.

I see on your “about” page that you are ranked as #2 of all the top influencers in the SF bay area on Twitter. Where is that ranking from and what practices would you say garner you such a high ranking?

Lol- well it’s all relative huh? That’s an old statistic, but I joined Twitter in June 2008, yes, back in the old days. So that is part of it.

You are a founding associate member of the Women Speakers Association, can you tell my readers more about the association and some of the benefits of becoming a member?

I have been a speaker forever, I started toastmasters in the 7^th grade! I’ve been a professionally paid speaker since 1995. WSA, like any organization, is only as good as you become involved and WORK the benefits. Just becoming a member isn’t enough. This is true of anywhere you network!

You speak a lot on attitude. Can you explain a little bit on how having a good or bad attitude affects the work of an entrepreneur?

It’s all mind body connection isn’t it? One thing I would say about attitudes of entrepreneurs is that you have to get over the attitude of “if you build it they will come” (from Field of Dreams). I watch too many entrepreneurs launch something, put it out there at one meeting, or one tweet or Facebook post, and the next time it’s something new. Consistent and Persistent are critical attitudes if you want success as an entrepreneur (and I have been self-employed since 1997).

Why do so many people today, especially entrepreneurs, lose focus of their core values and their mission? Also, what could help entrepreneurs stay more focused and thus, more successful?

I totally agree, and I think there are many reasons, but the biggest in my mind? Not having their business mission and values align with the Vision of their Most Influential Self. Career (being and entrepreneur, small business owner) is only ONE of the 6 core influencers in our lives. And until we align them authentically, we can lose focus.

Deep I know huh? Many entrepreneurs just want to say that they have so many ideas, or need to make the buck, but all of that become very clear when you align your most Influential Self. This is the part of my coaching that I love, is when we bring this together and it clicks. http://www.udemy.com/vision-of-your-most-influential-self-ann-evanston/

Can you share some about your earliest effort at being an entrepreneur? I read you started your own sorority in college? Where was that? And why start your own sorority? The fact that it’s still thriving on campus 20+ years later is impressive.

I did! That would be my first, other than some crazy things I did as a teen to earn a buck! I went to Whitman in Walla Walla. The sorority is called Zeta Pi.

What lessons did you learn from that endeavor that you still implement today when working on your entrepreneurial efforts?

Brand image is tied to who you are.

I have to be able to clarify what matters most to me and say NO to the rest.

Strategy is more important than just doing.

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Please give some words of wisdom to entrepreneurs who say, “I can’t make my business work because things are tough right now,” or “My niche is just way too competitive to succeed.”

Ah, back at attitude! Scarcity thinking is alive and well, you have to change the scarcity thinking! I’d also challenge some of these people and ask if they really are entrepreneurs, or just unemployed corporate people trying to make some money because they can’t get a job right now. Ouch, that was painful huh? Here is the reality of an entrepreneur: We work EVERY DAY to earn the income we desire. And anything worth having is worth working on. But the work isn’t in creating something new to sell, it’s in the planning, forecasting and marketing strategies you build and then implement. Remember consistent and persistent will always make money.

One of the many services you provide to entrepreneurs is coaching. Can you tell entrepreneurs who have considered hiring a coach, but have not yet taken the step in hiring one, what coaching is all about and how someone can tell a good coach from someone who may just out to make a quick buck?

Oh I could write on this forever…1- You have to know EXACTLY what you need to WORK on before hiring a coach, so you can ask specific questions about fit. 2-You want a coach that will push you out of your comfort zone (otherwise they are a counselor) 3- Ask the coach what their process, or system is for helping you, any good coach has one. If they can’t speak to steps, or where they start to get you to where you want to be, run.

See, think coach like in sports. A good coach knows how to win the game, and has a way to bring the BEST YOU to win the game.

Finally, a rapid fire round of questions……

Best business book you’ve read? I have three, but every entrepreneur needs to read The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber

Best pizza in San Francisco? Never had pizza in San Francisco, but we get Zachary’s in Berkeley J

Favorite entrepreneur story you’ve read or heard about? I like any failure story, but few want to share their failure…

Favorite sports teams? Denver Broncos GO ORANGE CRUSH!

Cats or dogs? Both. My cat, Wiley died at 20 years old this past May, Blaze is our German Sheppard

Favorite all time Saturday Night Live skit? That’s hard, Mr Bill? Rosana? Candy-gram?

If you could only choose Facebook or Twitter, which would it be? Twitter

Favorite movie of all time? Don’t really have one, but if I have to pick….Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I want to give a big thank you to Ann Evanston for all the time she took out of her schedule to give my readers some advice, helpful tips and most importantly, inspiration.
 

Get in touch with Ann Evanston

On Twitter: @annevanston

Facebook:  http://facebook.com/warriorpreneur

Website: Warrior-preneur.com

Learn more about her class on the Vision of Your Most Influential Self

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Coach Lineweaver Speaks, We Should Listen

I first met Trinity head coach Steve Lineweaver at Lushaj’s Pizza & Pasta, just across the street from Trinity High School. He actually held the door open for me and my son when we were leaving. Outside, I told him I kept hearing people call him “Coach.” I then asked what type of coach he was. Duh! I’d always rooted for the Trinity Trojans to win, but had not paid attention to their coach. Well, this man is definitely the type of person to whom a lot of attention is paid. Coach Lineweaveris one of the best High School football coaches in America. His teams at Trinity have won three state championships (2005, 2007 and 2009). His overall record as the Trinity Trojans head coach (as of the beginning of the playoffs in 2012) is 96-11. Coach Lineweaver is a a soft spoken man with an eye on creating great men and citizens. Developing great football players happens under the tutelage of Coach Lineweaver, but that is not his main goal.

Coach Lineweaver is a man of very few words, but they are important words and here they are:

Besides helping kids become winners on a football field, is there an alternative way to judge success for a football coach?

Like many other influences in a boy’s life, we won’t know the impact we had (on our players) until years later when the boy becomes a man, with a job, a wife and kids… Hopefully he will be a man of service.

How important is good sportsmanship in high school sports? And what kind of negative impact can bad sportsmanship have on a team?

Good sportsmanship displayed assures that sports is in the right perspective. Bad sportsmanship shows a poor representation to a lot of great entities… the school, the team, the community, the boy’s family, the coaching staff. Good sportsmanship acts are praised, pointed out and encouraged.

How do your players learn better sportsmanship under your tutelage? What tips or words of wisdom can you provide other coaches or to parents of younger children about nurturing sportsmanship?

It is taught in our football program during “Success Class” (Character education 15 minutes a day, before practice starts…. All year round.) Tips- Model it yourself, as a coach.

In all your years of coaching, is there one example of teamwork that stands out in your mind?

Example of teamwork.: We used to give out weekly helmet decals (awards) for stellar plays. I noticed one “star”player was handing his decals out to teammates who did not have any awards to put on their helmets. … Great lesson in showing teammates matter. (I quit handing out individual awards after that.)

We live in a world where a lot of people lose hope, kids get out from football teams, parents get out from jobs, people get cut from relationships. As a well respected person, do you have any words of wisdom for those who have lost hope?

Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Now, just a few favorites and preferences of yours…. (feel free to elaborate if you’d like i.e why Chevy or Ford is better than the other)

Country music or Hip Hop? Country

Ford or Chevy? Ford is better. Why? Because of the slogan: “Built Ford Tough.”

Favorite football movie? The movie with a boy named Radio.

Favorite Dallas Cowboy? I like the coach, Jason Garrett (high character, intelligent).

Favorite food at Lushaj’s Pizza & Pasta? Stromboli !!!!!!!

Thank you so much Coach Lineweaver for doing this interview. If you’ve enjoyed it, who would you recommend I interview next for GotInterviews.com?

Suggested next interviews: Barry Morgan (Colleyville Covenant)

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Carol Gordon Ekster is an amazing author. She writes for children and she does an inspiring and encouraging job. She is the author of Where Am I Sleeping Tonight?- A Story of Divorce and Ruth the Sleuth and the Messy Room. I first remember Carol from a great amount of time I spent on Verla Kay’s Blueboard. I now see Carol quite often via her Twitter account. She’s an active tweep and I always look forward to her tweets. If you don’t yet follow her on Twitter, please do so. She can be found at http://twitter.com/cekster.

