I’ve been wanting to get out solo on hikes and peaks a lot lately and in July of this summer I had an excellent opportunity to bag a couple peaks in the Desolation wilderness. I very nearly made one of the peaks and realized my eyes were bigger than my stomach for the main goal but had an excellent hike and learned some valuable lessons along the way.

The night I got in it was clear skies and an awesome show of bright long streaking meteors. I pulled in towards fallen leaf lake and slept out off to the side of the road. After about 30 minutes a couple of girls from New Jersey cruised in and parked nearby to finish off a 12 pack of beer. This was slightly annoying but I appreciated the company. I knew I wasn’t going to be greeted by any big animals that night sleeping under the stars with their warding voices.

At about 3 am, all the stars disappeared and I panicked a bit because I thought a storm moved in while I was sleeping. After I roused a bit and considered moving into the car I realized a heavy smell of smoke in the air. Something big was burning somewhere but I couldn’t tell how far or close so I went back to sleep.

In the morning I found the skies filled with smoke. The radio mentioned a big fire burning north of Yosemite so I imagine that was the source. I headed toward the trail head hoping for a change in the winds to push the smoke away.

Hiking in along the trail was pretty straight forward. It didn’t take long to find out that desolation wilderness isn’t quite as desolate as one would hope but it’s still a beautiful area. Before heading for the peaks I passed by a few lakes, a couple with a 2 year old out backpacking (awesome!), and a field of high sierra flowers.

It wasn’t long till I thought I saw my first goal Jack’s peak. As I turned off trail and started climbing straight up I noticed actually summitting the peak would be difficult possibly class 5 climbing. Since this was my first solo trip I was starting to have hesitations regarding actually summitting but as I climbed on I realized the peak I was aiming for was not Jack’s peak but a lower peak preceding it and Jack’s peak did come into view. It looked much more achievable. There was a huge field of smaller sized talus to walk through as I made my way. It was very easily passable but warranted careful footing to avoid twisting ankles. You can see Jack’s peak in the background beyond the talus in the picture below.

When I got to the saddle in the above picture I stopped looking up towards Jack’s peak and looked down towards the way I intended to descend. I also noticed Dick’s peak which was my second goal for the day looming above Jack’s peak. The summit to Jack’s looked passable and safe but the summit to Dick’s was literally huge loose talus all the way up from the side I was on. That’s when I decided rather than summit jack’s or dick’s I needed to work my way down. It was treacherous and loose the whole way down. I was so focused on the route, I didn’t even pull out the camera. I slowly picked my way down to a much more desolate lake from the previous ones.

There were tons of fish I could see and the main trail in was over grown. I for sure plan on bringing Erica back in here via the trail. When I looked back the way I came down I felt a sense of accomplishment and safety to be on flatter more solid ground. It was literally cliffs with landslides of rock between. All of the rock was loose and I had to be careful to not slide down or cause larger rocks to slide down on top of myself.

Heading back to the car felt like driving on a highway since I was back on trail. I was happy to get back safely and ponder the lessons learned for future solo trips.

1. Have an awesome map. The scale on the map I had was a little too small for hiking off trail. It was good enough to keep me from getting lost but bad enough to keep me from seeing where I really was. I constantly was mistaking the peaks I saw for what were only ridges on the map.
2. This one is a tough lesson for me cause I hate going back the way I came but if the way you came was way safer do it! I ended up taking major unnecessary risks just to not see the same thing twice in the day.
3. Loose large boulders suck to travel over.
4. Giving up is okay. Yeah I totally wimped out of the peaks and one of them I was within 500 feet of the summit. But I’m here writing about it and I didn’t have an epic in the dark walking out.
5. If I were to hurt myself during about half the hike, it was going to be pretty serious to get out dragging myself along and I saw nobody nearby who could help. You gotta take every step with thought and diligence over treacherous terrain. It would also be very wise to leave a marked map with someone who knows when to expect you.
6. Desolation wilderness is awesome!

