After one of his first ventures exposed the wide-eyed 21-year-old to the shadier side of business, replete with dishonesty, broken friendships and inequitable wages, Isaac cut his losses and moved on. He had put his all into something that he believed in, only to watch it all come crashing down around him. Isaac would not be discouraged by the people he trusted but was betrayed by; he chose to learn from the experience, pulling something positive out of a painful situation. Isaac shares this experience and reveals what all starting entrepreneurs should know.

A Short Clip of My Conversation with Jude Gomila
Trouble Viewing? Visit: IntimateMath on YouTube

PROFILE

STATS
Companies Founded:
1. Recurly – August 2009
2. Syncplicity – 2007

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Hometown: Highland Park, IL
Currently Resides: San Francisco, CA
Age: 27
Bachelors of Science: Illinois Institute of Technology, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Hobbies/Interests: Photography
Biggest Fear: Working too much instead of enjoying life
Role Models: Eric Ries and Sean Ellis because they share their knowledge with other people and are changing how startups work today
Favorite Musician: Lisa Loeb

Isaac’s: Linkedin | Twitter | Blog

THE CONVERSATION:

Kim Ngo: Thanks for talking with us Issac. Let’s go back. Start by telling us how you got started, not with Recurly, but with your first experience of the tech startup world and entrepreneurship.

Isaac Hall: My first experience with a startup was right out of college. I worked for a computer consulting company, building eCommerce websites.

Before I worked for the startup, a few Microsoft recruiters prospected me for an interview. It seemed pretty cool. But at the same time, I was reading about startups and entrepreneurship, and those topics really resonated with me.

I turned down Microsoft and built this startup with these guys, knowing that I would be working at home with no salary and putting in 100 hours a week. We built a really cool product, an online asset maintenance system for Cisco hardware, fast. It was an interesting experience.

Kim Ngo: Were you a co-founder of this company?

Isaac Hall: I was 21, naïve, and fresh out of college. I thought I was a co-founder.

Nobody tells you as a computer science graduate what you need to watch out for. The two guys I started the company with were in their 30’s and were slick business guys, the kind you should be wary of. They would take me out and get bottle service, so I thought that they were treating me well. I didn’t know what my talents were worth; they took advantage of me and underpaid me, even though I thought we were equals in the company.

Kim Ngo: Did they say that you owned a third of the startup when they first approached you?

Isaac Hall: Yeah, but everything was verbal, nothing was written. I thought I was a co-founder; I just trusted that I was getting a third of the company. At the end of the day, all I had was a very small salary that I was tricked into taking.

Here’s my advice for startup entrepreneurs: if it’s your first time starting a company, get things on paper, get a lawyer, get advice outside of the company, and make sure you have equity or stock options.

Kim Ngo: Tell me about that experience, the moment that you found out “I’m screwed!”

Isaac Hall: I had been with the company for two years, then the two co-founders of the company started suing each other. They had been best friends for 16 years, so this was a major fight. One of them ended up getting kicked out.

After that, one of the other programmers left and things continued to fall apart. I continued to hold things together on the programming side. The two co-founders both wanted me to help them argue their story, so I was hearing two different things.

It was a very weird situation. I started to realize that I had no shares in the company; they each owned 45%, and the investor owned 10%. My salary was half of what they were earning, even though we were supposed to be earning the same amount.

Kim Ngo: Did you cry?

Isaac Hall: Oh, yeah I did. I was really upset.

I was naïve. I didn’t know anything about options or equity, and I thought I owned a third of the company. I sacrificed my time—100 hours a week!—and my own money to help build it.

Kim Ngo: Maybe you didn’t get the stock options and maybe you weren’t officially a co-founder, but the opportunity that they gave you allowed you to further develop your skill set and experience to have even more exciting opportunities in the future.

Isaac Hall: Definitely. I had free reign over the programming and how we built the product, as well as a lot of other things. I also gained a lot of experience working with clients, quickly iterating over product design, and I learned a lot about what not to do.

Subscription billing and recurring payments seem simple enough at face value, but once upgrades, downgrades, cancellations, free trial periods and more are introduced, the process can get pretty hairy. Though highly common, most startups don’t anticipate this predicament until their clients start calling the support line. That’s why Recurly is such a lifesaver for online businesses. Tasks that typically eat up 2-6 months are settled in a single day with no elbow grease from you and no nuisance to your customers. After all, launching an online business is a full-time occupation, and entrepreneurs don’t have the time to press pause for a credit card validation or an invoice. Recurly keeps billing quick and efficient and makes it easy to focus on your growing business so you can leave the number-crunching to the pros. Time is money, and Recurly can save you a great deal on both.

