Normally I wouldn’t write about it, but I have to tell you about the Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha. I first heard about it from David Pennock on his “Oddhead” blog. What’s incredible about the theme is a) it’s free and b) it’s incredibly customizable.

The Suffusion theme supports a wide variety of layouts, with sidebars, various headers and footers, and widgets everywhere. And then those widgets can be customized. In fact, it looks like every single element of every feature of WordPress can be customized. It’s even got a variety of standard icons built in (for Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.) and supports key products like Feedburner, Google Analytics, etc.

So if you’re looking for a new theme for your blog, check out Suffusion.

(Note that enough though I got the Nexus One, the experience will be very similar for anyone switching to a modern Android phone, such as a Droid or any of the cool new HTC phones that have come out recently.)

The wicked awesome

Power widget / battery management - When I first saw the power widget on my phone’s home screen, I honestly didn’t know what it did. There were five icons, which seemed to toggle on/off. But this widget is fantastic, and allows you to quickly turn battery hogs (such as GPS, WiFi, push notifications, etc) on and off. Compared to digging in a variety of various iPhone menus in the “Settings” app, I can quickly change how much power my phone is using.

And it might be my usage patterns, but I get a LOT more use out of my Nexus One battery than I got out of my iPhone. It was getting to the point where my iPhone would barely last until after lunch, where my Nexus One can easily last all day and my commute home. Not only that, but when my Nexus One battery degrades, I can replace it myself!

Google Maps - This app is just amazing. It’s even got StreetView, and I personally think that the StreetView interface on the phone is superior to the interface on the desktop. I find it hard to describe exactly how fantastic this app is, and how useful it can be. Every time I go somewhere I haven’t been before I use this app.

Flexibility - I love the flexibility of the Android platform. Just the concept of adding widgets to your homescreens is awesome. I’ve been traveling quite a bit recently, and I have little 1×1 widgets on my homescreens that constantly update with the latest exchange rates. There are built in widgets to control music, to search (big surprise there), see news headlines, twitter, etc. Fundamentally there is so much more flexibility in what you can do with an Android phone, and I love it.

Multiple apps - The biggest feature I love is that multiple apps can be running at the same time. This didn’t seem to matter that much when I first switched from the iPhone, but I’ve slowly come to realize how brilliant this is for users. I can click on a link in my Twitter client (I use Seesmic; it’s awesome), open it in a browser, get a notification that I’ve got a new e-mail and open the Gmail client, and then switch back and forth with little or no wait since all the apps are running at the same time. It just makes the experience of using the phone so much faster, particularly for “power” users.

The really good

Unlocked - The Nexus One doesn’t come locked to a carrier. While you may or may not have a contract with that carrier which could be expensive to break, the phone itself is unlocked. I really like that.

Form factor & display - The display is amazing, and really vivid. It’s got an 800 x 400 pixel display, which is over twice the iPhone (which has a 480 x 320 pixel display). It feels great in your hand, and it amazingly thin. While I don’t see the need for a trackball, it’s there and has occasionally been useful to select/edit within a paragraph of small text. It’s just a really solid phone.

Speed - The Nexus One is fast. I switched from an iPhone 3G, and the 3GS is probably a better comparison, but I love the speed of my new phone.

Google integration - I’ve been a Google user since it was still hosted on the Stanford servers. I’ve been a Gmail user since 2004, and have since switched to Google Calendar and Google Contacts. If you use *any* of these products, the Nexus One is amazing. The apps just simply work, and work the way you want them to. Any changes sync back immediately, and you can be much more productive. (Certainly much more productive than I was with my iPhone.)

The needs improvement

The Nexus One and Android isn’t exactly a “Jesus” phone… there are some things I wish it did better.

App Market - Searching and purchasing in the App Market is great. Browsing, however, isn’t. I personally feel that browsing for new apps is something best done on the desktop, and that’s not possible with the App Market as it stands. Hopefully it’ll be something that will change someday.

Sync music - So far I’ve been using DoubleTwist, and certainly recommend it. (And highly recommend getting the DoubleTwist app for your Android phone- it eliminates some annoying steps you would otherwise have to do manually when you plug your phone into your computer.) But it’s not perfect and not quite as slick as iTunes is for the iPhone. That said, I think there’s a lot more I can learn and get configured within DoubleTwist, so I don’t want to be too harsh.