You began writing and submitting children’s books at the end of your 35 year teaching career, but was there anything you remember writing as a child that you could amuse my readers with? Something that amuses you still today?

Oh, yes! I wrote a story in 6th grade that was bound with a cover. It was called “Dolly”. I even illustrated it. Boy, is it cheesy! I was so dramatic and used so many adjectives. It was quite the sob story about an orphan. I shared it with my students after I became an author to show them how fun it is to save what you wrote and be able to look back at who you were and how we change over time. Each child in my class went home at the end of the year with a bound book of their writings ….poetry and pieces about their lives. It was a pretty special memory of the year. Before I even thought of becoming an author I had writing workshops with my class.

Throughout your years of teaching , has any child you’ve taught gone on to make writing their own career? Has anyone come back to say, “Thank you Mrs. Ekster,” and if so, how did that make you feel?

Many children, some who are now adults, told me how they love to write and were inspired in my classroom. I have some amazing letters from students and parents expressing their gratitude for my dedication and unusual style of teaching. It makes me feel incredible to have been told that I will have an influence on their children for their entire lives. That feeling is how I would describe success! But one e-mail I received the year I retired popped up in my mind when you asked this question. A student from over 30 years before said he heard I retired and said many lovely things to me. But the comment that really pulled at my heart strings was that when his daughters, now in elementary school, get their teachers in the beginning of each school year, he always hopes they will be as wonderful as me.

Writing is not an easy profession. There are typically many more downs than ups when it comes to the journey to publication. How did you persist when you received rejections? And how many rejections did you receive before selling your first book?

I am one determined woman….always have been. My first book sold after twelve rejections. But let me give you a clearer picture. I recently reached the number 800 manuscripts that I’ve sent out to publishers in the ten years I’ve been writing. And the total number of manuscripts I’ve written is approaching fifty. I’ve only sold three out of that number, two books and one magazine article. Those are not good odds! You must learn to persevere if you want to succeed in publishing. I get a rejection and hang onto hope by sending it out to another publisher. And I’ve decided that not everything I write has to get published….it’s just part of the writing process. Rejection is part of the process as well. I remember hearing Jane Yolen speak at a conference. She mentioned she had just gotten three rejections the day before. If Jane Yolen, a prolific and award winning author, still gets rejections, then it was clear to me – you can’t take rejection personally, and you need tough skin to remain in this business.

On the front page of your website, you list your books, but you also mention how they came to be sold. I don’t see that on many author websites. Is there a certain reason you provide those details?

I wanted to give others who are interested in becoming a children’s author a realistic look into this journey. Many people say, “I always wanted to write a children’s book!” I think most people have no idea how difficult the road to publication is and how much effort it takes to work on the craft of writing. I also wanted to encourage others to join SCBWI. It was because of targeted submissions, both of which I learned of through SCBWI, that I am published.

I recently saw on Twitter that you received some good critiques and are busy on a revision. If you can reveal a few details about your latest story, we’d love to hear about it.

Oh, it’s such a fun picture book! I don’t want to divulge too much. But it has to do with dancing books and learning about the different genres in the library. I usually get excited about each new book that I see as having potential to touch lives and be a positive addition to the world of children’s literature.

On the same topic – critiques – what makes a good critique a good critique?

A good critique for me is one where someone saw a way to make my story shine brighter. I’ve gotten so many helpful and incredible suggestions from small word choices to main story concepts. I love when I come home and read through the notes on the manuscripts and see a suggestion that clicks with me. The hard work is choosing what advice you want to take while still staying true to your own voice and vision. Many times it’s funny how some group members can want to change your entire plot line. I think, well they can write that story, but that’s not the direction I want to go in.

Your latest book is about messy little girl named Ruth. Your previous book, Where am I Sleeping Tonight? – A Story of Divorce featured two little boys named Mark and Evan. Where do the names of your characters come from? Is there any science, any rhyme or reason when picking a character name?

In my newest book, Ruth the Sleuth and The Messy Room, Ruth happens to be my mom’s name and she can find anything she sets her mind to. The character in my story says she can find anything she sets her mind to, but of course, learns it’s easier and faster to locate items when you’re more organized. I also wanted a fun rhyming title, inspired by Dora the Explorer, and came up with “Ruth the Sleuth”. In my first book, Where am I Sleeping Tonight? – A Story of Divorce, the boy in my class, who lived the schedule of shared custody discussed in the book, was Evan, so I used his name for the younger brother. I used my husband’s name, Mark, for the main character. I use many former special students’ names in my stories as well as some names of friends and relatives. Sometimes I just go to the internet to find popular names. I think for kids, it’s cool to find your name inside the pages of a book. I don’t have any set science to picking names. I go with my feelings. And sometimes I change character names after the story is finished!

You love to promote your books. What are your favorite avenues of promotion?
I’m not sure I LOVE promotion. I find it stressful. I like to be very organized and prepared and exciting. That takes work! For my first school visit, I presented to two groups of about one hundred in each group. It was wonderful to see kids looking up at me again and see they were really interested in what I had to say. It’s different coming in as a visitor. You don’t have that rapport and mutual love and respect already built up that occurs between teacher and student. I also have presented at a few conferences for teachers and librarians and once for guidance counselors. I love to inspire other professionals to use picture books to reach children. Twitter and Facebook are quick and easy and wonderful ways to get your name out there. I connected with you on Twitter! But honestly, when I started to write, I had no idea that I’d have to do so much more than write. This has been an incredible opportunity for growth for me.

In this world of email, is there still such a thing as an old fashioned piece of fan mail? If so, do you have a favorite piece?

I haven’t gotten any snail mail from fans, but I have gotten some e-mail correspondence.

About how many total manuscripts have you written, picture books and magazine submissions combined?

I’ve written close to fifty manuscripts so far, and have many ideas waiting to be developed in my “story ideas folder”.

If you were not allowed to ever write another word for children, what genre would you turn your writing skills toward?

I can’t imagine such a thing, but I might try to write for educators with hopes of helping to inspire them to teach with love and passion.

Finally, a rapid fire round of questions. One word answers are fine, but minor elaboration is definitely encouraged.

Coffee or tea? Coffee

Circles or squares? Circles

Mountains or plains? Plains

Buddha, Mohammed, or Jesus? Buddha

Dark chocolate, white chocolate or milk chocolate? Dark

Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts? Starbucks

Your 4th grade year or 11th grade? I LOVED school and remember both years fondly. But fourth grade was certainly easier! And I can still picture my fourth grade teacher more clearly than most of the 11th grade teachers.

Late nights or early mornings? Early mornings.

New pair of shoes or a new purse? Tough one…I want both!

Thank you so much for your time Carol. This interview has been a long time in the making and I appreciate you providing such great answers.

Please visit Carol’s website and order her latest book Ruth the Sleuth and the Messy Room

The post Interview with Children’s Author Carol Gordon Ekster appeared first on GotInterviews.

Juli, you have a long list of credits, but they only begin in 2008. Where were you before 2008? In Hollywood? College? Somewhere else?

That’s right! I was in college: at U of F. I even went to the same high school as Tim Tebow. I also traipsed around Europe a little during college: France, Monaco, Germany, Poland and the UK.

How long have you been acting?

Professionally, since 2008. In my backyard, since 1988. In front of my mirror, 1989. And the first time the world saw me on stage, 1990, from which there exists a VHS videotape.

When and why did you make the decision that acting would be your career?

It was either that or law school. There was a feature film production in town, and I happened onto for a couple days. That pretty much helped my decision.

You went to Krakow Poland and attended college. Did you have a chance to visit either the Płaszów concentration camp or the Auschwitz death camp in Krakow?

I didn’t visit them during that particular trip. But I had visited Oswiecim before. Not with my family, surprisingly, even though we frequently visited Poland, but on a High School trip. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly where you take your kids on summer vacation, maybe that’s why. I think it’s something everyone should do, visit a camp. I still haven’t seen Sophie’s Choice. I recently read for a role where an immigrant mother lets her baby go at Ellis Island, and I thought it’d be great study, to see the film. Meryl Streep is remarkable, I know, and I wish I could watch her play that role, but I haven’t mustered the gumption to watch that. Yet.

