We were highlighted on Started in Seattle yesterday. Started in Seattle is a a new site where Stephen Medawar and Chet Kittleson profile startup that were actually started in Seattle. (Stephen made the distinction that it not just companies that reside in Seattle, but you actually have to have started in Seattle.)
It’s a cool new idea and I was honored to do a short interview with Stephen, where he asked a few questions about how to get noticed in a very busy and competitive market.
I am noticing a trend forming in my life.
I’ve been more open to starting a few new projects lately and so I decided to update this blog and create a spot where you can go to at any point in time and check out what I am working on. You can find the link at the top right of the header menu bar on this blog.
Below you can see a snippet of things I am up to right now. More will probably come soon but this is what is happening at this point in time in my life. Given the fact I am currently also doing some outside contract work for other companies, I am only listing the projects/companies I have founder or equity stake in.
Enjoy.
And reach out to me if you are interested in partnering or getting involved with any of them.
Seconds is a payment system allowing you to swiftly complete transactions via the desktop web, mobile web or text message. It shouldn’t matter what method you use, the payment experience should be as quick, simple and intuitive as sending a text message. Realizing how important ongoing relationships are between customers and merchants, and also realizing the main point of entry into our world is now through our mobile device, we see an incredible opportunity.
Callin’it is a mobile web based real-time sports prediction and data analysis platform. Using Callin’it, people are able to test and share their sports knowledge by publically predicting – or calling – stats, plays or outcomes of an upcoming sporting event. For instance, right now I am calling the Miami heat will have more rebounds than the Chicago Bulls in tonight’s game. Using real time sports data, we then compare the specific call with the actual result to build out a score for each user based on the accuracy and difficulty of their calls. If Twitter and the ‘SAT’s for sports’ had a baby, Callin’it would be their lovechild…
Founders Raw is my newest project, a video blog with conversation style interviews focused on bringing out raw stories early stage founders experience in their rough and tumble entrepreneurial journeys. I invite founders to talk openly over a beer or a coffee about the “truth” of how they survive and grow their companies. We intend on slicing up the conversations and sending out daily videos no more than 3 or 4 minutes long so we all can receive daily nuggets of the entrepreneurial truth.
The Agony and Ecstasy of Entrepreneurship
The Agony and Ecstasy of Entrepreneurship has been adapted from this blog, So Entrepreneurial, and placed into book format. They are my thoughts and musings on all things entrepreneurial, meant to help you understand what it takes and how to think like an entrepreneur in today’s world. Far from perfect and by no means the only way to go about the journey, they represent my lessons taken straight from the trenches. Since my thoughts originated as blog posts it’s best to take them piecemeal, maybe even digesting just a few topics each day. You will find my main perspectives are around mobile, digital and internet technologies but the principles can be applied to any other entrepreneurial focus.
This post is part wind-down announcement and part new product news.
We started Seconds (back then called Order SM) in September 2011 with the goal to experiment around mobile – text ordering at local restaurants. Our assumption was people would want to simply text “burrito” to their local mexican restaurant and then be able to swing by and grab it without having to wait in line for their food pay with a physical credit card. Everything would be taken care of in the background on the web.
We learned a ton, but the biggest thing was both merchants and customers really liked being able to just pay for something by sending at text and not mess with all the other communication crap, so we ended up moving towards specifically focusing on a mobile payment system. We changed the name to Seconds and rolled it out in Jan 201n2. We saw a dramatic market interest in our unique take on payments, receiving inbound request from almost every continent in the world. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to secure capital it required to scale our team and out product and so we basically stalled out at the end of the year.
Rather than being a Zombie-startup, I decided it was best we make better use of each members skill set (go get paying gigs) and wind down the operations on Seconds, as a mobile payment startup. This means we are not taking new customers or putting in new work around the product. It also means we are retaining the IP and tech, placing it on the shelf for a while as we determine the next phase for our ideas. As I said to the team when we made this decision, “with each passing day, people will only get more comfortable with mobile payments and we’ll make more and more mobile payments as the months and years go on. I don’t think this is the end of the line for our ideas, just not the right time and place for Seconds as it is today.”
This was definitely a tough decision and one I probably put off for a few months not wanting to accept the reality of the situation.
For all you who know me personally you will be quite familiar with my challenges as I built Seconds. It is not easy to be a founder, no matter how “rock star” it may be described nowadays. It’s lonely. It’s stressful. It stretches you in ways you will never imagine. It mentally challenges you to the point where you actually think you are crazy (and probably could be) yet just normal enough to not be committed.
Frequent readers will recall my many posts on what it’s like to be a founder. Rollercoaster is an understatement, mainly because when you get off the ride you say to yourself “wow, that was crazy fun” and then simply go back to your normal, unaffected life. No so when you jump head first into your life as an entrepreneur. There are scars from this journey that will take years for me to fully recover from.
With that said, we are not finished. Strangely, I am scarred yet more excited and more prepared for future success. A backstory will help you understand what is about to transpire from here on out.
About 7 weeks ago the Seconds team took the Super Bowl Weekend and entered Sports Hack Day, a 3-day hackathon to see who can build to coolest thing using sports oriented data. What a weekend. It was full of late nights, massive brainstorming and beer infested hacking. Although we didn’t end up winning any prizes or awards, we emerged from the weekend with a kernel of a cool idea that as sports fans we just wanted to use as we went about our life.
“What if you predict – or make a call – on any stat, play or outcome of a sporting event, and in Twitter fashion simply be able to shoot it out into the social sphere telling the world you think ‘X’ will happen in this game. If correct, your score would go up. If wrong, it would go down. You could then challenge friends with a simple finger swipe on your phone and then go back to watching the game. And what if we could then determine who knew the most about sports by this running number, similar to a Klout score but for sports.”