Recently Glenn Kelman wrote a less than praising post about Silicon Valley. Sadly there is a lot of truth in it but also a lot of hype. Silicon Valley is the Hollywood of tech and Kelman is focusing on all those high budget films that suck. There’s a lot more to The Valley for Entrepreneurs and lifestyle when you look around and read further than Tech Crunch

Looking at the valley’s past they were working on apples and we’ve moved on to oranges. My father and father in law , who came to this valley during a boom of their own, were working on things (and still are) that the current generation of entrepreneurs can’t even maintain a conversation about past introduction much less truly appreciate. I want to talk with my father about the latest trends in internet development and he wants to talk about the latest silicon process and how small they can get transistors. He also never fails to remind me we would have nothing without their innovation.

The fact is the valley is leading the technology circus and by the time a generation develops some nostalgia the next generation is already moving on with the next thing. Sure there’s a lack of nostalgia but only at the expense of innovation. Beats the crap out of sitting around and talking about high school.

Kelman is correct to assume people don’t live here cause they like it here. My wife and I have considered leaving many times and heading up to the Portland or Seattle area. But finally we are settling in.

The real problem with Silicon Valley is the hard to find community. We’ve been living in downtown San Jose and whenever I stroll around downtown all I can manage to find is a semi-vibrant club scene (clubs suck!). There’s no real music scene, no extraordinary hang outs, and not a lot of people my age to be found. In fairness I do work alone but I also do try to meet people around here.

It’s a tough place if you want more in life than work. But if you’re willing to work on it, you can find great friends and communities here too. The reality though, as Kelman points out, is there will be a lot of difficulty getting a good flourishing community, particularly of young people, when you have to work 24/7/365 just to pay rent or buy a house. On the same token Silicon Valley will probably continue to lead for a long time because many here are willing to work so hard.

Is it really just the one school?

I don’t understand how Kelman can be so pompous as to finger Stanford for the success and failure of the valley when he says “Yet we all know that without Stanford the Valley would grow old and die.” Great schools tend to make great corporate leaders (And some bad public leaders!).

Stanford certainly has produced a lot for this valley and without it we would not do as well. But Seattle would certainly suffer with the loss of Stanford or any other great ivy league university as well. I fail to see how silicon valley would not be able to leech talent from other great universities as well as Seattle does. The fact is California at large has many great universities to provide talent to support the valley along with ivy league grads willing to travel here.

California simply takes up where Washington leaves off and we happen to take a share of their potential talent into our universities as a result. We have great higher education and that investment pays off big. Sadly our K-12 scene is much less than spectacular.

You gotta be cool here (for now)

Kelman says “Dingbat ideas are scattered like pennies on a sidewalk”. That sounds about right for Silicon Valley. What’s even more amazing is the money that will chase around those ideas.

It’s been a real struggle for us to get attention with our startup in silicon valley because we are so uncool. Even though Kelman thinks Redfin isn’t cool I think we take his cake in the un-coolness arena at MerchantOS.

Yes things get very crazy here and to the point of absurdity but it’s exciting and certainly Seattle gets a lot of value out of it. Somebody needs to try these ideas out and some of those people with “cool” ideas do succeed. When Kelman says “But some of the best – and most meaningful — new ventures may be the ones that combine old and new business models, experience and youthful recklessness, perseverance and opportunism. And it is these ventures that really seem to belong in Seattle.”, in the later half he’s just flat out wrong. They don’t belong in Seattle any more than they do in Silicon Valley. True we have a lot of “dingbat ideas” in the works but there are as many good ideas here too. They’re just harder to see cause they’re obscured by “coolness” taking center stage.

West vs. Northwest

There’s advantages and disadvantages to the handful of “entrepreneurial cities”. This post wasn’t intended to start a battle over which is better but instead to defend silicon valley and point out that it is awesome that people have a choice.

There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to any city over another and be thankful that you don’t have to settle with only one to find a great entrepreneurial setting.

I for one will be staying here. When they close down Stanford it’ll be a sad day :-)~

Tech Crunch recently wrote an article on Redfin which sparked some personal angst against the current (and broken) way in which real estate transactions occur. My wife and I had recently attempted to purchase a house and even had an accepted offer. Once our real estate agent and mortgage broker saw the dollars (their commission), they began turning the screws to get a deal done - not on the terms we originally laid out for them, but on their own. It was quite educating. You have to watch your own back in a deal like this unless you’re positive the people you are dealing with are looking out for you.