What was Oswiecim like?

Hmmm, it was sort of very strange. I was on a tour of Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Lichtenstein with my High School classmates. I remember it sort of being in the middle of all that– of fun stuff. Rightly so, so it wasn’t our first or last impression of the trip. I had a ton of pictures developed, but not one from the camp. I just left my camera on the bus. In our culture of being able to snap a photo of anything anytime, our food, friends, a memorable event… this was the first time I can remember thinking, I am not going to take any photographs, what will I do with them, this is something to be experienced and felt. It was very dark and abandoned, even though it was a bright summer day. Some kids even elected to stay on the bus. I actually don’t remember too many exhibits or buildings. Just some bunk beds, the creepy dark hall, and an open field. But in all that nothing there was definitely a residual energy of so much.

Did that experience change you in any way?

Of course it did. It’s sort of when you grow up from being a child and realize your mom is not the best driver in the world, or your father isn’t infallible. I had that realization about the capacity of humans and government. It shattered my naivete and hopes, I guess.

Your bio says you’re also an artist and photographer. In your art, what medium do you use? In photography, what kind of equipment do you use and what subjects do you like to shoot most?

I enjoy painting, using layers of paint. I also enjoy oil pastels. I like “chunky” mediums. I don’t just like to do flat art, it’s dimensional. In photography, I used to use a digital camera, but have discovered the simplicity and beauty of film. It’s one of those instances where less is more. I like to capture fleeting moments, no special subjects in particular.

You won a best actress award for “Jane” at the 2011 Cannes film festival. Were you there? Were you surprised? What kind of new doors did winning that award open up for you?

I didn’t win Best Actress at the Cannes film festival, but the director of Jane won a Best Film award for his previous work that had been to Cannes. I was at the award’s ceremony for the announcement of Best Actress. I hope no one judges me when I say I wasn’t surprised. And I will say that I attribute that win in part to the wonderful Cinematography by Mark Hubbard, who also won an award. That Award is still opening doors for me; it just puts you into a new echelon of professionals.

Does your interest in different cultures guide you choose certain roles over others?

I wouldn’t say my interest in other cultures affects my decisions; I would say my sociological understanding of different types of people does.

Can you name me the first movie you remember watching as a child?

Jeez, first movie I remember… I’m not sure which one it was; it’s between ET, Neverending Story, or a very creepy movie I wasn’t supposed to see on the TV about a man in bed and snakes all over his room.

How supportive has your family been in regard to your career?

Some of my family has been tremendously supportive, and proud. The others, well, it comes with the territory- when you’re untraditional, you get really weird looks. But I knew that going in.

What’s been the biggest highlight so far in your acting career?

I would have to say my role as Ellen on “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23.” There is just something about millions of people watching you simultaneously across the US on television.

Any disappointments you can share?

There are many; this is probably the hardest career anyone can intentionally choose.

At some point, would you like to direct, produce, or write?

I have produced, I’m not so much cut out for it. I like to have my hand in more of the art of it. I would love, love to direct, but it’s not something that I’m actively seeking out. I know I’ll write screenplays.

If you were given the opportunity to shoot on location anywhere in the world, what three locations would you choose?

Yay, a fun question! In no particular order. Australia, because I’ve never been, and I know it’s all going to be fantastic. Canada, because it’s so beautiful. And somewhere in South America.

To conclude, a rapid fire round of your favorites…..

Coffee or tea? Coffee, every morning. Can’t function without it.

Glass and steel buildings or a tree in a field? If someone prefers glass and steel buildings to that, I’m not exactly sure how we could be friends.

Cats or dogs? Cats! They’re so sweet, and have attitude.

Color? Green, all the way.

Jesus, Buddah or Muhammad? I was raised Catholic! But I know Jesus won’t get mad when I say Buddha, because I know they’re best friends.

Hobby? I love to ride my bike. I love to eat good food.

Country Music, hip hop or classical? Of only those three choices? I have to pick country.

Favorite musician? Oh, jeez, I’m not good at this. I’ve recently been really attracted to the complex orchestrations of the band Phish.

Leave it to Beaver or Dennis the Menace? Dennis the Menace. Ne’er do well little boys melt my heart!

Thank you so much for your time Juli. I really appreciate it.

Learn more about Julianna Piechovski

Visit her website

Juli Piechovski on LinkedIn

Juli on IMDB

Juli on Twitter

Juli’s Facebook Page

The post Interview with Actress Juli Piechovski appeared first on GotInterviews.

It was a joy to talk with Pavel Bains, founder of a new iPad app for children called Storypanda. There are so many interesting facets to Pavel, whether it’s his love for some old school music like New Jack Swing, his work experience at Disney Interactive and for a Vancouver restaurant group or the many lessons sports taught him about competition and how it honed his own competitive spirit. Pavel loves competing in this game of life and a couple minutes on the phone with him exposed his enthusiasm and I think I’ve been infected. That’s a good thing. I hope you can catch some of his start up spirit by merely reading his words. After reading the interview, Pavel would love to read your comments and I bet he’ll respond. He’s just that kind of guy. Now, onto the interview

Of all the different types of startups you could have been involved with, why did you choose a family friendly startup such as Storypanda?

I grew up on video games and comic books and a lot of the guys I grew up with chose careers to go into video games, making them, working for these companies. The past five years, all the guys I knew, who were in games, started having kids. You get to the point where you’re playing Call of Duty and making games like that and you’re just offing people the entire time. You eventually realize, “I really don’t want to make these kind of games any more.“

Also, the development cycles of producing those types of games was about three years. Then we started seeing what our kids were doing on the iPad and we saw this paradigm shift. I thought, “I want to do something I can enjoy, creating a brand and making something and enjoying it with my kids, the way I enjoyed Disney type entertainment when I was a kid growing up.”

You worked at Disney Interactive, right?

Yes I did.

What was your position there and how did you get the job?

I was always into interactive entertainment, video games and everything. I knew one of the vice-presidents – Howard Donaldson, VP of operations for all of the internal studios and financial operations. He suggested I come over to work with him at Disney to basically do the financial management of all their internal studios, and there were six at that time.

How long were you there?

I was only there a year. The reason I left was two-fold. I could see a paradigm shift fast approaching. I didn’t see console games as a long term endeavor with the 2-3 year development cycles and the shift toward mobile and tablets. I was also presented with an opportunity to be the CFO/COO at a smaller studio. For me, I would rather fully run a studo and know the entire workings of it than be a small cog in a big factory. It was more entrepreneurial for me to go to ThreeWave Software. I was there for two years. And as the overall video game industry changed, with console titles selling less and less except for blockbuster titles, we made a conscious decision to divest ourselves of the business before we suffered the fate of other small studios who were shutting down or running out of money. Around that time, I decided to make my own business and here we have a new space, that’s Storypanda.

How would you explain Storypanda to a family with small children who you might in an elevator, what’s your elevator pitch?

I’d say we’ve developed Storypanda for the iPad. It will allow you to read an interactive book, create your own version of that book you just read, and then share it amongst your friends and family. You can share it in such a way that if your daughter creates a book and her grandparents log into Storypanda, they would see the message floating that little Julie just created a personalized book for them.

How does a Storypanda user create their own book? Is it just by using the characters in the story, new ending or is there some other way to customize your titles?

We look at each book that we create, or books from our partner authors, as a mini story template. What we’re motivating readers to do is take a story and start swapping up characters we provide, assets in the background, change the text, and essentially, re-make the same book with their own style. The reason we give guidelines is pretty simple. We’ve found if you give people a blank slate, it actually goes against creativity. If I give you a blank piece of paper right now and say , “Hey, make up a story,” you’ll have a frustrating experience just trying to get going. Now, if you give people constraints and say, “Hey, here are the rules and paramaters,” They will most likely respond, “Okay, now I know how to play within this.” Guidelines can actually encourage more creativity.