We liked the idea so much we decided to continue to work on the concept after the weekend concluded. I couldn’t get it out of my head and as a sports fan I wanted to use it – like really bad. I don’t normally play fantasy sports leagues because it feels like such a commitment of time and mental energy. But if I could simply make a few predictive calls on my mobile as to what I think will happen in the Bulls vs Knicks game tonight, and show my friend I know more about sports than he does, I’m into that. It’s addictive.
So the 3 of us wondered what it would look like and continued to build it out. It ended up more of an undertaking than we realized and has required many late nights over the last month. We are now almost ready to release it to the world and see what happens. That is all I will be saying until we announce the release very shortly, but needless to say we are interested to see what the world thinks.
As for me, I will be hired here soon and will have new daily responsibilities with another company. Am I excited to join another company? Yes. Do I wish I was full time (and paid) in my own company, not having to work for someone else? Yes indeed. Will it just take a little more time until that happens? For sure. Will I give up on pursuing my creative side as an entrepreneur? Hell no. Do I realize my time building Seconds is pretty much the only reason I will be hired into this next position? Yep. It’s not lost on me all this has been worth it no matter the financial outcome or the pain associated.
Spring is in the air; no better time to emerge towards a new direction and pursue an exciting new opportunity.
As the name suggests, Seconds is the fastest way to make a mobile payment using either Dwolla (digital cash from bank account) or a credit card.
If you are familiar with Seconds you may already know you a transaction can be completed by simply texting the merchant phone number with a keyword (that they previously set up) or any dollar amount value you wish. With an account already created and payment credential already in place, the transaction instantly takes place securely in the cloud and you are done!
No text boxes to mess with, pinching and zooming or other hassles.
It’s that easy. Watch this video to see just how easy Seconds payments are…
If you are walking through the mobile web experience for the first time with no previous Seconds account, you will see below we’ve made it a piece of cake to complete.
Click here if you are interested in accepting payments in Seconds >
It’s that easy.
Click here if you are interested in accepting payments in Seconds >
Seconds is happy to announce our partnership with Dwolla for their latest product release, referred to as guest checkout, allowing anyone to use Dwolla to make a one-time payment from their financial institution to an online merchant or marketplace.
Why is this so awesome? Now people can make Dwolla payments, in Seconds.
Simply put, Dwolla is great. For months we have been evaluating how to include Dwolla payments in our mobile payment experience. Their online and mobile payment network enables friends, families, and businesses to move money in a way that is safer, faster, and significantly more affordable than traditional payment options. We always believed in Dwolla’s mission to rid the world of credit card fees and today we are excited to finally turn on the Dwolla payment option.
With Dwolla, you simply connect a bank account so you can make payments through the system. The challenge up to this point was the fact that unless someone already had a Dwolla account created, it was nearly impossible for them to create a Dwolla account and make a quick payment during their first Seconds experience. Unfortunately, there were a number of steps – some even taking a few business days – to authorize the financial institution and finalization of the Dwolla account. It was basically a non-starter for our emerging payment platform.
As you can see, this new release leaves all that behind and puts Dwolla center stage in the Seconds payment experience, allowing someone the choice of quickly paying with their bank account using Dwolla in addition to a credit card.
Why is this so great? Merchants accepting Dwolla are charged at most $.25 per transactions over $10, and transactions under $10 carry no Dwolla transaction fee at all! Comparing this to the traditional 3% processing fee when dealing with credit cards and your looking at significant savings for merchants with each transaction.
We believe Dwolla has an incredible future and are excited to see where this will lead. More information about the Dwolla announcement is below.
Try it out now with GIVENATION, and give to IRD.org to help with Hurricane Sandy recovery.
What is Dwolla?
Dwolla is an online and mobile payment network that enables friends, families, and businesses to move money in a way that is safer, faster, and significantly more affordable than traditional payment options.
Using the Internet, Dwolla has designed a smarter way to structure payments and identify fraud. This allows the system to bypass credit cards, PayPal, and other payment types and, at the same time, offer the nation’s lowest cost payment network.
Since 2010, the Des Moines-based company has processed millions of transactions, becoming the nation’s newest and fastest growing payment network.
Pay as a guest:
Now, with Dwolla’s new guest checkout option, anyone can use Dwolla to make a one-time payment from their financial institution to an online merchant or marketplace.
Guest checkout adds Dwolla’s payment engine to traditional bank-issued transactions, allowing the same level of security, safety, and innovation regular Dwolla users enjoy.
Benefits of guest checkout
| For consumers: | |
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| For merchants: |
Using Guest Checkout vs. paying as a traditional Dwolla user
| Paying as a guest (for those without Dwolla a account): | |
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Users with Dwolla account (“Paying as a guest” plus the following):
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Frequently Asked Questions:
1. Does the merchant ever see my banking information
No. Aside from the fact that you’ve paid, Dwolla does not disclose or include sensitive financial information inside of transactions.
2. Is Dwolla safe?
All information is securely passed, encrypted, and stored in ways that meet or exceed industry standards. Dwolla does not sell your data or transactions with corporations or private parties. For more information, visit security and partnership.
3. Can I cancel my payment?
Yes, but the canceled payment must a.) be initiated by the merchant and b.) occur before the payment is processed.
4. How do Refunds and Disputes occur?
Dwolla defers to the refund policy of its merchants, but will assist in the dispute process whenever necessary. Learn more about Dwolla’s dispute process.
5. Why isn’t my total cheaper when I use Dwolla?
Not all merchants have opted to offer the Dwolla price discount. Dwolla believes it’s up to the merchants to decide what’s best for their business.