Return Wednesday, May 12th to learn about Isaac’s days before Recurly and the important lessons he learned that every entrepreneur should know.

Aloha Mahalo

IntimateMath visited the Mahalo office and got a feel for what it’s like to be a part of the Mahalo family. Calacanis’s enthusiasm for his project spreads seamlessly to his staff, and he sees to it that they’re well taken care of at the workplace. The Mahalo kitchen has more than just a typical coffee pot and water cooler; a private chef is on staff to provide employees breakfast, lunch, and healthy snacks. Eat a few too many of those snacks?

Jason Calacanis Founder of Mahalo

Mahalo also has an on-site exercise facility to keep the team energized. The office even has a washer and dryer for laundry days and an Xbox to fill any spare time. If the facilities weren’t enough to keep his team happy, Calacanis’s ear is always open to new ideas or friendly conversation with the people who keep Mahalo running. He even ranks his editors’ performances with his own brand of karate belts, ranging from the traditional white through yellow, green, purple, brown and black; a fitting choice for a man who has actually earned a real black belt in Taekwondo. As Mahalo.com continues to grow, Jason Calacanis is proving that a happy team is all the more happy to help you when you need it.

No Need for Coffee Runs; a Fresh Cup of Joe is Just a Run Down the Hall!

Mahalo Kitchen is Stocked with Tasty Treats & a Private Chef to Keep Employees’ Stomachs Full.

Mahalo Team Mixes Work with Play During Free Time with the Office Xbox.

Out of Quarters? Spend Laundry Day at the Office with the On-Site Washer & Dryer

After a colorful collection of “mini startups,” Jude is finally prepared for his biggest yet: HeyZap, a new site that simplifies the connection between flash games and websites. After several blurry months of hard work and nonstop coding, Jude’s newest project has got him more excited than ever. HeyZap is on his mind during every waking moment, not because he is burdened by the thought or worried about whether or not it will succeed, but because he is genuinely thrilled to have built it and excited to see where he can make it go. Jude says that more than anything, the key to success is truly believing in a product and putting everything into it, because if you can’t live and breathe it, then it’s not worth your time. Click here to read more about HeyZap: Finally Plug-in-Playable: HeyZap Makes Flash Gaming Even Easier

A Short Clip of My Conversation with Jude Gomila
Trouble Viewing? Visit: IntimateMath on YouTube

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PROFILE

STATS

Jude Gomila of HeyZap

Companies Founded:
1. HEYZAP – First Proper Valley, VC-Funded Startup – Sept 2008
Fundraised: $650,000
Investors:
Union Square Ventures
Highest Numbers Number of Employees: 8

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Hometown: Harrow, London
Currently Resides: San Francisco, CA
Age: 25
Education: Cambridge University, Engineering
Quality Most Remembered For: Great hair
In 10 Years, I See Myself…: Having one, or two, or even, three startups under my belt
I’m Happiest when…: I’m meeting people, networking, and seeing products launch
I’m Motivated by…: Innovation
Biggest Fear: My Girlfriend (Laughing)
Role Models: Mathematicians, famous physicists, famous engineers, business guys, and any extreme performer in their field.

Jude’s: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook | Blog

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THE INTERVIEW – (Full Interview Transcription)

Jude Gomila

Kim Ngo: How crazy are you?

Jude Gomila: How crazy am I? More than you can ever imagine.

Kim Ngo: Explain. Do you think I’m crazy?

Jude Gomila: Slightly. I think a bit of craziness is good, especially in startups because if you make a boring company, you’re probably going to do something that no one cares about. Whereas if you take a slightly unusual route and don’t do what everyone else is doing, people are attracted to that. Things that are different excite people.

Kim Ngo: What is Heyzap? Tell me in the coolest way possible.

Jude Gomila: Heyzap provides tools for connecting the best flash games from the web to the best web sites and allows players to be more social. So, we take a game from Facebook and we put it in the right place on the web.

Kim Ngo: Would you say this market is fairly new?

Jude Gomila: It’s very new. Asia is leading the market, it’s ahead of the US in ways; but the US is also skyrocketing. The market has been getting insane.

