Untitled, Haden Nicholl, 2007

We’d like to introduce you to DoDont (www.dodont.com or click Home at the top right of this page).  Please feel free to rail against us, our lack of business plan, and social networks in general.  Please let us have it.  We don’t have that many features.  We don’t even have Twitter integration!

Oh wow, a social network.  That’s impressive.  I guess you think you’re pretty smart and this is 2004?  You know, I’m sick and tired of all these lame sites that don’t add any value.  Where’s the group commerce?  The private sales?  The virtual goods?

We are just a few people who have other jobs and created DoDont in our spare time.

Oh really?  Guess what…cry me a river.  I built a site in two days that got sold to Google.

But you haven’t even tried DoDont.  How do you know you won’t like it?

Your site’s stupid and so are social networks.

But DoDont is an Opinion Engine.  It is the place to create and find opinions on the Internet.

You made that up.

No, it is.  You just finish a post that starts with either Do or Don’t.  It’s that simple.

Let me get this straight, DoDont is just a post with either Do or Dont at the start of a sentence?  Hey guess what, maybe I’ll do the same thing on Twitter or Facebook…or BOTH!

That’s fine.  Please do.  But realize that DoDont is laser focused on just this one thing, opinions.  We have a system that allows you to find the information you need.  We expect Dodont to work with many services. And guess what?  DoDont is binary.

Don’t try to woo me with binary.  I love that word.

Do or Dont.  Positive or negative. Binary.

Stop it.  Stop saying that….it’s such a beautiful word….

I’ll say the other B-word.

Don’t do it.

I will.

Don’t!

Boolean.

Ahhh!

Boolean!

You are some force of evil to be dropping Double Bs.  Sir, that is not cool.

That’s right.  You can even support or oppose each post.  Support or Oppose.  One or the other.

Is Britney Spears on DoDont?

Um…no.  Neither is Justin Beiber…

Really?  Well that’s good.

You mean the fact that certain people are not on our site is a positive? Well, if that’s the case, based on who is or who is not on Dodont, then DoDont can totally be your favorite site in the whole wide world.

Wait, you don’t have asymmetrical relationships?  What are you stupid?

Saying asymmetrical relationships doesn’t make you smart.

Does too.

Oh wow, Mr. Smart Guy.  Asymmetrical relationships.  Asymmetrical relationships.  What a great idea.  Never thought of that one.  Maybe we should hire you.  Oh, wait, I forgot we have no money so you may have to excuse the lack of perfection at this early stage.

No excuses, I sold my company to Goog-

I know.  To Google.  I saw it on your blog, your twitter profile, and that stupid t-shirt that you wear.

I didn’t make a t-shirt.

I was being facetious.

Oh that’s helpful  How witty of you.  At the end of the day, guess who has sold a company to no one…you!

Touche.  How ‘bought this, at least check out DoDont.  If you don’t like it, post a Dont saying why you don’t like it.  I will oppose your post.  You will be angry.  I will be contrite.  And then the cycle will repeat.

Fine.  I will.  And I’ll also take you up on that t-shirt idea. It could be useful for the holidays.  Don’t worry, you’ll be on the list.

Actually, truth be told, we appreciate the criticism.  When it’s pointed and astute, it only helps. It pulls us out of our own little DoDont mind warp.  Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t feel good.  It’s like taking a punch in the stomach, but eventually it heals over with muscle.

Well, I’ll also be honest.  I don’t have time for civility, but I’ll try harder in that category.

You should.

It’s just that, I see something and I give my opinion, my first opinion, which is usually right. It doesn’t always come out right, but the opinion is right. Sure, not always.  I can be wrong…but I’m more right than wrong.

DoDont may just be the perfect site for you.

Lay off on the sales for a second, ok?

OK.

I’m not trying to be cocky, but I’m made for this stuff. I know technology.  Do you understand what I’m saying?  I’m made for this stuff.  I love it.

That’s valid.

I shouldn’t be bothered with every new application out there, but guess what, I’m bothered by every new application out there.  I need to see progress.  It rubs me the wrong way if I feel we’re going backwards…… It bothers me to no end if we’re not pushing things hard enough.   I want humans to reach their potential.

Hmm.  The only thing I would have to say to that is I agree with you, but sometimes companies like us just don’t have the current resources to achieve our fullest potential.  Mentally, ideologically, we’re with you.  We want what you want.

Ok, but-

Hold On.  I’m not finished.  We’re in this game too.  Don’t forget that.  The thing is,  DoDont and every other startup are creating new things.  It may just be a glimmer of progress, but it’s progress.    So I would just say, take other factors in when you weight in on a new application…especially for green startups.

Ok, but green startups need to execute.  Period.

Of course they do.  DoDont does.  Check it out. You’ll see.

This was a good conversation.

It was.

I don’t disagree with anything I’ve said.

Neither do I.

Good.  It’s just…it’s easy to get disillusioned with the world.

Agreed.

So we are in agreement?

Yes.

