Late Labs Blog

Check out our conversation with the Wedgies team! They are a fun group of entrepreneurs that recently became part of the Vegas Tech Fund.

We interviewed them in their live/work office space the ‘Hacker Ranch’ a couple blocks from old town Vegas where the Downtown Project calls home.

Theses guys are making social poling simple and awesome. Check out what they have to say about their companies community and the Vegas Tech Community.

Links:

http://wedgies.com

http://vegastechfund.com/

http://downtownproject.com/

“Round The Table Community Discussions”. For each interview, we’ll go to a different startup’s office, bring drinks, and talk about community development.

We dropped by the Twilio headquarters in San Francisco. There we spoke with Twilio’s community manager “Murphy”, the channel maketing manager Meghan Grady, and one of their developer evangelist’s Joël Franusic.

We talk a lot about what the daily tasks of a community manager and developer evangelist. Check it out to learn more.

Here’s the first interview from our video blog series “Round The Table Community Discussions”. For each interview, we’ll go to a different startup’s office, bring drinks, and talk about community development.

For our first interview we spoke with Betabrand, so we dropped by the Betbrand headquarters in San Francisco. There we spoke with Betabrand’s CEO Chris Linland, and Betabrand’s CTO Colin Stuart. The beer of choice this time was Anchor Steam’s 2012 Christmas Ale, because Anchor Steam is a San Francisco tradition.

Throughout our conversation, Chris and Colin speak about how Betabrand has evolved from a random side project Cordarounds, into the fully-funded Betabrand. Other topics include how does Betabrand speaks with their community, and how do they keep the conversations going in the right directions.

“We are a qualitative approach toward quantitative.” – Chris Linland

When speaking, we also discussed how Betabrand deals with user testing. Since they release products very quickly, its hard for them to do traditional approaches. So they have come up with several very interesting and unique ways to answer this.

As a last note. Betabrand is currently growing from around 20 people, to about 40 people over the next year, so they are always looking for great talent, especially in the dev area. If any interest to talk with them, feel free to email them at info@betabrand.com

Fire up the “bubble” sirens, guys. Hot startup equity is now basically a substitute for cash, and it’s being used as legal tender for anything from creative and design work to Tweeting and social media promotion. Now, thanks to a group that launched earlier this year called Late Labs, you can code your way into some equity, too.

The company has the goal of turning the pet projects of coders into legit businesses. Many developers have little side projects they’re building in their free time. But not everyone is lucky enough to work at Google and watch those “20 percent” projects turn into something real. “Passion projects are rarely ever going to be successful, because they lack all the stuff they need to become a company,” Late Labs founder Justin Johnson says. Late Labs aims to close that gap.

The site crowdsources coders to dedicate their free time to building fun side projects. Projects that get the most support and traction will incorporate and spin out of the program. They’ll be awarded with a business development and support staff, sourced by Late Labs. A self-described “hustler,” Johnson’s background doing sales and marketing at startups and in the publishing industry will help him find talent for successful projects, he says. His co-founder Nathan Ross has a vast network in the agency world, thanks to his background as an art director at a number of creative agencies.

Anyone who contributes gets some equity. Each project gets a developer evangelist, who is responsible for picking developers out of the community, overseeing the architecture of the application, and and reviewing the code for quality.

Since launching last month, more than 3,500 developers have registered on the site. One of the most popular projects is a Chrome extension for photo editing called Buggle Us. Late Labs invited 1,000 developers to apply to work on the project. 200 applied; Late Labs interviewed 12 and eventually picked two people to work on it. Other popular projects include Peachfiz, a music discovery app; Joiyn, an all-encompassing social media app; and Mix App, a “mobile bartender” app. Other projects have gotten almost no requests, Johnson says. “Seeing where people click through and what people contact us about has been a great way to get some early indicators for interest,” he says.

