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Reflecting on “Stuff”
As I make the move to the Bay Area, dealing with my “stuff” is a big thing. Going from a 4,000 square foot house to a 10′ by 12′ room in a friend’s apartment has been an adjustment both physically and mentally. But more interestingly, its lead me to reflect on all the stuff I have and what it really means to me. This Paul Graham essay on Stuff from 2007 also resonates with me.
The Story of My Stuff
In 2004 I purged everything I owned except for what would fit into the Land Rover I bought, and moved to downtown Seattle. That felt great, and being free of stuff also kept my mind free of clutter as I embarked on the beginning of my career. While I was making $9 as an hour, I had no money for buying anything except for the occasional professional clothing item or meal out with a friend. If I was spending money, it was on experiences.
By 2006 I was making good money, and dating the man who would become my husband. I had moved into a penthouse studio apartment and wanted to impress him (duh) with my taste, as well as enjoy the freedom of not having to conform to the tastes of a roommate. Ikea furniture, books I had been storing at my parent’s house, kitchen utensils, clothes, SHOES… the “stuff” began to accumulate, and soon the studio was feeling pretty cramped.
We got married in the summer of 2007 and moved into his bachelor pad, which had even less personal space than my studio. The cheap Ikea furniture had to go and once again my personal style was subordinated to someone else’s idea of “home” – which at the time was uber-sparse and uber-expensive (and uber-masculine) urban chic. I got rid of my car too, which was wonderful at first but later felt stifling, in favor of his Audi. In all, from a materialistic point of view my entire lifestyle was upgraded when our possessions became shared. All I really brought my ever-growing book collection, and enormous collection of designer shoes and fabulous clothes. For two newlyweds, this was a lot of stuff to manage.
So what did we do? We bought a bigger container for our stuff, in the form of a 4,000 square foot house in the suburbs. What started out as curiousity about what was on the market turning into me finding our dream house. We moved in on Halloween 2007, a mere 3 months after getting married. Our stuff began to expand again… we left all the furniture at the Seattle condo (we were renting it out) and took on a bunch of furniture from my parent’s house that they had been saving for us, as well as piano, 8 person dining room table, and new couches, bar stools, etc. AHHH! We were in stuff acquisition mode, shopping every weekend for stuff to make our not-so-little nest feel like a home.
And then the economy tanked.
I wish I could say that we’d been frugal with our acquisitions, but with Kevin’s job at Microsoft and my investments flying high we weren’t too concerned. I was working for a startup, making a startup income, but we were still a two income household without anyone depending on us. My walk in closet was stocked with fabulous outfits, I wore labels, and we threw dinner parties almost every week. While the market crashed we were in Las Vegas, treating my little sister to a memorable 21st birthday. Looking back, that was probably one of the best ways we spent money that year.
Traveling Sets Me Free of My Stuff
On Friday, I flew from SFO to Seattle with my most important “stuff”: my black Kate Spade purse, MacBook pro, iPhone, engagement ring and necklace my husband gave me for Valentine’s Day this year, my passport and some cash. I could have flown anywhere in the world and started my life from that moment in time with the items in that bag. That’s a pretty empowering thought, and lead me to think that the lack of “stuff” might be part of why people find travel so liberating – it certainly is for me.
What I’ve Learned: Buy Experiences, Not Things
Enabling great experiences and memories, shared with people I enjoy, is the most important leisure activity in my life. My rule of thumb now is that my “stuff” needs to enhance or enable experiences in some way, or it isn’t valid. Additionally, the more expensive the item (both in terms of money and amount of trouble I go to keeping it) it better generate lasting and repeat value.
Another important thing I’ve learned is that owning expensive things is great, but only if you use them. Each time you use them, its a part of the experience of owning something. If you know me, you know that I have a thing for expensive leather purses and shoes, and that’s because when I use/wear them the luxury and stylishness of the items creates an experience for me personally. I love that. It’s the same for things like owning silver and china, or crystal. Use it or give it to someone who will.
