"Wine" of the Times

OK, I know I've posted a little bit about the this concept of "Wine 2.0" floating around out there and how our services and facilities will tie into this rapidly changing market, but it's a GOOD day for us when a topic about wine shows up on the front page of Digg.com, getting voted up to front page within 2 hours of posting, and garnering 460 "diggs" in just under 6 hours.

Geeks rule the world, AND they like wine (not just the Linux sort either). Awesome!

Angel Financing, Table for Two, Please?

As we proceed with Angel discussions, I have to note that in spite of all the management and angel information you might have ahead of time, it's easy to lose sight of other really important things a potential Angel investor may (or may not) bring to the table besides cash.

When you're burning through what resources you do have, busy building the train and laying the track, worrying that you're not going to get the coal you need to get your locomotive to actually move down the tracks, it's hard to *not* think only of the liquid capital.

But if you get a lucky break and get to step back for a minute at your field of potential partners, the differences and the value propositions that extend beyond "just the money" begin to make themselves evident.

A great angel investor isn't a great angel because they have gold in their pockets, they're a great angel because they can, and have, flown before. They're great because they have experiences, knowledge, resources they can contribute to your new business AND an (obviously) enthusiastic interest in the road you've chosen for your company.

I know I've never taken a large risk for anything that I wasn't really enthusiastic about, and I would hope nothing less for our partners.

Larry & I are both definitely excited about the value beyond cash that our angel investors bring to the table.

Vator.TV Posting

While it's difficult to tell how legitimate (or not) an avenue Vator.TV is in terms of getting startups the resources they need, we found it interesting enough to post our own video submission.

Entrepreneurship = Sleepless Nights?

I can definitely tell that striking out on the startup trail has some of it's own quirks and swerves.

Like right now, a few nights in a row, waking up at 1 or 2am, and not being able to sleep.

Not anxious at all, really (I know, I had lots of anxiety at the *old* job), but more just laundry lists of all the details to get handled, the closing of our full seed round, etc. etc.

These are all the things I'm really happy to be responsible for and not stressed out but about getting done but they do pick odd times of the night to come sit down and have tea in my head.

Everything from site operational manuals to how to situate the furniture in the new offices (a choice we're making by Friday).

It's a good thing that this endeavor isn't just mine and my friend, Co-Founder and President of the company, Larry Lee, has lots of details to keep him busy too, or I'd think I was just plain nuts.

Eh, maybe I'm still nuts, but I'm loving what we're accomplishing, and all the new "things to do" that come with each milepost along the way.

Alpha version of our website is up!

OK, so maybe the term "Stealth Mode" doesn't really mean you're being stealthy, it just means that you're moving too fast on other, more important things to get a website up.

We're very excited, however, to get at least an "alpha" website live as we continue to work hard on lots of other levels.

Keep watching this space!

Reading "Cluetrain", Again

As we continue forward on multiple fronts with starting up, I'm revisiting the Cluetrain - which is probably the best business book I've read in a lot of years. (while the entire book is available online for free (follow the title link), I highly encourage folks who want to read the book to pickup a hardcopy if for no other reason that you are going to want to make notes in it along the way... mine is covered with scrawl:)

One of the opening salvos of the book is a nicely condensed "what the heck is this" foreward written by Thomas Petzinger, Jr. which says;

"There, in a few pages, I read a startlingly concise summary of everything I'd seen in twenty-one years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist for my newspaper.

The idea that business, at bottom, is fundamentally human. That engineering remains second-rate without aesthetics. That natural, human conversation is the true language of commerce."

The Cluetrain is one of those rare books that looks the reader (and businessman/businesswoman) square in the eye and says "While you were off practicing your shot-put, we changed the game to a high-jump, and the bar is waaaaay up there. Get over it, or get off the field."

Larry and I are both genuine believers in the power of passionate conversations. It's a big part of how Vino Veritas came to be, and it's a critical part of why we will succeed.