Do and Dont are strong words. DoDont is built upon their strength.  They force you to make a decision.  They compel you to think.  Do and Dont are constraints.

Frank Loyd Wright built Falling Water on top of a rock.  He was commissioned to build a country house for summer getaways.  The client had hundreds of acres of land outside of Pittsburgh.  Wright walked around the expansive property with his client.  The client spoke of swimming with his family and then relaxing and sunning themselves on a boulder.  After seeing the rock, Wright said he would build the country house on top of it.  Any other architect would have chosen a nice safe parcel of land, maybe something on top of a hill with endless views of the rolling countryside.  They wouldn’t have chosen a rock.  Wright was ahead of his time.  He practiced organic architecture, believing a structure should coexist with its surroundings.  He built buildings that integrated with nature.  He did not believe in track housing.  He didn’t sketch a house and wait for a client, then force that sketch upon them. Wright allowed the terrain to dictate what kind of building he would build.  He listened to his clients’ needs.  He didn’t see any of these factors as being constraints.  Quite the opposite.  They were endless supplies of inspiration.

Do is action.  It is no wonder the athletic company Nike incorporated it into their slogan.  It is a command.  It has the feeling of truth.  It is how we progress as a culture.  Without Do we we are nothing.  Things will not get fixed.  Products will not be improved.  Books wouldn’t be written. Websites wouldn’t be updated.  Do tells us where to eat, what to wear and who to vote for.  It gives us an excuse to be positive.  It fires our soul.  Do is action.

There are three types of short stories: flash fiction, which is usually under 1000 words, the short story, which is a standard five to twenty pages (ish), and the long short story, popularized by writers such as Alice Munro, which can be thirty to fifty plus pages.  Within the short story framework a reader’s trust must be won.  That is the first step.  Once there is trust, a writer must then move the reader.  Woo the reader. Challenge them.  Impress and ingratiate.  If the writer does not, then s/he has failed.   Great short stories are masterpieces of constraint. Reading a great short story transforms a snippet of time into movement, pushing your soul into new directions.  The short story thrives on the tension between brevity and complexity, revealing a life truth; so much can come from so little and so little can say so much.

Dont is intense.  It is no wonder Google incorporated it into their  slogan. It is a command.  It is how we warn our culture.  Without Dont we are a mess. Things will continue to break.  Inferior products will be bought.  All books would be published.   Websites would be feature heavy quagmires. Dont tells us what not to eat, what to never wear and who to vote against.  It gives us an excuse to be blunt.  It fires our soul.  Dont is intense.

Examples of creative constraints are endless.  A canvas.  The length of an album.  A 140 character tweet.  A meal.  Do not confuse constraint with adaptation.  Anyone can adapt.  It is a survival skill.  It takes talent to embrace the difficult and different.  Forcing yourself to move outside of a comfort zone, in order to create, is where art is born.  She was looking for the new.  He was upset with the standard.  We are moved by the bold.  There is Do and there is Dont.  We are always confronting theses two extremes.  We share ideas and spread opinions.  Within these limitations we still remain nimble, as we travel through time, gravity and our minds.  We Do.  We Dont.  And we do it again.

Untitled, Haden Nicholl, 2007

The Lean Startup, as evangelized by Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Dave Cancel et all, is a great way to go about building an Internet product.  We’ve embraced many of these practices at DoDont (@dodont) including the concept of building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Summarized, you build a product/application that has very few features, but embodies the heart of what you’re trying to accomplish.  Once the product is built, iterate as necessary based on feedback (from customers, metrics, etc).  By avoiding over-building a features-heavy application, two of the biggest hurdles in product development are minimized: time and money.  Just as important, the startup becomes laser focused on iterating only where necessary.

The problem DoDont is solving deals with recommendations, reviews, and opinions.  While more and more people are on social networks, most don’t want to share their opinions with the entire web universe.  Not all people are Yelpers or Power Twitterers.  What everyone does share is a desire to express passionate topics with friends.  By finishing a post that starts with either Do or Dont, we provide an outlet for primal opinions that bubble up from within.  DoDont’s binary data, Do or Dont, is easily quantifiable by users due to their offline relationships.  A user is able to quickly compute the weight of a specific DoDont based on their previous interactions.  Plainly speaking, if you know Jane’s opinions in food mimic your own, the crucial need for trust is already established.

Taking the core message of DoDont into account, we set out to build our own MVP.  We limited ourselves to the bare essentials: posting Dos and Donts, tags, Facebook Connect, and a few other minor details.  We kept it simple, which ironically is very difficult.  We have a long list of features that feel crucial to DoDont but we excluded them from our beta product.  Instead we are waiting for our application to tell us what feature to build next. The brilliance in this model relies on the fact that our next feature could either be something we anticipated or more powerfully a necessary feature we didn’t foresee.

