Joe Stump on How SimpleGeo Co-Founder Grows Into Leadership Role

In Chapter 1 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares what is getting easier and harder in his life. Personally, Stump finds his groove in his relationships and beliefs. Meeting many new people through work and travel, he adjusts to manage relationships better. Professionally, starting and managing a company gives him perspective on pressure previously unseen in his corporate roles. Stump transitions into a co-founder and board member role, contrasting it to being a normal employee or corporate executive. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michelsen:  What is getting easier and what’s getting harder in your life?

Joe Stump: I think the whole searching for yourself thing has gotten a lot easier as I’ve gotten older.  I’ve kind of got a lady that I don’t have to worry about. It’s like the first girl I’ve ever dated that it is what it is. It’s awesome and I don’t have that “grass is greener on the other side” feeling anymore.  That’s gotten a lot easier.  A lot of pressure gone on that.  As I kind of come into my own as a person, I don’t worry or care about what other people think, that’s elevated a lot of pressure. 

What’s gotten harder is I don’t have enough time to do everything that I want to do and I really wish I had more time to do more things with more people.  My social circle has expanded greatly over the last five years and I’m finding that I don’t have enough time to visit everybody that I’d like to visit.  And as I progress in my career, there are a lot more responsibilities that are work related that add a tremendous amount of pressure.  There is a world of difference between even being a VP at a company and being a co-founder and board member and somebody that – there is a lot of pressure that goes along with that that is much different than being a normal employee.  So, that is what has gotten harder, but at the same time a lot of the normal social stresses have almost completely gone away.

Joe Stump on Travel Advice From a Frequent Flier

In Chapter 2 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares what he has learned traveling. For one, he travels ruthlessly to other countries to see new perspectives outside his culture and shape his worldview. Two, Stump shares why he carries a ruthless approach into an airport to get in and get out stress free and efficiently. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: Why should one travel ruthlessly?

Joe Stump: I like traveling to get a sense of other cultures because other cultures always tackle problems differently. And I think that filters into so many different things, I think that you can have a much more interesting political debate around people where they’ll talk about, for instance they’ll talk about, “Well if we get rid of all the guns in America then murderers will run ramped and kill people.” And they did similar things in Australia and the U.K. and murder rates dropped precipitously.

And I think similar things - I think that actually applies to developing products as well because if you’ve ever driven, or ever ridden on public transportation systems in other different parts around the country - of the world, they’re drastically different, they all have little different buttons, little different instructions, and different things. So I like to travel ruthlessly because it shapes my world view and gives me a lot more context cause really all I know is my own culture and my own upbringing, and learning more about other cultures and other upbringings can shape your own upbringing I guess.

Erik Michielsen: How is traveling ruthlessly different from going into an airport and being ruthless?

Joe Stump: Uh, So when I head into the airport it’s like a precision guided missile, like, and airports are basically - I hate airports. I love traveling but I hate airports because of a couple things, one because they represent the most cheesy version of whatever locale you’re in, so if you go to Austin’s airport it’s nothing but barbecue and Texas Longhorns right?

And the other thing I hate about airports is there are fundamentally two types of travelers, there are people who literally are on their first flight ever in their entire life or there are people who have flown 150,000 miles last year there is no middle - there is no middle ground and those two sides seem to be at war with each other so perfect example of this, I was going through the Chicago airport and in the Chicago airport there are two main United terminals, B and C, and you have to actually, there’s this long lighted underground walkway and it was really packed and I had to make a connection and everyone was standing on the monorails or whatever the hell they are and I start pushing my way through and I’m like “excuse me” and this lady is like “well where are you going?” and I’m like, “I’m going to tell all these idiots to stand on the right and walk on the left just like every other human being on the planet knows to do.”

There tends to be an inverse relationship of number of people in crowd and average intelligence of said crowd, so if you’re in an airport and there are 20,000 people, they’re basically all retarded and so yeah I’m absolutely ruthless, I have no sense of etiquette whatsoever, I’m just like everybody know you walk on the left and stand on the right unless you’re a former British protectorate and then you walk on the other side, right? But yeah so we all have some place to go and we all have to get there and it’s a logistical nightmare to begin with, can we all just do it in an efficient manner?

Joe Stump on How to Pick a City That Best Matches Your Interests

In Chapter 3 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares how living in multiple cities has informed what he looks for in choosing a city where to live. Stump looks for high walkability, good public transportation, bike friendly streets, and high speed broadband access when searching. After time in Seattle and Boulder, Stump returns to San Francisco, a place that meets his criteria best. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What’s been your approach in determining which city is best for you to live?