We are committed to having conversations with our members and our vendors and service providers as human beings (it's convenient that wine is the perfect accompanying social instrument for that conversation).

There's going to be times where my posts probably seem a bit too "market-y" or on the other side of things that may not be totally "corporate" - so be it. I may be the CEO, but I'm also just another human.

My commitment to our stakeholders, our partners, and our members is that I'll be passionate about what I believe is a great business and straightforward in conversations about it.

I suppose the day that "The Company" has to put a disclaimer on my blog that it "doesn't represent the opinions of Vino Veritas, Inc." is both a sad day and a good day.

At any rate, if you haven't read the Cluetrain, go, NOW and do so.

(Great) Sign of the Times

Web 2.0 really is an amazing thing to watch as online applications, communities and services all finally start to fulfill the promises that we were so deflated by just 10 years ago when the web first came to be.

I clearly remember the days of such heady promise of all the things you "could do" - the possibilities were endless!

Right up until you sat down to start coding pages, and then the possibilities ended. The tech standards, the languages, more importantly the browsers, the bandwidth and the audiences, just weren't there yet.

And now, here we are at Web 2.0, with amazing things coming out everyday. Great applications, awesome interfaces and things we only dreamed of doing not long ago.

Now hot on the heels of "what REALLY CAN be done," Wine 2.0 emerges.

If there is any doubt in anyone's mind that the wine business is radically changing (for the better), these are great signs of the times all being tracked and watched by this rapidly growing industry community.

There are things happening that one never would have dreamed of just a couple of years ago. For instance, Vator.TV is holding Venture Capital competitions JUST FOR innovative wine industry companies (not just wineries, but any supporting services as well - we will have our full video pitch up for viewing on their competitive site within a few weeks from now).

There are a million-and-one social networking/wine enthusiast sites that offer free cellar management tools and niche networking that are being enabled by the coincidence of Web 2.0 technologies and the enormous growth in the wine business.

This is all really exciting for us - it validates the research and the market out there for the unique blend of services we'll be offering and the more research we do on other cellar management tools out there, the more we see how very different our interface and application really is.

Being able to check out all these communities only helps us further define what we do and do not want to be (we're not *all things* to all folks, for sure) and clarify what tools will be more useful than others by the adoption and use rates on existing apps.

The real defining point for Vino Veritas, however, is that our app isn't just an app - it's a means of delivering premium services tied to physical, climate controlled storage for our members.

It's going to be a great marriage of 2.0 tech, and 2.0 wine geeks... oh, and it's GREAT marketing that doesn't cost us a ton of money (relatively speaking).

Wine 2.0. Dig it! (in our case, literally!)

How We Got Here & Where We Are

Another question both Larry and I get asked regularly is how we came up with this whole idea. The answer to that isn't exactly short, but then, neither is most of what I write.

First off, we've both been in the film & television business for a decade a piece. We were there because it was the ultimate place to chase passion for great stories. We got to work with interesting people and do interesting things from time to time.

When it worked well, it was the stuff of movie making magic.

However, the further up the food chain of the business I got, the less it became about "good business" or even "good story" and with the current upheavals of business models etc., it became much more about protectionism and a lot of people who have been around a long time doing whatever was politically necessary to maintain positions of power.

Short way of saying it? Not all that much joy in it given the current business climate.

So Larry & I sat down one evening over a bottle of wine and the conversation went about like this.

Larry: "You know, making movies and stuff just isn't as much fun as it used to be."

Me: "Yeah I know... so... um... what else do we like?"

Larry: (pauses for a moment, then raises glass) "Well, I like wine."

Me: "Hey, me too!"

And the rest is history.

Actually, there is more to it than that (of course).

And out of Rajesh Setty's blog about knowing the "story" of your business (or at least not being ignorant of it) here's the rest of it.

We've both had years of acquiring wines, really enjoying the opportunities to share great bottles with friends, and the challenges that have arisen as our collections have grown.