Here’s a video showing how easy it is to participate in GIVENATION and use Seconds to give to IRD in support of Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts. Although he’s paying rent and booking a hotel room, your payment experience will be just the same.
It actually takes longer and it’s more difficult to stand in line and order a latte at Starbucks. Today, hold the latte and give to those who need it.
Being a founder is often hard to describe. When you are asked, “what do you do” at parties or other social events, it’s easier to brush it off and not bring up the fact that you are a founder of your own company, just so you don’t have to go into how crazy it is. When they realize you are a “founder” and you have a “startup”, it’s quite impressive to them. They think it’s all glitz and glamor. “Oh” they say, “that must be really fun!” They think you make a ton of money and instantly give you more credit than you deserve. They almost give you rock star status.
Or, ironically, they don’t give you enough credit.
The problem is they have no clue what you are going through and what it took just to get to where you are right now. They have no idea how much you gave up to get here. They don’t understand you don’t go back to a desk in an building owned by the company you work for, push some pieces of paper around, report to a boss, provided daily meals by your employer, given a shiny mobile device and a cushy salary with benefits.
They don’t actually realize NONE of that is included. They have no idea you have given up everything in your life for this moment.
They also have no idea being a founder is like learning to juggle while riding a unicycle on a tightrope.
Why would I use such an analogy?
Most people’s idea of a founder is Steve Jobs – Miraculous. Incredible. Innovator. Charismatic. Leader. Someone who’s all put together and very wealthy. Use whatever descriptive words you want but they will be wrong.
Sorry to ruin the fun, but as founders we are generally running around like a chicken with our heads cut off trying to put out the latest fire threatening to burn down our dream. Most things presented to you will be foreign and scary as hell to fix. Customers will leave you. Investors will say no. Tech will fail. Team members will leave. Bank accounts will go dry. And that’s just par for the course each day.
Most of the time you have no idea what you are doing or what the right move is, you are just putting one foot in front of the other and feeling your way around the dark room.
It’s feels like this: you attend to one thing, and just when you think you have it figured out another thing pops up. So now you have two things to look over and figure out. Yet before you know it, instantly another issue arises. But this one is specifically attached to how you actually make money so you must drop everything else and go figure it out. Hopefully, once you get that figured out you remember what the last issue was so you can return and fix it.
Learning. To. Juggle. While. Riding. A. Unicycle. On. A. TightRope.
Yes, it feels that tiring each and every day. Next time you find out someone is a founder, please just give them a hug and ask them what you can do to help.
And you know what? Juggling and riding unicycles also have their benefits and the analogy works the other way. More on that topic at a later date.
Today, Seconds is excited to announce GIVENATION, a nationwide competition during the holiday season challenging you and your state to give whatever you can to help with the Hurricane Sandy recovery effort.
We thought it would be encouraging to establish a friendly competition between states to determine “the most giving state” based on amount of dollars contributed using Seconds during this year’s holiday season.
Seconds is also excited to announce a partnership with International Relief and Development (IRD) on the nationwide campaign to raise funds for Hurricane Sandy relief.
As families shop for gifts during this holiday season, it is important to remember that our neighbors in New Jersey and New York are still in need. GIVENATION encourages people to give what they can. Even $5 or $10 can help rebuild a home or provide a winter coat or blanket for someone in need. Imagine what millions of Americans can accomplish by giving up one holiday latte and gifting that amount to help others.
The funds collected through this challenge go directly to IRD, a global non-profit that has distributed $3.5 billion toward disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, and development programs since 1998. Funds raised for Sandy relief will support IRD’s immediate disaster recovery efforts. IRD is working in association with FEMA, the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD), and several local organizations to supply water, blankets, winter coats and clothes, cleaning supplies, hygiene kits, and other items to individuals in New Jersey and New York. This is just the first step toward a long-term recovery and rebuilding plan for the region.
To donate—and represent your state’s support for Sandy relief—go to getseconds.com/givenation, where you can make a donation in any amount you wish. You can also text your donation dollar amount to the phone number (202) 999-3736. For example, texting “5” will instantly send back a link where you can quickly complete a $5 payment using a credit card or bank account.
Seconds will be mapping the competition results in real-time starting November 3 and continuing through December 31. Visit IRD’s Facebook page at facebook.com/irdvoices to download and share the “I Gave” and “Did You Give?” images. And learn more about the GIVENATION campaign at getseconds.com/givenation.
For more information on IRD, visit www.ird.org, and visit the IRD Voices blog to read first-hand accounts from IRD staff in the field.
Full press release below image:
Which state will give the most to help the recovery efforts of Hurricane Sandy?
SEATTLE, WA – November 16th, 2012 – Seconds, the company enabling quick payments using mobile devices, is announcing GIVENATION, a holiday campaign encouraging the nation to get further involved with the Sandy recovery effort.
Hurricane Sandy recently caused billions of dollars in damage, destroying cities and displacing millions of people. People may have already given via The American Red Cross or other relief campaigns but there are still a lot of people who are in need and Seconds believes much more can be done.
Today, Seconds is announcing GIVENATION, a nationwide competition during the holiday season challenging you and your state to give whatever you can to help with the Hurricane Sandy recovery effort. “We thought it would be encouraging to establish a friendly competition between states to determine “the most giving state” based on amount of dollars contributed using Seconds during this year’s holiday season,” says Seconds CEO Nick Hughes.
So as people are buying toys, clothes, electronics and other items for family and friends this holiday season, they are urged to not forget about a nation in need. People are encouraged to give what they can – even $5 or $10 – and help rebuild their country. Imagine what millions of Americans can accomplish by simply giving up one holiday latte and gifting that amount to help others in need.