Sound/Vibrate - When I first drafted this list, I wanted to point out that there’s no “silent” switch like there is on the iPhone. However, I’ve since learned about the “Ringer Toggle Widget” which is now on my homescreen. It lets you quickly toggle between normal ringer, silent ringer, and vibrate modes. And even though it’s on the home screen, with multiple apps it means you don’t have to quit out of an app to get to it. With all that said, I do like having a physical switch so I can reach into my pocket in a meeting to make sure the ringer is off!

Summary

I love my Nexus One, and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new smartphone.

But more broadly, I’m now a convert to the Android platform. As the iPhone becomes more of a walled garden, I’m really loving the openness and flexibility of the Android platform. Where there are certainly some user experience things I find a little annoying, overall I love the sense that I can make my phone do what I want it to do, and not what Apple thinks I should do with it. Now clearly I’m biased, not least because I work with a team of engineers who also do Android development and work with the community of Android developers. But the trend toward openness and flexibility is something I really look forward to experiencing in the coming years.

PS

For an example of a video I created/uploaded to YouTube directly from my Nexus One, see below. (It’s MGMT in concert in London this last week… on a side note their next album “Congratulations” should be awesome!)

(Not too bad considering how close I was to the speakers.)

The week of 25-29 January 2010 is going to be absolutely awesome in Cambridge. There are three great events that you need to attend.

Of these, it’s most important that you come to the Cambridge Tech Meetup. We’ll be kicking the year off with a bang and six “wicked awesome” technology demos, from people/companies based in Cambridge.

Tuesday – January 26th – Enterprise Tuesday

Time: 6:30-7:30pm lecture (registration from 6pm, networking afterward)
Location: Lecture Theatre 0, Engineering Department, Trumpington Street
Speakers: Neil Davidson, Co-Founder and joint CEO, Red Gate Software; Steve Barlow, Co-Founder, Alphamosaic; Alex Mehta, Communications Director, Judicium

Enterprise Tuesday is a great event, and the topic for next week is “Building a Dream Team.” I recommend this specifically because I think incredibly highly of Neil Davidson, who co-founded Red Gate software and continues to serve as co-CEO. (In addition to founding the Business of Software conference, serving as Chairman of the Cambridge Network, and starting the Springboard programme at Red Gate.)

Link: http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

*** Wednesday – January 27th – Cambridge Tech Meetup ***

Time: 6:30pm doors for 7pm start of demos (additional Q&A and discussion afterward)
Location: Lecture Theatre 1, Judge Business School, Trumpington Street

If you have to pick one event, come to the Cambridge Tech Meetup! (Yes, I started it with the help of many, many others.)

Six products will have has seven minutes to demo their technology/product; all of them developed in Cambridge! Everything from new display technology to cool video search technology to audio analysis and 3d model building via webcam will be demo’ed.

Demo companies/technologies are:

• Light Blue Optics – http://lightblueoptics.com
• Taptu – http://taptu.com/
• Cambridge IPTV – http://www.cambridge-iptv.com/
• AudioAnalytic – http://audioanalytic.com/
• ProFORMA – http://mi.eng.cam.ac.uk/~qp202/my_papers/BMVC09/
• Prismastar – http://www.prismastar.com/

Link for info and to RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Cambridge-Tech-Meetup/calendar/12221063/

(The sharp-eyed among you will notice that this takes place shortly after the big Apple announcement on the 27th. I’ll be sure to have the screen tuned to a live-blog or tweet-stream until the demo’s kick off.)

Thursday – January 28th – Cambridge Business Lecture: Dan Pink

Time: 6pm start (networking afterward)
Location: Robinson College, Grange Road
Speaker: Dan Pink, best-selling author, writer, speaker

This event is a Cambridge Business Lecture, hosted by the Cambridge Network. Dan Pink is a great author/writer, and I think it’s just fantastic he’ll be speaking in Cambridge. If you’re in town, go.