Joe Stump: Um I would say - If you asked my mom she would say I’ve been doing a lot of statistical sampling. As far as I can remember, I’ve lived in a very small town in the middle of a corn field, a very small town in the middle of kind of in the middle of a tourist area, a college town, a mountain town and then two west coast - two pretty major west coast cities, San Francisco and Seattle. So, my approach - the things that I look for after living in all those different places, the things that I look for are a very high walk ability score, kind of my minimum entry is I need to be able to, within a block be able to get to a bar and a restaurant that I wouldn’t mind eating at regularly and a bodega of some sort.

Number two, public transportation. Number three would be biking, I do a lot of biking so lot’s of bike paths and stuff are pretty important to me, Boulder was amazing for that, San Francisco less so, Seattle even less so than that. So, those are probably the top three things I look for, oh and the last one, and that’s one that’s arguably the most important is I have to have access to high-speed bandwidth.

Erik Michielsen: So why San Francisco?

Joe Stump: Um, San Francisco, so you know I lived in Seattle for three and a half years, I love the Pacific Northwest, if I wasn’t a computer geek I would probably still be in Seattle, so San Francisco has a lot of the things I liked about Seattle, it’s laid back, extremely liberal, probably a little militant on the liberal side for my taste, but nice. You know you can still get to the mountains fairly easily, water’s there, those are all good things I like about it, but I think that what keeps me in San Francisco as opposed to Seattle or even So-Cal is really two things, one, San Francisco is a Mecca for nerds, I am a nerd, this is where my people live, and in conjunction with that my salary is now probably fifty percent higher than it would be anywhere else in the world.

I mean judging by looking at me, I’m not what you call a mainstream, normal, nine to five kind of guy. In San Francisco, those people that are considered normal everywhere else in the world are actually the weirdoes in San Francisco, and the weirdoes everywhere else are the norm. Like perfect example of why I think San Francisco is like, it’s Mecca to nerds but also just weirdoes in general. So, we have Frank Chu for instance he’s like a beloved San Francisco crazy person essentially, walks around with signs that say like “the galaxy of twelve soldiers” or whatever are coming, and he’s generally accepted as like the mascot for San Francisco.

Joe Stump on Why to Hang Around People Smarter Than You

In Chapter 4 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares why he hangs out with smarter peers. He sees this not as a threat but as a learning opportunity. He notes how he learns about wine listening to Gary Vaynerchuk and Garren Katz. Ultimately, the smarter peer group helps Joe continuously learn and develop. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  Why is it a good idea to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you?

Joe Stump:  Um… One, you look smarter. Guilt by association, man!  If people are smart and you hang out with them, therefore you will look smart too.  That is legitimately a benefit of hanging out with people that are smarter than you.  I think the other one is – I think the main reason I like to hang out with people that are smarter than me is that challenges me – people will react to that situation in two ways. One, they will basically wilt away from it and be like, “These people are too smart. I can’t hang with them. I’m out.”  And other people will sit around and sponge off of them and basically be like, “This is an opportunity for me to get better at something and learn more about something I didn’t know about.”  And that’s why I hang out with people that are smarter than me.  They have knowledge that I want, or that I need, or that I just find interesting.  

I’m never going to… I’m not a wine guy at all but I’ll listen to Garren talk about wine all day long. Same thing with Gary because it’s fascinating that someone knows that much about something so mundane. And I love the little things, like Gary will talk about how global warming is impacting wines and how different wine – like a wine regions that use to be known for one type of grape has actually completely shifted because the climate has changed so much and they can’t grow that old grape but they can grow this new grape.  That stuff is really interesting.  It’s challenging and it’s beneficial in a number of ways and if you’re one of those types of people that always wants to get better, then you have to surround yourself with smarter people because otherwise you’re just treading water. 

How Entrepreneur Gets Advice From Peer Support Network - Joe Stump

In Chapter 5 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares where he seeks advice and help from friends and how this is changing as his company grows. Whenever Stump has a big decision to make, he consults his "Jedi Council", a group of friends and family who know him well. Stump values multiple perspectives from different people, including his dad, and over time adds new members as his needs change. This includes investment professionals and legal contacts. As Stump becomes progressively focused on growing his business, he seeks progressively more entrepreneurial-based insight from the peer group. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Joe Stump on How to Manage Hypergrowth at an Internet Startup

In Chapter 6 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares how management continues to challenge him as his company quickly grows. In his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, Stump noted how general management challenged him as he started his business. In this 2011 interview, after securing multiple rounds of financing and building a larger team, Stump finds new levels of challenges across hiring, company structure, and culture building. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What has been most challenging about growing and starting this business?

Joe Stump: Oh, it has to be management, by far and away. The team grows really, really quickly and unlike I think a normal person that is a manager at a normal company, the company is always established, you get high engrained into the culture probably because you fit into it, where as in a startup, we went from zero to fifty employees in about three months. And so not only, you know in that other scenario there are two structures in place already as well so in a startup you have to define the structure, you have to hire the people, set the cultural tone and all of that stuff and that all needs to happen literally in days.