The funds collected go directly to International Relief and Development (IRD.org) a global non- profit which has distributed $3.5 billion towards disaster relief, and will be put towards immediate disaster recovery efforts. IRD is working in association with FEMA to supply water, blankets, winter coats and clothes, cleaning supplies, hygiene kits, and diapers in addition to other important recovery efforts.
To donate, go to at http://getseconds.com/givenation where you will see the map and a donation box to enter any amount you wish. Mobile users can also simply text a numeric dollar amount to the phone number (202) 999-3736. For example, texting “5” will instantly send back a link to quickly complete a $5 payment using a credit card or bank account via payment partner Dwolla.
“While we hope and pray for the full recovery of those affected by Hurricane Sandy, we are excited to partner with IRD in encouraging the entire nation to give any amount they can during the holiday season to help with the disaster recovery,” says Hughes.
Seconds will be mapping the competition results in real-time starting Nov. 16th and proceeding through Dec 31st, 2012.
About Seconds
Seconds enables any device holder to send or accept payments, whether through the web, mobile web or a quick text message. They believe the payment experience should be as quick, simple and intuitive as sending a text message. Founded during the fall of 2011 in Seattle, the original idea was to enhance mobile ordering and commerce for small local businesses. After pilot tests proved both merchants and customers just want the payment experience to be completed as fast and easy as possible, they decided to only focus on the mobile payment experience. They have a vision of any individual being able to interact and transact with any merchant in the world, holding any device they wish. Currently they hold office space in the recently opened SURF Incubator in downtown Seattle.
Fred Wilson has written extensively on designing for mobile first, desktop second. I couldn’t agree more and that is exactly what we are doing at Seconds.
When looking at our initial user interface design of both the mobile view and the web view, one will see quite a few similarities. This is not by accident, this is because we start with the mobile view first. We first ask ourselves which mode most people will use our service, mobile or desktop? Given the fact Seconds is a payments platform oriented around mobile devices, mobile takes highest priority.
Also, the fact that more smartphones are shipping than feature phones and the estimation by 2017 is the majority of web traffic will come from mobile, we feel designing for mobile first is a safe bet.
Finally, it’s such a pain to view a website on a mobile device only to have to pinch and zoom to even read the content and click the desired button. We feel it’s better to design for the smallest screen and allow the larger screens to pull the content/visuals out. It’s the reverse perspective of the pinch and zoom experience you mostly see today.
So, if take a look at our desktop web presence you will see pretty much the same information and visuals, just aligned slightly differently since there’s quite a bit more real estate.
How did we do this? Did we use a different service to create a “mobile optimized website” to augment our desktop website? One with drop down menus and a very different look and feel to it? Nope. I don’t believe this is the right approach. Unfortunately, farming out your mobile experience to a third party white-labeled service removes your branding and familiarity of your product. (For example, view this blog article on a mobile device vs the web and you will see what I mean.) You can refer to this mentality as desktop first, mobile second because you are not allowing the mobile device constraints drive overall user interface design.
Without sounding too redundant, why would you focus on desktop first when as a society we are clearly spending more and more time on mobile devices?
So how do we go about it? As stated above, we have a mobile first mentality. We design all Seconds experiences mobile first and then scale up to desktop. You can see this in play when you access Seconds on a desktop browser. (Try resizing your browser and shrink the width of the page. It’s responsive.) If anything, one might initially feel there is something lacking in the desktop view. You might think maybe there’s not enough imagery or things to look at… yet is that really the reason to go to Seconds?
You know what, we don’t care. We know people aren’t coming to Seconds to view pictures, to browse friends’ profiles or to see anything else. What we care about is that the primary functions of the system, which is to complete a transaction as quickly as possible. This is paramount. We measure user experience in mere clicks and finger swipes and most times the more visually stimulating the design, the more clicks/swipes to complete the desired experience. Those extra steps, in the end, often result in a lost transaction. Just ask PayPal.
Our mobile first mentality allows the design and UI constraints of the smaller mobile screen to aide us in development of Seconds. Why? They help us sift out all the unnecessary and focus on the essentials.
Brevity is always refreshing. Clean and clear is more compelling than busy and confusing. Adding things when it seems right is always easier than trying to determine what to remove from the 100 options that could be the problem.
What is GIVENATION?
Hurricane Sandy recently caused billions of dollars in damage, destroying cities and displacing millions of people. What if GIVENATION was a holiday challenge to give whatever you can, helping with the Hurricane Sandy recovery effort?
What if we established a friendly competition between states to determine “the most giving state” based on amount of dollars contributed during this year’s holiday season?
What if Seconds just partnered with one of the largest global non-profits focusing on disaster relief around the world?
What if, as you are buying toys, clothes, electronics and other items as presents for family and friends this holiday, you didn’t forget to give a gift to a nation in need?
What if we announce something big this Friday, November 16th 2012?
What if GIVENATION was real? Would you give?
We will be announcing the partnership with a global non-profit and the roll out of a national campaign for donations towards a recent disaster to our county. More to come….
In the meantime, try Seconds out and give to the Capitol Christmas tree to support forest restoration.
Below is from my latest posts published on PayPal’s DevZone, titled The Future of Commerce Will Combine Your Social Network and Mobile Device.
Each day we hear growing speculation about the so-called mobile commerce revolution that’s just starting to take shape. Some think NFC payments will be the next big thing in retail. Others believe text-based payments will open up the mobile payment experience for the billions of mobile device holders around the world. And thousands of new apps are created each year with a new twist on using your mobile device to pay for everyday things.
To some extent, these concepts and more will shape the future of mobile commerce. However, pundits are forgetting what might happen if you combine the most commonly used platforms in the world—mobile devices and social networks—and infuse quick payment technology within them.
