The Future

Everyday my mind is blown by the technology that we have at our disposal. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the Internet, let alone having it in our pockets. And we’re moving forward so incredibly fast. Little over five years ago the iPhone was only a figment of our wildest imagination. Yet in this short time, smartphones have literally transformed our daily lives.

To put things in perspective, here was the hottest technology in the late 80’s.



….then in 2006. The Razr’s coolest feature was it’s small size and camera. That’s all it had.


 

….and today.



I’m just using smartphones as one example, but technology everywhere has had an equally impressive progression.

Where will we be 10, 20 or 50 years from now? Crazy.

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Never Say Social Network

A few weeks ago I met a founder who was essentially building a social network for elderly people. I was pleasantly surprised when she described it as a “safe place to communicate and connect within retirement communities.” She never mentioned “social network” at any point during our discussion. Smart.

Although I realized that this was indeed a social network of sorts, I didn’t felt the instantaneous turn off that normally comes when someone says they’re creating a social network for X. The term social network has been overused ever since Facebook’s early success, and the final shot to the head came with The Social Network. Now, I naturally discredit any startup that describes itself as such.

So think twice before dropping the S bomb in your conversations. Even if you have a valid concept, most people will dismiss you as soon as “social network” comes out of your mouth.

Why First-Time Entrepreneurs Need False Hope

Your eyes light up. The light bulb turns on. Your mind begins to race with all the ways your new idea is going change the world. This is going to be huge.

You don’t think about the fact that you’ve never built a startup, you don’t have a co-founder, your programming skills suck (or you don’t have any), and you’re poor.

All entrepreneurs have been there. We are a culture of dreamers. However, often the harsh reality of big dreams is that they are simply filled with false hope. False hope being defined as “hope that is based entirely around an extremely unlikely outcome.” First-time entrepreneurs are the most prone to this symptom.

Initially, one would think that this false hope is detrimental and should be purged from the minds of founders. Realism about your vision is beneficial, right? To some extent I’d agree, but my argument is that a healthy dose of false hope is absolutely necessary for founders to take the initial plunge into entrepreneurship. I find truth in this point by relating to my own life.

Previously, I quit my engineering job to pursue a social video startup that ended in failure (a tiny sale). To say the least, my vision was filled with a long list of false hopes. My startup would quickly find product/market fit and experience exponential user growth. I was going to raise millions in funding and convince the best engineering minds to join me. Once reaching critical mass, I would implement a strong business model built around promoted videos and accounts. This was all going to be feasible despite the fact that I had no experience building a startup.

Sounds pretty great. So great in fact that I quit my job and entered into the unknown world of entrepreneurship to make it happen. This is the most important step of every entrepreneur’s journey, and where false hope is needed. I can say with full certainty that I would not have made the decision to quit my job and pursue my entrepreneurial passion if it wasn’t for false hope. Think about it – No one is going to take big risks if they know they’re going to fail.

Ok, but what’s the point of taking that leap of faith if the end result is failure? Well on the verge of sounding cliché, you will learn from your failure. It’s hard to put into words the amount of learning my experience provided, but I can say that I gained more valuable learning during those ten months than I did during my entire college engineering program. As a first-time entrepreneur, this learning was essential for me.

The point of this post is not that false hope leads to failure. The focus is on the role that false hope plays in causing you to take the initial step into entrepreneurship and the learning you’ll gain from the experience. You will find those two things are invaluable.

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This is the micro-documentary series I was featured in. It was filmed a while ago, but just recently was released by Cisco. As you can tell, a lot has changed for me since then. But regardless, it’ll make a nice keep sake from my experience :)

Finally, an update.

Phew.. what an incredible experience the last several months have been. Sadly, I have done a pathetic job at keeping my blog current. So here it goes - finally, an update.

It’s been 5 months since I left my “normal” life to live from a car in Silicon Valley. I’m happy to report that, as of a few weeks ago, my wife and I moved into an apartment in Mountain View. Although relieved to have a roof back over my head, I can honestly say that the decision to move up early was one of the best I’ve ever made. During that time I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with some truly amazing people, learned a ton about building products, and made quite a few meaningful personal realizations. The latter may be the most important of the three, and I could write an entire post on the new perspective that you gain while living in such a minimal way. I’m undoubtedly more grateful to have the simple things in life than I ever was before.