Like, so you pay more attention, like at SimpleGeo we establish what we call a cultural creed, which is like ten rules that we as employees agree to live by, we all participated in creating that, and then once you have fifteen employees you have to do things like establish PTO policies, and like follow them and once you hit twenty five you have to do sexual harassment training and the list just goes on and on, but I would say my biggest struggle has been setting up the team, setting up the structure, establishing culture and then essentially kind of, once you’ve done that getting them all pointed in the same direction and on board with the same vision, has… it’s something we struggle with even today.

We’re constantly getting better but we still have people in my one on ones that are “I really don’t, where are we going with all of this?” and it’s like, “Ok well clearly all of the things I’ve done to satisfy that question for everybody else aren’t working for you, let’s talk through it,” so yeah, it’s a constant struggle.

Joe Stump on How Intrinsic Motivation Shapes Startup Success

In Chapter 7 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares why startup leaders tend to be intrinsically and not extrinsically motivated. He notes the challenge creating, running, and sustaining a business without intrinsically motivated leadership. Stump uses Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as an example, noting his style was about solving a problem - i.e "scratching an itch" - and not making money. When Zuckerberg did become financially focused, Stump still believes it was about company and vision control and not reward driven behavior. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What has your entrepreneurial journey taught you about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation?

Joe Stump: I think what it’s taught me is that there are fundamentally two types of people. Those that are intrinsically motivated and those that are extrinsically motivated. You can’t viably create, run and sustain a business if core, key people are extrinsically motivated.  Because you’re really in a startup – I think really the greatest startups that are in existence and have thrived are the ones where the people scratched an itch and were really very passionate about it and didn’t really pay attention to the dollars and the cents as they were going along.  

The only time I’ve rarely seen entrepreneurs that are intrinsically motivated act in an extrinsic manner is really around control of the company, and that’s driven I think entirely by passion for the product.  So, like the amount of control that Mark Zuckerberg still has at Facebook, I don’t believe that that was because he was fundamentally a money grubbing kind of guy.  I just don’t – I’ve talked with Mark a couple of times and that just doesn’t seem like the type of guy that he is.  I think he did it so he had utter control over the product and the direction of the company as it moved forward.  So, that’s probably the main lesson I’ve taken away from that.

Joe stump on How Leadership Ambition Becomes Longer-Term Focused

In Chapter 8 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares how his ambition has shifted from shorter to longer term focus as he has built his company. In his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, Stump noted his preference for short-term sprint projects. Since, as an entrepreneur building a company, Stump learns the startup journey is filled with consecutive challenges that build upon one another. As a result, Stump adapts both his personal and professional approach to think longer term. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How has your passion for doing sort term sprint projects played out as you’ve built your own company.

Joe Stump: The thing that has really changed and that has surprised me is when I first started SimpleGeo, I was like, “Well, I’m going to come here.  I’m an early stage guy.  I probably won’t fit in very well once we raise like a big round and decide to go big and what not.”  So, the thing that has surprised me is that as I’ve gotten further into it and as we get closer to what I thought would be the end game, is that there is a whole new set of challenges and it basically rolls and comes in phases.

Where as in the me from two years ago that just started SimpleGeo would probably say, “By the series B, that will probably my clean exit point.”  And now we’re getting real close to probably raising a series B and potentially over the next six months.  And if that does happen I want to stay another year because I have a whole new set of goals.  And it’s uh… where as in I think before my normal thing would be to come in, fix the stuff and work the things I wanted to and once I kind of hit that finish line, look for something else and move on.  

Now, quite frankly, you know I started it, my name is attached to it in a fairly significant way, I have a pretty large, obviously, equity stake in the company and so it’s constantly changing.  SimpleGeo is completely a different company in every way, shape and form than it was six months ago and it’s going to be, again, a completely different company six months from now.  So, it’s kept me engaged in a way that I probably wasn’t expecting.

Joe Stump on Working With Investors as a New Entrepreneur

In Chapter 9 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares his experiences learning to work with startup company investors. In his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, Stump shared how he developed a "tell it like it is" approach. He carries this into venture capitalist and investor meetings. Surprisingly, he finds his transparent and honest approach well-received. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How has your approach of telling it like it is went over with the investment crowd?  

Joe Stump:  Uh, surprisingly well, actually.  I think that the things that investors hate the most is the unknown.  They’ll talk about the more information that they have the better investment decisions that they can make.  And so I really don’t sugar coat anything, I tell them exactly what is going on and exactly how I feel like I fit in, and it’s resonated pretty well.  They know exactly what they’re getting and they know exactly where they stand on the whole thing and where I stand.  So, it’s gone over a lot better.  It’s a fine line between being overly abrasive and being honest and open.  And as long as I stray more on the open and honest and away from the abrasive, it’s gone mostly fine.