Kim Ngo: So how many companies have you founded?

Jude Gomila: Heyzap is my third startup, but it’s my first proper venture capital-funded startup and also my first Silicon Valley-located startup.

I’ve gone through many smaller projects. When you try to create a website, make a product, or experiment with your friends and make things, those are all mini startups in a way. I’ve been making things in my bedroom, experimenting, and messing with websites since I was around nine years old. Each of these experiences helped prepare me for a big startup.

Kim Ngo: At nine years old?

At the HeyZap Office

Jude Gomila: I started messing around with the web when I was about fourteen when the Internet became available to me. My friends and I were messing around, playing with games, and trying to figure different things out. Essentially, we wanted to be creative and find new uses for the web, which weren’t really available at the time.

Kim Ngo: Can you tell us the story? How did it get started?

Jude Gomila: I’ve been making things in my bedroom, working on random hardware and electronic projects. I was really interested in constructing things, engineering and messing around with stuff. I used to take apart electronics just to look at what was inside.

For example, there’s a company in the UK that’s a bit like Costco, I used to go through the catalog and look at all the different products and their pricing, not necessarily because I wanted to buy anything, but because I was interested in how they worked.

I was also into making cash on the playground from buying and selling things. I remember buying some chewing gum in bulk that was super cheap, and then selling each stick for roughly 75 cents. I made about 50 times of the price I bought the gum for. It was small money, but I was like, “Okay, now I can buy things like hardware and whatever I want!”

Another thing I did in primary school was I used a magic 8-ball reader to go around the playground and ask people, “Do you want your future read? It’s 10 cents a go.” It was great because it was a virtual present, like the ones you see in the virtual world today. I could keep doing it over and over again.

Jude Gomila AGAIN.

Kim Ngo: Which university did you go to?

Jude Gomila: I went to Cambridge University and majored in engineering.

I was among pretty good people. I got interested in business during college. Though, I was always interested in making money before university, but the “traditional business process” wasn’t part of my mindset.

In my second year, I participated in a business competition, and we redesigned a process for kidney dialysis. My team was a finalist, and we took fourth place, which was pretty good since most of the people there had PhDs. I think we were the youngest finalists ever. It was encouraging. It was a big competition where the winner took home $75,000.

But I started to see this disconnect between participating in college competitions and just being creative. The competitions weren’t like the real world of business. Even though it was impressive and I started to make contacts, I started to think about funding and the practical aspects of entrepreneurship.

Learning about business is very different in the UK than the in US.

Kim Ngo: How so?

Jude Gomila: Well, there weren’t role models to look at around our community. There was really just one guy, Michael Smith, who created Moshi Monsters. He did firebox.com, which is a big UK gift site, and he was quite a bit older than us. He was one of the few guys that made it seem possible that you could be very successful as an entrepreneur in the UK.

Kim Ngo: Why do you think it’s different in the UK?

Jude with Max Ventilla of Aardvark

Jude Gomila: There are several reasons. Obviously, there are more funding opportunities because there are so many venture capital firms here. Other companies like Facebook, Yahoo and Google are here, so you can make deals quickly. And the skills to make it all happen are here: you’ve got people with the right mindset and training. The right people, funding, companies, and deals are all here.

Even the pure logistics of having a meeting are so much simpler in Silicon Valley. There are many different startups close to our office. We can just jump across the street for a meeting. In London, it’s a 30 to 45 minute commute for a meeting.

Kim Ngo: Who’s your favorite VC?

Jude Gomila:Union Square Ventures has been really good to us. They’ve been giving us a lot of great advice. Albert Wenger is an amazing guy. He’s one of the few investors with a computer science degree. Albert brings a lot of context – not just on business side, but also on the technical side as well.

Kim Ngo: I hear the relationship with a VC is really important.

Jude Gomila: Yes! They can make you or break you. You have to report back to your VC every day or every week, and they have the ability to get involved with what you’re buying, who you’re recruiting, and the direction of the company. If a VC tries to restrict you in too many ways, you end up being non-entrepreneurial.

It’s much better for VCs to provide contacts to you when you need them and steer you towards the right market. Often, they will solve specific problems if you need help, but the most important thing is that they are there when you need them and that they keep track of you and make sure that you’re going in the right direction.

Kim Ngo: It sounds like entrepreneurs don’t look for micro managers; they look for investors who support them when they need it. Let’s get back to your story. What happened after college?

