Profiles in Power – Austin Women
Jul 26 2009

This past Friday, I attended the annual Austin Business Journal’s Profiles of Women in Power event.  I attended on behalf of my co-worker and friend, Melissa Rabeaux who I have mentioned on this blog before.  She runs most of the green technology organizations in town including the Clean Energy Venture Summit, CleanTX.org, and Austin Solar Energy Entrepreneur’s Network.  She was nominated for the event in the non-profit category.  She wasn’t able to attend because she is recovering really well from successful surgery!

I sat at the IC2 table.  IC2 is the parent organization to the Austin Technology Incubator (check out our NEW website), where I work by day.  It was probably the best of the Profiles events I had attended and I’ve attended a handful throughout the years.  IC2 sponsors the event every year.  We sat right next to the keynote/award recipient table.

Last year Laura Kilcrease, founding director of ATI, was the 1^st Lifetime Achievement award recipient.  This year it was Betty Sue Flowers (see fuzzy iPhone picture of me with Betty Sue taken by someone who doesn’t know how to take iPhone pics).

I met with Betty Sue several years ago when I was working on a book concept that I have yet to complete.  My friend Randi Shade introduced me to her.  She said she remembered me and that she had seen some of the articles that I’d published.  She also said the offer to write the Foreword of my eventual book was still open even after she moves to New York with her new love, former senator Bill Bradley, who was also at the lunch.  He’s a very tall man!  Now I just have to write that book…whatever it ends up being.

Karen Hughes (former Bush under secretary) was the keynote speaker! She was a fabulous, engaging speaker and even spoke about Bush’s made up words like ‘misunderestimated’ and how they often had to tell them they weren’t real words.  It’s stunning to me that he didn’t know they weren’t real words, but Betty Sue in her acceptance speech said she liked that word and that as a professor of English she thought it should be added to the Oxford dictionary.  She said it should mean something like people underestimate the extent to which they misunderstand something.  Betty Sue is so good with words!  Because it was a woman’s event, Karen spoke about jewelry she bought (and was wearing at the lunch) with Arabic on it when she visited Kuwait and how honored they were that she was wearing it.  They were impressed that a White House official would wear something with Arabic on it.  She said her husband told her it was just an excuse to buy jewelry! 🙂

The winners of the final awards were (ones in bold I know and/or are friends with):

Joyce Batcheller – Seton Family of Hospitals
Marilyn Bostick – Dee’s Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas/Seton Family of Hospitals
Linda Brucker, A Legacy of Giving
Tausha Carlson, Marahton Real Estate
Ewina Carrinton, Reznick Group, P.C.
Deborah Cole, Greater Texas Landscapes
Charlene Crump, Mary Lee Foundation
Nancy Ebe, Ebe & Associates, P.C.
Nora Foster, Campus Advantage
Candice Houston, ThinkStreet
Julie Jumonville, UpSpring Baby
Vickie Lee, VP HR of Tokyo Electron
Marny Lifshen, Marny Lifshen Consulting
Victoria Lynden, Alliance Abroad Group, AIDE, Kohana Coffee, Cissis market & Wine Bar
Sandra martin, founding CEO of Center for Child Protection
Caroline Murphy, St. David’s Healthcare/HCA, Mayor of BeeCave
Rebecca Powers, Impact Austin
Kerri Qunell, Capital Area Food Bank of Texas
Kendra Scott, Kendra Scott Design
Sue Snyder, Jackson Walker LLP
Denis Trauth, President of Texas of Texas State University – San Marcos
Jimmie Ann Vaughn, Jimmie Ann Vaughn Real Estate/Bastrop Downtown Business Alliance
Stuart Vick Smith, Maxwell Lock & Ritter, LLP
Lisa Williamson, UpSpring Baby
Ellen Wood, vcfo
Patricia Young Brown, Travis County Healthcare District

I saw several people I hadn’t seen in a while, and I enjoyed the event immensely.  Maybe one day I’ll be nominated for an award and win  something… 😎

Country Music and Broken Hearts
Jul 14 2009

When I was in high school in Lubbock, Texas, I took a part time job at Mr. Gatti’s Pizza because one of my friend’s worked there and I wanted to earn some extra money.  I even worked there on my 18th birthday and served my very first beer.  I remember the thrill of pulling the tap and angling the plastic, chilled mug to get the right amount of beer and foam top.

I also remember a few other things from that time and one was one of my co-worker’s statements about country music.  I can’t remember his name, but I remember how he looked when we had the conversation.  He was short to medium height, average looking, with curly light brown hair and was wearing the Mr. Gatti’s uniform (tan pants, white buttoned shirt, and apron).  I think he was in his early 20’s.  We were standing in the front area by the register.  At the time, I couldn’t stand country music.  I told him how lame, annoying, and stupid it was.  He looked at me and said something like “You obviously haven’t had your heart broken.  Come talk to me about country music after you have had your heart broken.”  I looked at him and thought to myself “Well, I better not let anyone break my heart then.”