10 Things I Need to Travel the World
- Internet (Sprint mifi)
- iPhone & charger (Apple)
- MacBook pro & charger (Apple)
- jeans & a t-shirt
- expensive & indestructible purse (Kate Spade)
- expensive & durable/comfortable shoes (Tory Burch)
- all-in-one makeup kit (Lancome, buy it at the airport)
- passport
- cash (or access to cash via ATM card)
- my wonderful husband Kevin
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We Launched – Check out Twilio SMS
I love when I can finally talk about something secret that I’ve been working on. Yesterday we launched Twilio SMS, a new API that makes it ridiculously simple (or as someone on Twitter said, “stupidly simple”) to send/receive text messages from Twilio numbers.
Here is the screencast we made to go with it – which I am very proud of 🙂
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Launching a New Blog: ConstraintMarketing.com
While I love my DanielleMorrill.com blog, it is pretty much a smattering of random things I am thinking about and pieces of my personal life. And don’t worry, I won’t stop writing here, but I am looking forward to creating a more structured home for all my ideas about how marketing can be done effectively at startups.
Lately, I’ve been following along more closely with Eric Ries, Steve Blank and others who are talking about Lean Startup. I think it is really cool that “lean” has finally made it down from the ivory tower of Six Sigma to the nerf gun wielding floppy haired startup kids. And with the state of the economy, it couldn’t come at a better time.
How I Came To Love Lean
When I was 15, I started working for my Dad’s newly formed financial consulting company (he’s blogging now, woo!). After two failed startups that had attempted to marry technology and the finance/healthcare benefits industry he was ready to strike out on his own, and I served as his tech-support/office-manager/generalist. It was my sophomore year of high school, and the first year I really got to know my road-warrior of a father. As consult, the business was basically a one-man-show so I began to set up processes that would help things like reporting to scale as we took on more customers. The first business book I ever took down from his shelf was The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox, and it was the seminal work that brought the concept of lean manufacturing to the average businessman when it was published in 1984.I was fascinated by the “Theory of Constraints” – the idea that you have to run your business in a way that is appropriate to your constraints. You have a broken machine, materials shortage, broken supply chain, damaged orders? Figure out how to restructure your processes to serve your end goals and take the reality of your situation into consideration.
Why “Constraint Marketing” for Startups?
Marketing in the technology world is more than just brand awareness, it’s a core distribution channel for consumer and enterprise products that are sold on the internet. The new product supply chain isn’t interested in planes, trains, trucks, and boats. Instead it is interested in channels like display advertising, social media, webinars, and ultimately a call-to-action that leads to conversion.
So what if we applied the rules of lean manufacturing and supply chain to startup marketing? What would happen, what can we learn, and would be more effective marketers? I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard marketers derided for not being cost conscious enough, or efficient enough – and in that way I think I have a lot in common with a plant manager at a factory.
I think my experiences working in logistics (Expeditors International) as well as on-site for highly productive lean manufacturing factory concerns such as a Genie Industries and distributors like Zumiez were some of the most fascinating and formative experiences of my life. In the same way I am marrying the old and the new in telecommunications with Twilio, let me marry the old and new wisdom of product distribution for online products. We’ll see where this goes… I’m looking forward to feedback.
Stay tuned, http://www.constraintmarketing.com will be live soon
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Ignite WordCamp Boston Videos
Want to watch one of the super-fast presentations, or weren’t able to make it last night? Never fear, Flipcam HD to the rescue! These are also on YouTube for your embedding pleasure.
Getting the Moneyshot: Making Screencasts without Going Insane – by Danielle Morrill (me!)
You Beta’ Test Your Plugins – by Michael Erlewine
Turning WordPress Into a Social Media Monitoring Dashboard – by Kevin Palmer
Yo Dawg I Heard You Like Publishing Platforms – by Eric Buth
more coming soon, they are still uploading on the airport wifi…
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Wordcamp Boston is Tomorrow!
Wow, this morning I woke up and I’d slept with the balcony door open in 80-degree weather in Miami Beach and now I’m in Boston, and there’s snow on the ground! The joys of air travel, it’s just amazing. ITEXPO was a good show, and I’m very happy with the launch of the 1st StartupCamp Telephony, where my company was the premier sponsor and two of our customers presented their startups – I’ll recap on all that soon.
Outside my hotel room I haven’t been to Boston in almost 6 years, and it’s so cool to be right here next to all the geeky goodness of the MIT campus, Akamai, etc. In fact, I’m checking on Gary’s Guide and Plancast right now to see if there are any tech/entrepreneur type events scheduled for tonight. It would be fun to meet new people – I don’t know very many folks in this town at all.