Kurt Varner sleeping in car

If you’re curious as to how I made out with the physical and logistical part of car dwelling, take a look at my answer on Quora. I will eventually elaborate in a more detailed blog post, but this should satisfy any eager minds for the time being. I even included a video of me waking up in my car. Maybe that’s TMI, but I’m all for being transparent.

Alright, let’s talk about startup stuff. What’s my current status and the progress I’ve made? Well, like any other entrepreneurial journey mine has been filled with bumps. For numerous reasons, I have decided to stop the development of DailyToaster. Mainly, the concept was too niche in order to realistically build a sustainable company around. It was more of a novelty app than anything else. This became clear after conversing with experienced entrepreneurs and a couple early stage investors.

Here was the idea, explained by Inc. Magazine:

His product, an app called DailyToaster, started life as an iPhone alarm clock that could be dismissed only from a computer. Varner, a chronic oversleeper, hypothesized that if people were forced to sit down at a desk, they would be less likely to crawl back into bed. Once they were online, information spilling in from various feeds, networks, and accounts would engage their minds, waking them fully. Users would visit the site almost every day to deactivate their alarms, and Varner believed that inherent stickiness would appeal to marketers.

I think the cause for my blinders was that the app solved my problem with oversleeping extraordinarily well (even with the bugs). However, I found that not enough people who have similar sleep habits actually want a solution. Or at least not want it bad enough to be forced out of bed every morning.

All that said, I’m super pleased that I took the opportunity to work on the project. It gave me reason and drive (no pun intended) to make the move to the Valley. It provided something to demo while meeting people, and I was able to portray my passion for creating. This whole experience was well worth throwing out a couple of months worth of work.

After I the hit the restart button, I went through a week or so where I felt very lost. I had no project, no one to work with, and few friends. I debated looking for a job at a startup (which would actually be a fine outcome), and calling it quits on the entrepreneurship side for a while. It’s just too draining to go through it by yourself for as long as I had (going on 2 years). But I dug deep and decided that I wanted to push through at least for another few months. After all, I wasn’t living from my car without reason.

Around that time I started bouncing new ideas off of a couple of the people I had met at the Hacker Dojo. Through this process I began creating friendships. One of the ideas stuck well between my pal Lin and me. He was in the process of winding down some freelancing work and expressed interest in working together after it was completed. That time recently came, and I’m thrilled to have started working with him as my co-founder. He’s an amazing developer, and I’m fortunate to be collaborating with him.

Finding someone to work with was my primary goal I set prior to moving north. It was a huge win for me, and I’m excited to move forward. As far as the idea, I’ll keep you posted as we really start to build it. It’s currently at the earliest kernel of a product, thus I’m sure it will be changing quite a bit.

So, that pretty much brings you up to speed on what I’ve been up to. I owe so, so many people enormous thank yous for helping and encouraging me along the way. The support, both online and off, has been amazing. Even simple things like a friendly email or tweet, kept me in good mental standing.

The real journey starts now.

Yes, the crazy car living adventure is over. It served its purpose and was an invaluable experience. However, there’s so much more that lies ahead. I’m more excited for my future now than ever before.

TL;DR I lived from my car for 4 months, realized a ton about myself, stopped developing DailyToaster, lots of lessons learned, got a co-founder, moved into an apartment in Mountain View, started building a new product.

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Photo credit to Drew Kelly.

So many people are afraid to learn. I will not be one of them.
This thought just hit me today. Looking back on my life, it’s clear that at times I’ve avoided learning out of fear. This will no longer be the case.

My Networked Life. This is the trailer to a short documentary series that I’ll be featured in. It was a blast to shoot (thanks Ben!), and I’m grateful to be a part of such a cool project. My “episode” will air August 29.

You can find out more about Cisco’s series here.

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A tour of the car I’ve been living from for the last 3 months. MTV Cribs ain’t got nothing on me.

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Thank You

I owe big thank yous to a lot of people I have encountered over the last six weeks. I’m mostly writing this post as a sincere thank you to those people, however, I’ve also been asked many times to share whom I’ve been meeting since moving north. So, for those of you that are curious, here’s a list (que negativity for name dropping).

