Today the focus is just declaring this new resolution, and from tomorrow onward the challenge will be to follow through with it. I will succeed!

I had a lot of fun with last year’s resolution, but didn’t quite cross the finish line. It turns out that writing 10 minutes worth of comedy that people will actually laugh at is REALLY hard. Nonetheless, I met some awesome folks, and the guy who runs the SFCC is a great guy. I’d highly recommend the program to anyone who has public speaking problems, wants to learn how to add comedy to their daily routine or is just looking for a new hobby. Definitely a good crew to be around.

This year I’m focusing much more on myself, and asking myself to commit to a healthier future. I am… giving up fast food!

I’m not giving up every fast food restaurant out there. I’ll still eat at Bojangles or Chik-fil-a, but other than that, I’m done. It’s been pretty hard so far, but I’m definitely getting there. I think it could be a real game changer.

My second resolution, which is much smaller in nature but equally worth noting, is shaving at least every other day. I want to be consciously coming into each day, and I think that shaving is, for me, a way of not letting the day catch me by surprise.

I feel good about my resolutions this year, but I’ll definitely update all as the year progresses!

The phase we’ve just entered with Amelia Rose is mobility. Explore the world through a sense of mobility which enables independence and a sense of adventure. And so enters the age old adage that one should learn to crawl before they attempt to walk.

It turns out that that adage is misleading.

You see, it’s entirely possible to walk before you crawl. Amelia Rose is doing her darndest to do just that. Given enough help, she’ll definitely get there. So why all of the emphasis on learning to crawl first?

The danger isn’t that she learns to walk. It’s that she never learns to catch herself when she falls.

So my job is to catch her when she needs a net, but to let her fall when there’s a lesson to be learned. And somewhere in between she might learn to crawl, but I know she’ll find her way onto her feet and into the next adventure.

Oh baby, the places we’ll go!

Hunch was in the position of being “too hot”. I think that OpenTok is still in a position of being… not “too cold”, but I’d revise it to actually be “not quite cooked yet”. In lean startup methodology, I think that we’re still a “nice to have” as opposed to a “must have”.

I’ve spoken a lot with my fellow PM Andrew about what it’s going to take to make the OpenTok platform cross over to that sweet spot where folks understand that not only do they need live video to be a part of their applications, but that they need live video as powered by TokBox.

It’s a tough problem to solve when you’re creating a market. The real value of face to face communication can only be experienced, it can’t be sold. And that makes it difficult to try to hand wave one’s way to a deal or partner launch. At the more abstract level, you need to convince someone that something they never knew they were missing is actually a critical component of the product that they live and breathe every day. That’s pushing water up a hill if ever there was an example.

All of that said, we’ve done a few things that have really started to help move the needle for us. Better demoes, live demoes and improving quality of partners, and with it testimonials, have all helped with the “you’ve got to see it to believe it” problem that we were having. Those were big steps forward, but I don’t think that they are the real game changers.

The biggest game changer, in my opinion, is what we didn’t do.

Not doing has two components – what you actively chose not to do, and what came to you outside of your control.

We chose not to wait
I can definitely say that I disagreed with the TokShow plug-n-play application. It felt too close to what some of our favorite partners were doing. I don’t actually believe in grey areas, and a lot of the defense around the app used grey area arguments. I’m of the opinion that you make a decision consciously, and that you confront the known consequences of that decision.

Why was the decision right, and I was wrong? Because the opportunity wasn’t a need; it was a flash in the pan. This is where I truly realized that we weren’t a “must-have” platform for anyone yet. But the transition across that proverbial chasm required that when there were flashes in the pan, we caught them.

Is it possible to grow organically, and really let the market come to you? Yes. Disqus did it. But that just wasn’t in the cards for us, and so we didn’t wait.

Our competition arrived
I don’t know how many people thought that video chat was relevant before July of this year.

Yeah some phones had it, but not really.

Yeah Skype had it, but that didn’t live in the browser nor did it integrate into other applications.