Can you tell me about some of your early experiences that have pushed you in the direction of having such a great entrepreneurial spirit? Was your family influential in this?

Nothing in my family helped push me in this direction. Recently, I was joking with my Dad that if anything, my family background probably held me back. My dad emigrated over here and worked a good job and the mindset in my family was grow up, get a good job and get another safe job and keep going. I’ve always liked the challenge of being an entrepreneur. I’ve had a number of opportunities at big companies and I always end up thinking I can go back to that if I want. The big question I’ve always asked myself has been, “How can I challenge myself?” I guess it just comes down to my dad coming to this country with basically nothing and I know I’ll personally probably never fall into that situation so I might as well shoot for the stars and see what happens.

Having worked at Disney and other good companies, my partner and I believe we’ve done all this work, we know how to build a brand, we can move faster, let’s execute. It’s really just a personal belief of goal setting and saying, “I can do this.”

If it wasn’t family, were there other experiences that helped create in you this entrepreneurial spirit? Just looking for a motivating factor, was there one person you can point to who helped set you on this path?

I grew up on video games and watching action movies in the 80s and 90s. We’re all familiar with Jerry Bruckheimer and seeing Top Gun when it came out. I thought making movies like that would be cool. Then, when I got older and attended university, I thought I had a better chance at running a video game studio than running a film studio, so I started going down that path.

On the entrepreneurial side, there was Peter Bonner, the CEO of a restaurant chain I worked for who was one of the biggest restauranteurs in Vancouver through the 70s and 80s. After school, I worked right beside him, and just getting that mindset of him building his chain up from nothing and how he looked at each restaurant as design, as a product, that really got the entrepreneurial spirit into me. I could have been there forever but I had to do something on my own that was more interactive. I think that experience inspired me a lot. Seeing guys like that made me think if they could do it, so could I.

What restaurant chain was that?

The chain was called Spectra Group of Great Restaurants. They had four different chains. When I was there, they had Milestones, The Boat House, The Bread Garden and Macaroni Grill. While I was there , I think we had over 40 different restaurants.

You’re a parent now, aren’t you?

Yes.

Before beginning Storypanda, what did you read your children? And how did you read it to them?

I read them traditional books, ranging from CURIOUS GEORGE to CAT IN THE HAT. I always liked to lean on the things that I grew up reading. My daughter is four now and she finds WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS by Shel Silberstein absolutely hilarious. Once the iPad came out, I’d look at interactive books on there and saw some good Dr. Suess titles. They looked good, the resolution and the animation was fine. But after going through those interactive books, I thought, “How can we make this experience better?” because I found my daughter was reading the CAT IN THE HAT book and would rarely go back to it.

I also noticed that the interactive book companies didn’t do a very good job of promoting their next titles and the quality differed with each one. With our concept, we wondered, “How could we create a brand trust where parents could open up the Storypanda app every time and know there would be a new book every month or every couple of weeks that was always good?” So our goal was to build that trust and parents wouldn’t have to wonder, “Should I get this or not?” because with so many apps, you don’t know which ones are good.

Will you ever read your children a traditional book again?

Oh yeah, it’s probably an easy split between the two (interactive and traditional books).

My next question was going to be about Storypanda and other similar apps having a goal to put traditional publishers out of business, but after hearing you speak, that’s probably not your goal.

No. Our goal is to create new compelling intellectual property and characters we can tell a good story with. As a brand, we’re focused more on collaboration and co-creation. It just happens that interactive books is the first place we thought we could go.

Is there any way you can take your technology and add it to a traditional book?

We’ve been talking to some publishers who love how our technology works and we’ve discussed white labeling our entire tech back end so they can brand it themselves and put out their own platform where people can read, create and share their books. Or we could get their specific books and put them through our channel.

We’d love to take an author like Robert Munsch, who has fascinating characters and a unique voice for his stories and provide him with the Storypanda platform. Imagine allowing kids to choose their own Munsch adventure, swapping out his characters. I think Storypanda would be a good medium for him.

In Canada, what is the entrepreneurial scene like there in British Columbia? I know it’s not going to be the same as it is in Silicon Valley but are there cultural differences there in Canada?

In Vancouver, I’d say there’s a different mindset here. With us (Storypanda) being in 500 Startups, we’ve been down to Silicon Valley and the experience is different. There, they believe that you build it, you’re in here, you’ll figure it out, shoot as big as you can. Over here, people are a bit more risk averse. For example, if you’re talking to a potential investor and you don’t have an answer to a question, they see that as bad. But in the valley, if you don’t have an answer, they respond with, “You know what, you’ll figure it out. You shouldn’t have all the answers. Focus on what you’re doing and execute.” There’s also a big supportive eco-system down there that you can lean on. You’re now getting more startups here in Vancouver and I think it’s going to take a couple big successes over the next 5-10 years to allow everybody’s mindset to shift into a “Valley” kind of mindset. And then you’ll see people really shoot for bigger things.

Do you see yourself moving Storypanda to Silicon Valley?

We’re there right now. We have an office set up there because of the investment we have through 500 Startups. We’ll be down there but we’ll always keep the base here in Vancouver. The reason is because the interactive talent here is really good. That’s because we have a really big video game industry with Electronic Arts, Activision and many indie studios here. So we’ve got this big talent pool so I believe for what we’re doing as a creative and technology company, our base is right here and the talent is right here. Instead of having to move to the valley and say, compete against Facebook, Google, Apple and everybody who keeps taking talent, I’ve got it right here.

Is all of your content for Storypanda, your animation and writing, all done in house? Or are you looking to hire talented children’s writers and illustrators?

About half of our stories will be in house and we want to do half with select authors. And by “select” we mean they have to fit the right art style we’re shooting for, it’s got a bit more edge to it, a bit more polish, those sorts of things.

What is the age range for Storypanda titles?

What we’re shooting for is 2-8 year olds and the stories fit different needs for different ages. For example, my two year old likes to sit and switch the characters in our stories. My four year old will sit there and create a different ending for each story. My co-founder’s eight year old nephew, he’ll sit there and be very cerebreal in how he puts the entire process together.

On Storypanda, how do you see the stories being grouped for various ages?

I would say the groupings would be 2-3, that’d be one and 4-6 would be another group. That would be our core. Those are the ones who are beginning to read. They have a better understanding and they are becoming very adept at the iPad. They want to create something. Finally, 7-8 year olds would round out our audience.

You have a strong background in gaming, do you plan on creating games for Storypanda or are your interactive offerings like a game right now?

The Storypanda experience was designed to be almost like a game for reading. But as a company, with our vision overall, we want to be for software, what Leapfrog was for hardware. We want to have games that have an undercurrent of learning and education. Our goal is not to hit users over the head with being an educational type of app. With this platform, we’re going after establishing our user base, building brand trust, and then move that over to the next thing we want to do, mobile games and possibly utility apps designed for kids.

Not just with Storypanda, but with all of life, what keeps you motivated when it comes to any of your endeavors? Would that be a higher power, pride in your work, financial gain? Is there one thing that motivates you?

Financial gain is never really it. I’ve always thought that in whatever you do, if you follow your passion, financial rewards will come. I kind of look at all this as a game and how it’s played and building a brand and seeing what others have done, whether on the local front in Vancouver, nationally or with the big brands. I love this game and I want to compete. I know I can beat the game. I think that’s really the motivating factor.

Growing up, our dad had us in sports, challenging us. I ran track up until the university level. So it’s all about pushing yourself harder. When I ran track, a lot of the times I was just racing against the clock. When we used to train, it was all about getting yourself into a comfort zone, and then you plateau and then you have to push a bit harder. You only get better when you push yourself out of that comfort zone. I think it’s inherent in me that I have to apply that to everything I do.

How long have you been working on Storypanda?

We started development in May 2011. We broke it into stages because we had self-funded it. We came up with a concept and once that was done. We then hired a coder and started building Storypanda. There was a lot of user testing, seeing how people were interacted with the product and fixing problems. It’s been a little over a year.

How many people did you start with?