Link: http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/events/article/default.aspx?objid=65628

Flook

Flook is the least-known of these three apps, but potentially the most interesting. Users take photos (which are automatically geo-tagged) and then add captions and information about the photo. What’s cool is that if you go somewhere new, you can quickly pull up the interesting places nearest to you. That might be a pub, a cool shop, or virtually anything else. And of course there’s a comments section around each card, too.

For me, the current downfall of Flook is that it’s iPhone-only, and I’ve recently moved to an Android phone. It’s also difficult to find and follow people you know, unless they’re in the same area and you see their cards normally.

Fundamentally, Flook is a hugely rich source of interesting information, with a *fantastic* user interface. I highly recommend that you download it for your iPhone and try it out. (Disclosure: I know the founders/investors of Flook, and think highly of them.)

PS- They’re currently running a competition to win a MacBook Air by just making cool Flook cards… check it out by clicking here.

Gowalla

Gowalla competes directly with Foursquare, and I have to definitely give the edge to Gowalla. It’s a beautifully made application, and what I love about it is the metaphor that Gowalla uses: a passport. Users are encouraged to get “stamps” in their “passport” for visiting new places. You earn and collect cool items from commissioning/founding new places, and can drop them off and pick up other cool items anywhere you visit. It’s definitely helped me think about new and interesting pubs, restaurants, etc. near me. (And of course see where your friends are checking in, too.)

While Gowalla has an iPhone app, their Android interface is through a web application. (http://m.gowalla.com) It has 80% of the functionality; the only major thing it’s missing is the ability to see and drop off your “items”.

[UPDATE]: I forgot this in my original post, but Gowalla lets you add locations anywhere in the world, and not just in particular cities like Foursquare. For example, I was at a conference at a huge convention center in southwest Ireland recently and added that to Gowalla, no problem. (Unlike Foursquare.) Foursquare may be rolling out to new cities all the time, but Gowalla can be used anywhere in the world right now.

Foursquare

Foursquare is bigger (in number of users) than Gowalla and has top-flight investors (Union Square Ventures), but I just don’t care for it. Its design is good, but not beautiful like Gowalla’s. But the biggest thing is the metaphor of points & mayorships that Foursquare uses. Each week a user’s points gets reset, and you have to keep checking into places to get and keep your “mayorship.”

To me, the metaphor of “mayorship” is a recipe for stagnation. It encourages users to go back to the same places over and over, and the mayorship will likely only rotate amongst a small number of regulars. For me, I quickly became the mayor of places where few other people checked in, and was out of the running for mayor-ships where I went regularly but where others checked in far more frequently. In both cases, my incentives were to stop using it.

Now, Foursquare does have a native application for both iPhone and Android, and it has excellent advisors. The founders previously started Dodgeball, a similar application which was bought by Google (where it stagnated) a couple years ago. It will need some better execution to get over its current problems. While Foursquare might be popular now with early adopters, I think it will have serious problems if/when it goes mainstream.

Summary

So I’m a Flook user when I have my iPhone handy, and I’m definitely a Gowalla user. Gowalla is great to track cool places I’ve been and where my friends go, and Flook is great to find interesting stuff that I might otherwise miss. Definitely give both a try.

If you haven’t ever heard of Failblog, it’s simply hilarious. Every day there are a ton of photos and videos that can only be described as “FAIL.”

But Thursday there was a post called “Bus Driver Fail“. What’s great about this is that the video was taken at my local bus stop! It’s literally just a couple hundred meters from home.

Just check out the video here:

[If you can't see the video, just click here.]

Note 2 – A Wikipedia entry for a 500-person town

When I was very young, I grew up in the rural Minnesota town of Danube, Minnesota. The other day I just happened to look it up on Wikipedia, and found the entry hilarious. Clearly some local has turned it into a bit of a brochure for small-town America. Examples include:

Danube Pride

While the people of Danube may appear to be normal small-town dwellers, they in fact have a very rare and highly regarded sense of pride for their quaint city in Minnesota. Many residents have been noted as saying proudly, “Danube is the heart of God’s Country.” or a blunt reply, “This is Danube, of course it’s awesome.” This is most evident in the people who were born and raised in or near Danube. This sense of pride typically continues into adulthood and in many cases it continues even after they have moved away from their hometown.