Well for me Happiness was Lubbock, Texas in my Rear View Mirror (Mac Davis) and I have no interest in being buried there in my jeans. 🙂

As I grew older and had my heart broken, I did come to appreciate country music.  I’m still not an avid fan of the entire genre (broken trucks, everyone leaves, the dog dies, somebody kills themselves, etc.) but artists like George Strait, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, John Denver, Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain really know how to sing to a broken heart.

Broken hearts come in many forms but the kind involving personal relationships hurts the most.  I’ve had my heart broken a few times in my career, two of which have partially happened while I’ve been blogging (2 years now) and you, my readers, have been along for the ride.  Once when I learned about my first company’s/baby’s death and wrote a post called The Entrepreneurial Ledge.   My heart broke when I left the company back in 2001 and it broke some more when I found out it was gone in late 2008.  The other is of course having to find a home for Babble Soft, but I’m still optimistic that there will be a good outcome and it will live on in some form or fashion.

So if you want to shed some tears, relieve some tension, and appreciate the learning/yearning from some of your broken hearts check out some of these country songs on You Tube:

You Look So Good In Love – George Strait

Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue – Crystal Gayle (quasi-country)

Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash

Walk the Line – Johnny Cash

Landslide – Dixie Chicks (via Fleetwood Mac)

Always On My Mind – Willie Nelson

Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain – Shania Twain and Willie Nelson

As they say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!”  My heart will hopefully be stronger (with some duct tape, stitches, and super glue) on the other side.

Documents And Other Such Things
Jul 4 2009

In between doing some laundry, making beds, painting my daughter’s fingernails, and making grilled ham & cheese sandwiches for the kids, I spent much of today getting things and documents together that people who might be interested in taking in Babble Soft will want to look at.  I just finished up the typical “one pager” that entrepreneurs use to gain interest from a potential investor or acquirer. I got some great feedback from a couple of my co-workers at the Austin Technology Incubator that I think enhanced it quite a bit.  That’s one of the pluses of having a day job where the Directors review such docs for other technology start-ups.

The one pager can be different depending on who you are sending it to.  It’s much harder to write a one pager than a novel sometimes because you have to really figure out the best words to put down in a limited amount of space.  It’s a cross between a product sales sheet and a company highlights document.  A ‘teaser’ document that will hopefully get someone to call you to discuss your company further.

Since tweeting about us finding a home for Babble Soft, I already have more leads than I expected.  That is the power of a strong social network…so many people reaching out to help others.  I’ve started following up on those leads and they are interestingly quite different.  I also sent messages to some of my LinkedIn contacts to see if they might have connections to appropriate partners.

I’m not as organized as I should be about this process as I’m pulling together information in real time.  I guess I’m following a “fire, ready, aim” route instead of the proper one but it’s the best I can do at this moment in life so may the winds of favor smile on us. 🙂   Thank goodness for smiley emoticons.

On an unrelated note, in the background today I’ve been playing music.  For all of my life, I’ve loved music but I haven’t been able to have it playing in the background when I work.  I usually have to have almost complete silence when I read, study, type, etc.  But for some odd reason that wasn’t the case today.  I found myself listening to Jim Croce, James Taylor, ABBA, Simon & Garfunkel (Feelin’ Groovy), Michael Jackson, and of course Backyardigan’s while working at my computer.  Not sure if that bodes well or not to the final product, but it’s an interesting new experience for me.  I guess I’ve just enhanced my multi-tasking abilities or maybe I’ve killed those brain cells that tell me I can’t listen to music and concentrate at the same time.

Just finished listening to I Am A Rock – by Simon & Garfunkel “And a rock feels no pain and an island never cries”

My husband is just getting back from taking the kids grocery shopping, and now we’re off to take the kids to see Ice Age – Dawn of the Dinosaurs at the theater.

How Do You Know When You’ve Made The Right Decision?
Jun 29 2009

I don’t usually know if I’ve made the right decision (business, personal, kids, etc.) until after I’ve made it.  And then even after making it, I sometimes wonder if it was the right one.  But usually I feel a huge sense of relief for some time until, of course, the details have to be worked out.  But life is a series of decisions.   Some are small ones like when to do the laundry, what clothes to wear, what to eat for dinner, etc.  Some are big ones like what house to buy, whether to sell your company, who to marry, whether to have kids or not, how many kids to have, where to send those kids to school, where to go on vacation, what job to take, etc.  But I guess whether a decision is big or small depends on who you are and where you are.  Looking back, when I ignored my gut instinct the outcome was not so great.  When I voiced my opinion, knowing I was right, and was ignored only to prove myself right, I was vindicated but still it sucked.