And then Google Hangouts landed, and the Facebook+Skype integration followed. And then it got interesting.

Our competition has arrived.

We chose not to be afraid of specialization
I think that I was under the impression that a platform had to solve all problems to all people. It worried me that at times we were making trade offs and decisions that applied to certain verticals, and helped certain partners.

I now realize that platforms never start as all thing to all people. That’s way too difficult a problem for day one. Instead the early adopters of a platform help to shape and define the path from from where we are to where we are going.

It’s still our job to be the conductor, but every now and then there’s a soloist who needs the opportunity to shine for all of us to get to the next level.

New, unforeseen use cases emerged and we did not ignore them
We spent almost nine months on the archiving infrastructure. We did a lot of things wrong (and that’s coming in a new post). The one thing we did right was listen.

During our beta program a new use case emerged; we rapidly iterated and got the stand-alone recorder and player to our developers.

I don’t know that if we had allowed ourselves to be (a) consumed by a desire to singularly focus and (b) driven by a need to launch we would have made the same decision.

Instead we chose not to ignore the blinking light off to the side, and it has brought the archiving API into many more applications as a result.

I haven’t read the remainder of Chris Dixon’s blog series about the journey that Hunch has taken in getting acquired by eBay, but I wonder if NOT doing played as integral a role for Hunch as it has for TokBox.

I do know though that when we look back at what got us to the “Goldilocks point”, not doing will have been as important as anything we did on purpose.

First some background:

I believe that the reason that TokBox is successful right now is because we’ve built the right culture. Hiring in the Valley is a bitch, and if you aren’t careful, then you’ll hire anyone out of desperation. We’ve made that mistake before, and I’m sure we’ll do it again, but lately we haven’t.

What is the crux of our culture? I think TokBox as a company is focused around building an excellent product together. There is team buy-in to our vision, strategy and execution. Buy-in doesn’t mean consensus mind you, but at the very least we force ourselves to come into a room and hear each other out before anything is committed to paper.

At some points that community approach is challenged. People have a bad day or they fundamentally disagree with how something is being presented. It’s these days that challenge the culture hardest, and we recently had one of those days.

It happened; we acted on it quickly, and I think that at the very least the problem has been surfaced. There is a clear chink in the armor, and that’s not going anywhere. At the end of the day, we’re all people, and the dynamics of that come into play. But in immediately responding to the situation, and vocally championing what’s right instead of what’s easy I think we took a big, big, big step in showing that our culture is sustainable.

Good job us, and now on to the next challenge.

I finally figured out how to do it right from a food perspective. It’s very important to eat the right kind of meals. At Iftar I’ve tried to eat foods that are easy to digest. Nothing processed. Barely ate out at restaurants where there would be lots of sauce, and high sodium in the food.

I then had a stated goal of drinking 8 cups of water in that tiny bit of time between sunset and sunrise. The hours to eat are really starting to reduce. The days when I did this, the next day was easy. On the days that I didn’t…

For sahoor, I was a hipster to the end. Yogurt every day. Fruit everyday. Bran cereal of some sort. Turkey and cheese sandwich. It was super filling, but still super light.

Making sure that you do the food right is a huge element of how you experience the month. It’s not supposed to be painful, but contemplative. At least I’ve always said so. And this month was a good one for me.

But that will be good for another post

It’s tough to be on the more serious end because you end up getting extremely frustrated by the folks who aren’t taking it as seriously as you are. The right way to approach this frustration though is the difference between whether you enjoy the season and your teammates or whether you let the frustration get in the way of your success.

When I coached the JV Girl’s Soccer team at Cary Academy, I took the approach of anger. When the girls didn’t take things seriously I got angry, and they ran sprints. Or, I took away a privilege. At the half-way point of the season, I was really burnt out. I realized that the problem wasn’t the hours, girls or trying to mix a 5-day a week gig with school. It was my attitude. We had an amazing second half of the season, and I saw a LOT of growth in the girls and the team. The pride they took in their matches once they felt like it was a team they wanted to be a part of was really astounding to see, and to be a part of.