Thank you,

  • Sahil Lavingia for sharing your story and advising me on fundraising.
  • Evan Doll for your thoughts on co-founder relationships and patiently fielding my Apple related questions.
  • Brian Wong for punching me in the face with reality.
  • Justin Kan for the advice on why I should start small and test quick.
  • Dave McClure for sharing how an investor may view my current living situation.
  • Ev Williams for scheduling 16 minutes with me, although jury duty really screwed us here.
  • Daniel Brusilovsky for breakfast and all the encouragement and kind words.
  • Paul Braigel for not getting pissed about the number of times I emailed you. But seriously, it was awesome to get the perspective of someone who actively invests in early stage startups.
  • Brenden Mulligan for the insight into 500 Startups and YC, great feedback about my product, and genuinely being a helpful person.
  • Derek Andersen for everything - inviting me out of the rain, the meal, the Black Card, writing about my story, the support during Startup Grind. You have been the most helpful person I have met. Thank you.
  • Matt Matteson for being one of the nicest people I’ve met here, and for the introduction to Kim.
  • Shane Mac for your product insight.
  • Ryan Mickle for discussing your YC and fundraising experience, your hiring strategy, and your overall perspective from an early stage startup.
  • Josh Avant for being a friend, the couch to crash on, and investing a week to hack together.
  • Kim Vogt for spending a day working together and introducing me to the Eventbrite team.
  • DJ Chung for being the person I know is willing to listen and support me in my struggles.
  • Nick Frost for the startup enthusiasm, introductions, and simply being a friendly face I consistently run into.
  • Raphael Schaad for letting me pick your brain on iOS.
  • Kirill Zubovsky for all the introductions and product feedback.
  • Eoin McMillian for giving me the scoop on Startup House and for the introductions.
  • Sara Huth for the tour of Square HQ and giving me your input from the VC side.
  • Mike Chen for the pass to Startupism.
  • Bjoern Zinssmeister for the friendship, advice and beer.
  • Ven Jandhyala for walking me through icon design and mind sharing on product ideas.
  • Rus Khakimov for the crazy late ride to the airport.
  • Tim Johnsen for talking iOS and product brainstorming.
  • Kelly Dessoye for genuinely caring about my well-being.
  • Lin Xu for the brainstorming session and kicking it in the Dojo.
  • Michael Baker for the thorough input on sleep and waking habits.
  • Eugene Chuvyrov for dinner and the list of alarm ideas.
  • Reilly Brennan for talking YC and the introduction to Ed.
  • Ming Fu for the Greek food and sharing startup plans.
  • Espen Siversten for the introduction to Tech Shop and thoughts on creating physical products.
  • Inc. Magazine for the groceries :)

I’m so incredibly grateful for all of the help and support. This community of people and the mindset toward helping one another is what makes San Francisco a fantastic place to be. If you’re reading this, and I can be of any help, please don’t hesitate to ask.

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[EDIT] I’m still living from my car. It seems this post was interpreted by some as a farewell. My mistake for being unclear.

Why People Expect Good UX

In addition to documenting my story, from time to time I’m going to be sharing my thoughts on design and startups. I’d like to provide more value than just an entertaining story of some dude living from his car.

—

I recently came across the question “Why do people expect good UX nowadays?” on Quora. Not the best question in the world, but it did get me thinking. My response was as follows:

The same reason you expect food to taste good at a restaurant, your flight to be on time, and the movie you watch to be entertaining.

Pardon the slightly cheeky answer, but while others went rambling on with theoretical and abstract responses, I think my one sentence most accurately answers the question.

People expect a quality user experience because, at the end of the day, that’s all you are able to offer – an experience with your product. Whether your product is software, food or a movie, if the experience sucks, there is no reason for people to use it. In the case of software, consumers couldn’t care less about the technology you’re building, how much money you’ve raised or anything else that happens below the surface of your company. They just want your product to flawlessly work.

A perfect example of a company that understands UX is Dropbox. I have a single Dropbox folder on my desktop that I drag files into. When I’m using any other computer, I can open my Dropbox and all my files are there. Magic. The experience is seamless and only takes seconds. I never think about the extremely complicated technology that was built to allow this synchronization between devices. All that matters is my experience.

Furthermore, the original Quora question was phrased as if the expectation of quality UX is a new trend. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always expected the experience with a product I use to be good. I think that expectation is timeless.

Maybe your perspective is different. Feel free to share your thoughts on Hacker News or comment below. And I’ll give you a high five if you follow me on Twitter.

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