I think we often let others make decisions for us in business and in life.  I know I’ve done this several times in business as a young entrepreneur.  We think other, older, experienced people know more, but sometimes they just don’t because they can’t see the things you see.  Sometimes we don’t even realize we are doing it.  We might politely express our opinions but not push hard for what we really want for fear of something happening (e.g., not being accepted, looking bad, not being validated, hurting other people, feeling like we don’t deserve what we want, or our outstanding innate power).  Yes, I do think many of us are afraid of our power and being our true selves.

But then we wake up one day to realize we are living a life and business decided by others and not ourselves.  I know many a mother who finds herself in that position in her life…living a life that someone else (family, society, job) dictated to her and she passively accepts it.  I know a few fathers who feel that way too.  I know far more business people who wished they had spoken up and made different decisions.  In the world of entrepreneurship, we call those learning experiences scar tissue!  A necessary rite of passage to prove yourself.

I’ve learned that knowing your boundaries up front helps you make better decisions even in times of crisis or joy.  For instance, if you know you will never lie, cheat, or steal then your decisions of course are going to be different than a thief who doesn’t have those boundaries.  But if you are not careful, you can end up like that proverbial frog in slow heating water who doesn’t realize he is in danger until it’s far too late and he’s boiled to death (e.g., Enron and other financial scandals that involved otherwise good people).  I think most of us make the decision to jump out, turn the temperature down, ask for help, or change the rules of the game of the pot we’re in and earn our scar tissue and badges of experience in the process.

Making a decision to do something, accept something, not do something, or not accept something can leave you with images of the road not taken.  Not following your gut instinct, can leave you with many more decisions to make that might have been avoided or replaced with other decisions…not to mention heartburn and anxiety.

Oh, if we only could get away with not making any decisions and end up being rich, happy, healthy, and fulfilled… 😎

I wonder if someone has invented a pill for that?

In A Music State of Mind
Jun 28 2009

The entrepreneurial journey is full of interesting twists and turns.  Even the most successful entrepreneurs I know struggle with what success means.  I was recently meeting with a two time successful (multi-million dollar exits) entrepreneur, and he said after a few months we’re all back to our miserable selves and looking for the next thing to do.  It’s funny how many people I interviewed for the Success Profiles sort of said the same thing.  They would achieve or fail in one thing and then it was on to the next with something to prove.

Are we ever content?  I’m not sure if it’s an entrepreneurial trait, a mid-life characteristic, an MBA grad fate, or something else.  But as I continue to tweet about and reach out to my contacts about finding a good home for Babble Soft, I find myself turning to music as I have often done in the past during times of transition.  There’s something about music that pulls out the emotions in me and lets me process them in a way that can’t be processed in silence or even with close friends.

Since I started taking yoga last year, I’ve seen the benefits of certain meditation and quiet times but music – the combination of words and instruments – pushes buttons in me that make it OK to to feel things that intellectually my mind tells me not to feel.  The mind just says focus on this task, get it done, and move on.  The mind doesn’t want to be bothered with stuff that affects the heart and soul.  Music reminds me that to be human is to feel because other humans are singing about their life transitions and it reminds me how kind of normal some of these feelings are.  And sometimes we need to give ourselves the space to feel and really listen to what our body is telling us instead of just our minds to make the best decisions.  Instead of feeling isolated in silence or the sometimes deafening noise of two kids incessant chatter, music brings me softly into the river of humanity.

So some of the music I’ve been listening to lately is by Billy Joel (hence the title of this post), Indigo Girls, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, Michael Jackson (mostly because of his recent death), Sarah McLachlan, and oddly enough Book of Love.

May the music be with you…

Babble Soft Looking For A New Home
Jun 22 2009

This is a hard post for me to write, but there are times in life when the best way to handle hard things is to just deal with it head on.  I had some time and space to reflect during my recent beach vacation.

Babble Soft, an idea that I started tinkering around with after my first baby was born in 2003 (our first beta web app release was in 2007 and iPhone app in 2009), has reached a point where my partner, Nicole Johnson, and I can’t do it justice and build it to the company it could be.  We just don’t have the monetary and time resources that a consumer web and mobile (iPhone) based product Baby Insights and Baby Say Cheese require to become a household name.  I’ve been working on Babble Soft part time while balancing kids, the house, etc. for most of the company’s life.  I spent a few months full time on it just before I took a day job about a year ago and now the time has come to find a new home for it.  Nicole has been working on this part time, after hours, as well.

We are both discovering that Building A Web Business After Hours is hard to do with two small kids around.  And doubly hard when two ventures are trying to get off the ground in one household: my husband is starting the pre-K to 2nd grade Magellan School that’s scheduled to open this Fall and our resources are also being tied up with that and our kids will be attending the school.

Nicole and I both believe in web applications to help make parents of newborn’s lives easier, and we want to find a good home for Babble Soft with someone who can take our vision to the next level.  We will continue to support our existing customers and any future customers so please don’t worry about that.  We have a high bar set for customer service!  We just can’t take it to the level (with all the exciting new applications we have planned) where we know it could be right now in our lives, but we know there is someone or some company who can.