We had one developer at the beginning and even right now, we just have one developer, one artist, my partner James who is head of product, design and creative and I handle the business side. The coder for what we’ve got now, our programmer, he built a really good platform that can scale well and he created a nice scripting language for when we get new books and authors. We’ll be able to turn them around relatively fast.

What is a typical day like in the life of a startup founder? Maybe describe one from today and from when your first started.

Things have changed quite a bit from the beginning. When we first began, it was more concept heavy, and a lot of brainstorming, thinking, and because we weren’t raising capital, it was more about the product side and what worked and what didn’t and sort of just fleshing all that out. Then we got to the point where the product was ready, so it was then about branding and launching our website, networking. That was the middle stage where it’s having a product, we’re networking and just getting known. Now, for the past couple months, I don’t focus days on one particular thing. You’ve got to look at it all at the same time. So I look at my core functions and 30% of my day is related to business development – establishing new partnerships, following up with authors or people we’d like to work with. Another 30% would be on the raising capital side, maintaining those networks, talking to people. 30% would be marketing, spending time with people like yourself, PR, peer marketing with a product or optimizing the website, going through the product descriptions and things like that and the other 10% would be other operational aspects.

I remember Jack Dorsey from Twitter and Squared wrote about six months ago how he described his day. It was funny, because he’s running two different companies, and he has a schedule just like that, he’s not just running around everywhere.

Can you tell me when you will know Storypanda is a success?

The first thing will be, what we define as getting product market fit. That will be seen in a good number of users reading the books, X number are creating books and X number are sharing them. Once we establish product market fit, we just need to know how to scale that to a bigger size. That’s our first success measurement. One goal, we’ve been told is to ask your users, “How would you feel if you were not able to use this product every day?” If 40% of them say they’d be disappointed, then you’ve got product market fit. Like in sports, you create mini-goals, That’s our first goal, hitting that.

What are your keys for other people to become successful at startups? What would be some things you would suggest they do to become a success?

I think from the beginning, write down what is core to the company and your foundational principles, not your design pillars, but your business pillars. Once you put that together, it allows you to filter out stuff that could be distracting. For example, our mantra is “Connecting Families Through Storytelling.” So anytime some feature or business venture comes our way, we have to ask if that helps connect families through storytelling. If it doesn’t, then we’re not going to spend any time on it. What your brand stands for is really big. What somebody told me a while ago, a serial entrepreneur, he said the product you create per se, is not the product. It’s everything. Take a car for example. A BMW and an Infiniti are pretty much the same thing. They are both luxury cars. But the website, the brand name, the look, the communication, the ads, that’s the entire product. It’s everything tied in together. So I think, a lot of startup guys, all they figure out is, product as what people define as a product, and not thinking about the rest of the company and business and what it stands for.

I think the keys to success are really defining what is core to your brand or company and on the product side, it’s getting started, right away, or you’ll talk yourself out of it. For us, we talked to everyone we knew about our idea just to get feedback. I know that a lot of people don’t like to talk about their idea because they’re afraid somebody is going to steal it, but we took the other route. If somebody’s going to steal it, an idea is just an idea, you’ve got to execute on it anyways. And others don’t know what’s going on in my head or my partner’s head.

Thank you Pavel. That’s a good way to end our interview today. “Just go for it.” You’re right. Sometimes we can talk ourselves out of pursuing our goals and dreams. Thank you so much for sharing your passion about Storypanda and about the entreprenurial life. I know my readers have enjoyed it. But first I’ve got just two more short questions.

First, why Storypanda? Why not Storywombat or Story Platypus? No, seriously, why Panda?

My co-founder James’ young nephews would pronounce my name as Panda. My young kids would refer to James’ beard as red fur. we had seen pics of these cute red pandas from China, so we went with Storypanda.

Second, if there’s anyone you’d like to see interviewed here at GotInterviews.com, who would it be?

I would like to see Dominique Leca, CEO and co-founder of Sparrow Mail, interviewed.

Learn more about Pavel and Storypanda

PavelBains.com

Storypanda

The post Interview with Pavel Bains – Founder of Storypanda.com appeared first on GotInterviews.

Don’t forget to visit Morgna’s blog after reading all about her below.

You’re the CEO of Sociable Boost, what does your company do?

I provide social media coaching, consulting, training and general guidance. I’ve been involved in building online communities and engagement for about 12 years now and love every minute of it!

Do you believe there is such thing as an unscrupulous social media manager who may try to lure unsuspecting business owners into their lair?

Oh absolutely! I have seen so many websites and so called social media “experts” that just make me cringe. I wish I could call them out on their actions in public, but I learned long ago that it’s better to just give people awesome information and hope they realize one is better than the other.

What are some unscrupulous social media practices you have noticed?

Mostly, it’s companies promising that they can get “so many new followers” for like, $10 or something. Basically, any company that offers to get a specific number of new followers for a specific price, is a SCAM! They may be able to get you a few new followers, but chances are, NONE of them will be targeted and even care about what you’re trying to offer. Anyone who tries to rush the process of social media is a scam. Anything that says, “I can do this in just 24 hours!” or whatever, you need to run the other way! You also need to make sure that the people who say they can help you with their social media, are actually social themselves. I have seen so many people claim to be SO great at social media but when I go to their platforms it’s a ghost town, or even worse, they do nothing but self promote. Basically, make sure they practice what they preach!

How long have you been working as a social media manager/social media coach?

Well, this field has not been officially around until only a few years ago. I’ve been practicing and learning the fundamentals for 12 years, but have been helping people for about 5. Started out working directly for specific companies, but then branched out on my own a year ago.

What is the one thing business owners are typically unaware about when it comes to social media platforms or campaigns?

I know you only asked for one, but I’m going to give two, if that’s alright. The first one being that businesses want everything to happen ASAP, but since social media is about building trust in order to build a community, it can take up to 6 months to start seeing real results. The other thing is, business owners want to just promote their stuff and get people to buy buy buy. But again, that’s not how social media works. You have to be social, engaged and listen to what people are saying before self promotion. We all want to make money and we all want to see results, but there’s a method to the madness that must be done first before asking for the sale. Which means doing their due diligence with providing awesome customer service, engagement and FREE information to build that long lasting trust.

You have a monthly social media newsletter. What kind of tips do you provide for your readers?

Right now I’m running a campaign where if you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll receive a 7 day social media mini course, where I offer some great tips and advice. In general, though, I send out a monthly newsletter where I simply talk to people about some great new tips and advice that they should be implementing into their everyday social media campaigns. As long as it’s practical, reasonable and realistic, I’ll include it in the newsletter.

Do you provide any special free offers other than your newsletter tips?

I have a TweetChat that goes on every Wednesday @ 3PM CST under the hashtag #sociablechat. I also offer a monthly LIVE seminar event where I’ll talk about a topic and give the chance for people to ask questions LIVE on the air and I’ll answer them. I also offer a podcast where I’ll talk about different topics, trends, etc. I also have a smartphone app that is also free. I’m also gearing up to offer some free eBooks, free training videos and lots of other free stuff! The social media evaluation that I offer is no longer free, as I was getting a lot of people that didn’t take it seriously or would get frustrated at the results I gave them (my opinion to further your campaign is an option, the actual evaluation is based on facts and observations), so I am charging a bit for the social media evaluation, but it’s super cheap compared to some other companies. All of this can be found on my website: http://sociableboost.com

Social media is your passion, how did you get to be so darn social?

I don’t know. Haha. I’ve always been a social person. When I was a kid, I’d always befriend the new person and I always made friends with everyone in class. When I got online, it just translated really well. But to be honest, even if you’re not sociable offline, you can still be sociable online, as not being face-to-face with someone can actually sometimes make the situation easier. Try not to get caught up with saying the “right” thing as there really is no “right” thing to say. Just say the first thing that comes to mind, and if that happens to be, “I love your article on “such and such”.” Then so be it! Anything can strike a conversation.

At age 11 you began recording your voice on a boom box and making your own radio shows. Were these like old time radio shows from back in the 1950s like The Shadow or Burns and Allen or something more like the Howard Stern or Don Imus shows?

Haha, not quite like that. Though I did start to make those old time radio show (or radioplays as they’re more commonly known by online), when I got older. But when I was in middle school, I’d just get with my friends and we’d record silly radio shows, like talk shows, music shows, etc. It was great fun!