WordPress Boston Tomororw
Tomorrow it’s all about WordPress. We’ve got a Twilio WordPress plugin that I’ll be showing off, and then I’m speaking about screencasting at Ignite in the evening (right after the closing keynote). I’m 2nd up, so I need to go watch some YouTube videos of previous presentations and do quite a bit of practicing to get the timing right.
I’m not in love with my slides (quite a rush job) but I think I can compensate for them with great spoken content. I’ve also been considering making a screencast on how to make screencasts – that way people can see how the entire process works if they like the talk. If you like this idea, or think it would be useful, please drop a note in the comments.
I’m sure there will be some video footage of the event coming from your’s truly soon. See many of you tomorrow! You can follow along with what’s going on using the #wcbos hashtag on Twitter search.
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Time to Say Goodbye Seattle, Hello San Francisco
Cross posted from Seattle 2.0 >>
A series of events yesterday convinced me that it’s time to write the blog post that I haven’t being willing to touch for over six months. This is the blog post that says goodbye to Seattle and hello to San Francisco.Seattle is a great place to start a company and, after traveling a ton this past year, I strongly feel it is also one of the best places on Earth to live. I anticipate that you, Seattle 2.0 readers, might point out that it seems a little ridiculous to be editor of Seattle 2.0 and then to move away. As numerous people can attest, I’m a huge fan of Seattle startups, entrepreneurs, and as someone who was born and raised in the Seattle area I’m homesick as hell. But I don’t live for the scene, much as I enjoy being a part of it. For awhile, I did feel like the startup community was an end in itself and I think that is one danger to be aware of as you’re starting your own companies. Your fellow upstarts are not, for the most part, your customers. Impressing them is optional – impressing (and making money from) your customers is required.How Long Has This Being Going On
I’ve been avoiding talking about my move kind of like someone who’s in a new relationship but doesn’t want to call the guy her boyfriend. But the truth is that Seattle and I had to break up, because I’m seeing someone else… and it’s very serious. I wasn’t planning to fall in love with a startup in the Bay Area but it happened, and as one of our investors (who is partial to the New York tech community) said, “you have to go to the place where the startup you want to work on is”. I think he’s right, and beyond that I think you have to take your business where it is most likely to be successful. For Twilio, that’s San Francisco.I saw Mikhail Seregine of Seattle-based startup Jambool (their San Francisco team shares an office with us at Pier 38) today, and we laughed at how much one chance meeting at a WTIA event could do. One year ago Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, Mikhail, and I were eating dinner together at an event where our respective startups were presenting and look how much has changed since then (Twilio took funding, ClayValet closed, and I left Pelago).It’s a Choice, Not a Sacrifice
Right about now I’m missing everything from our weather to our (often crappy) sports teams, and for the record Seattle really does have the best Thai food no matter what these foodies tell you. Most of all, I’m missing A LOT of people including my parents, my sister, my friends, and the majority of business contacts I’ve built up in the past five years since dropping out of college. Case in point, I saw Dave Schappell today at our office here in SF and probably hugged him hello a little too tight (sorry Dave).Why give all that up for a startup? Why give it up for a company that, despite an impressive trajectory, still has statistically high odds of going nowhere like every startup? Why risk messing up my marriage, going bankrupt trying to sell my real estate, etc. just to be constantly exhausted, have panic attacks, get sick, travel too much, sleep too little? Why live like this? My reason might surprise you. It’s not that I love startups (although I do, for many reasons).My reason for choosing this crazy life is simple, I want to give people back hours of their lives. I want to take things that are hard, and make them easy. I want to free people up to do higher value things with their time. It is the common thread of everything I’ve ever worked on, and it is the motivation behind each company I’ve chosen to work for and each product I’ve worked to create or bring to market.Tactics: On Becoming a Maker