Jude Doing His Thing!

Jude Gomila: After I graduated, I set up a business with two other guys from Cambridge.

We tried a few different things, like a strategic consulting company because we had a lot of specialists in that. That paid the bills, but it wasn’t scalable.

Another thing we tried, which is quite funny, is an egg packaging company. And everyone takes the piss out of me for this one, but it was still an experiment in entrepreneurship. The profit margin was very slim, and I learned that you have to go into a business that has a decent margin. There were some hard lessons learned that you couldn’t learn from a textbook. Selling to farmers was the hardest thing in the world. But I learned not to get into a stagnant market. To make a profit, it is essential to get into a market which will innovate quickly, because that speed will allow your business to move fast as well.

Kim Ngo: What did you after that?

Jude Gomila: I tried to develop an electronics brand for electronic photo frames marketed to premium stores. We led the spec and captured the best part of the market. We came in at the highest priced point and were making good margins. But, I realized that it’s difficult to compete with the large manufacturers, like Philips and Kodak, without a lot of funding. We literally started out with one of two frames, sold it on eBay, then doubled and re-doubled our money, which went back into making more frames.

The cool thing was that we had real products which got into the Hi-Fi Expo. Our product was in Harrods and Selfridges – the most prestigious stores in Europe and the rest of the world – and our brand was getting out there. That was back in 2007, right after graduating from the university. I did about a million dollars turnover over the projects.

Kim Ngo: How old were you?

Jude Gomila: I think I was 22. Then I spotted an opportunity to sell Nintendo Wiis from Europe to the UK. During Christmas time, the UK completely ran out of stock. I had seen this coming and bought stock from Europe and retrofitted the machines.

Kim Ngo: So you were one of those guys selling the Wii game for 3 times the price. Why did you decide to come to the US?

Jude Gomila: Well, I was searching for my next project, and I was interested in virtual goods because it was a hot market— it still is. I learned all the fundamentals about products from my previous experiences with hardware. I decided to come over to the US and work for ClickPass to help them strategize. Soon after, the company sold. At that point, Immad Akhund, one of the cofounders exited; he was a long-term friend of 10 years.

In the summer 2008, Immad Akhund and I started thinking about ideas. We settled upon the idea of Heyzap around September. Then we coded like crazy to get the whole thing ready to launch in January 2009.

Kim Ngo: So just you and him coded?

Jude with Chris Bader and Paul Graham

Jude Gomila: He did back end and I did front end. We got in the Y-Combinator program from January to March. It was good being in a group of mutual hackers, coders, and business people. The network and lessons we learned, like how to launch a startup, were really interesting.

We coded so much that we actually missed meals.

Kim Ngo: Sounds too familiar. Did you lose weight?

Jude Gomila: I don’t remember. It’s a bit of a blur. I lost track of time and can’t really remember. We launched in January and were in the batch as the first guys to launch, I think.

Kim Ngo: What do you mean “in the batch.” Were there competitors?

Jude Gomila: There weren’t competitors. There were 15 companies that are in the program’s batch, twice a year. Everyone creates their own startup and pitches it in on demo day in March. On demo day, all the investors come in to look at all the company proposals and ideas. It’s a great way to find the right investors and get funding.

We knew that demo day was coming up and wanted to be prepared for the funding round. We got some traction from launching, and lots of people installed our widget. Then we started doing our funding round. We got oversubscribed for the round and talked to Union Square Ventures. There were other great angel investors as well. After that, we recruited CTO James Smith and started building our own team. HeyZap has 10 employees now as of March 2010.

Jude Gomila (Right)

Kim Ngo: Were you really passionate about packaging?

Jude Gomila: Yeah, is that sad?

Kim Ngo: No, I’m just wondering, “How?”

Jude Gomila: Once you see the unique selling points of the product, you can get passionate about the product and the market. You have to be passionate about what you are doing! When you employ people, as well, if you aren’t passionate, you don’t show any form of leadership or help your company culture. If you start to let things go, your company will start drifting.

Kim Ngo: Do you think building a company has hurt you from going out and living your life? Do you have a girlfriend? How does she feel about your busy work schedule?

Jude Gomila: Yes, building a company has been a lot of work. Yes I have a girlfriend. What I learned is that you need to be efficient with your time. You are trying to spend 100 hours a week on your company, but you also need to spend time with your girlfriend. You got to be super efficient and drop everything that is a waste of time. It’s smart to have a personal assistant.