If Those Two Powerful Phenomena Merge, Will We Discover a New Payments Utopia?
It seems as if we’ve been in the stone age of social commerce for years now. Facebook has been around for almost a decade, and before that we had Friendster and Myspace. From my perspective, most don’t realize how close we actually are to merging social and commercial actions. How many times have you read a Facebook update from a friend, for instance, saying something like “I just saw ____ and it was the best movie I’ve ever seen.” Or what about the posts that show off a new car or recently purchased clothing? Those posts, in a small way, are the beginnings of social commerce. By sharing things such as a new purchase or a cool new movie, you are influencing your friends’ commercial interests. Today, people are partaking in social commerce without actually knowing it.
The question is, what will happen when they know they are doing it and they help you make a similar purchase? And more interestingly, what happens when it originates from a mobile device?
We are pleased to announce Seconds has been chosen to power mobile payments for the 2012 U.S. Capitol Building Christmas Tree. Yes, the one that travels across the country on a truck and is put on display in front of the capitol building in Washington D.C. That one.
This past spring, wildfires burned more then 100,000 acres of land and more than 600 homes near Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, Colorado. In addition to destroying homes, these fires severely damaged critical watershed areas that supply water for the cities of Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. They also damaged critical habitat for wildlife and fish in the region.
Seconds was sought out by a Colorado non-profit called ChooseOutdoors and the National Forest Service looking for a dynamic mobile/text payment system to help raise money for restoration of the thousands of acres destroyed in the fires. They were very clear they wanted it to be as smooth and quick as possible to complete since people will be standing outside during festivities and if wanting to make a donation, they should be able to with a mobile device.
I told them “No problem. Heres how it works: People simply text a numerical dollar amount to the phone number. For example, texting “5” will instantly send back a link to quickly complete a $5 payment using a credit card or bank account. Payments can also be made on the desktop or mobile web by visiting getseconds.com and searching for the tree.”
That’s it.
You can learn more about the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree here. From the press release (full press release below):
People are encouraged to give what they can – even $5 or $10 – to help restore their country, whose deteriorating forest conditions place America at a growing risk of forest fires. “Our team wondered how many dollars can we, as a nation, raise to help restore the forests during the holidays,” said Nick Hughes, CEO of Seconds. So the goal became to raise at least $25,000 for restoration of the very forests many of us make our back yards. “All money raised will go to supporting work crews and acquiring materials needed to replant riparian vegetation, stabilize stream banks and re-plant trees lost in the fires,” said Jeff Olson, president of Choose Outdoors.
The U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree now represents much more than an old holiday tradition
SEATTLE, WA – November 1st, 2012 – Seconds, the company enabling quick payments using mobile devices, is announcing their have been chosen as the payments provider for a holiday donation campaign associated with the Christmas Tree standing in front of the U.S. Capitol Building.
This past spring, wildfires burned more then 100,000 acres of land and more than 600 homes near Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, Colorado. In addition to destroying homes, these fires severely damaged critical watershed areas that supply water for the cities of Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. They also damaged critical habitat for wildlife and fish in the region.
Seconds is announcing today they have been selected to help ChooseOutdoors.org and the U.S. Forest Service with the Colorado Forest Fire Restoration Challenge Fund, in association with the 2012 Capitol Christmas Tree project. The U.S. Capitol Christmas tree will be cut from Meeker, Colorado and driven across the country starting November 6th, touring more than 30 cities before being decorated and put on display for the holidays in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington DC.
People are encouraged to give what they can – even $5 or $10 – to help restore their country, whose deteriorating forest conditions place America at a growing risk of forest fires. “Our team wondered how many dollars can we, as a nation, raise to help restore the forests during the holidays,” said Nick Hughes, CEO of Seconds. So the goal became to raise at least $25,000 for restoration of the very forests many of us make our back yards. “All money raised will go to supporting work crews and acquiring materials needed to replant riparian vegetation, stabilize stream banks and re-plant trees lost in the fires,” said Jeff Olson, president of Choose Outdoors.
To donate, simply text a numerical dollar amount to the phone number 303-502-5858. For example, texting “5” will instantly send back a link to quickly complete a $5 payment using a credit card or bank account. Payments can also be made on the desktop or mobile web by visiting getseconds.com and searching for the tree.
“It’s an honor to be chosen by the U.S. Forest Service and ChooseOutdoors.org as the payments platform for this special event. Our goal is to encourage people to give any amount they can during the holiday season to help improve the health of our land”, says Hughes. All participants from the winning state will be placed in a drawing for two tickets to next year’s tree lighting ceremony in Washington D.C.
Give up a latte, gain a forest. Our nation’s forests are in critical condition and need our help to restore their health. Imagine what Americans can accomplish by simply giving up one holiday latte and gifting that $5 to the forest. Funding for restoration and public education are just a few of the ways we can decrease the chances of devastating fires – saving homes, neighborhoods and possibly lives. “We are thrilled that a Colorado forest is providing a gift to the nation and hope that it will assist in educating the country about forest health and restoration” said Jerri Marr, supervisor of the Pike and San Isabel National Forests.
For additional information on how to support or help with efforts, contact Jeff Olson at jeff.chooseoutdoors@gmail.com or Nick Hughes, CEO of Seconds at nick@getseconds.com.
About Seconds
Seconds enables any device holder to send or accept payments, whether through the web, mobile web or a quick text message. They believe the payment experience should be as quick, simple and intuitive as sending a text message. Founded during the fall of 2011 in Seattle, the original idea was to enhance mobile ordering and commerce for small local businesses. After pilot tests proved both merchants and customers just want the payment experience to be completed as fast and easy as possible, they decided to only focus on the mobile payment experience. They have a vision of any individual being able to interact and transact with any merchant in the world, holding any device they wish. Currently they hold office space in the recently opened SURF Incubator in downtown Seattle.