We soft launched in mid December.  It became apparent that having every DoDont going to Facebook was problematic.  People were apprehensive about over-sharing and in turn spamming their Facebook friends.  Others wanted to build up their DoDont library and just send a few pearls of wisdom into the Facebook stream.  We reacted accordingly.  We decided to build a check box that allowed the user to choose whether each DoDont post would or wouldn’t go to Facebook.  A check box that said Publish to Facebook? No problem right?  Not entirely.

This is where being an ultra-bootstrapped company clashes with the quick iteration desired in lean startup theories.  Many companies that are bootstrapped are financially stable/well-off.  They have received founder, family, and/or friend funding which has allowed members of the startup to work on it full time.  Myself and my partner are both working other jobs and can’t devote all our time to DoDont.  To delineate between the haves and the have nots, I’m coining the term Ultra-Bootstrapped: companies comprised of founders/members who work other jobs and devote their free time to their startup.  At ultra-bootstrapped companies iterating can take frustratingly longer than at full-time startups.  In this particular instance, we had other fires to address.  We had server hiccups, blog delays, and pressing minor issues.  We prioritized and then ran smack into the holidays.  We had a large gap between the recognition of our issue and the actual update to DoDont.  But this post is not about questioning the Lean Startup model.  I believe the model is the best practice for ultra-bootstrappers.  The main takeaway is that ultra-bootstrapped startups can experience serious angst and longer delays trying to keep up with the necessary addition of features.  In a startup, when money is tight, motivations can waver.  It is important to grasp the fundamental realities of working two jobs (1 paid and 1 unpaid).  The ultra-bootstrapped startup’s resilience within this layered framework combined with the quality of their released MVP reflects strongly on the team’s character.  They have overcome.  They have pushed each other.  They made this in their spare time because they believe in what they are undertaking.

Some people think if you’re a real entrepreneur you need to quit your job and go for the gold before you have any funding or are profitable.  I do not agree with these types of generalizations, especially when it comes to money.  It is easy to to look at a few proven examples and make a rule, but it can be damaging to exclude those who do not fit within such arbitrary guidelines.  And people who make generalization such as these can change their minds.  Why?  There will always be exceptions to these types of rules.  And as exceptions go, it is usually the talented who embody these exceptions.  I can’t afford not to work.  I have a day job working part time, so I can devote more time to DoDont.  I work as an administrative assistant, a position that I’m over-qualified for, in order to concentrate on DoDont.  My family has made serious sacrifices so I can invest all free time into this startup.  I would love nothing more than to quit my day job and work on something I love, but economic realities preclude sophomoric optimism.  As a result, team DoDont works nights and weekends.  We try to improve as fast as humanly possible within our realities.  This is the situation we are in.  At some point our situation will change.  Until then we are scrappy, pushing hard to make DoDont better, growing little by little, unwavering in our desires to create something useful, meaningful and lasting.

Untitled, Haden Nicholl, 2007

DoDont starts the conversation.

In order to prove this thesis let me show you a few DoDont posts and see what happens.

Do: feed the pigeons in the street excessive amounts of fizz candy.  That way they will explode in the air, creating horrible beauty.

Dont: touch the electrical fence with the plug of a waffle maker in order to make breakfast.

Ok, so now we have a few different starting points for a conversation.  We can discuss these statements separately or together.  It depends how they enter your DoDont stream.  Let’s pretend that the statements were separate.

Is this true that enough of this fizz candy would produce such a spectacle?  And how would this spectacle look in action at a park or an urban monument?  After the exploding pigeon’s feathers were scattered, would the ground be a pillow fight battle field that squishes after each step?  Would we still hear the fizzing of the candy over the screams of the terrified onlookers?  When I was young I never really saw pigeons that much.  I didn’t mind them when I did see them.  Now I think they are the plague.  Am I mad at my former self, who didn’t mind pigeons; mad that I was such a fool, mad that I was so weak!?

The electrical fence is an interesting thing in and of itself.  We could talk about what an oddity this type of equipment is and how unpractical it would be by a bus stop.  It seems like it is from some spy movie, but you have to wonder, if you really wanted to hide something from people, wouldn’t it be easier not having an electric fence calling attention to yourself?  When you go through all the trouble of having an electrical fence, with a big fancy red sign and constant hum, that is precisely when the crazies come.  They are usually there in the morning with their waffle makers, pitchers of batter, and squeeze bottles full of artificial syrup.  Now if one could manage to make breakfast for eleven, one wonders if one could charge an electric car.

If  we see the aforementioned two posts together, in a pair, from the same DoDont user, we would have to assume the pigeons were on the fence eating the fizz candy, dancing through the pain of electrical currents zapping at their feet.  As the pigeons chomped away on the fizz candy, a band of crazies came by in an electric van loaded with fixings for their waffles, and just as the waffle plug made contact with the fence, the pigeons burst.  From a screaming onlooker’s perspective, the only discernible features were pockets of fizzy mayhem.  It was horribly beautiful.  And from then on out, the crazies never tried to make waffles again.  The End.

You see, DoDont starts the conversation.  Now go on and start your own at www.dodont.com.