If you know of someone who might be interested, please email me at blogger(at) babblesoft(dot)com to discuss further.  Please pass a link to this post to everyone you know!

Motherhood is not always peaches & cream and being a mom entrepreneur adds a little extra challenge to the process so sometimes it’s the hard calls that can make the difference in a company’s and person’s success.

Thanks to all of you readers for your continued support and sticking with me through my unusual parenting and entrepreneurial journeys!

Aruni Gunasegaram
President/Founder
(512) 961-6002

Nicole Johnson
VP Product Development
(512) 961-6002

Have You Discovered Your Passion?
May 25 2009

Everyone has heard the word passion.  It’s written about in business books, in fiction books, in poems, in romance novels, etc..  It’s shown on TV and in the movies when people find their true loves or their calling in life.  But what is it?  In the world of entrepreneurship, people tell you in order to be successful you must be passionate about what you are doing.  I’ve run into a lot of people who appear passionate about what they are doing but they don’t always succeed in the way they expected.  Passion ebbs and flows in most everything in life.  Sometimes you are in love with your business and sometimes you aren’t, but in order to survive like Microsoft, Dell, Apple, etc. the passion must be there, the underlying love for your products, people, and company must be there and the gaps between must not be long.

They say true passion can be traced back to childhood, when everything seemed possible.  My son is passionate about soccer and hanging out with his good buddies.  If it was up to him, he’d be kicking around a soccer ball all day long.  I often have to tell him not to kick the soccer ball in the main part of the house.   If we’d let him, he’d probably sleep with his soccer ball.  If you mention one of his friend’s names, he will incessantly ask us when we are going to see him next.  He’s a bit of a socialite like his mom.

I can’t tell what my daughter is passionate about yet, but I think she has an affinity for music and lip gloss.  We have a keyboard in our house that my father gave us and she tends to gravitate to it and punch the keys from time to time.  And she likes to play the bowling game on the Wii.

My husband is passionate about starting the multi-lingual, international Magellan School here in Austin.  He is passionate about his kids learning Spanish since he is fluent in Spanish and wants them to have the gift of multiple languages that was given to him.  He is also passionate about biking and exercising.  He set a goal to do the Shiner Bash – 100 mile ride and he did it.  He exercises every day and he says he’s in the best shape he’s ever been in his life.

What a blessing it must be to discover your passion and find yourself being able to realize your goals.  It’s even better when you can make a living at it.  It seems like most people can’t turn their passion into making a living for whatever reasons whether it be timing, market acceptance, encouragement, money, health, ability, skills, etc.  Many people try to keep their passion alive on the side or after some time, we forget what it was we were passionate about.

Right now in my life, I’m most passionate about my kids.  I am passionate about helping people achieve more than they thought they could.   When I look back upon my childhood, I remember the passion I had for music.  I think my father actually started taking us to piano lessons when I was about 9 years old when we lived in Albuquerque, NM.  When we moved to Lubbock, TX , I sought out my own piano teacher who lived nearby and I would walk to her house for lessons.  It was hard to find time to practice and hard to find time to continue since it was just me, my mom, and my sister.  My grandmother studied piano in Oxford University in England so I must get some of my passion for music from her.  Sadly, I can’t play the piano today, but I can sing.

I sang in church and actually did a solo in front of the entire church in my early teens.  I sang in high school choir.  I sought out my own voice teacher and when I went to college at UT Austin, I took voice courses for two semesters.  I knew I was reasonably good, but not great.   I never envisioned myself singing in a musical or singing opera so I guess I thought what’s the point and continued on with my business degree.  In grad school I sang a few songs in a couple of bands.

I also remembered that I liked to write.  In my early teens, a few girlfriends and I would start this notebook with a story and each of us would have to write the next part until we ended up with a full story.  I hate to admit this, but I think Michael Jackson and his glove showed up a time or two in those stories. 🙂  I wonder what happened to those notebooks.  I would also invariably get high grades in creativity in my English classes but very low grades in grammar.  The concept of grammar didn’t click for me until my freshman English class in college for some reason.

I also didn’t have anyone around me encouraging me, connecting me with people, giving me feedback, or showing me the way to nurture those creative right brain activities I was drawn to.  So I did what any respectable child of two doctors would do….I got an Accounting degree and then an MBA, which has served me well and odds are has resulted in a much more lucrative career than if I had pursued writing, singing or horse back riding (another younger days hobby of mine) as a career.

So now here I am in mid-life.  Too old to start up regular horse back riding again for fear of breaking my bones…well not really, but not enough time to go to a barn and take care of a horse.  It’s highly unlikely that I can make singing a financially rewarding career at this point in my life, but I am enjoying my voice lessons and relish any time I can make it to a jam session.  I do enjoy writing in my blog.