Christmas is still more than 2 months away, but we are already full of holiday cheer. We have been chosen to be a part of a large holiday tradition, putting Seconds payments on the national stage and changing the trajectory of our company forever.
What it is? Can’t tell just yet. But I can tell you it’s not proving mobile payments at Macy’s. And it’s definitely not a Starbuck’s payments deal, Square already go that one! Stay tuned for more details in the next few weeks.
Great things don’t just appear out of thin air. You have to nurture and cultivate them over time into what you envision as your dream company.
That, my friends, is the secret to startup success.
Yes, you have to build a solid product. You will need to attract great technical talent. You also need to have enough user engagement and financial capital so you don’t end up in Startup Death Valley. But even if you have all that in your favor, luck is still required if you want to succeed.
Luck gives you the breaks you desperately need to go from a no-name into household name.
Seconds has been given an amazing opportunity to drive payments for a nationwide holiday event. I will provide more detail as the event nears but suffice it to say this lucky opportunity is only possible because of what we have done over the past year.
It definitely didn’t appear out of thin air. Day by day over the past year we made it happen.
Launch early
We launched the earliest version of Seconds about a year ago, under a different name and clearly aimed at a different customer segment. The product was buggy as hell and to be honest, a bit embarrassing. But that’s the point of an early release, isn’t it? It does you no good to have an idea without a product others can touch, taste and see. We knew we needed to get something into end-customers hands ASAP if we were going to receive any feedback – feedback that actually led to our next iteration. I consider it lucky we were able to have a team willing to quickly put out a buggy product and gain much needed feedback. In fact, we created that luck by committing to releasing immediately and listen to the feedback.
Speak loudly
Not surprising, I like to write. Also not surprising, I like to write about Seconds and payments in general, on this blog as well as others more well known. For a number of reasons, I believe this is why we are in the position we are in now given we have only been around 12 months.
If you search Seconds, we come up fourth, above the fold, right below a Wikipedia entry for the time interval and a few links to a movie also titled Seconds. This is huge, as early feedback on the name was something akin to “great name, but how are you going to be found in Search? Pretty tough huh?” Well, that’s where writing comes in…. the more links to a website the more “relevant and valuable” it is in the search index algorithm. I have no idea how many links are pointing to Seconds but it’s quite a few, based on how many articles I have written as well as how many others have written about Seconds. This tactic also has helped Seconds gain media attention a lot earlier than other startups in the same situation. At least we had something written about us and our vision the media could go off of, even if it’s from the founding team.
Founders need to speak loudly about what they are doing. If you don’t, why should the media? Getting your word out and better positioning your product are a few ways to create your own luck.
Spray widely
Discovering product market fit is probably the most challenging task for an early stage startup. It’s one thing to sit at the white board and determine your products are meant for __(whatever)___ market; it’s a whole other ballgame once you get outside the office and try to grow a customer base in that market. Not so easy…
Seconds is a payments system, a mobile focused one at that. Amazingly, almost every industry and market vertical handles payments in one way or anther. This poses both a great opportunity and a large problem. The fact that our larger market is HUGE is quite the opportunity. The challenge is trying to serve everyone right out of the gate, which is pretty much impossible. So we spent the last 8 or 9 months spraying our message quite wide, gaining attention from a number of customer bases. Some turned out well. Some did not. But the incredible thing is we have continued to learn from each and every customer discovery conversation, resulting in refinement of our pitch, company positioning and – at times – the very essence of our product. Ultimately, this practice led to a few very promising markets ready and willing to run with Seconds.
We refused to be boxed too narrow in the beginning, and it has paid off tremendously. A year ago, we were a text ordering system for local restaurants, struggling to fit our solution to their non-obvious problems. This winter, possibly millions of people will be using Seconds to make donations to an important cause with a few quick swipes of their finger. Everyone wants their payment experience be easier and more enjoyable, especially when making a quick donation.
Are we lucky? I would say yes. Did we create this luck? You bet. You can’t sit on your butt and think the world will come to you. If you want the world, you need to go out and get it.
I’m sure a large number of teams reading Techcrunch or other tech blogs right now are in the same situation my company found itself recently. It probably goes something like this: you have a startup, a product, users and a maybe little revenue. You are growing month over month but really you aren’t where you want to be.
Most likely you are answering questions with reflexive responses such as “well, we are just testing some assumptions right now” or “we’re heading in the right direction, just need a few more engineers on the team.” Or, how about this one, “oh, we’re still in stealth, you could call it alpha…”
Give me a break. Quit lying to yourself.
To put it bluntly, you are in Startup Death Valley. And you need to get out as soon as possible. If not, your startup will certainly die. It might make you feel better knowing Death Valley is where most startups end up – not quite done but definitely not making anything happen. If you do feel better thinking you are not alone, you are most certainly destined to fail. Finding yourself in Death Valley is scary and should result in only one question: “how long until we’re dead?”
You and I know it wasn’t always this way. Not too long ago your team was driving forward toward a goal, excited as hell to be at the office until midnight or later hammering away to the launch your latest concept. And you absolutely knew, once you launched, millions of users were going to flock. Revenues were supposed to grow. Investors were most definitely going to call you back.
And then… Crickets.
Now, it’s become a lot more difficult to get out of bed. You’ve noticed it’s not as exciting to load up the email or go into the office, and definitely not as fun to field questions about your startup. Reading all the media out there you just wish you could be on the other side, reaching milestones and attracting investment dollars at record levels. But you’re not. You get up each day wishing things would be different instead of actually doing anything about it. In a word, you are complacent.