Over the years, we've both had some really disappointing wines that probably didn't start out that way, and it took a while to realize that many of them had probably gone bad while being kept in a proverbially hot California apartment kitchen instead of the 55-58ish degrees wines cellar best at.

When Larry finally got to the point where he put three large wine refrigerators into his home, it looked like he, at least, had the problem solved.

Until he got his first post-refrigerator installation electricity bill.

And he ran out of room to store new bottles.

And the compressor on one of the units went out.

And trying to go through Excel spreadsheets of wines to find something he knew he had, and he could "see the label" in his head, but couldn't find it on the sheet.

All of this adds up to tremendous time and expense that takes away from the experience most wine enthusiasts like having with their wines.

We love wines and winemaking and we love learning about different varietals, how they differ from each other, and we love talking with other people about wine because everybody has a story about their favorite wine experience, either a wine itself, or a vineyard, or something they were celebrating when they found a new discovery.

More than any other aspect of our new business, that is what we really love about wine - it is the social interaction and sharing of stories and discoveries that we really, really enjoy.

As of this moment, every storage and asset management support service for wine enthusiasts out there does not provide an experience that is commensurate with the overall experience of the product that those services are supporting.

The storage is storage, the asset databases are asset databases. They are functional.

But they do not capitalize on the natural context and accompanying stories that come with enjoying and sharing wines.

Our vision at Vino Veritas is one of making a perfect match between social context, technological context, and enabling wine enthusiasts to get even more enthusiastic about their finds and creating memorable places they can share them with their friends and families.

It's about creating consistent, appropriate and inspiring experiences that parallel all the things that go with enjoying great wines.

Location, Location, Location

Lots of people also asking where we're going to be located.

We're looking at about a dozen or so different sites in the Los Angeles metro area right now. Of those, we expect to build on 2 or 3 in the next 36-40 months, having our first location open by October 2008 if all goes well.

From LA Metro area we'll build wherever the demand and demographic are right for us and for the communities we want to do business in.

We'll also be having above ground vineyard-style event spaces adjacent to each location where topography and real estate allows. This is part of our business I'm really excited about where people can come have weddings, private parties, etc. surrounded by an entire experience that's hard to come by outside of Napa Valley.

So, you'll build me a wine cellar?

Ok, there's lots of folks out there who don't have our business plan, who are trying to figure us out as we get our website together along with all the other startup work.

Q: So you would come to my house and build a wine cellar?

A: No, for that kind of personal cellar, we would highly recommend our construction partners over at Bacchus Caves.

What Vino Veritas is all about is giving wine enthusiasts who need space to store their wines an environmentally-friendly aesthetically exciting place to properly cellar their wines and tying that into a very cool RIA interface for folks to organize and browse their wine collections online.

We're kind of like a luxury Public Storage unit, but way cooler (in more ways than one), and our facilities will be able to accommodate somewhere between 500-800 members.

Members can store as few as 50 bottles and as many as we have space for with us, with rates based on type of storage they choose and other services.

Membership privileges will also include access to our wine-tasting cave so that they can come pull bottles from their collections anytime and invite friends with them to share their wines and the Vino Veritas experience.

Enthusiasts who collect wines already are familiar with the high costs of refrigeration units at their homes (initial purchase cost, maintenance costs, and electricity and associated CO2/environmental costs), and these can be very significant.

In another post, I'll soon compare the costs of home cellaring/refrigeration costs with our cellar membership options and how we stack up.

How To Be Creative

While some of this missive belongs on my other blog, I think a lot of the authors' (Hugh MacLeod) intent was that this kind of thinking reach far beyond what are traditionally considered "creative" industries.

I don't care what business you are in, your should read "How To Be Creative" - and if you don't get it, get to work on figuring out why you don't get it.

It's notable, of course, that Hugh came from an Ad Agency background, then found himself as a frontman for brands who wanted him to represent them in a new way... from an honest voice.

