What I've Learned on Teamwork
I found this very surprising, but the last few hours of work on Treehouse turned out to be some of the most relaxing we've ever had. We decided not to write new code. Things had picked up over the last week, and it began to seem fun, real fun. Adhi got his computer up and running again (he's now on Linux, bless his soul); Kah Hong had less to do (and became, almost instantly, a much happier man for it); I got better at churning design and stylesheets and wrapping things around whatever the programmers handed to me. And we didn't have to worry about the paperwork, since Andy did most of that.
It was a pretty good ending to the first assignment.
I think what's most surprising about this was that we had a really high rate of depression, given our technical ability. Adhi got depressed first, because he felt like he wasn't contributing to the team. Then I got depressed, because I was trying to hold the team together and it felt like I was loosing it. And then Kah Hong got really mad at me (and yes, if you're wondering, it was my fault) just as we were pushing a really buggy version of the app.
And then things became better. Kah Hong squashed a whole village of bugs on Wednesday night, and I did this gorgeous page for the app, and Adhi added a couple dozen new features in one afternoon. Without much discussion, we had collectively decided to stop development on the photos and videos section of Treehouse. We got together and began to polish - really polish - whatever we had. I think (hope?) the results show, despite the small number of bugs and design quirks still left in the app.
On Productivity
I've found that collaborating on gTalk to be the best way to work on Treehouse. This was another thing I found surprising. The guys at 37signals were right: alone time is the best development time, and it shows in your work when you've got nobody there, physically, to disturb you as you're programming. We spent the vast majority of week 2 physically separated from each other, programming together online, passing files through Dropbox, and checking with each other only occasionally through the odd chat convo. We got a lot of things done that way. I found that remarkably cool.
So what have we built?
I think it's about time that I explained the ideas behind Treehouse. There's a shiny new icon in my sidebar, pointing to a TLD listing the general principles we've built towards, but I want to explain some of the things we see in the app, too.
For the heck of it, I'm going to do this in the format of a Y-Combinator application. I'm also going to be tongue-in-cheek about this, and maybe (just maybe) I might send this in, for fun, as part of their summer incubation program.
What is your company going to make?
Treehouse attempts to solve the Long Distance Relationship problem. It allows users both on Facebook and off to create private forums/blogs (to be called 'treehouses') with each other, which then allows them to share text, moods, pictures and video messages.
Possible use scenarios include couples in LDRs, and parents with kids overseas. Both relationships require lots of information-sharing to have the relationship survive the distance, and this is difficult to do given equally capable but less specialized (or disparate) tools.
There are lots of interesting possible features. One such feature is to use Justin.tv's newly released API to enable user recording/broadcasting from within the browser. Another is future posting - if a person is busy and cannot come online for the next couple of days, say, he or she may record a series of audio/video messages and set them to post once a day for the entire duration he/she is away from a connection. And then there's building an iPhone app - we've already got mood data in Treehouse, we can leverage that to show one party how the other is feeling through a graphical interface on his or her iPhone.
For each founder, please list: YC username; name; age; year, school, degree, and subject for each degree;
taykahhong Tay Kah Hong 2008 (NUS Bachelor of Computing in Communications and Media) www.taykahong.com
shadowsun7 Cedric Chin 2009 (NUS Bachelor of Computing) www.isnerdreturntrue.blogspot.com
Adhiraj Somani 2009 (NUS Bachelor of Computing (Honours) in Computer Science)
Andy Hoang 2008 (NUS Bachelor of Business in (iamnotparticularlysure))
Please tell us in one or two sentences something about each founder that shows a high level of ability.
I built Novelr, lent a hand in starting Web Fiction Guide, and am currently working on a digital publishing house, Pandamian. Kah Hong is in a startup, called sgBEAT, with his brothers. Adhi is an International Olympiad in Informatics silver medalist. Andy is just plain awesome.
What's new about what you're doing?
Nobody's actually thought of tackling this problem. We've got blogs to connect one person to many (one-to-many); we've also got forums to connect many people (many-to-many). Nobody has really quite figured out how to provide meaningful ways for individuals in distance relationships - be it parents worried for their university-going kids, or LDR couples - to communicate and share their lives with each other.
What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?
They've not thought of it yet. Maybe it's a market nobody's interested in, or maybe it's just something hackers don't find challenging enough. I don't know, but I'm using Treehouse alpha now and it doesn't feel that way to me. It feels useful.
What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn't exist yet?
They email each other. They skype. They create private blogs for the family to follow their exploits. There are problems with all of these.
Email is messy; it has no standard html across clients and it's rather clunky for images and videos. Plus there's no easy way to archive conversations (as in separation of personal, meaningful emails from non-meaningful emails). Plus the design for emails mostly suck.
Skype rocks. We do not intend to replace Skype, but we're aiming for that sweet spot just below Skype, where time zones become a problem. Treehouse would be a good alternative to push messages - be it text, or pictures; audio or visual - when you just can't stay up late.