If this is how you are feeling, you are currently in Death Valley and have little time left. So, how do those select few companies – the ones gaining all the attention and money – get out (or stay out) of Death Valley?
First and foremost, they make their own luck. They pick up the dice and roll them again – quickly. They get out by putting it all on the line and betting the company, just as we did recently. Oddly, when faced with inadequate growth too many startups just keep heading blindly toward danger only to drive right off the cliff. This is, quite literally, insane. They are not self aware enough to sense what needs to change, when, and how fast. The ability to sense market shifts and adjust accordingly is an incredible skill that can be found in all of the successful founders, especially ones the ones you don’t find in Death Valley.
Without going into detail about my startup, here’s the playbook we just used to redesign and deploy a brand new product within a month’s time, reviving our company and paving the way for a whole new market opportunity. If you are a founder or early employee of a stagnant startup, maybe this playbook will help you too.
Make a commitment to change
The first step is to determine what you are going to do and how you will go about it. To get clear on those issues, you need to take an account of what you have or have not accomplished up to this point. This requires a long and painful look in the mirror by the founding team, revealing truths that will hopefully save the company.
Has your vision changed since the last big development? What has the larger market and your existing user base told you since your last product release? What features are engaging users on the existing product? What is not engaging and not being used. Point blank, what’s not working? What assumptions were proven true and what didn’t pan out?
Then it’s pretty simple – keep what is working and throw away what doesn’t. Really, just scrap it. In our experience it was smarter to cut the fat and trim features rather than just add new ones we thought might work. For a number of reasons we actually decided to rebuild rather than make additions to existing codebase. Contrary to popular belief, this is more challenging than it sounds. Why? Inherently, humans tend to be scared and freeze when making drastic changes on things they spent long periods of time working on. It all comes down to our natural fear of change. This is no truer as an employee of a Big Co. than as it is as a startup team reviewing their V1.0 product. The reason is we fear change. Yet, this is exactly where we found ourselves with our product – growing but not growing very fast. Ultimately, we decided we weren’t scared of the consequences since we knew if we did nothing, nothing would change. Actually, that’s not true. It would have been the end of the line since “good enough” is actually not good enough in the big leagues.
State it VERY publicly
Almost nothing gets done until there’s a deadline. Although dates set internally are the start of it, they are only as good as your team’s integrity. Unfortunately, it’s way too easy to fudge on commitments when they are loosely agreed upon between a few team members in a private meeting. Fully committing to a new product release required establishing a public event and trying it to our new product. To make it even more drastic of a commitment, we also stated this publicly and promised a large group of people they would be using our system, the very product that wasn’t yet built. This was really the only way to move the needle. Similar to launch parties, larger public commitments set solid deadlines teams must respect. In fact, DEADline is a great word since that is what you will be if, in fact, you don’t meet it.
Do whatever it takes to deliver
Staying at the office until wee hours of the morning, having intense discussions of where buttons and other little details should be placed, and not spending time with friends or family because a deadline is fast approaching, these are all signs you are doing whatever it takes to make things happen.
The biggest sign: you are more afraid of not delivering and failing in public than anything else in the moment.
We found ourselves performing at levels we hadn’t reached in quite some time, if ever. The last few weeks were a blur, and we didn’t sleep at all the night before our release, not because we were excited like Christmas Eve, but because we HAD to deliver. Although not amusing at the time, the moment media was suppose to go live (6am EST) announcing our latest release, our site was actually down. How fun! Even more challenging, throughout the entire launch day our system was incredibly buggy due to a DNS change and other small issues. Yet I was as proud as any startup CEO could be watching our entire team set aside all other distractions, doing whatever it takes to push out a successful new release.
The lesson here is simple – without a predetermined public commitment connected to a larger event we would never have pushed ourselves as hard as we did. We would have stayed in Death Valley, remaining complacent like the other 90% of startups out there. We smartly made a commitment others outside our organization could hold us accountable and expect us to deliver on. It was very risky.
Yet, through the very late nights and stressful moments an awesome feeling started to emerge: Damn right, we will most definitely make this happen.
image via Flickr user Michael Ransburg.
…6… 5….4….3…2…1…
WE HAVE LIFT OFF.
This is exactly what I am feeling right now as we prepare for our latest release. And it’s a huge release. In fact, it’s a company defining release and will launch us into brand new territory. It involves a Seconds launch event Friday night in Seattle, with hundreds in attendance. It involves national press coverage. It has involved weeks of (almost) all-nighters from the team – blood, sweat and tears.
It, by all regards, has been the most challenging but exciting time of each one of our lives.
It also involves a hell of a lot of dev work on the product. We basically rebuilt Seconds from the ground up, keeping what worked and threw away the unnecessary. At the time, I didn’t think we could make a more streamlined payment experience, but we did! This could be taken as blasphemy, but the Seconds payment experience is unlike any other.
If you are are a frequent reader you know we have experienced growth each and every month yet we were struggling to onboard new customers/find the right market. Based on that situation, during this summer we decided it was time to expand what was working and remove what wasn’t.
If it’s on or after Sep 28th, check Seconds out now!
Here’s a run down of our changes.
1. We stripped away much of the old merchant experience, it was too clunky and confusing and have drastically redesigned the experience from the ground up. Seconds is truly a new age payment system, built mobile first.
2. We realized the payment experience must be available to everyone (device agnostic), available and functional anywhere the consumer finds themself (proximity agnostic) and merge together communication and transaction for a quick but complete commerce experience.
3. We created a clean interface for both individual and merchant accounts, easily usable and quicker to complete a task. The product is even leaner than before and in my opinion, way more potent.
