SV Adventure

Email and Calendaring for a Startup

As a startup, we don't have time or money to waste on setting up complex infrastructure.  Mail servers are notoriously complex.  At DataScaler, we wanted to hit the ground running, but also have an email system that would grow with us.  Shared calendaring was also a must-have.  Even with only four people, it's amazing how many schedule conflicts can arise without shared calendaring.

We found Google Apps to be a great fit.  It uses the familiar Gmail user interface and has solid calendaring.  Everything resides under the datascaler.com domain, so our email addresses are all @datascaler.com.  At only $50 per user per year for 10GB of email storage, it's served us well.  It's never been unavailable or had any hiccups.  We can easily invite each other to meetings and manage email. 

We also use the Docs & Spreadsheets app from time to time.  It's not exactly Microsoft Office, though.  It is a bit slow to use over the Internet and cannot import certain documents.  We use it mostly for notepad-type items, but we'll likely move those over to our wiki.  At a prior company, we used a hosted Microsoft Exchange system, but almost 10x more expensive.  After years of using MS Exchange, I don't miss it at all.

We're an all-Mac shop, so we use Spanning Sync to keep our Google Calendars in sync with iCal on our MacBook Pros.  This has worked well for us and the product is also quite inexpensive at $25 per year or $65 forever. 

Another key advantage to using Google Apps is that it requires no VPN.  Since our email is on the internet, it's always available from anywhere.   Between Google Apps, Amazon Web Services, Skype, eFax, Unfuddle, and a few other apps, we are able to run our business quite well without any servers in our office.  We never need a VPN and we don't have to purchase, house, power, and cool a bunch of servers.  As a frequent business traveler, I have come to loathe VPNs, which never seem to be able to connect when you need them to.  The Web truly is a wonderful thing.

Skype As An Office Phone System

We use Skype as our phone system at DataScaler.  It works surprisingly well.  Each person has a Plantronics CS50-USB wireless headset.   These high-quality headsets play well with Skype and allow us to wander away from the desk to take calls.  Using SkypeIn and SkypeOut, it's nearly indistinguishable from having a "real" phone.  We save a ton on long distance fees, phone lines, a PBX, and desk phones.  The headsets aren't cheap (~$180), but that's all you need.  A good desk phone will run at least that much if not 2-3x more.

At a previous company, we spent $60,000 on an Avaya PBX and phones for 40 people.  At a subsequent company, we spent $15,000 on an Asterisk-based system for a similar number of people.  We thought that was a killer deal.  Skype will cost us 1/100 of that and we don't need to pay for phone lines.

We also use the Skype Business Control Panel to allow me to centrally manage all the SkypeIn numbers and put SkypeOut credits in the individual accounts.  It works very well.  My only complaints are:

• The Skype website is hard to navigate.  It took me a long time to find what I needed to get started.
• I couldn't use a credit card to pay.  I wanted to buy a large block of SkypeIn numbers, so I needed to spend $200 or so.  In order to do this, I had to open a Moneybookers.com account, then transfer money into it, then transfer the money to Skype.  This process took several days and was a pain.  Apparently, they do this to reduce fraud.

We don't yet have true PBX functionality (dial by name, call transfers, etc.), but we intend to use a managed service on top of Skype to provide that.  More on that when we roll it out.

Home Sweet Home

After founding and funding DataScaler, we needed to find our first home.  We wanted:

1. ~1000 square feet
2. 6 month lease
3. A large open area with 2 private offices for making phone calls, etc.
4. Running water and bathroom in the suite (this was harder to find than we thought it would be)
5. Mountain View, Sunnyvale, or Cupertino location

We started our search on Craigslist.  We found various properties, but none that fit all 5 criteria.  Since were looking for a small office and a short term lease, I figured the large commercial real estate brokers  would not be much help.  However, I was wrong.

We were about to compromise and go with an office suite where we'd have to go outside the building with a key to use the bathroom.  Luckily, Chase Lyman and Steve Henry at Cornish & Carey found us a great office.   We got a beautiful 1000sf office in Mountain View with a conference room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, lots of light, and a six-month lease.  Chase and Steve really came through for us. 
We'll move into a much larger office soon, so they are smart to do a good job for us on this initial office, even though they made little money on it.

To furnish the office, I gave Derek Taylor, our Director of Hardware Engineering, a budget and told him to go wild. ;-)  Using a combination of Craigslist, furniture liquidators, friends, and an estate sale, Derek was able to get us desks, chairs, bookcases, tables, couches, a refrigerator, whiteboards, a projector screen, and some other goodies for about $1800.  He did an outstanding job.  I snapped a few photos with my Treo:

We went with 30" monitors (more on this in a future post):

One of our investors even donated a nice conference table and chairs:

We love our office; it's nice to have a great place in which to change the world ;-)

The Magic of the Valley

Silicon Valley is unlike any other place on earth.  The weather is great, the hills are beautiful, but most of all, this is the center of the startup universe.  Why is that?  Paul Graham and others have written about their theories on the subject.  I don't pretend to know the "real" answer, but here are one man's observations.  Each of these will likely be posts of their own in upcoming weeks.

Silicon Valley has:

• Abundant venture capital
• A risk-taking culture
• Awesome startup legal expertise
• Experienced startup executives
• Tons of customers, large and small, within a 30 minute drive
• Several major research universities that attract brilliant people
• Great companies that attract brilliant people (which we then recruit away...)
• An amazing network of people involved in technology, entrepreneurship, and business

These elements are stronger here than anywhere else.  This is where dreams are made.

Boot 'em!

Don Jaworski, VP of Product Development at Brocade gave us some good advice yesterday.  The story starts with a band...

Don plays drums in a band, and has played in many, many bands dating back to high school.  When he and his partners formed this band, however, they made a list of verboten behaviors (negativism, flakiness, unprofessional behavior, etc.)  No matter how great a band member was, if he/she displayed any of these behaviors, they would "boot 'em." As a result, this band is awesome.  They have a defined culture and aren't afraid to enforce it swiftly.  Don encouraged us to immediately "boot" anyone who wasn't fitting in.

When choosing our founding team, I knew we could only have people who were brilliant, and more importantly, had a can-do attitude.  Negativity and pessimism have no place in a startup.  By definition, startups are doing the impossible.  In larger companies with established customers, negativism can be healthy and pragmatism can be useful.  However, when you are changing the world, comments like, "That can't be done," etc., aren't going to help.  I am extremely pleased with our team at DataScaler.  We're making the impossible happen.