Startup interview: Viewzi

August 12, 2008 | Posted in Interviews by Geof Harries

Today marks the third round of interviews on my blog, this time with startups.

I’ve already interviewed agencies—nclud, nGen Works, Clear Function and Erskine Design—and solo developers—Matt Brett, Lea Alcantara, Ryan Masuga, Jonathan Snook and Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain—so a series dedicated to startups fits rather nicely.

First in the series is Viewzi, based in Richardson, Texas. Their questions were jointly answered by Viewzi Founder Brandon Cotter (BC), VP of Design Stephen Anderson (SA), VP of Products Chris Mancini (CM) and Front-End Viewzeloper Nathan Smith (NS).

When and why was Viewzi started?

BC: Actually, I wanted to start a wine retail store that was sort of a Williams-Sonoma meets Starbucks. However, after spending some time with a financial whiz friend of mine, I was talked out of it. It would have been just too easy to lose money.

That led to about a year of exploration, and one of the things I was exploring was data visualization and search. This was October 2006. After a few months of trying to get Chris Mancini to leave Yahoo! to come help me start it, he finally left in January of 2007 and things got rolling. Chris is our lead Flash developer and is also in charge of building out our ActionScript and JavaScript API.

How do you plan to foster a community around the Viewzi API?

CM: The Viewzi API will allow developers out there to build their own views to be run on the our site. Being as Viewzi is all about web search put into context and perspective, we don’t want that envisioning of search to come only from Viewzi, but from the web community at large. The APIs will be ActionScript and JavaScript initially, allowing Viewzi views to be built in Flash, Flex, HTML, etc.

In the upcoming months, as we get closer to releasing the API out into the wild for all developers to start rocking on some views, we will be launching a developer community site called Viewzoo.

The goal of this site will be to support community involvement in view development using the Viewzi API, as well as teaming up potential developers with skilled designers. The site will also feature how-to articles, technology discussions, and contest. We will also spotlight exceptional ideas and implementations of views.

In what ways has Viewzi changed since its inception?

BC: Most of the core is the same, but in the beginning we did not really grasp the implications of the search platform. We thought we could build it all ourselves. About six months into it, we started thinking about extending it and allowing the community to participate. We think we have a lot of great ideas, but when we allow other creative minds around the world to add to Viewzi, that is when really interesting stuff happens.

What sort of hierarchical management structure does Viewzi follow, if any?

SA: We run things fairly flat, though there is definitely some hierarchy in place.

I would say that Brandon, as the founder, definitely has a lot of say in what the priorities are, where we are headed, and so on. He has also done a great job of surrounding himself with a really talented leadership team—CTO, CFO, etc.

As part of this leadership team, my focus areas are mostly strategy and design (which includes all aspects of the Viewzer experience). However, in terms of people management, I try to stay pretty hands off, though I do my fare share of meddling!

We have an incredible team here. My philosophy is that if you do a good job of attracting the right people, then your role as a leader is really to set the vision, the direction and some boundaries, so that everyone can succeed in their role.

Everyone has stewardship over their particular area of expertise. Mine just happens to be organizing people towards a clear goal. In this sense, it is not so much about who is the boss. It is more about how are we complementing each other and challenging each other to grow.

NS: Stephen said it best. Viewzi has a pretty level organizational structure. While people have their respective job titles, it is less about having an environment like Dilbert, with a manager breathing down your neck, and more of a team atmosphere. I tend to think of those senior to me not as bosses per say, but as veteran players on an all-star team.

I look to those with more industry experience for advice and coaching, but they trust us as employees to do the caliber of work that is expected from us. Likewise, they are open to suggestion when I those lower on the org-chart have ideas for how things could be improved.

Do your employees work in a central office or are they distributed around the world?

NS: Most of us work from our Dallas office, but some work in various remote locations. That is one thing I like about our work-flow: We would rather hire the right people, even if it means they are remote, rather than just hire people to fill empty seats in our central office.

Typically, our remote guys fly in to Dallas one week out of every month, so that we have the opportunity for some good face-to-face collaboration. Given the choice, I would rather work from the office anyway, because our environment is so relaxed, and I enjoy being able to work closely with other designers and developers. Plus, we like to goof off from time to time: going to see a movie, playing Wii or the old-school game Age of Empires II.

What methods and tools does Viewzi use for internal communications?

SA: Morse code? No, as far as online tools go, pretty typical stuff. We use Basecamp for online collaboration. For dialing in remote workers, we have rigged up a little portable video conferencing system, using ooVoo as the software. Within the office however, we have created some pretty interesting management tools.

I think it is fair to say we are all highly visual thinkers. So anything we can strip out of someone’s computer and put onto a wall, we have done so!

I will share one example: For tracking the progress of new views, we have taken over a hallway with the “view wall.” Here we capture new ideas, and track the progress of ideas from definition through to testing. It is a highly engaging way to see everything that is being worked on and by whom. We even ordered stickers with everyone’s faces so we can just append those to the views, and visually answer the question: “Who is working on what?”

NS: For communication about code progression, we use Subversion (SVN). We are diligent about explaining what has been done with each check-in. This allows us to know what others are currently working on, and also allows us to roll back to a previous version of a file, in case something goes awry. Each SVN check-in triggers an email out to all our developers, which we typically have filtered to a specific folder in Mail.app, as to not clog one’s inbox. It is nice, because I can go through and read the backlog of what has been updated, at my leisure.