That is the voice of conversation, of dialog. The voice that happens when two human beings speak with each other as human beings instead of as one "corporate entity" to the "consumer" or one "corporate entity" to another "corporate entity."

Corporations are still made of people last I checked.

How To Be Creative is one of the great signposts of the generation grown up empowered by the Web and by the knowledge that corporations are not responsible for our lives, we are.

Oh, and by the way, How to Be Creative is made available for sharing under a Creative Commons license - and for those of you in my other industry who don't know what that is, y'all need to get with the program. The world of licensing creative content has been busy changing while you had lunch at the Ivy.

It's an interesting journey to rediscover that Hollywood/Network Television etc. doesn't have the corner on the creativity market they'd like to think they have.

There's tremendous creative talent in a bazillion different directions out there in the world and they all start with ownership, or what Hugh calls "Sovereignty" over your work.

You think it's good?

Put it out there. Let the world, market, etc. tell you what they think.

Take ownership of an idea whether it's good OR if it's bad. If your work is consistently bad, start thinking about doing something else. If it's good, stick with it, be passionate, and may it bring you great joy.

Why Build a Cave?

There's a couple of very common questions we seem to get when speaking with people about building caves that we try and address directly in our business plan.

I think a few of the basic ones are worth addressing here as well and maybe add a little more detail.

Q: Underground? What about earthquakes?

A: This is a great question and in our investigation & research, there are a good number of studies that show being in an underground structure may actually be a *safer* place than being in an above ground structure during earth movement.

As we've found there are over 300 case studies of subterranean structures and their performance in seismic events.

In particular, the following study provided lots of excellent data on historical effects of earthquakes on underground structures as well as providing useful information about what can be done to mitigate effects of earth movement around an underground structure.

The study also makes 10 significant and relevant observations:

Seismic design and analysis of underground structures: an overview
Hashash, Youssef M A; Yao, John I-Chiang


The following general observations can be made regarding the seismic performance of underground structures:

1. Underground structures suffer appreciably less damage than surface structures.

2. Reported damage decreases with increasing overburden depth. Deep tunnels seem to be safer and less vulnerable to earthquake shaking than are shallow tunnels.

3. Underground facilities constructed in soils can be expected to suffer more damage compared to openings constructed in competent rock.

4. Lined and grouted tunnels are safer than unlined tunnels in rock. Shaking damage can be reduced by stabilizing the ground around the tunnel and by improving the contact between the lining and the surrounding ground through grouting.

5. Tunnels are more stable under a symmetric load, which improves ground-lining interaction. Improving the tunnel lining by placing thicker and stiffer sections without stabilizing surrounding poor ground may result in excess seismic forces in the lining. Backfilling with non-cyclically mobile material and rock-stabilizing measures may improve the safety and stability of shallow tunnels.

6. Damage may be related to peak ground acceleration and velocity based on the magnitude and epicentral distance of the affected earthquake.

7. Duration of strong-motion shaking during earthquakes is of utmost importance because itmay cause fatigue failure and therefore, large deformations.

8. High frequency motions may explain the local spalling of rock or concrete along planes of weakness. These frequencies, which rapidly attenuate with distance, may be expected mainly at small distances from the causative fault.

9. Ground motion may be amplified upon incidence with a tunnel if wavelengths are between one and four times the tunnel diameter.

10. Damage at and near tunnel portals may be significant due to slope instability.

We are very confident that together with our geological engineers and architects that Vino Veritas facilities will be as safe, or safer than comparable above ground structures in a seismic event.

Q: Aren't there already a lot of wine caves out there?

A: Yes there are! And in the United States, all but one of them are for commercial cellaring by wineries. That's because underground is the best place to store wine! (Not only does it save a LOT of electricity, but wineries reduce evaporation of wine by up to 20% by storing it below ground in an environment that maintains a natural amount of humidification).