So that leaves me to figure out how best to blend my passion for working with people, with a product I’m passionate about, with a path to millions of dollars….

Any suggestions?  How did you discover your passion?

Board Management
May 22 2009

On May 20, 2009, we held a board management Lunch & Learn at the Austin Technology Incubator.   We hold these monthly or bi-monthly.  Our next one is going to be on Building A Great Corporate Culture.  It was a very productive meeting and our companies learned a lot.   I served as moderator and the people on the panel (with the exception of Janice because she got struck by swine flu sick) were:

Richard C. Benkendorf, Co-founder/Managing Principal, Technology Impact Partners (TIP)

Dick, through his role at TIP, serves on the Board of Directors or Advisory Board of both private and public firms as well as investment partnerships including Wave Max, Open Scan, Care Data Systems, Revelation, Concentric Equity Partners, AllianceTech, Adtron, State Street, Murphree Ventures, Facilities Technology Group and CMIT Solutions as well as not for profit entities such hospital charitable or civic organizations.  Other current or very recent investees of TIP include @security, Globalscape (now public), Voxpath Networks, Pointserve, Tobin, Dwight’s Energy Data, Advent Networks, Liberty Fitness, Facilities Technology Group, American Telesource (now public), Reunion Ventures, and Affinegy.

Previously, Dick was a Senior VP of Ameritech and prior to that spent 16 years at IBM.  He founded The American Software Company (TASC) and was President of Telemed and Chairman of Execucom.  He founded T/D Technology, a private equity firm that acquired and operated software and information technology firms.  He also founded ISSS Ventures, a $155M venture capital fund.

Bob Bridge, Entrepreneur In Residence, Office of Technology Commercialization

Bob has been in management, marketing, and engineering roles at semiconductor and system companies for 33 years, including serving as founding CEO at three technology companies. One of those companies, Zilker Labs was sold to Intersil in December 2008. Bob has also served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Austin Ventures, vice president of marketing at Agere (a network processor IC startup), and vice president and general manager for communications ICs at Crystal Semiconductor/Cirrus Logic. Additionally, Bob has held engineering and management positions at Motorola, AT&T corporate headquarters and AT&T Bell Labs. Bob holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Sciences from Rice University.

Janice Ryan, CEO and Chairman of Social Dynamix

Janice Ryan has a 27 year track record of growing profitable sales organizations and venture-backed startups.  She is currently CEO and Chairman of Social Dynamix, an early stage venture focused on tools for social media performance measurement.  Prior to this, she was CEO of Sigma Dynamics, a predictive analytics software company in San Mateo, which under her leadership was sold to Oracle (ORCL) in August of ’06.  Prior to Sigma Dynamics, Ryan was the founding President/COO, of ROME Corporation, headquartered in Austin, Texas.  She was also a member of the founding executive team that launched Vignette Corporation (VIGN), an early internet enterprise software company which experienced one of the most successful IPOs of 1999.  As Vice President of Sales at Vignette, Ryan established the company’s sales infrastructure and management team, and was responsible for driving Vignette’s revenue through all channels worldwide, including direct sales, telesales and a network of systems integrators and resellers.

Ryan has served on several high tech Boards and Advisory Boards, and as an Interim Executive for multiple venture-backed companies in Texas and California.  Early in her career she held a variety of senior sales and leadership positions at IBM, Lotus Development, Filenet Corporation and ViewStar.  Active in philanthropic causes, Ryan has also served on various non-profit Boards, currently serving with the Center for Child Protection.  She earned her BBA degree from Baylor University with distinction in the fall of 1977.

Brian P. Wong, Director, Intersil Corp.

Brian was the President and CEO of D2Audio Corporation, a leading audio semiconductor and software company, which he recently sold to Intersil, a public company in August 2008.  He is currently running the D2Audio-Intersil business as part of Intersil Corp. Mr. Wong has more than 26 years experience as an executive and general manager in the sales, marketing and the development of semiconductors, firmware and software.  Market sector experience includes digital media, consumer, IT and computing, telecom, and storage.  His technology experience includes power management; digital audio, optical and wired datacom; data converters; semiconductors; optical, firmware/software.

Brian has closed over $130M from Venture Capital funds and corporate strategic partners.  He has formed Strategic Partnerships involving investment and/or licensing with AMD, Intel, Intersil, Delta Electronics, MediaTek, and Form Factor. Previously, Mr. Wong was CEO at Primarion Inc, a company focused on I/O and Power Management ICs, which was acquired by Infineon.  Prior to that, he was a senior manager at TRW and ran the Mixed Signal IC business, which included data converter, Clock/Data Recovery, PLL, and high speed digital ICs. Mr. Wong holds a BSEE from University of California, Los Angeles, a MSEE from University of Southern California, has taken graduate management classes at UCLA Anderson School of Management. He is the Chairman of The Austin Technology Council, sits on the Advisory Board for the UC Davis ECE Department, and served on the board of Integral Wave Technologies, a power management company.