One of the top reasons I took on the role of 1st non-founding multiple-hat-wearing something-or-other (we call is “Director of Marketing”) is because I need to become more technical to achieve my long term goals of founding successful startups of my own. Startup Weekend taught me something important about startups in the earliest stages: he who writes the codes makes the rules. As it turns out, I really like the freedom and immediate gratification of creating working prototypes. One of my proudest moments was when an app I wrote made it to the #3 spot on Hacker News, and no one said anything nasty about my code. Phew!Tactics: On Becoming a Marketer
Although I hold the title “Director of Marketing” I am not a traditional marketer, meaning I didn’t study it in school and I didn’t even really intend to get into marketing. In most startups, engineers are the rockstars and marketing plays second fiddle but its becoming increasingly obvious that startups with engineering gurus who never bring anything to market are not viable businesses, and ultimately a waste of time and money for investors. What I’m doing now allows me to stretch my wings as a marketer, and become intimately familiar with marketing channels and how to bring a product to the public.Thank You, Thank You, Thank You
It’s not like I’m disappearing or anything, I’m still going to post my ramblings on here until Marcelo or the commenters kick me out. I wasn’t going to do this because it is a little cheesy but what the hell. I really want to thank some people who have been helpful to me in the Seattle startup community, and who I think are part of what makes Seattle a great place to be in tech. I apologize in advance for anyone I’ve forgotten, and I’m sure I’ll be updating this post.my husband, Kevin – for putting up with my single-minded obsession with entrepreneurship, supporting me endlessly, and also kicking my ass when everyone is telling me what I want to hear- Marcelo Calbucci (Seattle 2.0)- for encouraging me to write for Seattle 2.0, live broadcast, and generally inspiring me to go after things I want in life, cooking yummy food and talking for hours
- Michelle Goldberg (Ignition Partners) – for being a supportive mentor who believes in me, listens, and gets excited about the same things I do
- Brian Westbrook – for being my better half when we cohost Seattle 2.0 TV, up for anything every time I call with something I want to film, teaching me to fake smile on camera for hours, and letting me play with his gear and toys
- Rob Eickemann – for being the first person to say hi to me at the first tech event I ever went to, Six Hour Startup, as well as a friendly face at Saturday House and organizer of Startup Weekend
- Cassie Wallender – for interviewing me at my first attempt to join a startup (I didn’t get it, maybe because I wore a suit to the interview hehe) at iLike
- John Cook – for cofounding TechFlash, because it is helping keep Seattle startups on the map where they belong and helping them be taken seriously
- Ksenia Oustiougova – for showing me how hard you have to dig in to get what you want, sharing your office space, and inspiring me to be less nice and more badass
- Josh Maher & Nathan Kaiser – for hosting Lunch 2.0 and nPost events (respectively) that helped me meet tons of people, learn to pitch, and feel like I was a part of something special
- STS mailing list – for letting me lurk, the entertainment, the wisdom, did I mention the entertainment?
- numerous geeks like Brian Dorsey, Calvin Freitas, Colin Henry, Damon Cortesi and Aviel Ginzburg – for explaining things to me without making me feel stupid, encouraging me to keep getting better at coding, and answering my (often dumb) questions
- Poker 2.0 – for your money 😉
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Stuff I Built: Simple International Calling Card with Twilio
Reposted from the Twilio Company Blog
When I came downstairs this morning I was greeted by two bubbly and very sleep deprived Australians eager for some tea, and a chance to call Mum. My first thought – there’s a Twilio app for that (or there will be soon)!
Being in the Christmas sprint, I decided I’d quickly code up an application that would make it easy for them to call a U.S. number from the landline at our house or any local phone, and be forwarded to their mom’s, boyfriends, and other folks through a simple menu. 20 minutes later, we made our first call!
Setting Up the International “Calling Card”
Twilio doesn’t provide international phone numbers, but you can set up a U.S. number and have it forward to an international destination using the <Dial> verb. You don’t even need to use the REST API to make the outbound calls, its so simple!
Files to create:
- * Handler for the incoming call, to greet the caller and read the menu, gather the menu selection keypress
- * PHP handler for taking the keypress and directing the application to the right file to dial the number
- * Files for each of the phone menu options, going to the different numbers to call
Setting up incoming-call.php
This first file is the one that I pointed the Twilio phone number to, to handle incoming calls. It greets the caller and reads them a menu of people to call, and asks them to press a number to start.