Our terms were a house with a standard fixed rate mortgage coupled with several teacher loans. I knew we barely qualified for the loan but I also knew it was possible. They thought it would be much easier to just place us in a sub-prime loan after having one bank turn us down on a standard loan. I suspect this was just easier for them and required less work on their behalf with the same result (commission!). They even tried to convince us my wife’s teacher loans were a bum deal. The teacher loans inconveniently (for them) were not allowed to be used in conjunction with a sub-prime type of loan. The teacher loans financed nearly 20 percent of our loan, which made buying a house for us a reality in the first place. If you live in San Jose and are a teacher, check it out here.

We ended up with no house and no lost money, thankfully. But it’s easy to see how this industry can screw the less attentive over. A sub prime mortgage simply means a bank is going to lend money to someone whom has no business borrowing that amount to begin with. This is evident today by the current state of the sub-prime market. It’s also probably the leading cause of an overly accelerated housing market and its current subsequent slump.

Below are a couple of my gripes with the industry.

Why can’t one talk to the seller of the house until the deal is nearly done? When making such a large investment speaking with the current owner should not be considered taboo. Anyone should be freely able to not only explore the history of the house but interview the owner. They know more about the house than any inspector would. This seems like job security for real estate agents. No one else can do the talking, so they are mandatory for the process.

Why is the buyer’s agent financially motivated to screw the buyer over!? That is the most alarming part about the transaction. The more they can get you to pay for a house, the more money they make. For example a $500,000 house brings them about $15,000 in commission. Every $50k more they can get you to spend means another $1,500 in their pockets. We had to all but walk away from our agent to convince him to offer $40k below asking price (which was the accepted offer!).

If and when my wife and I decide to make a home purchase, services like Redfin seem a lot more attractive. Particularly since we never enlisted our agent to show us houses (we drove around on our own to open houses). Also, it seems a lot wiser to get your loan approved well ahead of time. Not pre-approved but completely approved. Not only does this let you know your exact capabilities, it gives you some extra bargaining power when your offer is being reviewed.

Recently I had a situation where I had to install and use Vista. I’ve had a little experience with Vista and knew I didn’t want to put it on my primary work computer. My wife wasn’t quick to donate her box either (believe me I tried to sell her on how Vista was the latest greatest!). She did come up with a great idea though. We have a Mac we use for testing at work and she suggested putting Vista on there. I thought it would be a lot of work but read about Boot Camp and decided to give it a shot.

First its extremely easy for an advanced computer user to install Vista on a Mac. Just download Boot Camp and print out the instructions and follow them. What’s more important is how well this fits into Apples business. I’m not a normal Mac user but I can certainly agree that their hardware rocks. Boot Camp is an awesome way for Apple to allow PC users to take advantage of their hardware. Apple doesn’t lose anything by allowing a user to install another OS on their hardware and they have sales to gain. They even get the opportunity to expose you to OSX albeit a brief one if you never boot it again.

Apples sales model makes one wonder why a company like Dell isn’t trying to get ahead by marketing similar hardware. People certainly are willing to pay a premium for nifty hardware packages like the Mac mini. And to be honest, it seems amazing we are still buying towers when all that same hardware can be placed in a much more tidy and pretty package.

I recently read Guy Kawasaki’s article on Money as a Social Barrier. He refers to a study on how people react when they are pre-exposed to money then are asked to do a puzzle where they may ask others for help. The study concluded that those who have money on the mind are less likely to ask for help or help others. Guy goes on to compare this study with paying your customers a commission when they find you a new customer. He concludes that “If a company brings money into an evangelistic relationship with its customers, it could create barriers and instead of incentives.”

I couldn’t agree more with Guy on this one. And why would you pay your customers when they are perfectly willing and in fact may feel obligated to do it for free. Customers I have worked with seem to love the product I support for them and seem to always try to find us more customers and refer them to us. Sometimes before we can even ask them for anyone they might know who would be interested. I think this is a result (At least I hope!) of a good product doing its job for the customer. A lot of times when I speak with customers it seems like they feel they owe us (If any of our customers read this please let me know if I’m wrong). Maybe it’s cause we charge to little or maybe it’s the product changing their lives so much that they want to help change others’ or help us in return. Either way they are doing it for us for no monetary compensation and we greatly appreciate it.