The company has unleashed a host of new projects: Satisfactor, an employee management tool for employers; Top Trios, an entertainment app for discovering the “top three” of everything around you according to your friends; and Not My Block, an app that somehow helps users avoid the “wrong part of town.” This week the company will post Anylomo, a “platform as service for micro photo sharing communities,” whatever that means, and Green Thumb, an app to find plants that’ll grow where you live and get automated reminders on how to make them thrive. Sortof like Bitponics for brown thumbed plant-illiterates like myself.

Many of the projects are silly, but that’s sort of the point. No one wants to build enterprise software in their spare time.

Here is the original article link: http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/17/5-things-you-shouldnt-do-when-recruiting-bootstrapped/

Recruiting is one of the most important jobs an entrepreneur has in the early stages of setting up his or her company for success. After all, people are the most valuable resource at any company, and when you bring in a co-founder, you’re starting a new relationship that requires nurturing and mutual support. It’s very important to approach this task with enthusiasm and transparency.

Bootstrapping a startup is an excellent way to validate your assumptions about the company you plan to start. Researching and learning about the market you’re addressing without spending a lot of money helps pinpoint where your product is going to have the most impact and gives you a better understanding of what you will need to make it a success. At a certain point, you’ll know if it’s the right time to knock on investors’ doors or go at it with no investment. Regardless, you should have an understanding of what you need for success.

Here are 5 things you shouldn’t do when you start bootstrapped recruiting that will help point you in the right direction.

1. Don’t ask anyone to sign an NDA to hear your idea

NDA might as well stand for “Not Doing Anything.” There are certain cases where NDAs are absolutely necessary. For instance, an NDA makes sense after you have spent 500 hours developing an idea that is not patentable and hasn’t been released to the public yet. When you’re at the idea stage and trying to recruit other co-founders, secrecy is not your friend.

As an entrepreneur, you should be approaching problems that you have expertise in and are passionate about. Other people will be drawn to work with you based on your own excitement to solve the problem and the advantages you bring to the table like industry knowledge or special connections.

2. Don’t assume people understand your idea is a good one

You’re probably thinking about your business day and night. You go to bed late working, dream about the problem you’re solving or product you’re building, and wake up early in the morning for meetings. It’s important to remember that the people you’re trying to recruit haven’t been doing that. It can be really easy to pitch everything from the “big picture” and skip through some of the less fun details about how you are going to get there.

It’s best to treat your interviews like you might treat investor pitches. Make sure you walk through everything with lots of detail and let the person ask as many questions as possible.

3. Don’t try to recruit too early

Before you have any conversations with anyone about building a team you need to understand whyyou’re building the team. Following the 500 Startups model of hacker, hustler, and designer is not enough. You need to know your personal strengths and weaknesses and be able to articulate what the team really needs to be successful. Having an amazingly clear understanding of the market you’re entering and the competitive landscape is a must. Not having reasonable answers to questions in these areas is almost always a deal breaker.

Giving a potential co-founder the sense that you will be able to execute on a well-thought-out plan is extremely important. Side note: Your plan is going to change 100 times, but you still need to show your ability think critically about your situation in a holistic way.

4. Don’t ask people to work for free

Be transparent about your expectations, goals, and timelines. The people you’re talking to are intelligent enough to understand the situation. Everyone is working for equity including you, so be generous and fair with equity splits and have paperwork drafted up right away. It’s also worth checking out Orrick’s Start-Up Tool Kit for resources and pre-drafted contracts.

5. Don’t bullshit statistics

It’s easy to spout off stats that back up your statements based on something you remember reading before or something someone told you once, but just don’t do it. Make sure and keep all of your reference material and that it comes from a legitimate source. You lose all credibility if you can’t back up the stats that show your business’ target audience, the revenue your project could generate, and other important details.

Here is the link to the original article done by Sean Ludwig: http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/06/late-labs-buggle-us/

Recently launched “crowdcoding” startup Late Labs has selected its first project. It’s an app calledBuggle Us, and it will be a Google Chrome extension for simple photo editing and sharing.