and

Activities

The youth of Danube enjoy some unique activities that help to keep Danube special. The youth ride bicycles as their way of getting around, and typically have ridden their bikes through the streets and sidewalks of Danube enough to accumulate 5,000 miles (unofficially). Skinned knees are an epidemic with these youth. [...]
In their teenage years, residents will typically discover that the Danube water tower can be climbed (much to the chagrin of the city maintenance workers and the lone police officer) for a great view of the city and the surrounding area. [...]
Adult activities include “going up town” for lunch at the cafe, catching up with the gossip at “The 1-Stop”, “going up town” to get the mail, or attending the high school’s various sporting events. Nightlife is monopolized by Miller’s on Main – the residents’ only choice for a place to sing some karaoke.

On a side note, my mother used to own the cafe mentioned above…

As a former resident of Danube, I suppose I have to have that “Danube Pride” described above. And to be fair, I do have fond memories of the town, though generally through visits with family friends after we moved away…

Note 3 – Google Waving

If you haven’t heard of Google Wave, it’s a new tool for collaborating that Google announced earlier this year. I recently got an invite and have been playing around with it. (If you’d like an invite yourself, just let me know.)

But here’s a video of Google Wave, um… “simulating” the movie Pulp Fiction. It’s pretty funny. Check it out here: (Not safe for work)

(See an earlier post on SpaceX and Falcon 9 here.)

For background, Falcon 9 can lift just over 10,000kg to Low Earth Orbit. The future Falcon 9 Heavy (which is the standard Falcon 9 with two additional Falcon 9 1st stages bolted on for a total of 27 engines at the start) will be able to lift 29,610kg to Low Earth Orbit!

To put that in relative terms, here is what other rockets/systems can lift to LEO:

• Apollo: 118,000kg
• Space Shuttle: 24,400kg
• Delta IV Heavy: 22,950kg

In other words, this small, entrepreneurial rocket company that was founded less than ten years ago is building some of the biggest rockets around.

But enough of that… let’s get to the pictures! (Which are all from the SpaceX updates page here.)

The nine engines of the Falcon 9 first stage:

The assembled Falcon 9 first stage engines & thrust assembly (at 17,000lbs this is over half the weight of the unfueled rocket):

The first stage engines getting ready for shipping:

The Dragon capsule, which sits at the top of the rocket for Space Station resupply missions:

The full rocket, on the launch platform at Cape Canaveral:

Traffic

According to Google Analytics, that post alone received over 2600 pageviews. Over 1200 of those came from Hacker News alone. Though the link was tweeted and re-tweeted all over (just check out the comments section to see the list), I got less than 200 page views from Twitter. It also got bookmarked 45 times on Delicious.

I’m honestly just really happy that people found it interesting! I post the stats above because I think it’s useful to have some data points about where traffic does & can come from.

Strategic Level vs. Tactical Level

In hindsight, I didn’t distinguish as much as I could have between the strategic choices in starting a new seed accelerator program and the tactical choices. This is where perhaps some of the comments/criticism/mis-understanding came from.

The Strategic choice has to do with the most basic analysis of what resources you have available, and how you can structure the program to take advantage of them. Your goal should be a program that is strong enough to be essentially independent of location; it should instead be dependent on the people and resources (connections to appropriate investors, customers, advisors) available. Startups working in your defined niche should want to come to your program above all others, no matter where it’s located.

Now while I’m not saying that a pure Y Combinator clone in Wyoming will never work, just that it will never be competitive with the real Y Combinator unless the resources provided to entrepreneurs are better than they could get through Y Combinator. Now the goal may not be financial success, but building an ecosystem. But even if that’s the goal, local startups have an incentive to go where they have the greatest chance of success. If that’s not your program, then you’ll only be helping a lesser quality company.

The Tactical choices are pretty much everything else. Once a seed accelerator founders have identified a focus where they have a true competitive advantage, then they can decide elements such as program length, investment and equity size, office space, etc. It’s important to recognize these as tactical decisions, versus the strategic focus decisions.

Thanks to everyone that read, linked to and commented on my paper and post. I really appreciate it!

(With apologies to Chuck Palahniuk…)

• The first rule of copying Y Combinator is: Do Not copy Y Combinator.
• The second rule of copying Y Combinator is: DO NOT COPY Y COMBINATOR.