I wrote this mostly to confirm what Guy is getting at but also to suggest to those paying their customers for spreading the word to think about using that money to help the product instead. This makes the money you spend potentially twice as effective. Your product is getting better and your customers will start to spread the word on their own.

Customer loyalty seems to be coveted by many organizations. Naturally it’s important if repeat business is important to a company’s survival. What irks me is when organizations achieve customer loyalty through coercion rather then through superior product or service. I see a bright future for a new wave of business which preserves their relationship through paying attention to their customer’s needs rather then penalizing them for leaving or before they even start.

The contract

Contracts tend to go along with services. When you ask me to sign a contract your really telling me that you don’t think your service is good enough to keep me around. Many companies counter that they need to have a contract to protect from losing money from a short membership yet tout the best service around. If they have the best service why would their customers leave them and why do they contractually obligate their customers to stick around?

Comcast is a fine example of a company which understands contracts. They provide reliable Internet service with no contract and at a reasonable price. Very simple plan and I must admit their excellent service is making me more then loyal. I tell people they should use Comcast for their Internet provider too. On the other hand SBC, whom provides a competing DSL service, demands a contract or pay them a lot more for a month to month agreement. After using their service for a couple months I came upon the opinion that this service was below standard and not worth it. Being stuck in a contract I had to pay an early termination to get out. I won’t be using them ever again and I advise everyone I know to avoid them as well.

The contract may be useful in some industries but it seems to me that it only opens the possibility to leave a bitter taste in your customer’s mouth. Furthermore it can actually drive away some potential customers. It seems like a much safer bet to preserve your customers through good service.

Startup Fees

Startup fees seem to be a tactic to make you want to stick around till you’ve spread that startup fee over several months of time. Many times a startup fee is charged and there is no apparent added value gained for paying that fee other then the fact that you can now pay a recurring fee and use the service. When people ask me for a startup fee I immediately want to know what I am getting in return for this extra payment. Usually you get nothing and if you do get something you aren’t really paying a startup fee. Your paying for installation, labor, equipment or something. Business’ should never call these startup fees but rather bill for exactly what they are selling. Customers feel a lot better when they see they are getting something in return for their money.

Again if you are trying to preserve your customer subscriptions by charging a hefty up front fee think again. Fees make a great deterrent to most people. You might have exactly what the customer needs and are just scaring away a stream of recurring revenue. If you won’t make enough money without the startup fee then drop the fee and raise your membership fee. As usual if you want to keep your customers around just make sure you serve them the best you can.

No Contract or Fees

As odd as this might sound its difficult to get some customers to understand a no contract or fee service. I’ve sold a service for some time to customers and when they find out we have no contract or fee they are confused and ask repeatedly about it. They think suddenly a huge hidden fee is going to pounce on them that I was secretly hiding until they sign up.

This leads me to believe a lot of people get screwed over by contracts and fees. Furthermore a lot of people must get hidden charges dropped on them that they weren’t told about. I find this shocking and think a consumer revolt is in order. There’s no reason we should buy from companies that don’t trust themselves to keep us around based on their quality of service. Unless of course there is no other option out there. So join me in my boycott of companies who are not willing to constantly compete for our business with great service. Let’s force companies to serve us not themselves. Without us they would have nothing.

If you know of a great no fee service please comment on it below…

TiEcon 2006 was a show not to be missed. TiE stands for The Indus Entrepreneur. Being Indian however is not a requirement for attendees and if you are shy you shouldn’t be. The atmosphere was very welcoming and open. It was even a good opportunity for some cultural exposure.

Excellent speakers included John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Guy Kawasaki, Sashi Tharoor, and Larry Brilliant. Topics not only covered entrepreneurship but world affairs such as poverty, health, and environment. My personal favorite was Guy Kawasaki. The most entertaining speaker of the show with some of the best advice.

Networking was an important theme for the show as well. Plenty of people were buzzing around with smiles ready to engage in conversation. This show is mandatory for anyone who would like to meet fellow entrepreneurs and people who can help each other.

I will be attending next year after this great experience and I recommend this event to anyone who would like industry exposure or has interest in entrepreneurship. If you have any questions, please email me and I would be more then happy to provide additional info.

For show details visit the website at http://www.tiecon.org/