Recording your voice eventually became something you were paid for by doing voice over work. You’ve been doing it for years, how did your first opportunity come about?

While I did my social media thang, I realized that I had talent in the voice over field. I spent YEARS practicing and training my acting and voice skills. Eventually, I felt I was ready and started applying for paying jobs. Low and behold I started getting quite a bit! Now, social media is my #1 priority, but I am occasionally contacted about a gig. I only take fun gigs, since I don’t have a lot of time to fully focus on voice acting, since social media is my priority. Still love to use my voice any chance I get, though, like in my monthly podcast.

In what markets have you done voice over work? Anything outside of Texas where you now live?

I’ve done voice acting work for people all over the world. I used to have a contract with someone in China who used my voice for a lot of stuff. So yes, lots of things outside of Texas. Never did any national commercials or anything, only because you really need to be in LA or NY to pursue that kind of work, but I’ve done a lot of fun stuff.

What are the keys to being a successful voice over actor?

Patience, persistence and never ending training. A lot of people get started in voice acting and they get a few bad reviews and just decide they suck and give up. Most people can be trained into becoming brilliant voice actors. As long as you have the drive to succeed, then you will be successful. If you don’t have passion for it, then you’re not going to succeed. It is a cut throat industry, to be sure, and that passion will keep you moving forward until you make your big break one day.

You blog at SociableBoost.com and guest blog too. What are some of your favorite blogs where you write guest blog posts?

A couple of my favorites are: Basicblogtips.com & Famousbloggers.net. I’ll usually stumble upon other places to guest post and will generally only guest post once, unless I get invited to be a regular contributor. I recommend using http://BloggerLinkUp.com/ to find places to blog post and others to blog post for you.

You are also an avid LinkedIn user. How many LinkedIn groups are you subscribed to and how beneficial are they to your success with Sociable Boost?

I’m a part of 33 groups, but really only visit 3 of them on a regular basis. The rest I visit on occasion, but they just aren’t updated as often so there’s no need to visit on a regular basis. I’m a part of many local groups which are great for networking purposes and I have gotten a couple clients from them. The groups and Answers are extremely beneficial. The more often you participate, the more likely you are to be contacted and in turn, get sales/clients.

When it comes to any endeavor in life, what would you consider success and how do you suggest others attain it?

When it comes to success, you need to be extremely passionate about what you do. If you’re not passionate, then you’re going to falter and eventually quit all together because you’re just not motivated enough to keep going. Like I talked about above with voice acting, if I didn’t have the passion to keep going, I would have quit a long time ago. But I kept at it and eventually gained my own success. The definition of success is different to everyone, so I suggest being able to find that definition for yourself so you’re not trying to attain something unrealistic.

Finally, just some quick questions about your favorites.

Favorite season? Summer!

Coffee or tea? Coffee

Concrete and glass or grassy field? Grassy field

Favorite color? Red

Jesus? Mohammed? Or Buddha? Buddha

Favorite books? Kite Runner, Lie Zombie Lie & The Power of Unpopular

Cats or dogs? Dogs

Pizza or Burgers? Pizza

Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus? (choose only one) Twitter

Trivial Pursuit, Settlers of Catan or Candy Land? Candy Land

Favorite voice over actor ? H. Jon Benjamin

And if you’ve enjoyed this interview experience, who would you like to see interviewed here at GotInterviews?

Melissa Agnes from melissaagnes.com
Ileane Smith from Basicblogtips.com

Thanks for the interview. It was great having you as a guest here at GotInterviews.com.

Thank you so much for interviewing me! I had an absolute blast.

Find more on Morgan Barnhart

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The post Interview with Morgan Barnhart – Social Media Manager appeared first on GotInterviews.

Weeks in the making, this interview with Roger Dickey is filled with inspiration and insight from one of the most creative people I’ve ever met. Roger has been writing code since the fifth grade. He sold an app company to Zynga in 2008. He is now out on his own, finding startup companies he believes can be the next big thing. He helps many with money, he helps others with advice. Roger Dickey is a man who is leaving his mark on Silicon Valley. If you have a chance to catch Roger at a conference near you, get in there, listen, take notes and heed his advice to create, create, create. Enjoy this interview. I hope you get a glimpse of Roger Dickey that you may not have seen in other interviews you’ve read or watched online. I am in the process of having an article based on this interview published, so a few of my original questions have been omitted for that reason. I’ll update this post when that article is published

What kind of family raises a serial entrepreneur? Can you describe a bit about your early upbringing?

I may be an unusual case. My father is an accountant. He works for the state of Texas. My mother is a librarian. So , I kinda was brought up… I was brought up, not in a technical family, although that’s the direction I eventually went,

I did have two friends during my childhood who were influential and I sort of happened upon them by chance. One of them had a father who built the 3D engine behind the polar bears that you see in the Coca-Cola commercials. Another friend’s father was a computer science professor at University of Texas at Dallas near where I grew up. I just sort of encountered these guys and as a kid, I always liked working on projects. But genrerally that entailed taking cardboard, string and tape and glue and just putting something together. I was just always buiding something. I don’t know why I liked that. So I found computers and I just naturally gravitated toward them, because you know, the potential to build inside of a computer, to make software, is pretty much unlimited. I really found that attractive and my parents encouraged it, they were, you know, helpful, they got me a computer despite how expensive it was for the family, at a very young age. They got me connected to the internet.

Also, I was always a really motivated individual. That was another side of the coin. Once I learned about computers, for some reason, I was always doing a project. I would be up till 11, 12, 1, every night, just programming something. And I’d come into school, show it to friends. We had a friendly competition going, like who would write cooler programs, me or my buddies. I think that really helped. Aside from the sort of environment I was in and the competitive motivations I lived under, I don’t think there were too many other unique factors.

With a librarian as a mother, you’d be surrounded by books, did you love books too?

I did. Certainly. So, my mom was an insomniac as a kid, and unfortunately or fortunately, that gave her a lot of extra time and she ended up reading constantly, so she burned through almost all of the classics by the time she was 12 or 13. She’s very very well read and any well-roundedness I have, I contribute to her, anything I know outside of computers, she pretty much taught me. We would spend a lot of time together and she would read a lot of things to me and inspire me in a lot of different directions, and I also ended up reading a lot, before I encountered computers, that’s what I spent a lot of my time on. Then I was addicted once I began programming.

How old were you when you got your first computer and started programming?

Well, I started programming when I was, I think in 5th grade. I was around 10 years old. I had that friend whose father worked on the polar bear models for Coca-Cola. He had a computer and my family didn’t and one day, he was actually sick and we got on his computer and were playing around and I remember this blue screen that he pulled up at one point and he showed me some program his dad had taught him how to write, I hadn’t thought much of it but it had always been this mysterious thing to me, how did he program the computer to do something? So I got in there and I started messing with the program and made some changes and I noticed how they affected the output. I started making more changes and then I got to the point where I could add my own lines to the code. I still remember that day and my mom came to pick me up and I didn’t want to leave. I was too engrossed in what I was doing. So then, when I got home, I asked to go back the next day and the day after and I just became completely hooked from that day forward.

Awesome to have good friends like that. So you’re from Richardson or Dallas, TX?

Actually, Richardson. I grew up in Richardson, but not many people know it, but there’s a lot of tech out there. It’s not the high Silicon Valley type tech. More semi-conductors and that sort of thing.

How did you get to the University of Illinois from Texas? And Why there?

It’s the number five computer science school in the U.S. and I always knew I wanted to do computer science. Since probably junior high, I knew that was the direction I wanted to go. So I applied to all of the top six schools in computer science. The problem was that a lot of those other schools were very strong in other areas and at the time, admissions programs for universities, I recall they had a pretty heavy focus on grades and my grades weren’t bad but they weren’t top tier. I think I had a 3.6 gpa in high school. A lot of the reason behind that was that I’d go home every day and focus on computers and not studying to squeeze a few points more out of my bio exam.