The key to copying Y Combinator is to figure out how you can be just as good, but in a different way, than Y Combinator.

Background

This last year I’ve been an MBA student at Cambridge University. In order to complete the degree we had to do a substantial piece of research, and I chose to do it on the rise of Y Combinator and similar “seed accelerator” programs. My hypothesis was that a lot of people/organizations are starting seed accelerators without really examining the full scope of innovations they need to think about in order to achieve their goals.

I wanted to take the opportunity to look into why entrepreneurs choose to go into a seed accelerator, why individuals choose to start a seed accelerator, and then propose a framework for designing new programs.

Key results are described in this post, and the full paper is embedded via Scribd (a Y Combinator company) below.

Data

The very first step in examining these programs is to get data; it’s almost all posted somewhere, but isn’t consolidated. Between the data that each program publishes on their website, press on the various programme Demo Days, and Crunchbase, I built a list of virtually every startup funded by every seed accelerator.

Click this link to see the spreadsheet on Google Docs.

The only accelerator where this data isn’t as comprehensive is for Y Combinator; I’ve put in placeholders where known (ie, 8 companies in cohort X but only 5 have launched). That said, it should only be missing a handful of companies at most. And please note that nearly all exit values are purely speculation, though educated speculation based on exits of similar companies.

I also surveyed the founders of companies that have either been funded by accelerators or are looking to be funded by accelerators (Y Combinator and others). Specifically, I wanted to find out what they cared about when choosing a seed accelerator. The results are as follows:

• Connections to future capital: 8.51
• Brand/Alumni connections: 7.83
• Business support: 7.42
• Product support: 7.13
• Pre-money valuation: 5.25
• Level of funding: 4.14

These numbers did vary somewhat between different programs and non-funded companies. (For example, the average Y Combinator founder valued Brand/Alumni connections much higher than the average respondent.) But the trends show that entrepreneurs value the elements of programs that give them long-term chances for success: connections to investors, other connections, and product/business support.

Financial Results

Since seed accelerators are still in their early days, it’s too early to make a definitive verdict on their success. But the early data is promising.

Y Combinator and TechStars are two of the oldest seed accelerators, and are the only two to have had substantial exits. The TechStars exits have likely already generated a profit, and there are several companies that may still exit at some point in the future. The Y Combinator company exits have likely already brought Y Combinator to break-even, even after having funded over 100 companies. More impressive is that there are a good number of companies in the portfolio that could reach substantial exits at some point in the future. (And potentially a handful that could reach the vaunted $1billion+ exit.)

Recommendations – How to Copy Y Combinator

The bulk of my paper goes through the elements that are involved in a seed accelerator program. But the fundamental decisions that can define the potential success of a program are simple.

Success derives from the program’s founders and focus; together they must create a distinctive and compelling reason for entrepreneurs to join them.

There will always be entrepreneurs looking for funding; what a seed accelerator should provide is the right match of resources for those entrepreneurs. If the resources that entrepreneurs get by participating aren’t compelling, the program simply won’t get the highest quality applicants, and thus will not achieve maximum success.

This is why there has been little true competition for Y Combinator thus far: they simply have truly compelling resources to offer through PG and the other Y Combinator founders, the YC alumni network, and the combined program network. Until another program can be more compelling than Y Combinator, they will attract the best startups. (See rules 1 & 2 at top about copying Y Combinator.)

The key when constructing a seed accelerator is to look critically (and honestly) about the resources a founder has available; the founders’ experience and the expertise available to the entrepreneurs. Find the focus point that is different from Y Combinator that makes it distinctive and compelling. For example, FbFund REV accelerates companies building applications on Facebook. The new Springboard program in Cambridge (UK) is focused on B2B software applications.

Maybe your expertise is in mobile technology, maybe it’s in medical devices or maybe its in enterprise software. The key is that the founders and the mentors they assemble for a program in that focus area are a distinctive and compelling reason for entrepreneurs to apply and attend. Once the founders and focus are decided, many other decisions fall into place. For example, the program length and funding level will need to be adjusted so that companies can reach a significant development milestone during the program. Just because Y Combinator is three months long doesn’t mean that your program can’t be 9 months long, provided that’s right for the companies involved.