Erik Michielsen: What were you expectations going into those conversations and what has played out in reality?

Joe Stump: It’s really funny, I thought that basically a tattooed, t-shirted asshole who doesn’t filter himself coming into those offices on Sand Hill Road will basically get me thrown in jail and it’s been the direct opposite. I think what really resonates with them and I think actually terrifies them is that I’m okay with things failing because my failure is a lot better than most people’s.  

My failure is to go have a nice, cushy salary at Facebook or Netflix or something like that.  So, I don’t really care and that resonates with them but it also scares them because they know that a lot of other entrepreneurs that don’t have that possibility, particularly younger ones, the investors in part rely on the fact that if they fail that they go back to the ground floor and have to work their way up through the system.  And with me I’m like failing one rung down.  Like, it’s not a big deal.  So, I think that is good and bad for them.

Joe Stump on How to Manage Venture Capital Investor Feedback

In Chapter 10 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump learns to work with venture capitalists (VCs) after taking a Series A financing round. He shares the VCs provide a strong checks and balances feedback system that helps a business accelerate growth and refine product. He notes that while criticism around products is usually valid, acting on the feedback should be a startup team responsibility and not a VC responsibility. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How has taking venture financing affected what you do and how you do it?

Joe Stump: I would say as far as day-to-day operations, it hasn’t changed what I do that much.  The venture-funding thing has been interesting to say the least.  I think what it changes is it - that influx of cash puts everything into overdrive and also creates a balance – a checks and balances kind of system between what the company is doing with the people that put in the money, which I think is good.  

I think most entrepreneurs would be like, ‘Oh, our VCs stink and all they try to do is screw up the product.”  And there are definitely VCs out there that will do that, but I think that’s an exception to the rule and not the norm.  Most of the time when they are telling you you’re doing something wrong, you probably are doing something wrong. The thing with the investors and the VCs in particular, when they say you’re doing something wrong, they’re almost always right that you are doing something wrong.  Where they tend to I think overstep and overexert is how the problem should be fixed.  I don’t think that VCs and investors are in a good position to force a specific fix.  I think that needs to be done from within the company.  And I think that’s where things to tend to go off the rails pretty frequently.  Like when a VC is like, “There’s a problem.”  

And at first the people and the company will be like, “Well, there’s no problem.”  And they’ll have a little fight over whether or not there is a problem.  Usually there is a problem.  And then they’ll come up with two totally separate solutions on how it should be fixed.  I think it’s fine for there to be problems, I think it’s great that VCs point out those problems, where it’s bad is when the VCs attempt to force their specific fix.  I think it’s pretty rare that the company, once that they recognize that there is a problem, that the company will come up with an inferior fix compared to the VC’s.  I think it will usually be a superior fix.

Joe Stump on How Startup Evaluates Potential Seed and Series A Investors

In Chapter 11 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares his approach to evaluating both Seed and Series A investors. In the early days, Stump looked for investors who had names and who understood the value proposition. He compares this to dating. Now, after two years, Stump looks for ex-entrepreneurs who invest their own money. He sets an investor cap at roughly $250,000, which at $50,000 per investor means about five angels. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What criteria did you use to evaluate potential investors?

Joe Stump: That’s a great question and I think it’s something that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about recently. In the beginning, to be totally frank, in the beginning of the seed round I was totally new to the game.  I didn’t know any of the terminology.  I didn’t know how any of this shit worked, and I literally said, “If you have money and I don’t totally hate you, let’s get this on!” It’s kind of like when you’re a fifteen/sixteen year old guy and you’re getting ready to finally enter man hood, you’re like, “Anything will work at this point!”  And as you get older you’re like, “Well, I have very specific needs and very specific things that I look for.”  And I think that my attitude has changed a lot recently.  

So, in the early days I looked for obviously people that were top tier investors that had wins that I could point to and say, “Clearly these guys have helped entrepreneurs win in the game.”  That was probably the first thing that I looked for.  And I also looked for people that I could get along with.  There are investors that you’ll sit down with and it’s clear, just like when you go out with dinner with a girl for the first time.  Within ten minutes you know whether or not you’re going out on a second date, right?  It’s the exact same thing with investors, you walk in and you’re like, “Here’s my idea.”  And they’re like, ”Eh.”  And you’re like, “Well, no second date!”

So, I think really finding – those are the two things that I looked for.  I looked for investors that got the idea, got the value of the proposition, were passionate about it and I looked for people that had funded companies that won and funded really good companies that I respected.  That’s changed totally since – now, uh, I don’t like the whole super angel, seed kind of thing.  I think what I look for in investors now are people that use to be entrepreneurs, and invest with their own money and normally don’t invest more than 200K. And that’s the first round – after that – Because I really think you can build almost any product on the face of the planet for 250K or less, and I think 250K is at the very high end these days.  