The key takeaways were:

• Pick and interview your board members carefully.  Pick people with skills that complement yours.
• Make sure there are no surprises on the day of the board meeting, unless of course they are good surprises!
• Equity compensation for board members ranges from .25% to 1.00% and is granted up front or vests over time depending on the board and the company
• Sizes of the board ranges from 3 to 5 people at the very early stage.  Any more it becomes unweildy and unproductive.
• Boards in small, start-up companies usually meet at least once per month.
• After a successful board meeting, everyone should know the financial state of the company, people/equity grants, milestones achieved, and milestones to be achieved.

It was great to hear the war stories and I contributed some of my own.   They are truly battle scars.

4 Steps to a Server Non-Migration
May 17 2009

And now for a guest post by my business partner, Nicole Johnson, who is the VP of Product Development for Babble Soft on the topic of moving servers.  She shares the ups and downs and great learning experiences of our recent attempt to move servers from a dedicated to shared environment.

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Recently, we decided to attempt to migrate our Babble Soft site from our own dedicated server at Rackspace to a shared server hosted by Mosso, which was spun out of Rackspace. It turned out to be a time-intensive process and in the end, didn’t work out. We thought it would be a good idea to chronicle what we went through just in case you are thinking about doing something like this, too, just to keep a few things in mind.  Although it didn’t work for us, it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work for others.

1. Server Assessment
The first step in our migration was to make sure the new environment would work for us. We had to make sure that our applications would work which are written using Microsoft’s .NET programming model and our main site and blog would work, written in php on the same server. After reviewing the “Is it a good fit?” guidelines, we deemed it should work. It would be a transition to go from having your own server to sharing: No more remote connections and no more SQL Server Profiler (among other things, but it would be for the benefit of the company to reduce costs.

2. Test, test, test
The second step of server migration is to test your application and website on the new server. We set up a new account and installed everything on the new server WITHOUT updating our domain host to the new location, yet. Mosso makes things VERY easy to test your website. In addition to that, the live chat tech support is invaluable!  All of the techs were very knowledgeable (some more than others, but all good) and very helpful. They were very eager to help me and did a great job.

One trouble spot was that when I tested the blog, it did not work. It’s a WordPress blog and moving Aruni’s blog, entrepreMusings, over was a breeze, but not our Babble Soft corporate blog. I couldn’t easily go to wp-admin because it kept trying to go to the domain, which was on our old server. After talking things over with the Mosso techs, we determined it might just be because we were “testing” and it would be fine when it came over. Wrong, but that’s just how technology goes sometimes. I’d later spend a good part of a whole day on a Redirect Loop Error that would only be solved by installing the Disable Canonical URL Redirection Plugin that both one of the Mosso techs and @clecompte gave me at almost the same time. I still have no idea why it worked on our server and not on the Mosso server, but c’est la vie, and I didn’t have time to figure it out. The blog still didn’t work after that due to our server having a default IIS configuration and blog posts don’t end in .php to “tell” the server that it should handle them as such, but I’m probably getting into too much tech talk now, so we’ll end that there. I would have gotten it to work, eventually…had we really finished the transfer.

3. Plan the downtime for the move
The third step to our migration was to take our applications down in an organized way. In our quarterly newsletter, we warned our users the site would be down for maintenance the week of May 11th, Mother’s Day. Aruni and I are both mothers, but, it would be a good day for the site to be down since most of our customers are moms, too, and they would likely be doing Mother’s Day “things”, so we “took one for the team” and planned to work that day. I had everything ready to go, so Aruni put our application and purchase page in maintenance mode and submitted for the DNS change at the domain host. They proved to move the site quickly and I was able to bring our application back online within a few hours (would have been faster if I hadn’t been a mom that day, but that’s what happens when a company is run by two moms). Unfortunately, it was not that simple to bring the purchase page back up as there was a database connectivity issue, but being the work-a-holic that I am, I worked on that until 2am and then part of the next day and fixed it. We were on our way. So, what went wrong?

4. Know when to cut your losses
In the grand scheme of things, had this been what I do full time all day, I probably didn’t spend THAT much time on this whole project, however, in a working-part-time-on-three-jobs kind of way (five if you count being a wife and mom), it proved to be almost “3 weeks” of work. So, when I was putting the finishing touches on everything, trying to make it 100% functional and the Mosso techs (by now we’ve become fast friends and all) let me know that Mosso was going to medium trust security level on all servers, it became a deal breaker. It’s not because medium trust is a bad thing. In fact, I think it might be a scary thing they weren’t in the first place, being a shared server and all, and it’s a good thing they are changing that. But, now I just spent “3 weeks” testing and moving an application on a server that is not configured like the final environment and our application doesn’t work in medium trust “as is.”