The full paper has far more detail, the point to take away is that the founders and focus must align, and must align to create a programme where an entrepreneur would travel from around the world in order to participate. (Even if there was an accelerator in their own backyard.) The potential to do this in the field of web applications is diminishing quickly.

Final Thanks

I want to say a specific thank you to the program founders that agreed to be interviewed: Paul Graham, David Cohen and Reshma Sohoni. And a huge thank you to the people that commented on my blog posts and Hacker News posts over the summer and took the survey I described above; your feedback was invaluable!

The Documents

Copying Y Combinator

Appendix A – List of Seed Accelerators

Click here to view the list of seed accelerators. Only seed accelerator programs are listed; see main paper for details.

Appendix B – Example Seed Accelerator financial model

Appendix C – List of all companies founded by Seed Accelerators

OR

Click here to view the list via Google Docs.

But we need demos!

Requirements include:

• Technology-based product
• Connection to Cambridge; ideally founded or located in Cambridge
• Able to demo in 7 minutes or less
• You MUST show the product working
• Hardware-based products/services highly encouraged. Simply demo as much functionality as you have.

I’d like to have 5-6 demos for the night, each lasting 7 minutes. All in all, one hour celebrating brilliant Cambridge tech.

Info for the night:

DATE: Thursday, September 10th
TIME: 6:30pm meet & greet, 7pm Demo’s start
PLACE: Judge Business School, Trumpington Street, Cambridge
RSVP: Will be posted once demo’ers confirmed

For the companies looking to demo, you’ll have seven minutes in which to show off your product (hardware, software… doesn’t matter) in front of a group of people that want to help you succeed. Find early adopters, investors, promoters, collaborators and potential hires.

For everyone else, get a fantastic look into the technology that’s being designed and built in Cambridge, and the people behind it. Find out the new, interesting tech before anyone else.

Last time we saw demos from Broadersheet, Timetric and True Knowledge. Who’s next?

(Please feel free to comment here, e-mail me at jed.christiansen@gmail.com, or get in touch via twitter at http://twitter.com/jedc)

About YCombinator (YC)

What is it? A three-month long programme to help start startups. Founders (you) get ~$15-20k in “seed” cash so they can live without any other commitments for the three months, in return for ~6% equity in the business. (Thus, being accepted immediately values your business at ~$300k, not that this really matters.)

During those three months there are weekly dinners with the ~15-30 other companies accepted into the programme. YC specifically doesn’t offer office space, but these regular dinners and office hours with Paul Graham provide regular contact and guidance from other startups going through the same issues you are. These dinners also feature guests/speakers from across the startup/tech industry.

At the end of the three months is a Demo Day, which is attended by some of the top VC’s and angel investors in the US. (I’ve heard anecdotally that as YC has established its brand, Demo Days have become much better attended.) So in addition to helping get your startup and demo ready, YC puts you in touch with an incredibly ecosystem of VC’s and advisors to take you to the next stage.

My dissertation

Since Ycombinator became successful, there have been efforts around the world to try and copy the “secret sauce” which makes YC a success. These include:

• TechStars
• SeedCamp
• DreamIt Ventures
• Capital Factory
• LaunchBox
• OpenFund

But while each of these other programmes are broadly similar to YC, they’re actually fairly different. What I consider to be broadly similar is:

• For small teams of startup founders to work on their own ideas
• Defined term of programme
• Funding – for living expenses while on programme
• Education – intense period of product & business advice
• Contacts – help you make appropriate contacts to help you in the next stage
• Demo Day – opportunity to pitch to potential funding sources and advisors

My Goal

I am writing my dissertation in order to put a “framework” around the YC “special sauce.” If you’re thinking about setting up something like YC, what do you need to include and what do you need to avoid? How do your goals for the programme help or hurt its eventual chance for success? What will truly help entrepreneurs, and how do you make sure you do that in the programme?

Summary

So this is what I’m going to be spending a lot of time on this summer. I hope to release an early draft or two openly to get comments, and then release my final paper when it’s finished at the end of August. I hope that providing a way to think about YC will help other people as they set up similar programmes, hopefully world-wide!