You got to cut down all the time that is wasted on the little things. In the beginning of my startup career, I used to reply to and get involved in everything. Now I can’t do that. There’s a point you reach when you have to let the little things go.

Kim Ngo: Good answer. Are you afraid of anything?

Jude Gomila: I think you can’t be afraid of failure. If you try your best and it doesn’t work out, you have to try again. You need to know when to pull out, and you need to know when to keep going. If you discover that you went into a bad market, you got to switch markets. If you have the wrong team, then you got to switch teams.

It’s like the Vegas slot machines. There are 40 fruit symbols, and you are trying to hit the right ones for big payouts. You test all these different dials and variables. From your mistakes and experience, you know that these dials should be on certain settings, but you haven’t tested out all the other settings. If you line all them up correctly, you will be successful, but you won’t know until you make those mistakes and are experienced enough to know what variables lead to success.

Kim Ngo: What would you say was your toughest experience in all of this?

Jude (RT) = Best Energy Ever! No Doubt!!!! - Kim Ngo

Jude Gomila: Getting a visa was a lot of work. It was very distracting as well, because I was trying to build a company while messing around with legal work.

Getting funding is hard too. We were on the road, speaking to different investors. All the time spent pitching is time divested from building the company. Pitching doesn’t automatically lead to getting money, users, and traffic growth. As for funding, we’ve raised during the hardest time during the recession. It was hard, because no one was investing and some investors didn’t even have money.

Kim Ngo: What do you think are the three top qualities that an entrepreneur needs to be successful?

Jude Gomila: The most important quality would be persistence. It is the most important variable. Intelligence is actually at the bottom of the list. You need to take calculated risks by knowing the difference between the risks that come from important things where there is or isn’t any gain. Being frugal and not wasting money is also very important. Intelligence helps, but it can slow you down as well. Sometimes you just need to take action and know when you have to strategically move out and try the next thing.

Kim Ngo: What do you think is more likely going to happen to Heyzap? Do you think you will have an exit plan or do you think you’ll be able to build a profitable business?

Jude Gomila: You should always have an exit plan. You need to have an exit plan, and you need to know which companies can buy you. You need to know how far you want to go; we want to go as far as possible with Heyzap.

Kim Ngo: If you could give one piece of advice for future entrepreneurs, what would it be?

Jude Gomila: For consumer products: GO LIVE. Launch it. Be aggressive from day one, even if you don’t have a name. This is a common problem that often leads to failure, so many people come to me with an app that they built but haven’t launched.

Get out there quickly. You just have to get out there and test things like what the market wants. Listen to your customers, but you have to get it out there first.

Kim Ngo: Just do it. Thanks Jude. I enjoyed our conversation. Good luck with all your future endeavors!

Instead of allocating all of their resources to game development, HeyZap founders Immad Akhund and Jude Gomila decided to try their hand at cataloging the most popular games into a simple user-friendly widget that can be plugged into any site. By easing the game-embedding process and giving users an API option that allows for seamless integration (i.e. customizable borders, size, color scheme), HeyZap is on its way to becoming the YouTube of casual gaming. But instead of being a destination site that gaming junkies would regularly visit for their daily dose, HeyZap intends for most of its visitors to access its games through other sites that have embedded its games.

Facebook pages, tweets, and blogs are just some of the venues that HeyZap is plugging into, but nonsocial networking sites like lifestyles pages and hobby sites are some of the big game that HeyZap is fishing for. Looking to increase the traffic on your site? Embedding casual flash games with HeyZap increases both the number of visitors and the amount of time they spend on your site. Many of the viral games catalogued on HeyZap include those published by big names of the industry, but that doesn’t mean that the little guy is counted out. Publishing games is just as easy for independent developers, and HeyZap cuts them in on their fair share of the profits. HeyZap’s approach toward casual gaming lets developers, both big and small, make their games more public, viral, and most importantly, profitable.

With over 30,000 games catalogued in embeddable widgets, HeyZap is uniting the thousands of flash games scattered throughout the web into a single, cleanly wrapped package, complete with instructions for dummies.

Return Wednesday, April 14th to meet the young energetic HeyZap co-founder Jude Gomila in a one-to-one interview!!