It looks something like this:
<?php header("content-type: text/xml"); echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n"; ?> <Response> <Gather numDigits="1" action="make-call.php" method="POST"> <Say voice="woman">Hey girls, ready to call someone? If you know your s\ election, you may make it at any time.</Say> <Say>Press 1 to Call Laurens Mom</Say> <Say>Press 2 to Call Jace</Say> <Say>Press 3 to Call Eleesa's Home</Say> <Say>Press 4 to Call Duh lane ah's Cell Phone</Say> <Say>To get help, Press 5 to Call Danielle</Say> </Gather> <Say voice="woman">Thanks for using this Twil ee oh app, created by Danielle. \ Happy holidays!</Say> </Response>
Setting up make-call.php
After the caller has pressed as key, the application posts the results to make-call.php, so we need to create a php file that understands what to do next with that information, and route the call.
<?php          if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '1') {                 header("Location: call-laurens-mom.php");                 die;         }         if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '2') {                 header("Location: call-jace.php");                 die;         }         if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '3') {                 header("Location: call-elisas-home.php");                 die;         }         if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '4') {                 header("Location: call-dlaina-cell.php");                 die;         }         if($_REQUEST['Digits'] == '5') {                 header("Location: call-danielle.php");                 die;         }         header("content-type: text/xml");         echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n"; ?>
Setting up TwiML to Connect the Call
As you can see in the previous php script make-call.php, each selection directed the application to a different file. This file is a very simple piece of TwiML that uses the <Dial> verb to connect the call. Each one is pretty much the same, and looks like this:
<?php         header("content-type: text/xml");         echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n"; ?> <Response> <Say>Connecting you to Danielle, for help with this application..</Say> <Dial>4256987497</Dial> </Response>
It’s Not Pre-paid, It’s Pay-As-You-Go
The best part about this for Elisa and Lauren is that it isn’t a prepaid card where they spend $50 and and are stuck with the card, even if they don’t use it up. I’m billing them for exactly the amount they use, and they don’t have to pay for it until after the fact. I can imagine turning custom pay-as-you-go calling cards into a really interesting business.
So there you have it. If you have any international guests in your home this holiday season, or are interested in going into the calling card business, this might be a good place to start. The app took less than 20 minutes to write, mostly because we were goofing around with the text to speech quite a bit, and is written with PHP.
You do need an upgraded Twilio account to get a phone number and make international calls, so maybe some Twilio minutes would be a good thing to ask Santa to bring you. Happy holidays!
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Get Out the Cameras, It’s Christmas With the Clarks
If you have been reading my blog for awhile, then you know by now that I have my family well trained to expect a video camera on them at any time. Last Christmas we were snowbound at my parent’s house, which lead to some real gems. This year, we only get to spend a couple days with them before driving South to San Francisco. Here are some of the videos from last year, and I look forward to sharing what we come up with this year in a coming post.
Christmas Morning 2009
Christmas Morning 2008 from danielle morrill on Vimeo.
Preparing Christmas Dinner with Mom
My Mom is a Total Martha from danielle morrill on Vimeo.
My Goals for 2009
I am going to need to follow this with some goals for 2010 – I’ve got my thinking cap on.
My Goals for 2009 from danielle morrill on Vimeo.
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The Great SF Apartment Hunt Begins
While not quite as epic as searching for an apartment in Manhattan, this is the first time in 3 years that I’ve been looking for a place to rent and this time it is in a city that I don’t know all that well. I’ve been reading up on neighborhoods, asking everyone’s opinion, driving around when I get a chance – all hoping to figure out the answer to the elusive question, “where do I want to live?”
It took me a couple tries to get my location right while I was a renter in Seattle, so it would be nice not to go through the trial and error process again. I’ve been renting a room in a friend’s apartment in Potrero Hill for about six months now, but somehow renting a room just isn’t the same as having my own place. Fortunately, it also means that I’m not in a huge rush to find something – more focused on getting it right. I am driving my car down to San Francisco from Seattle early next week, so I need to find a place with parking (willing to pay extra). I’m debating a couple things:
- studio vs. 1 bedroom
- month-to-month or short-term lease vs. 1 year commitment
- does being walking distance to work matter?
- laundry in the unit?
- secure garage?
- could I survive without a dishwasher
To Rent or To Swap?
We have a house in Kirkland and a condo in Seattle, so if we’re able to find someone willing to swap with us that might be a viable (and money-saving) option.
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Pictures from Our Tour of the Louvre
Using Whrrl for what it does best – sharing pictures with a narrative. Enjoy!