So, in that reality, at most you need is five angels, right?  So I think the big thing that has changed for me is in my future companies I don’t think I would pitch a seed round, I would pitch a couple of investors that were investing their own money. I think there’s a very big difference in the dynamics between people that invest their own money and people who don’t invest their own money.  And I think there is a very big difference in the insight and advice that you’re going to get in somebody who has worked in startups verses people who have started startups.  

Erik Michielsen:  And how has that – what you’ve learned from looking at investors at in the early stages applied to how you’re making decisions reflecting on your Series A and looking forward to your Series B?

Joe Stump:  Well, it’s really different, right?  Because each stage of the company and each stage of funding requires a different set of skills. So, now that we’re a twenty-something person company and we’re turning around revenue and we’re starting to negotiating big deals with big clients, we fundamentally need different insight and different money.

I don’t need that at this stage in SimpleGeo, I don’t need the guy that was the first angel investor in Instagram or the guy that founded something like that.  I need the guy that was a late stage investor in TeleAtlas.  That knows how to grow a big business and turn it into a billion dollar company.  So, I think as you progress through those stages of funding you need different investors with much different experience funding much different companies.

Erik Michielsen:  So, you’re dating different types of chicks?

Joe Stump: Indeed.

Joe Stump on How to Lead an Engineering Team

In Chapter 12 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump notes what it means to be an engineering leader. Motivating and managing technical talent requires many things. Engineers want leaders to understand their responsibilities and interests. Stump believes engineering leaders must accept they will be unable to please everyone and then follow through making difficult decisions to keep product goals aligned with available resources and timeframes. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What does it mean to be a leader in what you do?

Joe Stump: I think from an engineering stand point the people that - and what I try to do and what I try to emulate – engineers want to know that the people that are guiding the ship know where they’re coming from, think like they think and defend their interests.  And I think that’s probably true for most employees.  You know, they want to know that – I’m sure that people in marketing and accounting want to know that their views are being represented and defended to other people in the company.  

So, the qualities that I look for in an engineering leader are – I don’t think really nice people work well as engineering leaders or leaders in general because they haven’t really learned the “you can’t please everyone all the time” thing.  And it’s particularly true with engineering, because the problem with engineering is technically with enough computing power and enough money anything is feasible.  Technically, right?  But as a technical leader you have to be able to say, “No, we can’t do that.” And explain why. And if you’re unwilling to do that and you say yes to too many features and too many people, it wreaks havoc on the engineering organization because now they’re under extreme deadlines and you only have so much capacity.  

I think one thing that a lot of engineering leaders haven’t really wrapped their brain around is that engineers manufacture features in code. And just like a normal manufacturing facility you can only produce so many widgets in a given day with so many machines.  So, if you have a bunch of engineers, even if they are amazingly talented engineers, they can only produce so much code in a given time.  

So, if you have an engineering manager that’s out off in the rest of the company saying, “Oh yeah accounting, we can totally build that.  Oh yeah marketing, we can totally build that.  Oh yeah, we can totally build this.”  But you only have one or two engineers, next thing you know you have ten things that need to be out and that’s when things start getting off the rails and the engineers start getting really upset.

Joe Stump on How CTO Improves Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

In Chapter 13 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Joe Stump shares how his public speaking and presentation skills are improving over time. As his college Interfraternity Council (IFC) president, Stump learns to overcome nervousness and butterflies. As Stump progressively becomes a thought leader, he finds value simplifying his presentation and slides. As his talks become less technical and more about future and innovation topics, including mobile location services, Stump uses more statistics to support his points. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How has you approach to public speaking changing as you learn and grow as a though leader?

Joe Stump: I don’t get nervous anymore, obviously I’ve been speaking in front of a lot of people a lot, so that’s gotten a lot better.

Erik Michielsen: When did that stop?

Joe Stump:  Um… That actually stopped a while ago.  I did a lot of – I mean you were in B school and you know that everything is a group project and everything ends with a presentation.  And every class that I had I had group presentations or single presentations, I had to take speech in college because of business school as well and ended up on IFC as the IFC president, so I had to give like a speech in front of the whole Greek organizations on campus.  So, I think I got over a lot of that in college.  

The big thing that has changed as I’ve grown as a leader- well as I’ve attempted to grow as a leader in the tech space, is when I first started giving talks I felt that it was really important to put as much shit on a slide as humanly possible, right?  And it was literally like twelve-point font, all code, monotone, you know it looked terrible. Everybody is like “Ehhh” Everybody in the back is like, “I don’t even know what he’s talking about.”  And now if you look at my slides, they’re literally just like a funny picture background and one or two words, and that’s it.  