4. The Seconds experience starts with a simple search bar asking you “who do you want to pay?” You can make payments by searching name, email, twitter @username, phone number and possibly location, if they are not in our system there will be an option to send a quick invite. If you find them, you then enter an amount and click pay. That’s it. The new interface is an interesting direction we are leaning towards…. The merging of Search and Payments. It’ll be exciting to see how this will be used and where it will go from here, especially with merchant’s ability to create keywords. ☺
5. We reimagined what “accepting payments” meant, and have now placed the opportunity one click away from a general Seconds user. Basically, anyone can instantly upgrade to a “merchant account” if they want. The cool thing is merchants are users by default, so they can make payments as well as accept them.
6. We split payment acceptance in two options: a web only account (people are only able to make payments to that account via the web) and a text enabled account (involving both the web and messages sent via text/keyword based payments). Web only is free. Text enabled is $5 per month. All merchants are charged $.50 per transaction through Seconds. We believe the free monthly option will be a big winner and help increase merchant account creation.
7. Creating a merchant account and accepting credit card payments can happen in just a few minutes – all on a mobile device if necessary. It’s truly an amazing experience. This was not the case just a week or so ago – a recent discovery of a new payments partner is going to open doors previously unimaginable.
8. Based on these changes our margins are becoming even more awesome. We enhanced how we are facilitating credit card payments and digital cash payments to create not only a better merchant onboarding but a better overall business. This is huge and will allow for a nice cashflow in the short term as we get going.
9. We have decided to focus Seconds on the college/University/Greeklife student market. We have been told over and over how desperate they are for a sleek payment system where mobile users can quickly make a payment on the fly when they need to. There is also strong interest in non-profits and donation collections for the same experience. These two markets have one big thing in common: the payment is the product, in the sense there’s typically no physical product to be served. This is where we’ll start and should get some strong growth from there.
Below is just a few of the events on our calendar:
Sep 28th – Media Launch of new Seconds payment system
There will be solid media coverage of the launch of our new system. Sky’s the limit.
Sep 28th – Startup Crawl Fights Poverty
I have organized an event for the startup Seattle community and which will double as a launch party. It will be a great night, should grab some exposure for Seconds and you are definitely invited if you are in Seattle. https://soentrepreneurial.com/2012/09/18/the-seattle-startup-crawl-fights-poverty-september-28th-at-5pm-rsvp-now/.
Oct 1st – 3rd. – DEMO Conference
We will be down in SF for the DEMO conference, the trip we won during the SURF Incubator pitch competition. It will be fun and we’ll be working on meetings and connecting with people there. If you are in SF, please connect with me. @jnickhughes.
Oct 16th – 18th – TwilioCon
Twilio (the platform we use for communications) has invited Seconds to be a part of the event, one of a select group of startups to demo/highlighted during the event. TwilioCon will be an awesome time for Seconds to get some solid attention from other startups, users, investors and media.
Soon – Dwolla partnernership
Dwolla will be making some big announcements and they have asked us to be associated with the event. More on this soon!
This is a section taken from a recent article I wrote on PayPal’s x.com network.
How we interact with computers—and to an extent the rest of the world—is changing. As you know, we no longer log on or are required to go to a computer to get online. We now carry computers with us all day, every day; we are always connected.
We do not have to reidentify ourselves and re-enter our credentials each time we go online. And with the inception of Siri, along with other crude artificial intelligence (AI) interfaces, it is now apparent that we will leverage new blends of AI and intelligent data systems integrated within our mobile devices to create very personal consumer experiences.
These technologies and more will drastically change our purchasing experiences. I see a future where the specific mobile device you carry doesn’t have any bearing on how you make a mobile payment. Take simple text, for example. It is fair to say that text messaging has taken over as the most common form of digital communication on the planet, with 6 billion capable devices and more than 8 trillion messages sent in 2011.
But what if SMS and messaging technologies were not only created for basic communications, but for commerce as well? Imagine being able to say things like “send a message to the coffee shop telling them I will be there in 10 minutes and I will have the usual,” and by the time you get there, your correct drink is sitting on the counter, already paid for.
This is not too far off. Actually, the technical requirements are manageable, and the right pieces just need to be put in the right places. The next few years will bring a fundamental shift in the economy as merchants and business adopt this popular method of communication and use it as a new form of commerce. It is already being accomplished through simple text, voice, and gestures, thanks to natural language processing within your mobile device.
Personalization will also become prevalent and is another key component in the future of payments. Today, most merchants still require voice calls to communicate with them; when it comes time to transact, the customer must actually be present with cash or credit card in hand. Think about how far brick-and-mortar retailers need to go to catch up with the e-commerce world. Even today, when I call a local merchant I’m asked to identify myself and to read my payment information (aloud) if I want to make a purchase.
How secure is that?
Interestingly, this lack of personalization does not change when I am present. As I walk in the door, the merchant has no idea who I am, how many times I have visited that location and what my purchase history there might look like. In a word, these retailers are ignorant. They lack the necessary and vital information to not only improve their operations but also make my customer experience much, much better. And why do I still need to stand in a line for them to swipe my card and write my signature before I leave?
A whole new world of possibilities opens up when personalized connections between customer and merchant are made available through mobile technologies and artificial intelligence. Customers will be able to quickly find and interact with a merchant, requesting more information or making purchases when and where they feel most compelled. Since identification and payment credentials will have already been verified and stored securely in the cloud, transactions then become frictionless. Merchants are not only afforded a more efficient method of communications and transactions, but also a unique perspective on each customer and a clearer picture of their entire customer base—in real time.
Visit x.com/devzone to read the whole article.
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