That’s what a lot of these schools like Harvard and MIT, Stanford, Yale and Princeton, a lot of these guys were really looking for top tier grades. I don’t think I represented well enough on my applications, the extra-curricular work that I did. So I got rejected … I applied to seven schools and got rejected from six of them. I only got into the University of Illinois because they just looked at my SAT score which was great. So… I HAD to go there. I loved it. It was a great experience. Way better than I could have expected and a number of amazing folks who I have intersected with in various ways since then. They definitely have a very strong CS program. So I would highly recommend their CS or their engineering program to anyone.

Are there a lot of people that you went to school with at that time that are now in Silicon Valley?

Yeah, it’s funny. There’s more that sort of crop up every week. I think in the last week I was contacted by two classmates from U of I who are asking me for advice on how to apply to startup incubators or they have a company they’re trying to raise money for. A lot of those people have come out here cause Silicon Valley is a place where you can convert a strong understanding of engineering into success. I don’t think there are many other places in the U.S. to where this effect is as strong.

Since you’re the creator of Mafia Wars, I have to ask this question, did you watch many gangster or mafia movies as a kid? And which were or are now your favorites?

Great question. Of course, I like The Godfather, like anybody else. That’s definitely a classic. I’ve always liked action movies, not specifically mafia action movies, but I like all the action movies that were made in the 90s. You know, things like Con-Air, The Rock, Broken Arrow, all those ridiculously over the top action flicks with a ton of explosions. I think there was a pretty good era of those, like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard.

So if you look at the criminal organizations represented in those movies, it varies from the mafia to the Russians to some Chinese or Japanese organization that’s trying to infiltrate some business in the U.S. Some of those themes, beyond what you would traditionally see in like a mob movie, get into Mafia Wars. Especially these days, I’m not on the project any more, but I still look at some of the content that the team pushes out, and it’s essentially trying to reach a broader vision which is instead of a “mafia” theme MMO on Facebook, it’s sort of like a crime adventure thriller type of MMO on Facebook. So now it’s branched out and focusing on organizations like the Yakaza and there’s different cities and different things happening. There’s even some themes in there now that are remininscent of movies like the Bourne Identity. I definitely like all that media. In terms of what is my favorite, it’s hard to say, but I definitely like action movies.

You brought up the Bourne Identity, Matt Damon is not in the next movie. What will the Bourne franchise be like without Matt Damon?

I imagine a lot of people thought that about the James Bond Franchise whenever they switched actors. Maybe they’re looking to turn it into a kind of new school James Bond franchise. I know was always a huge fan of James Bond. I’ve seen every James Bond movie, every single one ever made, many of them multiple times. As they switched actors for James Bond, it would take me time to get acclimated to the new ones. I always liked Roger Moore, I was a huge fan of his. Then Pierce Brosnan came along and I think he just killed it. He was the perfect James Bond. Daniel Craig, it’s taken me time to get used to him, but I think I’ll get there. So I think they’ll acclimate to whoever stars in the new Bourne films.

When did you move out to Silicon Valley?

When I was running the business I sold to Zynga, it’s funny, but I only knew one person from Sillicon Valley. It was my co-founder who had moved over to Austin, Texas. I think I had been to San Francisico once, on a family trip, during high school. I really hadn’t any other occasion to go. When I first started talking to Zynga and a few other potential acquirers, I did fly out once or twice, and when I sold, I pretty much moved out immediately, but I wasn’t out there before that. It was about late march/ early April of 2008, right after the acquisition closed.

You were in Austin, TX when the move occurred?

Yes, I was. That’s where we had the small company based.

Was there a person or group of people who helped you learn the ropes in Silicon Valley? Or did someone mentor you, make introductions or was everything just Zynga at that point?

I’d say more the latter. I didn’t start to branch out as an entrepreneuer until I’d already been at Zynga for 2 – 2 ½ years. I was really heads down, trying to do the best I could on the product I was running. And really, during those two years the strongest learnings for me came through just operating a bigger team than I had before. There was a lot of learnings about leadership, organizing a team, project management, a lot of logisitics around handling a group larger than thirty to forty people, which was again a new experience. Then there were a lot of learnings in the product realm. Building products for millions of people, products that they love and resonate with and motivate them to act and come back is a skill you have to learn.

I spent a lot of my time learning product. Zynga was also like my MBA. I never had an MBA, I had always been an engineer. I learned everything I know about business while I was at Zynga and through some subsequent angel investing I did, where I had to engage with more businesses than I ever did before, albeit, in a pretty minor way. Really, Zynga was all of those things for me in terms of personal learning. In terms of building a network, I went out after running products for a little over two years at Zynga, I went out to Japan to help build the product function for our Japan studio. After returning from there, that’s when I really started to network a lot.

In Silicon Valley, why do people keep trying after initial failures?

People talk a lot about failure in the entrepreneurial community. There’s a lot of books about it. There’s even a conference about it called FailCon that I spoke at recently. I think people talk almost too much about failure. It’s something to understand and not be afraid of but I don’t think it deserves as much attention as it gets.

Effectively, by the time someone comes out to Silicon Valley and decides to start a business, generally, they already have a number of accolades, they have sort of gathered throughout their life, things they’ve achieved, trials they’ve overcome, outside of the business realm. So, within the business realm, I think in a lot of ways, business isn’t hard it’s just different than what a lot of people are used to doing and it requires tireless focus and energy which a lot of people don’t want to allocate to their profession. You know, some people kind of want something where they can come home at 5 or 6, have kids at an earlier age, have a dog, watch TV and that’s great, that’s fun. I think that’s enjoyable for a lot of people or maybe they have other personal projects.

A lot of the entrepreneruers I know, for whatever reason, they really just want to kill it, no matter what, at some venture. People I know who are motivated that way, tend to understand it’s something they have to do at all costs. So failure is essentially, just a step along the way. Being an entrepreneur is about tireless persistence, that’s persistence through success or through failure.

I hear so much about failure, especially from Silicon Valley folks, it seems like it’s a word that can almost be played out. If you could use a different term for failure, would you coin a new term, what would it be?

Well, a friend of mine, Adam Smith, who I have a ton of respect for, has a great blog where he talked about a study that McKinsey or maybe it was Wharton out of Pennsylvania did on entrepreneurs where they tried to find a common factor between successful entrepreneurs. So they looked at everything, trying to find correlations like what GPA did they get in high school? Were they an Eagle Scout? Did they go to a top tier university? Did they get an MBA? And the most common factor they could find between people was they really have this, like, again, getting back to this tireless persistence, they have this factor that he calls GRIT, which is, through tough times, and through long hours and working weekends, and years and years of trying to succeed at what you’re doing, you have to just keep going, he calls that GRIT.

So you don’t have to be super intelligent to succeed or go to a good school or have an MBA, but I think, rather than focusing on the negatives on how people handle failure or whatever other term you want to use for that, I think having the ability to transcend all of that and keep going is where I like to focus. So the term for that is GRIT which I like.

What drives you to succeed? Is it pride in doing a good job? Your creativity? Your desire for money? A higher power? If you could point to one thing that provides you with that GRIT what would it be?

I would rephrase that as, “What motivates me?” One thing that motivates me is… the biggest thing is probably… I don’t know how to phrase this…. To a degree, I’m competitively motivated. I have friendly competitions with friends. But, I’ve just always had this fundamental wellspring of motivation. I see this space of business and startups as a game, to a degree, with looking at it from a Zynga perspective, and it’s a game I really enjoy playing. I like the other players. I like people I’m playing the game with. I like my competition. I like the process of building products that millions of people see and scaling and hiring and you know helping people succeed in their careers. Everything down to going out with a co-founder to find office space, all the little details of it, I really enjoy. Like I said, I’ve always enjoyed creating things. When I was a kid, I might take the box the new fridge came in and build a fort out of it. Now, it’s working with staff and building products and having a bunch of servers on Amazon, you’re just able to create, but at a much larger scale. So, I guess I just like building things. And that’s what motivates me, it’s creating. It’d be my religion if I had one. I’m not a religious person. So really, that’s what moptivates me, doing something I love and I want to keep doing it.

How long have you been angel investing?

It’s been about two years now. I started when I was able to sell some Zynga stock. One of the first things I did was buy a bunch of stock in Facebook.