Everything that I talk about when I talk is off the cuff.  I don’t actually plan what I’m going to say other than I have my slides as an outline.  And the reason why I do that - a really good buddy of mine in New York, Eric Kassner, I use to when I was doing really heavy technical talks I would have him review my slides.  He’s a friendly nerd of mine.  And he was like, “Why are you putting all of this crap on slides?”  And I was like, “Well, I like to have something for them to read and I want to give them as much information as humanly possible and…”  

And he was like, “Dude.  You can bullshit about this stuff ad nauseum. You don’t need to worry about putting a bunch of crap on slides.” He’s like, “Get up there, be yourself and just talk as if you and I are having a conversation.”  That’s probably the best speaking advice that I’ve ever gotten.  And that’s – the biggest fundamental shift is I get up, I talk ad hoc, just from the cuff about what I know and what I’m passionate about and it either resonates with people or they think I’m an idiot, which is fine too.

Erik Michielsen: Now, how has that changed as you’ve talked less about tech and more about ideas and innovation?

Joe Stump:  I actually just recently learned a lesson on this one. Now that I’ve gotten away from more technical talks and getting into more of the “what does it all mean and where are we all going” kind of talks is that I use a lot more statistics and a lot more kind of metrics to get my message across.  Like one of the current things – there are a couple of things that I think are really interesting about mobile location kind of stuff.  

One is that there’s about 1.5, 1.8 billion people on Internet.  There are 5.8 billion mobile subscribers.  We have a four billion person gap that’s going to be closed – those four billion people will be on the Internet probably in the next year or two.  So, if we thought the Internet is growing quickly before, we haven’t seen anything because those mobile subscribers are just waiting for the Internet to come on to the network.  So, I use a lot of numbers to talk about that and to back that up.  

And recently a lesson that I learned from that was that I have sources for all that stuff but I don’t generally put them on slides, and I recently quoted a report from Africa that said that students in Uganda and Kenya spend fifty percent of their disposable income on mobile communications.  And this woman who was from Kenya got up and was like, “That is absolutely false!” Like she went off to me with the microphone in front of the whole thing and I’m like, “Clearly I need to cite my sources.”

Joe stump on How to Hire Top Engineering Talent

In Chapter 14 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares how to be competitive recruiting and motivating high end engineering or programming talent. Stump notes Google and Facebook pay roughly market rate while Netflix pays a bit more due to location constraints. He notes the hiring and motivation process is less about getting a passionate buy-in to a company vision and more about getting buy in around solving a particular difficult problem. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  How do you hire Google quality engineering when you cannot afford to pay Google money?

Joe Stump: I don’t think you can.  And also, Google doesn’t pay that well.  Google pays almost dead on at market rate, if not a little below.  And they can do that because quite frankly they’re Google.  Facebook does the same thing.  Whereas Netflix probably overpays because they’re way out in the middle of nowhere, even though they’re an awesome company.  

So I think really in today’s world there is a real shortage or really high end engineers and there is an abundance of places that would bend over backwards to have them.  So, I think the days of startups paying a senior engineer eighty-thousand dollars when they know he’s worth a hundred and twenty and giving him an extra two-tenths of a point are gone. I think I remember at Digg I had like two-tenths of a point in the company and in order for me to make a million dollars they would have had to sold for like five hundred million dollars, right?  So, I think that the notion that you can underpay and compensate with equity are – they’re gone.  There are engineers out there that are willing to take a smaller chunk of salary for more equity.  

So my approach now is I asking them what they’re making, where they would like to be and - usually they’re right around market and usually they would like to be a little bit above market, so what I do if I had an engineer come to me and his market rate was 120K a year and he was currently making 120K a year but wanted to be making 130, I would go back to him and say, “Here are three options.  You can make 120K a year and get a quarter of a point.  You can make 130K a year and get fifteen-hundredths of a point, or I can drop you down to 100 – 110 and we can get you up to four-tenths of a point.”  And then I just let him choose.  

Erik Michielsen:  What about using purpose as a motivational tool?

Joe Stump: Most of the engineers that I work with and that I know… they care about the product, but they don’t have the same level of passion for the product that I think the founders do.  What they do have a passion for though are the technical problems caused by the product.  And the way that I motivate engineers, or at least attempt to motivate engineers, what I like to call herding cats, is much more focused on the technical problems.  

For instance, if I need to extract some polygon data, they’re going to be much more interested in the fact that they get to play with Hadoop and like other crazy technologies in order to produce that data set, than they are the actual product.  I wouldn’t say that – there are exceptions that that rule but I think more and more engineers are motivated by the tough technical problems and less so by being passionate about any given product.

Joe Stump on the Pros and Cons of a Stealth Mode Product Strategy

In Chapter 15 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump gives his opinion on stealth mode product strategy. He compares and contrasts it to going private beta and also to releasing a minimum viable product (MVP) and improving via iteration. Stump notes why short development cycle products such as Instagram needed to be kept quiet before release. He also shares how some companies, for example Paypal, might pull a product back into private beta or stealth if a major pivot was in order. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What are the pros and cons of going stealth mode verses releasing a product and iterating?  