Yumi Kim is a hip clothing line full of flirty, colorful prints and fun, quirky designs that have been spotted in fashion magazines like Vogue, Cosmo, InStyle and Lucky — and sported by celebrities like the Hilton sisters, Kim Kardashian and Rihanna. Unlike most fashionable success stories, what sets Kim apart from other designers is her active use on her Twitter account and her intimate blog, where she shares all the details of her colorful life as a fashion designer, a business woman and a real person who is in the process of living her dream.

Kim Phan, Founder & Designer of Yumi Kim

Kim’s fashion line lets her open her wardrobe to the world, while her blog lets her open her heart. Follow Kim to industry events, fashion shows, and then back home to spend time with family and friends at a local café. Once you’ve gotten to know Kim through her blog, it’s hard to imagine that this warm and down-to-earth young woman is the same big name that dresses the stars.

Come back Wednesday, March 17th to get even more personal with the friendliest face in fashion, Kim Phan… and find out how she created a name for herself in the fashion world without a fashion degree or a plan.

Not only is it filled with useful information about upcoming events and real tech news, lalawag is a great site to just wander around and click away for the sake of pure amusement. It’s news with an edge delivered by the kind of people who speak their minds that you’d like to invite to your dinner party. Articles are insightful and intelligent with a witty flavor that makes for a rollicking good read. For me, what started as research for this article turned into several sidetracked hours of perusing through lalawag before I remembered that I was supposed to be working, not playing. Sean and Laurie have created the ideal vehicle to explore every corner of the LA tech world and wrap it all up in intelligent and colorful articles, videos, pictures, and more. Whether it’s event info, tech facts or a good laugh, lalawag should be your destination for all of the above.

Return Wednesday, March 10th to read about Sean & Laurie Percival and their labor of love.

Silencing his doubts about leaving behind secure employment, Mark has weathered the highs and lows that shape the risky startup process and has come out on top with a sense of fulfillment that can only be earned by taking a leap and doing it. Mark admits that it was a long road, and the ride wasn’t always smooth, but the rush of those highs has made the experience incredibly rewarding. “It’s all about trudging through it,” according to Mark, and his story proves that staying positive and confident in your own abilities will pull you through to your ideal destination.

A Short Clip of My Conversation with Mark Hendrickson
Trouble Viewing? Visit: IntimateMath on YouTube

Mark Hendrickson of Plancast

PROFILE

STATS
Companies Founded:
1. Worldly Developments (makers of Plancast) – 2009
Title: Co-Founder
Total Funding: Bootstrapped
Highest Number of Employees: 2

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Hometown: Menlo Park, CA
Resides: San Francisco, CA
Education: Bowdoin College
Age: 24
Hobbies/Interests: Tennis, philosophy, running, working, hiking, and the outdoors
Biggest Fear: Fear is a strong word. I think if I were going to be afraid of anything, it would be if the startup fails.
Role Models: Several teachers and mentors throughout college and high school.

Mark Hendrickson’s: Plancast | HomePage | Twitter | Linkedin

THE INTERVIEW – (Full Interview Transcription)

Kim Ngo: Thank you for meeting with IntimateMath today, Mark. Tell us about Plancast. And why would I love it?

Mark Hendrickson: Plancast is a service you can use to share your upcoming plans with friends and to find out what others in the community are doing. As of right now, there is really no other site or service that connects you with people for activities you want to do in real life. Plancast makes it extremely easy for you to keep track of what your friends are doing, whether they’re going to a concert or just going out for drinks.

All these small, often improvised activities, which are very important to us, are not easily sharable right now. In general, online services haven’t reached their potential in bridging the gap between the virtual world and the real world. You can chat with people on Twitter or post pictures on Facebook, but those aren’t terribly meaningful activities in reality. We are trying to connect people for real experiences by helping them figure out what their friends are up to.

Mark Hendrickson at the Apple Conference

Kim Ngo: How did you come up with the idea?

Mark Hendrickson: When I started, I wanted to work on something to help connect people locally. There was a lot of brainstorming before the concept of Plancast came about, and it seemed that the most powerful way to connect people is to help them share information about what they plan to do. But the general goal was, “How do I help users meet new people in their area? How do I help people learn about new places and new activities?” I want to help them get more out of their lives, wherever they are.

Kim Ngo: Has Plancast been a success so far? Has Plancast impacted the number of attendees at recent events?