As far as hardware goes, we are an all Mac shop. Each of us has either a 15” or 17” MacBook Pro. Several of us have external monitors as well, ranging from 22” to 24”. There is not a set rule about what equipment must be used, rather it is left to personal preference. For instance, we have a mix of Dell, Apple, and LG monitors. For browser testing in IE7, we have a Shuttle PC running Windows XP, and a few of us run Windows Vista via Parallels or VMware. I guess you could say we take a holistic, practical approach to the tools we use.

How do you motivate staff to stay focused when the future of Viewzi is not certain?

NS: While I feel pretty confident in the future of Viewzi, I suppose that working at any start-up does involve a bit of risk. As far as staying motivated, I cannot say it has really been a problem. I guess I would attribute that to the work environment, and the approach to management taken by our leadership.

I do not feel like I am being compelled towards some final destination, but rather I feel inspired to find creative solutions to facilitate our business goals. We also have the incentive of stock options, so that helps everyone feel like that have a stake in the health of the business. I would say that we each share a sense of ownership and take pride in what we are building.

SA: For me, I would have to say Dawn’s cooking. For sure. She is our office administrator, and used to run a catering business. She puts secret ingredients in her cooking. I am only half kidding!

Seriously though, I do not think that an uncertain future is something we are preoccupied with. On the business side, things are going well, both with venture capital and other revenue opportunities. Individually, I think most of us left a “secure” job to work here. If things were to go south, I doubt any of us would have trouble lining something up.

Honestly, we are a lot more excited by the team, the great work environment, and an exciting product than we are worried about things not working out. I do not really consider motivation to be an issue.

Most of us are pretty passionate about what we are doing. The easiest way to motivate people is to figure out what excites them, what they are most passionate about, and then show how that connects to the bigger vision. Once that is done, the real issue is avoiding burnout!

With so many creative, independent thinkers at Viewzi, how do you handle the inevitable conflicts between team members?

SA: With dance-offs, of course!

No, I’m sure conflicts will become more pronounced as we grow, but for now we have a pretty small, tight team, the benefit of which is more tracking together as a team (and less conflicts). Conflicts are largely the result of not being aligned around a shared vision, which at our current size is less of an issue.

Beyond that, conflicts come from not understanding (either an idea or how something works), not clearly defining roles, having no respect for someone, having different philosophical views, and sheer idiocy. Fortunately, we tend to avoid conflicts stemming from sheer idiocy!

At Viewzi, there are several things we either do naturally or have consciously done to avoid bad conflicts:

1. Hanging out as friends and the casual conversations you get in a relaxed work environment make a huge difference in how you actually work together. I’d argue that taking an afternoon to go bowl together does more for productivity than staying in the office for those 4 hours.

2. So many conflicts come from not understanding—how something works, a new idea, the history behind a decision. This makes clear communication—and listening—extremely important. At Viewzi, we have a bunch of ‘broad and deep’ generalists, who understand a bit about each of our disciplines. So conflicts stemming from mistrust are largely avoided. And, we’re mostly visual thinkers, which I believe results in clearer communication all around.

3. Because we each have a broad range of skills, you do run the risk of stepping on each others toes. This is where it’s important to have clearly defined roles or ownership. This can change, over time or per project. But, knowing who has the final say at a given moment is key; conversely, the owner has to be accountable to the feedback that he or she is given.

4. How you give feedback is also critical. Since what we are doing is design, not art, there should be a justifiable reason for why something works (or doesn’t work) as designed. I tend to draw a line between objective feedback (“no, people really won’t know this cute little box is a button”) and subjective feedback (“ehh, I don’t like yellow”), explaining ‘why’ as much as possible. Even on things like back-end code, you can choose a ‘better’ way to code based on metrics like performance.

I do think proximity makes a huge difference on conflicts—some things that are easily handled within the office are more difficult with our remote workers. If you look at the things I just mentioned, most are made more challenging by distance. For example, sketching an idea on a whiteboard is a whole lot easier if you are working shoulder to shoulder.

It’s also important to note that conflict is not necessarily bad—there is a place for the sparks from contending ideas. But you have to ask, “is this conflict going to promote competition or conversation?” If the conflict surfaces differing opinions and the end result is deeper alignment or a better end product—that’s a good thing!

What is the difference between a person who excels at a product-oriented start-up versus a client-services company?

SA: There is the obvious stuff associated with a start-up: Do you enjoy the constant change of pace? Can you quickly switch between a number of projects? Do you have the ability to do many different things well? How about a tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty?

The biggest difference might be around ownership. If you are an independent thinker, with a lot of good ideas and strong opinions, you are probably going to seek out environments where you can actually direct an idea through to completion, and simply get stuff done. This is most likely at a start-up environment.

However, there are consultancies and agencies where you can have some of this ownership. Just be prepared for a lot more compromises and overhead. The frustration I have seen is with people who are really good at their craft being put into positions where other folks actually implement the work, which in most cases is never to your satisfaction. That, and there are the really good ideas (you know, the scary ones) that get scoped out into the mythical phase 2.

In contrast to all this, a typical agency provides a more structured environment, which allows for more stability and structured growth opportunities. There is a lot to could be said for that, as well.