Joe Stump: I hate stealth mode.  Um, I hate stealth mode for a number of reasons. There are two fundamental reasons why people go into stealth mode. One is because they have an idea that they feel is easily replicable, so they need to build a product and then launch it.  Two, they’re idiots.  I don’t really understand why.  It’s kind of douchey.  It’s kind of like, “I have this awesome new thing that I’m working on and I have a bunch of VC money, but I can’t tell ya.” It’s like the ultimate hipster cock-block move, right?  

Not only would you, “You know it’s this awesome band that you’ve never heard of, I’m not going to let you hear of them?”  It’s like, “Come on…” I think the biggest con with the stealth mode is similar to developing a fully baked product is that if you’re not getting feedback, even from people that don’t sign NDAs that are friends and colleagues and stuff, you’re going to launch a product that could potentially fail on day one, where you miss out on the fail early and fail often.  

So, I don’t see a whole lot a pros to it unless you have an idea – like Instagram, I wouldn’t have told anybody that that was the idea that I was working on because the initial version of Instagram, those guys probably banged that out in a month.  So, if you’re talking about it and someone is only like a week behind because they’re like, “Yeah, that is a good idea.  I’m going to start programming on it.”  That would probably be the only pro that I could think of, but there is no reason in my opinion to be in stealth mode for like six or eight months.  Stealth mode till you have your NVP I could understand, otherwise you need to be out in the open I think.

Erik Michielsen:  What about companies that leave stealth mode, go do a public release and they bring it back into stealth mode?

Joe Stump: I guess the only time that I’ve seen that it would make sense is you go back into stealth mode when you’re scraping the product and pivoting.  I could see that. I’ve never seen it, but I could see why someone would do that.  So, if you’re launching something and you’re like, “Ehhhhh this isn’t going to work.”  Like PayPal.  They were originally were payments on hand held devices.  The ended up pivoting into send money through email.  But I could see how that would be, “Okay, well this isn’t going to work. We’re going to pivot into this other thing. So, we’re going to go back into stealth mode and work on this other thing”.  That’s really the only time I think it would make sense.

What I have seen is I have seen people – in fact we did this a SimpleGeo where we launched a product and they pulled it back into private beta because it wasn’t ready.  So, our storage product, we launched, we had a ton of problems with it and what we did was we made the decision – we were already in the process of completely rebuilding it, but it was a massive undertaking.  We had probably eight months of R&D into our new storage technology that we had recently launched back into private beta.  

So, we actually made the decision of like, “You know what guys?  We don’t new users assuming that they can use this because it wasn’t that good.”  And so we pulled it back into private beta, we had probably four or five hundred active people using it and that allowed us – that alleviated a lot of pressure on us out in the market to basically re-approach the product and redevelop it and we’re going to be launching that back publicly in probably a couple of weeks.  So, that will be probably four months that we’ve had it back in private beta.

Joe Stump on Why a Minimum Viable Product Design Strategy Works

In Chapter 16 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares why less is more when designing and building consumer Internet products. He takes a minimum viable product - or MVP - approach to release products with core features and build on them after initial feedback. He contrasts this with taking an approach that layers on non-essential features that dilute user experience and core feature functionality. He notes Apple and its initial iPhone release with roughly six apps. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  What have your experiences taught you about what makes a product great?

Joe Stump: Every interaction that I have with a product, I look for two things.  I look for the way in which you use the product needs to be blatantly evident, right? I feel that a product has failed if you have to read the instructions.  If you have to read the manual, other than assembly, obviously, you have to use the manual to use a product for its core feature, it’s failed as a product.  

And the other thing I look for in a product and product interactions are when a product does something in a way that is frustrating or requires more effort than it should, particularly when there is better technology.  A good example are doors, right? As a computer geek, it drives me insane that I still have to have a key and actually turn the key and open the door handle.  We’ve had automatic doors and RFID for a decade now.  Why can’t I just walk up to the door and it opens?  Like, I want my Star Trek doors!

So, I think those are my day-to-day interactions and what shapes product for me are one, because of those things, one… I try to pair a product down – when you first start and you have an idea for something, you’re like, “Oh man, it would be cool if I had something that did X.”  But by the time you actually launch that product, it does X, Y, Z, 1, 2, 3.  And the iteration of the product should only launch with just X. It should do X and do it very, very well, and then you layer on features from there.  