However, there are no real wine caves with secure storage for personal collections of wine in the United States today.

Vino Veritas will have memberships for enthusiasts with as little as 50 bottles of wine and our facilities our being designed with luxurious aesthetics and robust security along with a literally "cool" place to enjoy and share your wines with your friends!

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We'll answer more FAQ's as we get time to, but those are two biggies to start with.

Startups & Hard Work

Great post on startups and hard work as a guest post on Guy Kawasaki's excellent blog, but his entry this morning comes from RedFin's CEO, Glenn Kelman

Lately I've been thinking how hard, not how easy, it is to build a new company. Hard has gone out of fashion. Like college students bragging about how they barely studied, start-ups today take care to project a sense of ease. Wherever I’ve worked, we’ve secretly felt just the opposite. We’re assailed by doubts, mortified by our own shortcomings, surrounded by freaks, testy over silly details...

Like the souls in Dostoevsky who are admitted to heaven because they never thought themselves worthy of it, successful entrepreneurs can’t be convinced that any other startup has their troubles, because they constantly compare the triumphant launch parties and revisionist histories of successful companies to their own daily struggles. Just so you know you’re not alone, here’s a top-ten list of the ways a startup can feel deeply screwed up without really being that screwed up at all.

1. True believers go nuts at the slightest provocation.

2. Big projects attract good people.
   

3. Start-ups are freak-catchers.
   

4. Good code takes time.

5. Everybody has to re-build.
   

6. Fearless leaders are often terrified.

7. It'll always be hard work.
   

8. It isn't going to get better--it already is.
   

9. Truth is our only currency.
   

10. Competition starts at $100 million.
    

It's an awesome post and I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Glenn/Redfin - ROCK ON.

Job Descriptions, Accountability & Risks

I know that from time to time, I wander off to my "Business School 101" soapbox and rant about things, and guess what? Sometimes it comes from direct experience in my old industry, sometimes it's just out of the blue (like at 1:30AM because I can't sleep - therefore you must suffer with me;)

That contextual reference aside, here's some thinking about job descriptions that came about after a (good) discussion with Vino Veritas' payroll & HR admin provider, Paychex.

While there is a time in startups that requires people to wear a number of hats, as an organization grows it's important to have job descriptions not because "delegation is what people in power do" but because there's a number of really good reasons to create divisions of labor.

1. Because different people have different skill sets. Ideally a job position matches their strongest and most developed skill sets with an appropriate job function.
   
   
2. Because an accurate job description allows you to locate and find the best candidate for a given function.
   
   
3. Because a job description gives both the employer and the employee a common starting point for measuring how well that person is doing in that position.

Now, those are good reasons, but the really critical reason, I believe, is;

When everyone is responsible for everything, no one is responsible for anything.

The business critical path of communication - the answer to "who do I talk to in order to get 'x' done?" is non-existent without knowing who is accountable for what.

In the circumstance where there are multiple people responsible for the same part of a project depending upon either the importance of the project or the inability of one person to keep up with it, or the bosses perception of how crucial something is - without a single, clear tone of leadership and delegation, business hobbles along like a kid with a club foot.

Let me say it again, because it's important.

When everyone is responsible for everything, no one is responsible for anything.

Without leadership that has the ability to qualitatively assess what kinds of skill sets and talents will help the business run better, your business will always be struggling, your employees going home frustrated, and your competitors clapping with glee while they kick your butt because you're spending more time interviewing job candidates and hiring people who have no clue what they're actually supposed to be doing.
As our HR reps at Paychex noted, non-existent job descriptions can actually create liability and exposure to wrongful termination lawsuits for your company.

And that's not to mention the frustration of your employees when they're too busy playing dodgeball (dodging "that's not what I was hired for, nor what I have experience doing, nor want to have experience doing").

Good job descriptions create clear lines of communication & accountability on both sides of the management/employee relationship.

Dismiss them at your own risk.