This is not to say that we couldn’t make it run in medium trust and who’s to say that it wouldn’t be just a day’s work, but the way technology is, it could be a day or another “3 weeks.”  At this point, we have now lost too much productive time on this project to make this worth it. Taking Seth Godin’s advice, we decided to ignore sunk costs and determined that my time moving forward would be better spent on one of my primary job functions, product development. So, we went back to our dedicated server and decided, instead, that we’ll just have to become wildly successful to offset the savings and see that it was a blessing in disguise because our needs would far surpass what a shared server could give us in a year anyway.

In the end, this was a really good learning experience and Mosso definitely seems to offer a great service, but it just ended up not being the right fit for us.  Had we known about the medium trust issue earlier on, we might have either saved time or been able to work on it, but one of the main “issues” of a shared environment is we have to adapt to their changes and we just learned it way faster than I thought we’d have to. We’re staying with Rackspace as our hosting provider, who offered us fabulous customer service throughout this whole process.  Many businesses would do well modeling their service levels after theirs.

ATI Bioscience Open House
May 14 2009

Last night I attended the first ever Austin Technology Incubator Bioscience Open House!  I’ve been extra busy this week since the previous night I also served as a panelist at the TiE Austin Funding Forum.

The open house was a HUGE success with close to 150 people in attendance at the AT&T Conference center located on The University of Texas at Austin campus.  The event was held in an outside area and despite the wind, everyone seemed to have a great time.

The event brought together entrepreneurs, VCs, healthcare professionals, and hospital representatives.  It was was partly sponsored by Seton Family of Hospitals in Austin.

The open house was the brainchild of our fabulous Bioscience Director, Jessica Hanover, and was pulled off flawlessly by our Marketing Communications/Events guru, Melissa Rabeaux (who I mentioned in a post I did about her work pulling together the Clean Energy Venture Summit late last year) and her intern team:  Stephany Puno (@StephanyPuno) and Laura Benold (@lbita).

I was feeling a little anti-social last night for a variety of reasons including information and emotional overload, so I was more than happy to hang with Stephany and Laura eating tortilla chips, 7 layer dip, and mini-hamburgers…oh and drink a couple of glasses of vinto tinto.  🙂   They kept me entertained, and I helped with registering people and even validating parking from time to time.   Being near the check in process, I got to meet most everyone who came and went anyway.

I ventured out into the crowd to say ‘hello’ to a few people I hadn’t seen in a while, make some key connections, and to see Jessica speak.

ATI Bioscience is a fairly new program (about a year old) and is definitely building a great foundation to help grow Austin’s Bio community!

TiE Austin Funding Forum
May 13 2009

Last night I participated in annual event put on by TiE Austin called The Funding Forum.  I participated last year as a reviewer to help teams prepare for their pitches and as a last minute panelist to review pitches.  This year I was a panelist listening to pitches but was kind of a moderator too.

The companies rotate tables and pitch their ideas via their PC or hardcopy PowerPoint slides to a few potential investors.  Many angel investors, VCs, entrepreneurs, and members from the technology startup community are present.

At my table, we had 4 different companies.  One of them had already come in to the Austin Technology Incubator to present so I was familiar with them.  Two of them had very nice, well thought out presentations and a did a good job presenting their ideas.  One of the presenters was not very well prepared.

It’s a great place for new entrepreneurial teams to practice their pitch and get advice from experienced individuals.  Some take feedback gracefully and some don’t.

One of the investors at my table had funded a company he met at a prior Funding Forum so it seems to work, on occasion, as it’s designed to!

I left just after the company pitches ended for a variety of reasons, with one of them being that I started to wonder if I was truly in the right space-time continuum.

TheFunded Now Has A Founder’s Institute
May 5 2009

I just heard about this and it sounds pretty interesting.  You don’t have to relocate to take advantage of this program.

***

TheFunded Founder Institute is a new founder-centric incubator that trains new and seasoned entrepreneurs the best practices for building next generation companies. The unique 4-month program offers remote participation, the industry’s most founder-friendly terms, focused mentorship and training from renowned CEOs, resources from leading service partners, fundraising opportunities at fair market value, and shared equity upside among all participants in the companies formed. Passionate Founders can apply today at www.FounderInstitute.com – registration for the Summer 2009 Semester ends on May 10^th, 2009.

Why was the Founder Institute Created?

The National Venture Capital Association recently reported that VC fundraising dropped nearly 40% in Q1 of 2009. In these dire economic times, only the highest quality, most disciplined new businesses will proliferate – and The Founder Institute was created from the ground up to create such businesses. Our focus on quality is evident in our process;

–        Institute Founders receive guidance from renowned, experienced start-up CEO Mentors.