Apple is amazing at doing this.  You know, the first iPhone launched and I think it had one home screen and six apps, right? The world has changed.  But they paired it down to it’s most minimal, core feature set, people still loved it, people still used it, yeah there were issues and we’ve come a long way. When I launch and work on products, launch it with one great feature.  The founder of Instagram has a great quote that all great products started out as a feature. T

he other thing that I do with product and is something that if you go back to the key analogy, I won’t put a feature in a product unless it’s perfect.  So, a lot of people will treat features as a checkbox.  Like, “Oh, yeah I can upload user photos.”  But if uploading user photos is a draconian, terrible experience, I’m not going to add it.  I’m going to keep working on it, and keep working on the UI [user interface], and keep working on the technology till it gets to a point where it can pass “the mom” test, and then it’s a feature ready to be added to the product.

I think where people get things wrong too often is they treat the feature like a checkbox and feel like the product is better because the feature exists, even if the feature is poorly implemented.  And I think the reverse is true.  I think the product is actually worse because people are now being trained to use a crappy feature in a crappy way and if you even tried to fix the feature, they’re going to get angry that you changed the feature.  So, my approach in that situation would to just not have the feature until it’s fully baked.

Joe Stump on Why Startups Should Treat Products as Iterations and Not End Results

In Chapter 17 of 17 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, Internet entrepreneur and SimpleGeo CTO Joe Stump shares his product development philosophy. He believes product releases should be treated as iterations and not end results. He shares why this is critical in context of investor financed world where companies have limited financial resources. For fully funded startups, this typically means the company has 12-24 months runway before it runs out of money. Given this constraint, Stump urges startups to release early, gather feedback, fix product, add features, and position for follow up financing. Stump is the co-founder and CTO at SimpleGeo (www.simplegeo.com), a San Francisco-based mobile location infrastructure services company. Previously Stump was Lead Architect at Digg. He programs in PHP, Python, Django and enjoys scaling websites. He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Michigan University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen:  Why should a product be treated as an iteration and not an end result?

Joe Stump: You know we call The Constitution a living document, I believe that products are a living, breathing thing that need to continually grow.  So, the first product that you release should kind of be like a sapling.  It’s going to grow over time and it’s your job to water it and make it better over time.  I think launching products is really difficult as well and if you try to wait till the tree is fully grown, there’s a couple of problems that can happen.  

One, as a startup you generally have – if you’re fully funded, you generally have between twelve and twenty-four months in the bank, and if you spent - let’s say you had eighteen months of runway and you spent twelve months working on your big “ta da” project and you launched it and people were like, “You know what? The core feature and problem that you’re solving is a problem for me and I kind of like it, but the problem is that you’ve layered all of these other features on top of it that are crap and I can’t use them and it dilutes the whole product experience for me.”  

If you hit that at twelve months and you find out in twelve months that your product needs to be basically completely redone, you’re screwed.  Because you have six months of runway left and it takes three to four months to raise cash in the beginning. So, that gives you three months to fix your product and get it back into the market and get a positive reaction after you’ve already had a failed launch.  

Whereas if you had – there is a great quote out there that is basically “Fail early and fail often.”  If you had just started with just that core feature and you felt that you had nailed it fairly well, people would have been much more on board and helping you along the way shape where your product goes. So, I think it’s really important, for startups in particular, to release early, release features once they are minimally viable and you feel like you’ve really crafted them to a way that will resonate with people, and then don’t layer on those extra features till they’re perfect.

Erik Michielsen:  Because momentum is really important.

Joe Stump:  Yeah. Yeah it’s really important.  If you look at Instagram, they came out, literally it was it Twitphoto and Hipstamatic had a baby.  This was not a groundbreaking product in any way, shape or form.  It was, however, really well done in a very minimal way, right?  And they’ve layered on a ton of features since then and now they’re doing I think one hundred and thirty thousand signups a week.  

So, the people who are the movers and shakers in our industry latched on to Instagram early, continued to use it because it was a great feature essentially that they had been missing and are now totally hooked on it as it’s become a full fledged product with a full fledged community.  Would have things been the same if Instagram had launched a very fully baked, major product? I don’t know because the feature that people where using and liked and immediately flocked to with the original Instagram would have been buried in all of the other things that are now in Instagram.  So, would have it caught on as well?  Who knows?  It certainly wouldn’t have the community that it does now.  So, I think it’s super important.

How Starting a Company Teaches Humility - Dan Street

In Chapter 1 of 20 of his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, software entrepreneur and Loku founder Dan Street shares how he has embraced the challenges starting a business. He notes the lifestyle changes associated with becoming an entrepreneur - constant focus on the business, less sleep, and less social time. He finds meaning in learning the ropes - hiring, raising capital, and learning all aspects of the business - as he works on his vision. Street is the founder and CEO of Loku, previously known as Borrowed Sugar which develops Internet software to strengthen local communities. Previously, Street worked in private equity at Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts (KKR) and management consulting at Bain & Co. He earned a BA in music and business from Rice University.