Private blogs make a lot of sense. But we think there's a market for making something simple enough for parents to understand, and tailored enough for couples to use without going to other sites/tools. Execution on design is particularly important - the site must be good to look at.
How will you make money?
Two ideas. One, charge for bandwidth (photos + video, much like how Flickr does it). Second, partner with speciality handcraft marketplaces like Etsy, for a cut of the sales (maybe 2%-4%). Users may then have gifts delivered to their loved ones, from within their treehouses.
Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?
Google Wave is similar in concept, but they currently get the UI very wrong, and as a service is too fiddly for normal people. This may change, though, as the new team comes in (some of them from Etherpad). There're also the existing blog services - Tumblr, in particular.
For founders who are hackers: what cool things have you built? (Include urls if possible.)
I customized Undergroundsquare for my friends, though I didn't build the underlying software. Kah Hong did some of sgBEAT.
How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet?
We met at this crazy module in NUS called CS3216. There's a story in there, I tell you.
What tools will you use to build your product?
PHP & MySQL, Justin.tv's API, Actionscript, probably Amazon EC2 and S3 for storage.
If you've already started working on it, how long have you been working and how many lines of code (if applicable) have you written?
I believe we finished iteration 2 at midnight last night.
If you have an online demo, what's the url?
http://upthetreehouse.com/
How long will it take before you have a prototype? A beta? A version you can charge for?
We'll probably have a solid beta up by the end of the module, if I can find a team of good programmers to back me up.
Which companies would be most likely to buy you?
Facebook, probably. But Facebook's platform is built on connection, not meaningful communication, and there's this culture of short, superficial conversation on it. Google would be another - they bought Blogger for similar reasons.
But if we're being honest - nobody worth knowing. We're in Singapore, and the acquisition model isn't exactly one that's feasible in the current (tech) startup climate.
If one wanted to buy you three months in, what's the lowest offer you'd take?
I've got this prof, and he set us a minimum of 250 million for an A. I'm kidding. It depends on the amount of work and the offer, though it'll probably be hard to walk away from a million USD.
Why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate?
This is a problem. It wouldn't. It's not technically challenging, so the best hope we've got is to iterate quickly, listen very attentively to users, and build a strong community around that. A strong community is a significant buffer against competition, all things being equal.
Do you have any ideas you consider patentable?
No.
What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.)
Google might finally figure out how to make Wave intuitive. The service is currently a solution in search of a problem, and my fear is that they'll realize this to be the one (major) problem they may actually make a dent in, given their capabilities.
Also, there's always Facebook itself to contend with, who may see the interesting work we're doing and set its engineers to build something similar into the network itself.
If you're already incorporated, when were you? Who are the shareholders and what percent does each own? If you've had funding, how much, at what valuation(s)?
Wow, incorporation. That sounds cool.
If you're not incorporated yet, please list the percent of the company you plan to give each founder, and anyone else you plan to give stock to. (This question is as much for you as us.)
25% split each way, though we might want to give some percentage to the prof. (This is a tricky issue, needs discussion)
If you'll have any major expenses beyond the living costs of your founders, bandwidth, and servers, what will they be?
None.
If by August your startup seems to have a significant (say 20%) chance of making you rich, which of the founders would commit to working on it full-time for the next several years?
None. I'm bonded to the Singaporean government, Adhi wants to get a compsci degree, Kah Hong hopes to get good grades for a backup, in case starting up fails. Andy I'm not sure.
Do any founders have other commitments between June and August 2007 inclusive?
Gee, we have class. First sem of the new academic year.
Do any founders have commitments in the future (e.g. have been accepted to grad school), and if so what?
We're, err, undergraduates.
Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? Will any be working as employees or consultants for anyone else?
None. We're exempted from the normal NUS IP policy in CS3216.
Was any of your code written by someone who is not one of your founders? If so, how can you safely use it? (Open source is ok of course.)
No.
If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, feel free to list them. One may be something we've been waiting for.
May we write an app to save the world?
Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)
Vietnamese is a wonderful cryptographic tool. (That's an inside joke, for those not in the know).
3 comments:
Excellent post - but the most impressive thing is not the post, but the fact that you manage to even write coherently after submitting Assignment 1.
Really superhero. :-P
25% split each way, though we might want to give some percentage to the prof.
Best thing I've heard in a long time. :-P
You guys are really sweet. :-)
Kah Hong hopes to get good grades for a backup, in case starting up fails.
Maybe he should purposely flunk out of NUS. This gives him no other options but to make his start up succeed (or starve).
What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn't exist yet?
It does exist, but users today have to use multiple applications for their needs.
1) We want to bring it all together.
2) Ours is an archiving-friendly design. Waves are also archived, but they're painfully confusing to refer back to.
3) We're not simply making a personal space. Doesn't do much good. We're making a personal space on Facebook.
@Adhi: well said. Most importantly, however, we want to use it for ourselves. That's a self-motivating factor that I've left out - but we really do want to use it for our girlfriends/parents. =)
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