Mark Hendrickson: Yeah, we’ve already seen a lot of activity on the site. People have been referring to it as the reason they found out about events.

We just recently launched, but you can see the kinds of events people are posting and how they are interacting on the site. People are having discussions about the things they are doing. They are also joining each other for things like carpooling.

Kim Ngo: What is your business plan?

Mark with His Mom, Lisa Hendrickson - CEO of Plancast

Mark Hendrickson: We want to have all different types of users on Plancast. Right now, Plancast’s main users are friends sharing with friends. We would like to have business and organizations posting upcoming events and opportunities. So if you’re a band, we want you to post your upcoming show. Plancast could also be used to post sports teams’ games or local organizations’ meeting times. Plancast is not just for individuals to use for recreational events; it’s a tool that any kind of organization or business can use as a vehicle to promote events.

Kim Ngo: Can users create private events?

Mark Hendrickson: They can’t yet, but they will be able to in the future. Right now all events are public, but we have plenty of users that want to have more privacy.

Kim Ngo: Does Plancast have plans to offer pay services?

Mark Hendrickson: We have to figure that out. We want to provide premium services at a fee to businesses to market events. Also, we would like to charge event promoters for targeted advertising on the site. There are a lot of different opportunities to make money from Plancast.

Kim Ngo: How confident are you about the future of Plancast?

Mark Hendrickson (front left) with the TechCrunch Team

Mark Hendrickson: Very confident. Everything is an experiment. Am I confident that I have a viable idea that I’m excited about? Yes!

Am I confident that two years from now it’s going to sell for a billion dollars? I don’t know. It’s impossible to know for sure whether Plancast will be successful or not. But I do feel good about where I’m going with it.

Kim Ngo: How did you get started? Tell us about the first 6 months.

Mark Hendrickson: I worked at TechCrunch for a year and a half, and towards the end, I wanted to start my own company, but I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. When I left, I spent the first few months trying to get used to the idea of doing something totally new. The next few months were spent honing out ideas. It was a very exploratory type of process with lots of false starts and ideas that didn’t pan out. But in the end, it was about honing my plans into a successful product.

Kim Ngo: How did you find the courage to leave a great job and start Plancast?

Mark Hendrickson: I wouldn’t call it courage. I had an overwhelming desire to do something like this, something that was sort of harebrained; I didn’t want to go into a normal job. And I can’t say I didn’t have any doubts. There were plenty of times when I woke up and asked myself, “What am I doing? I’m trying to build something from nothing, and there’s such a long road ahead. Why did I think I could do this?” It took me a lot of strength to push through those moments.

Kim Ngo: Is it tough to stay positive?

Mark Hendrickson Representing

Mark Hendrickson: Over time you build courage, and you keep going. It’s all about trudging through it. Starting a company is all about silencing the self-doubt you have and persevering. But you do take hits from time to time. People say doing a startup is like a roller coaster, and it is. You have days where you feel on top of the world because you’re creating something that’s going to be of huge value to people. It’s the best feeling in the world. But an hour later, you can feel like the cards are stacked against you, and that your product isn’t valuable. You have to be able to ride the highs and the lows and not let either of them steer you off course.

Another thing is that after a while, people are actually more enthusiastic about what you’re working on than you are. And you think, “Wow, that’s cool, but let’s stay real about this.” Ultimately you have to learn to trust your instincts. I know that sounds cliché, but it’s a very individualistic sort of process where you can’t let anyone else be the authority to what you’ve chosen to do.

Kim Ngo: Why does someone start a company from scratch?

Mark Hendrickson: There are lots of reasons for starting a company. Maybe you want to prove to yourself that you can succeed at it or you think you can make a difference. When it comes down to it, I think all entrepreneurs have the desire to create something from nothing.

Starting a business isn’t done with the expectation that you are going to make a lot of money. For me, I felt compelled to do it on a very basic level. I didn’t want to let my life go by without going out on a limb and trying something like this. I also wanted to do it at a very early age so I would have a higher chance of success, a minimal cost associated with it, and a chance to do it again if I didn’t succeed the first time.

Kim Ngo: Is the startup world similar to Hollywood?

Mark Hendrickson with Friend

Mark Hendrickson: In a way, it is. But ours is also a very different dream than you find in Hollywood. Hollywood actors are trying to become the next big thing. People in the tech industry are often trying to create the next big thing. As individuals, they may want to be the next Steve Jobs. But overall, I don’t think people are as focused on fame as in Hollywood. Though, there is certainly a good dose of that desire. In Silicon Valley, people look to their peers and they want to impress them. They want to show that they can be something. To that extent, I think it’s very similar.

