Archive for category Personal

Two weeks on AngelList

May 16

Posted by Andrew Machado in Personal | 8,469 Comments

About two weeks ago I put Open Home Pro on AngelList. I’ve learned a lot in two weeks :)

Below are a few of my observations.

1.  Their invite system for investors is brilliant

With fundraising the domino effect happens often.  Once you get a few investors on board the rest come.  With Angellist you want to have all of your investors listed on your profile with how much each has committed.  What this means is I’m inviting all of my investors to the service ASAP in turn getting AngelList more potential investors for the other companies on the service.

2. Both Naval and Thomas are very active with the community

I have shared emails/messages with both Naval and Thomas.  Even small things like this to me make all the difference in growing a service.  It’s never been easier to talk to your users than it is today and they get that.

3.  Your company is not DOA if not shared by AngelList

There is an email list where they’ll  share your company out if you meet a particular set of criteria.  The reason for Open Home Pro not being shared is I’m not working fulltime on the project and the market being niche.  Despite not being emailed out we’ve managed to assemble followers, I’ve done a few calls with angels and have received a good bit of funding so far.

More to come as things progress

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Prediction #2 for 2011 - iPad remains at 1024 x 768 resolution for the entire year :)

Jan 20

Posted by Andrew Machado in Personal, Technology | 7,346 Comments

There have been many rumors about the iPad doubling its screen resolution to 2048 x 1536 pixels.  I do not believe this will happen for a few reasons.

1.  Cost. A display of that caliber at 9.7 inches simply doesn’t exist in a form thats affordable.  A display with nearly this many pixels sells from Apple for $999

2.  Power. To push graphics and motion on a screen of this resolution would take an insane amount of horsepower.  To get an idea lets take a look at Tom’s Hardware and gauge how the latest ATI graphics card treats a game at this resolution.  As you’ll see it can’t even deliver a consistent 60 frames per second experience.

3.  No Incentive to Deliver. Apple right now is in the drivers seat when it comes to the tablet business.  They have sold nearly 15 million, competitors arent even shipping yet and they’ve lined up developers in bunches.  Their focus at this point is growing the reach of the iPad not delivering something so bleeding edge the price goes up.

4.  It’s all about the consumer. Apple’s focus is on delivering features and products users want.  A beautiful screen is a nice to have, but we won’t see the true difference until they deliver it, so for now they’ll focus on adding video cameras and improving the smoothness at which games and animations can happen.  You ever felt an app that runs at 60 frames per second.  It just feels so much better.

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5 Songs I’ve Been Listening to Lately

Aug 29

Posted by Andrew Machado in Personal | 8,546 Comments

I get asked often what music am I listening to lately.  I’ve always found my taste’s to be pretty electic, so I’m going to try and share 5 songs including an oldie but goodie I’ve been listening to lately.

1.  Alex Gaudino’s “I’m In Love”

This song reminds me of Daft Punk’s “Around the World”.  A simple hook repeated for over 7 minutes, but the beat is transformative and really takes you on a journey.  Props to Garrett Scott for introducing me to this one.

2.  Linkin Park’s “The Catalyst”

I love the bridge in this song.  Linkin Park lately has been changing their sound and really growing up.  Minutes After Midnight sound wise was very different from previous efforts and I expect their new album to be even more of a drastic departure from the Linkin Park of old.

3.  Game’s “Blackout”

Game has been talking about releasing the R.E.D. album for nearly two years, but at least he’s still active on the mixtape circuit with his recent release Brake Lights.  The mixtape is awesome and Blackout has a solid chorus to even get the anti Game fans humming along.

4.  DJ Magnet “Party and Bullshit” (Miley Cyrus Notorious B.I.G Mashup)

I have no problem putting this on the list.  Say what you want about Miley, but this mashup is off the charts.  The only thing that would make it more epic is 16 bars from Ludacris (the new king of guest spots…move over Nate Dogg)

5.  Zero 7 “Destiny”

Destiny hit my iTunes on July 29th 2002 and is staple in chill out bad ass music.  If you don’t know Zero 7 pick up In The Waiting Line and enjoy.

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5 Commandments for Community Management

Aug 28

Posted by Andrew Machado in Personal, Technology | 9,572 Comments

1. Be Fast
Google, Facebook and others often write about how important being fast is. Speed in any business is important. In community management responding to any support emails, questions or quickly letting the community know you are aware of the problem is imperative.  The reason speed is so important above everything else is my eyes is it leaves people with an impression about how serious you treat them.  Constantly I hear “Wow amazingly fast response!” or tweets like this.

2.  Know Your Product

This may  seem simple.  It isn’t.  When I say know your product, I mean know it better than anyone at the company.  In the case with Apture I pride myself on attempting to know more than @tristanharris (he has an insane ability to find things) when it comes down to bugs, general usage and workarounds to common problems.  The reason this is so important is it plays into commandment one, but it also frees up your engineers to keep working on larger problems.  When you know your product well a great majority of gripes users have can be solved without an engineer.  When you run a small shop engineering time is imperative, slowing them down should be avoided at all costs. One issue I’ve seen pop up since the launch of Apture Search is where users may install our javascript twice on a page.  When you know the entire installation process, how to read html, etc you can quickly walk the user through a solution to this problem quickly.  They’ll love you for this.

3.  Always Be Closing

As a Community Manager your job is to “manage the community” well a big part of this is growing the community.  You can only grow the community so much by being quick and knowing your product.  Start looking for potential new customers who you think would love it.  A quick tip for this is find a target on Twitter send them an @ message about how you have an awesome product for their site and you’d love to send them a demo.  They’ll usually reply. Who doesnt want to see a demo?  You can do contests and things to drive participation, but I’m a firm believer especially in new companies you need to use brute force to grow your business.

4.  Be Yourself

You probably spend a great majority of your day inside GetSatisfaction or inside your mail program replying to customers.  When communicating with people who are having problems be yourself, feel more like a real person than an automated reply.  If I’m talking with someone who runs a sports site, I’ll mention something about an article I read on their site or a player from a sports they like.  These types of things I believe break the ice with someone and give them comfort in knowing a capable person is on the other end, but they are also cool :)

5.  Connect on Twitter or Facebook with your customers

If someone has a great experience with getting help from you find them on Twitter or Facebook and connect with them.  You should not only build your community for your company, but increase your circle of connections.  Now when I go to SXSW or BWE I can say hi to Kate Buck Jr, simply because after talking with her a few times over Twitter about Apture we are now friends.  Relationships with people are not only beneficial personally, but if I need help promoting something for Apture I’m always going to reach out to her.  Just don’t post crazy pictures of yourself on Facebook or they may see them :)

I hope these tips help you become a better community manager.  If you have any questions or comments do not be afraid to reach out on Twitter or leave a note below.

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