How To Split An Atom

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The one thing that you have to understand if you are planning to organize an event is that things will go wrong; presenters will cancel, panels will fall apart, venues will change. You have to understand how to roll with the punches, and you have to have GUTs. Thursday marked the second GUT Conference and it was spectacular, despite all of these setbacks.

I live blogged the event from Twitter, at least the portions of it that I was not running and this is just a tiny fragment of some of the fun we had.

Dan Rua

Dan Rua of Inflexion Ventures, a Florida based Venture Capital firm spoke about starting a fundable company. His entire presentation was fantastic, here are a few of the more telling quotations –

On commitment

Being in a startup means being able to do whatever it takes…

On resolve

Put one foot in front of the other, building a company is not explosive. [Starting a company] is doing one thing after the next.

You have to have the “X-Factor”, management with passion and unique knowledge.

On the pitch

The first 5 minutes of the pitch is critical.

On markets

Create markets don’t size them.

Peter Wright

Next came an impromptu presentation from Peter Wright, Vice President of Software Development at PayPerPost. He spoke on his career, developing a business and some of the trials that PayPerPost has run into.

On his early employment.

I lead the development team at Enron… that was fun.

On the various iterations of the PayPerPost software platform.

We’re just over one year old. We started as a PHP app and then it was rewritten in Ruby on Rail…we’re still recovering.

On explosive growth.

Currently the application is running on 23 servers. In the past year we’ve served over 15 Million pages, our data server couldn’t handle it. That was fun.

On criticisms.

Mike Arrington…who hates us. Jason Calacanis…who hates us… Robert Scoble…who also hates us. We love them…

Choosing The Right Platform

After some fanfare, we then began a panel on development platforms, and the decisions that go into choosing them. The panel consisted of Skyler Slade, lead programmer for Grooveshark; Peter Wright, VP of software development for PayPerPost and Qian Wang, CEO of QFX software.

What’s the balance between speed and quality?

Peter: It’s the web, it’s a mutable platform. You produce, get feedback and then fix the problems.

Qian: As soon as you have something that is useful to people…release…If they find it useful, they’re going to use it.

Skyler: If you have good developers, and their quick solution is a -good- solution then you can continue on.

Qian: BETA shouldn’t mean it sucks, otherwise…you should just put ‘SUCKS’

How do you deal with feedback?

Peter Wright: How do you handle feedback, you be honest. Complete honesty, complete openness.

Skyler Slade: It’s good to release early and release often if each little part has been tested and retested.

Qian: Don’t be mad at users who complain, it’s alright to apologize even when you know you’re right

How do you balance between cutting out the fat and trying new ideas?

Peter: What are you trying to do as a business, where are you trying to go? Does having a new lightbox do anything for the business?

Qian: There is such a thing as ‘over thinking’ some things. If it looks like it’s not going to work out, know when to give up.

Peter: Get an active community who is willing to tell you their problems.

Web 2.0 Roundup

I would like to thank everyone who attended the Conference. As always, here are some projects that were highlighted during this event. If you are in the area and would like to speak, be sure to contact me.

PayerPerPost
BloggersChoiceAwards
Chime.tv
Blulite
Qfxsoftware

[Be sure to sign up for the RSS feed before you leave. If you have your own event to promote, or any project / startup please contact me.]