Kim Ngo: Does a good business model make for a successful startup?

Mark Hendrickson: Starting a company, in my experience, is not about any one aspect of the company. It’s about the whole thing. You don’t start off thinking: I want to find a business model for something, that’s just part of what you have to do. My job is to get people enthusiastic about whatever I am doing, to get the attention of people who might want to work with your company, invest in it, or help promote it. As the owner, my main process is assembling of all those pieces. The rest is just details; all business is business when it comes down to it. You face the same sort of problems and tasks.

Kim Ngo: Do you think in the last 6 months you’ve grown the most than you have ever in the 24 years of your life?

Mark Hendrickson

Mark Hendrickson: Yeah. In the last 6 to 8 months, I’ve probably developed at a much faster rate than in the past 6 month span. I was sort of forced into a situation where I had to be on my toes all the time, absorbing new ways of looking at situations. I picked up skills at a much faster rate than I would have otherwise.

Kim Ngo: Can you tell us your most painful moment in the last six months?

Mark Hendrickson: Probably early on when I had a lot of self-doubt. There were moments where I thought my ideas weren’t good or I talked to people who weren’t excited about what I was doing. There were also times where I researched markets which I thought I wanted to go into but found twenty other people who tried what I was thinking about doing. Seeing others with the same ideas that I had fail was tough.

Kim Ngo: It’s timing too, though.

Mark Hendrickson: It’s mainly execution. Timing is important, but chances are, whatever you’re going to do, people have already done it or tried to do it. But on the other hand, they haven’t done exactly what you’re thinking, because whatever idea you have, you’re going to at least try to do it a little differently. You’re going to do it quite differently, if not better, because you’ve learned what mistakes they have made.

One thing I’ve learned is that you shouldn’t worry about competition or the other players in the market as much as you think you should. You should just worry about your own ability to execute. You need to take your vision and actually make it happen.

If you’re working very hard and you’re being smart about your work, you’re going to build something that’s competitive. It’s going to be harder than you think, but it’s also going to be hard for other people as well. Don’t discount your own abilities to do it better than someone else.

Kim Ngo: What are you passionate about?

Mark Hendrickson: I’m passionate about product design and the “interwebz.” I can’t answer that question with a straight face! I’m passionate about the good life: being healthy, having people you care about, and doing something you love. The good life is pretty simple, but it’s hard to get.

The Young Mark Hendrickson

Kim Ngo: And you’re motivated by?

Mark Hendrickson: I used to have a desire to do the best that I could; now, I think I’m mostly motivated by trying to prove myself things. I’m also motivated by money to some extent. I could run a startup and if it was success and I benefited from it monetarily, it would still be worth doing as long I wasn’t starving.

Kim Ngo: If you can tell future founders one thing, one piece of advice, what would it be?

Mark Hendrickson: Always be willing to adapt. Learn from your situation. Trust your instincts on one hand and question them with the other. Surround yourself with good people, and always seek help.

Treat it as an experiment. You’re going to fail at certain things, and you’re going to learn from others. Your mindset needs to be, “I’m going to try something. I have no idea if I’m going to be successful, but I’m going to give it my best shot and I’m going to learn along the way. And if it fails, then it fails.”

At the end of the day, we’re all idiots. So stay humble, don’t take what other people say too seriously, and don’t take yourself too seriously.

Whether you’re wondering what an old friend has been up to lately, or if you’re looking to join a group of pals for a drink, Plancast makes it easy. New in town? Looking to learn more about the local social scene? Need a ride? Just wondering where your friends like to eat? Plancast makes it simple and fun to get to know people and the things they like to do. Unlike event planning sites like Evite or any other typical social networking sites, Mark’s new project goes beyond picture-posting and messaging and encourages people to come together in the real world and interact face-to-face.

Mark Hendrickson of Plancast

In addition to spreading the word about informal social activities among friends, Mark plans to reach out to businesses to provide a medium for promoting events, meetings, shows, and similar activities. Plancast makes social interaction personal again, bringing people out from behind the keyboard to meet face-to-face.

Mark your calendar for Wednesday, March 3rd to catch Mark Hendrickson’s full interview and video feature with IntimateMath.