How do you buy stock in a company that is not public? I guess there is a private market for stock. (asked before the Facebook IPO)

Yes. There were two major websites where you could by private equity in hot startups. One was called SharesPost and the other was secondmarket.com. I think they’re still around. But to a degree, that market has dried up because a lot of the major players have adopted schemes where they don’t allow employees to sell stock, so that’s now baked into a lot of employment agreements meaning in the future these guys won’t have supply to match with their demand. Facebook, although it’s going public now, as of two years ago, they didn’t allow people to buy stock, Zynga didn’t allow employees to sell stock. A lot of that’s dried up. That’s one approach. Another approach is if you have a big enough network , go to someone you know well and try to get them to sell you stock. Maybe do some favors for the company and see if they’ll get you in on the next round. It’s complicated but if you understand the business, and you know the players involved, there’s certainly ways to get yourself in.

You’ve been an angel investor for a number of companies, can you name a couple that my readers should be aware of?

I’ve got a list of companies, some you may recognize. Of course Facebook. There’s a company that got a lot of press on TechCrunch a while back called Addepar. They’re sort of like a mint.com for high net worth individuals. There’s another company called DotCloud. They’re like a platform as a service solution like for launching solutions in the cloud. There’s another company called E la carte. They have this LCD screen based solution that sits on tables in restaurants and lets you buy little up sell items like drinks and desserts.

Is E la Carte being used in many restaurants now?

I think they’re in 400 restaurants and in the process of expanding. They’re trying to work with chains to get into more restaurants. Really smart team. I think they’re going to go far.

I’ll add one more company. They’re called One School. They make mobile applications for college students , enabling them to track notes, get campus information, like events, bus routes, course schedules, class locations, that sort of thing, They’re doing very well on IOS right now.

You have an advisory role in 500 Startups, how involved do you get with that advisory role?

In the case of 500 Startups, they have a program called 500 Mentors, where there’s a directory of mentors that companies in the 500 Startups network can reach out to of their own volition. I’ve been reached out to by several companies in the 500 Startups network. It ranges anything from my taking one meeting or phone call with them, talk through what they are doing, figure out what the problem is and see if I can help to companies that come to me and would like me to formally join their advisory board. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum. Right now, I’m on four or five advisory boards. I have a pretty full schedule, in terms of advising and I’m trying not to take on too many more companies. I do more of the casual advisory stuff at this point.

For people with new startups, how legitimate are the fears of their ideas being stolen outright or maybe incorporated into a project by people they’ve talked to in Silicon Valley or by anyone else?

Great question. A lot of people will go stealth because they have that concern. I think it depends a lot on the market you’re getting into. For example, if you’re really trying to disrupt a market that’s dominated by big companies, let’s say you’re trying to build the next Google Docs. There aren’t a lot of small companies in that space. If Google finds out what you’re going to do, it’s not like they will turn their team around and copy your idea. So you can share your idea broadly without much risk. But if you’re trying to do something in a space that has a ton of small companies, approaching the same problem, that also move fast, that have similar characteristics to yours, it’s probably prudent not to blab about it in context where these people may hear about it and go after what you’re doing.

It’s generally best for a startup to stay stealth, unless you a reason to do otherwise. If there’s a reason that PR is valuable to you. Or if there’s a reason it makes sense to throw a launch party, like to start hiring for example. Then, yeah, come out of stealth. Otherwise, there’s no good reason to come out of stealth outside of discussing what you are doing with a few trusted friends, which I would always recommend people do.

The Product X you are working on right now, I presume it is in the stealth phase right now.

Yes, and it would be for the reasons I mentioned. Not that we’re doing anything we’d consider really secretive or that we have to keep under wraps. It’s just that we haven’t had a reason to come out of stealth yet. Until then, we won’t.

So you won’t share any details today ? (laughing)

I can’t unfortunately. I could share briefly what we’ve been up to for the last few months. But probably shouldn’t share where we’re currently at. We’ve been in the ideation or a brainstorming phase, whichever term you’d like to use, for the past four months.

In the brainstorming process, if someone has the next million dollar idea, does someone need a million dollars first to create it, or can great ideas be formed on a shoestring budget? What would you suggest to someone who has a great idea but does not have the money to pursue their project?

Raising money can be difficult, especially for first time entrepreneuers. I generally recommend to just learn about business in a more risk free manor. Find a business you can run that starts generating cash quickly. One of the most difficult things for an entrepreneur especially when it comes to hiring or getting any kind of leverage beyond themselves is having money they can put forth to get that leverage.

So if you go after a Twitter type idea where it’s, “We’re going to build this thing and we might be profitable within six years.” Then, that’s not a good business for a first time entrepreneuer. For example, you have some trick to find a good engineering candidates or designer candidates, then you can have a subscription service that recruiters pay for that, you can maybe have recruiters paying you $100.00 a month each, you bring on 20 recruiters, you’re making $2000 a month. You just hit it home and work on this project. You can run a consulting business like that or something that’s a little easier to do. Once you do that, then I always recommend that people see if they can find sources of capital, folks you can raise money from and test the waters there. If you can raise money, then see if you can go after something bigger. If not, maybe you have to stay small until you build up your own nest egg.

So creating apps or having some type of subscription service might be best for bringing money in immediately?

Yeah, apps can immediately start making money. My first business that really took off was a facebook apps business. It eventually led to me making Facebook games which eventually led to the Zynga acquisition. At first, we were just building these apps that subsisted on ad revenue. Sometimes we’d make $10.00 a day, around $4000 a year which wasn’t enough to support ourselves. But we then eventually got an app making $100 a day, got it up to $200 – $300 a day. Then we launched the game , that did much better?

Was that Dope Wars?

That was Dope Wars, yeah. With Dope Wars we found some core mechanics that really resonated with people. It was fun. They liked the theme. And we already understood how to sell advertisements. Once we got people just essentially hitting more pages to play the game, everything started to multiply quickly and we were making thousands of dollars a day.

What were some of your other early apps before Dope Wars?

We tried a bunch of things. Around Christmas 2007 we had all these holiday themed applications which actually got us a lot of traffic which we then rolled into other projects. We had some social games, when I mean social games I mean they were around specifically your friends. You’d take your friends and dress them up in funny outfits or give them nicknames, things like that. We had something that was vaguely dating related. We had a few social utilities like a tool you could use to get connected to people that were two or three degrees away. We were just all over the map. We tried everything. It was 2007 right after the platform launched. People didn’t understand it. Nobody knew what would work.

What software or platform would you recommend to someone who is just now starting out to make some apps? Is there something from Adobe or is there some software to use that wouldn’t be overly expensive in order to create apps?

There’s a plethora of tutorials online for making IOS applications, Android applications or Facebook applications. If I have to look at those platforms, IOS and Android, pretty much everything on mobile requires more advanced distribution techniques than Facebook does, you tend to have to buy traffic or use other tricks to get people to find your applications. You’re beholden to the ad networks on mobile. In the case of facebook, if you make something that’s fun and catches on, it can go viral. That’s what I’d recommend as a starting point for entrepreneuers who want to build apps. Facebook. Distribution can be easier, it can be free and you can learn a lot about building products there, you can learn a lot about scaling, about technology, all the things you’ll need to know to succeed in mobile or elsewhere. That’s essentially where I learned how to build internet products, was on the facebook platform. There’s a number of good tutorials on that and actually the facebook website itself, the facebook developer website has some good tutorials and a really good reference and there’s also a vibrant forum community around starting apps.

What final words do you have to inspire the next generation of game creators and the next generation of serial entrepreneuers?

To game creators, I’d say find or start a company that aligns with your vision for how to delight users. Do work you’re proud of. Video games are the new games, and they’re here to stay. To future entrepreneurs, I’d say embrace a love of learning & never give up. Measure yourself against giants. If you do this you will win.

Do you prefer cats or dogs? (I saw that a cat also works for Product X)

Both, but right now prefer cats. Tough one!

Finally, what’s your favorite beer and pizza?

Hefeweisen. As for pizza, stuffed crust pizza from Pizza hut. Easy

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