Late Labs, the brainchild of co-founders Justin Elof Johnson and Nathan Ross, takes a disruptive view on startup apps by pledging to spearhead several projects and offering equity to coders who work on those projects. On each new project, Johnson and Ross will manage design and distribution, and one developer will oversee the technical development of the project. Other coders will come into the fold as needed, based on their skills, and will get equity. To manage code submissions, Late Labs integrates with GitHub.

The company has had nearly 3,000 developers sign up since it announced its existence about two weeks ago. Brian Cary, director of engineering at ReTargeter, will be the technical lead on Buggle Us and will select two additional coders from the developer pool. Johnson said the team is starting small to get the kinks worked out, and the next project could have as many as 10 coders selected from the pool.

“A year from now, we want to have five projects built and be a well-oiled machine,” Johnson said.

Buggle Us will be a Chrome browser extension that enables “ridiculously simple” photo editing and sharing, almost like an “Instagram for Chrome,” as Johnson phrases it. Johnson estimates that it will take two months to complete and launch the application. We’re looking forward to testing it out and seeing if Late Labs’ “crowdcoding” model takes off.

San Francisco-based Late Labs is currently bootstrapped, but is on the lookout for seed funds. “We’ve struck a serious nerve with the developer community,” Johnson said. “We’re moving crazy fast and meeting with investors next week.”

Here is the link to the orgional article done by Anthony Ha: http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/26/late-labs/

A new startup called Late Labs wants to connect coders with worthwhile side projects, and to reward them for their work with startup equity. The company lays out the problem on its mission page: “For Hustlers, its hard to find Hackers.  For Hackers, side projects lose traction in the design & distribution phrase, and fizzle … out.”

So if you’re a developer looking for a side project, you can go to the Late Labs site and browse the menu of projects that are currently in development. If you decide to participate, you sign up to complete specific coding tasks, and each of those tasks earns you equity in the project. (You’ll get a contract laying out the details before you start.) To manage the actual code submission, the company integrates with code repository GitHub. Ultimately, the successful projects should spin out as standalone startups, and your equity means that you’ll be rewarded if that startup has a successful exit. (Plus, when it comes to recruiting co-founders and employees, the developers who built the initial product would be an obvious starting point.)

Late Labs plans to take a very hands-on role in the process. Users can submit their own ideas, but the company will determine which of those ideas actually become Late Labs projects. (The idea alone gets you 5 percent equity.) Late Labs also plans to handle all of the design work. And every project will be overseen by a “developer evangelist,” who is either a full-time company employee or a contractor on the company payroll.

Founder Justin Elof Johnson emphasizes that this isn’t for folks who want to run a startup but outsource the development. “It’s not like a 99 designs for coding,” he says — because again, Late Labs will be running the process, not the idea originator. However, he suggests that many people have product ideas that they’re never going to do anything with, the kind of thing where you think, “Boy, it’d be really cool if …” but then you shrug and move on. Late Labs could help make the best of those ideas a reality. (The concept is similar to “social ideation” startup Ahhha, though the execution is pretty different — for starters, Late Labs is specifically focused on recruiting coders, while Ahhha is trying to crowdsource the entire product development process.)

When Johnson showed me the site, I had one big question: Given the failure rate of most startups, is it really likely that the equity in many of these projects will be worth anything at all? Especially given the large number of talent acquisitions, which are more about hiring a team than acquiring a product?

Johnson admits that it’s a risk, but one he’s hoping to reduce by focusing on products that have clear potential to earn revenue and build community — so that they’ll be more valuable to potential acquirers. At the same time, he says he’s willing to experiment with other compensation systems down the line, such as revenue sharing.

Projects currently being considered by Late Labs include Mxologist, a mobile bartending app; Thrift, an app for photographing and selling the old clothes in your closet; and Peach Fizz, a social music app. Johnson says the company will probably focus on one project initially (to be determined by developer interest), in part to work out the kinks in the model, before getting more ambitious.