–        The Institute’s unique equity-sharing model aligns incentives and ensures maximum effort from all parties involved. When one of the Institute’s companies does well, all of the participating companies benefit – and when the Institute’s Mentors help the participating companies, they share in the upside as well.

–        The Institute focuses Founders on non-abstract, critical company-building assignments that build successful businesses in a weekly, step-by-step fashion.

–         The Institute helps Founders secure investment at market rates and under the best possible terms – instead of forcing a valuation or equity purchase at a premature stage.

–        The Institute does not require Founders to relocate or live on reduced incomes.

–        The Institute sets up regular meetings with investors and the public throughout the company-building process to increase quality and focus.

–         Institute Partners provide discounted or free services, so Founders can focus more time and resources on building the business.

Great Founders are often overlooked by the current entrepreneurial ecosystem, and innovative startups have a dramatic positive effect on the global economy. TheFunded Founder Institute aims to help the global economy by helping smart people start new, high-quality businesses.

For more information, visit www.FounderInstitute.com, or contact jonathan@thefunded.com.

A New International Multi Language School in Austin
May 3 2009

Some of you may know that my husband, Erin Defosse, has been spearheading the formation of a new amazing private international multi-language (Spanish and Mandarin) school for the Austin community – The Magellan School.

Since we both fancy ourselves entrepreneurs, we understand each others need to try new things and hopefully make a difference.

The location was just announced (see a copy of the latest newsletter below) on Far West/Mopac and it will be the first of its kind here in Austin!

The Head of School, Marisa Leon, is fabulous!  I interviewed her and have met with her on several occasions since then.  She is remarkable with kids, brilliant, and extremely observant.  As a parent, I am so thrilled that she will be leading a school that my kids will be going to!

I will be the only one in the family who probably won’t be fluent in Spanish so I’m foreseeing a future where the kids will be saying things about me behind my back. 🙂  But it’s a risk I’m willing to take for my kids to be global citizens and be able to communicate with so many more people in the world.

They are still accepting applications for the Fall.  Even if you don’t have pre-K to 2nd grade school age kids please consider donating (tax deductible) and be part of the founding financial supporters of the school to help ensure its continued success.

The early years of any start-up/entrepreneurial endeavor are so critical and any financial or volunteer support you can give will go a long way to making Austin one of the key global centers in the world!  I firmly believe that schools like this will attract companies and families to our fine city.  Giving even just a little goes a long way.  Check out the Magellan Giving page for more information.

When a child discovers that he or she can change the world for the better…the world usually changes!

Please help spread the word!

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Above The Fray
Apr 26 2009

Is it possible to remain above the fray in times like these?  I think some of us if not most of us think we have some control over our destinies, our thoughts, or our feelings and it comes as a shock when we find ourselves in the middle of a tornado and we can’t figure out how we got there.  There are common sayings like “Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.” or “Man plans, God laughs.” or “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” but most of us still feel like we have some control over what happens to us.  Of course, we have control over what shoes we choose to wear one day, but the big things that really seem to matter just seem to all of a sudden happen to us.  Take for example the recent outbreak of swine flu (NY Times)!

When something like your company is wildly successful or a terrible failure we try to make sense of it.  If it’s wildly successful we can self importantly point to the things we did right, giving some credence to that strange phenomenon called “luck.”  When it fails we can point to a few things we did wrong but more often we point outside of ourselves to the economy, other people, the market, timing, etc.

Companies are starting right now, companies are falling apart right now, companies are doing well and growing, and others are doing their best to survive.  I know of one great success story that happened to someone in one of my networking groups, but it’s not public news yet.  The internet is littered with stories of companies failing or going bankrupt.  Fred Wilson did a long post about one of his first investments in Geocities, a company that Yahoo is planning to shut down.  I mentioned the 11 companies who recently graduated from the Austin Technology Incubator in my guest post on Austin Startup and they are at varying stages of of the start up life cycle.

We often think we are above the fray, minding our own business when the sky falls, the funding arrives, a legal battle over patent infringement ensues, or when we find that perfect person for the job, but are we really?  I think this is especially true of entrepreneurs.  We think we are different and to some extent we are.  We think differently.  We view risk differently.  We are less afraid and more afraid at the same time.  We become defined a certain way but we still have to fit into a society that is mostly designed for non risk takers, and we realize but for a few minor genetic or family of origin differences we are all deep, so deep in the fray of humanity.

It’s an exhilarating yet at the same time humbling realization.  At least I think so.

The Austin Technology Incubator is 20 years old
Apr 20 2009

By day I run operations at The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and this year it turns 20 years old.  By night I am mom to two amazing kids, work on Babble Soft, and often fail at my attempts to meditate.  I did a guest post on the Austin Startup blog called obviously enough:

20th Anniversary of the Austin Technology Incubator

I shared my story of being a founder/CEO starting my first company at ATI and how I see how it has evolved over the past several years since I first officed there on the other side of the fence back in 1998.