This came up again today in my mind because the team that I play for now has had the classic  mix of serious folks being committed and showing up, and the not serious folks just coming along for the ride. Today we got a bit of a flame e-mail from a player, and it surprised me. Don’t yell in email; it never works. Worse, you’re not going to inspire the uninspired digitally.

Here’s how I would handle that situation. Get to the point where we have a solid 7 – 9 players at practice every week. Then, first game of the season, only play those 9 guys for the first 20 minutes of the game. Make people earn their starting role. The team will suffer as a result, but it proves the point. On top of that, it actually rewards the folks who come to practice in the sense that they’ve earned something the others haven’t.

Create pride in the end result. Let others have a sense of ownership. And then, you don’t have to flame anyone because the outcome takes care of itself.

We were the youngest ones there by about 6 – 7 months, but it was still lots of fun. We did a few songs, including the “Itsy-bitsy spider”, and then got to hear about Spot’s first day at school. At that point all the 7+ month olds decided to just play, and so they brought out the toys, and they had at it. Amelia Rose and I ran upstairs, and kept going with story time. We read seven more books, and somewhere between four and five, she actually fell asleep. So it goes

After the seventh book, Micky showed up, and we headed to the De Young museum. There’s a Picasso exhibit, and it’s quite an amazing collection of work. They won’t allow strollers in the exhibit hall, and so I had to carry Amelia around. It made me the center of attention as everyone came up to look at her. She loved the attention for about one and half rooms, and then fell asleep. The Picasso exhibit was amazing for the fact that each room seemed to show a different decade of Picasso’s life, which if you know Picasso loosely translates to the various periods of artistic style through which he moved. The exhibit really emphasized to me that Picasso spent a lot of time understanding a piece before creating it, and that Picasso spent a lot of time re-imaging the same theme over and over again.

It was a really amazing experience, and one I think folks should definitely get to if they can. I would not however suggest carrying around an 11 pound baby for an hour while there

Amelia Rose was just amazing, and it was fun to have daddy/daughter time together. The first of many to come.

• Wendy & Raif visited

  We had a whole slew of visitors come through the first half of the month. Our far, far away family descended to meet baby Amelia. Unfortunately for Wendy (and Geoff) she had to be re-admitted to the hospital due to an infection. She had a bright red inflammation underneath her oemphalocele, and it took a 10-day course to knock it out. Once she was home though, it was all magic! 

  My dad being in town was nice except he smokes too much. It caused a lot of problems in that Micky kept getting upset, and I think he realized it and got upset as well. We also put him up in a bed & breakfast in the Castro district of San Francisco which I think he enjoyed (even though he got relocated to the “garden suite”). I’d highly recommend the Parker Guest House to anyone who has folks in town.

• Soccer/Fitness

  Still too fat and slow. I have however started to really lose weight. A trio of us at work are making it to the gym 3 times a week, and I’m loving it. Hop out for 1 hour as if we were going to coffee, and get in some exercise. Rotating muscle groups, but now I need to put some more time into aerobic. I’ve started that this week 

  My goal is to reach 180 pounds by my one year wedding anniversary. I’m at 195 lbs right now. I’m feeling pretty good about my chances.

• Work

  I think all in all, this may be where things are best right now. 

  I got to present at this month’s board meeting, and that went really well. I’m sure for most folks that’s a non-event, but I wonder if folks who have entrepreneurial  aspirations if your first board meeting is like your first time with a girl? It was about as exciting :-p

  Product team is buzzing with too much to do, and not enough time to do it. Everyone keeps saying that’s a good thing, but I’m pretty convinced that that’s just a convenient story to tell oneself to make it all make sense. I think we’ve got an awesome few months ahead of us at the ‘Box.

• Vacation

  Which leaves me with what I’m doing right now. We’re on vacation at an amazing house in Tamales Bay. We’re on the water, and we’ve spent the last few days grilling out, hanging out with Amelia and just re-establishing our family. It’s been awesome! Photos to come soon.