Clint Sharp’s Blog an’ Vlog

So, if you hadn’t seen the news FireAnt was acquired by Sonic Mountain (Odeo).  You can read recaps of the news on two of my favorite blog networks, NewTeeVee (run by Om Malik), and Tech Crunch (by Mike Arrington).

 I came to be involved in FireAnt through my connections to Jay Dedman and Josh Kinberg.  We had some discussions at Vloggercon in July of 2005 which extended into the following months involving my helping them get FireAnt off the ground.  I had started a project I was calling MediaFeedr, which would poll RSS feeds, examine any links, and then develop a new RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures for downloading into FireAnt.  The theory was that you could put any feed into MediaFeedr and then come out with any linked content as enclosures.  In reality, it never really got out of testing, but the initial feedback was good and I was proud of the code and the idea.

 Jay and Josh were in need of a directory.  Josh had put together some rudimentary code to implement some server side components to tie in the Mac and PC versions of FireAnt, but while Josh is an excellent visionary and a good leader, he is by his own admission a pretty poor coder.  I took the best of what I had and the best of what Josh had developed and we developed a videoblogging directory and some really innovative server side features to go along with with the video aggregation clients.  We spent months developing it, and we released it to the public on January 24th of 2006 (initial TechCrunch coverage can be found here).  We were ironically directly competing with Odeo at the time for one of the best directories available on the web.  It was developed with AJAX technology which at the time was still fairly new and required a lot of hand coding of JavaScript, etc.

 I was incredibly proud of the work I had done, but even by that point it was becoming obvious that the things we had thought were important weren’t what the market felt was important.  YouTube had in the course of a year become huge, and flash-based web video was where the traffic and the money was at.  The idea of aggregating different forms of video (of which Flash was incredibly hard to play on a PC based client and for the most part no sites supported RSS 2.0 with media enclosures) was falling by the way-side.  After a successful launch but a limit in the amount of video content to be obtained through podcasting, I left in March of 2006 shortly before Katie was born to pursue other opportunities and to limit my workschedule to spend time with my newborn child.

What went wrong then?  I’ve had over a year to reflect on this, and I think I can boil it down to a few choice areas where we wrong:

• Too much focus on the business and not enough focus on the technology
  • We brought in BizDev people very early in the process, in fact before I even officially joined the company.
  • Our BizDev people were unsuccessful at selling the technology.  Simple fact is, they were opportunists who were looking to make a quick buck and really didn’t believe in the company other than they thought they had a gravy-train to ride on.  The early stages of the startup should focus on the technology first and the business second.
• Poor initial design of the business and ownership structure
  • The initial design of the business was a 5 way partnership between two visionaries, two developers and one business development guy.  First of all, equal partnerships never work.  There was no clear leader and far too many chiefs without enough Indians.  When I was brought in, the initial founders were reticent to give up more of their ownership structure since it was already fairly deluted as it was.
• We bet wrong
  • We bet people wanted offline content and simple aggregation of feeds across many websites across the Internet.  Fact was, people wanted one destination in their web browser to view content.  YouTube won, we lost.

 There were great people involved in the founding of the company, but there were just too many.  The next startup I do will have a clear leader, a core set of technology people, and we’ll worry about making money last.  There just isn’t enough of a small company to split it 7 ways.  It should be split three ways and then a quarter left over for the rest to come.  The development people, the ones doing the work to get the technology off the ground should come first.  I’m slightly bitter over the fact that I worked hundreds of hours and at the end of the whole story I ended up with virtually none of the company.  The technology I developed for them was critical to the initial success of the company and I felt from the beginning that even thought my work was highly valued, the ownership percentage was never ponied up.  This is probably why I left early and didn’t stick with the project.  I think had I have stuck with it and not run out of personal funds we probably could have been much more successful.  There were also numerous problems with the client development founders who were also having to work day jobs.  I was the best suited financially at that time due to my severance with Cingular to work for no money, and I was rewarded the least.

 While this may seem harsh to the people who were involved with the company, I want to point out that I feel no ill-will towards the people who I worked with.  Mistakes were made all around, and I have the highest respect for Josh, Jay, Daniel and Erik who were involved in the project during my tenure.  They are all excellent people, and I’d work with all of them again.  I only note these things largely for my own reference, and I point them out so that if I were to ever team up with these people again we can have an open and honest discussion of our mistakes so we don’t repeat them again.  This was a learning experience for all of us, and I hope that some time in the future I can find a way to work with these people again.

 I’d especially like to point out Josh’s effort.  Josh stuck with FireAnt from the beginning to the end.  Josh sacrificed far more than any of the rest of us, even delaying his wedding so that he could see this through to the end.  I consider Josh a close personal friend, and I’d jump at the chance to work with him again.  Josh is an excellent person of the highest moral caliber.  Josh has endured personal threats, personal hardship, and he has endured and completed this project while the rest of us moved on.  I have the utmost respect for the sacrifices he made, and I tip my hat to the Sonic Mountain team who more than the technology we developed got the best part of FireAnt when they got Josh.

 You can still see the technology I developed for FireAnt at getfireant.com.  Some of our more unscrupulous shareholders stole fireant.tv as part of a petty personal squabble, but at least it’s still available there.  To those of you shareholders who were involved in that, shame on you.  Being involved in a small company with no revenue is about sacrifice, dedication and a pursuit of developing your vision, not about cashing out.  Stealing money, lieing, and personal threats are no way to end a failed startup, and I hope you feel ashamed of your behavior.  You know who you are.

 Jay’s thoughts can be viewed here.  Josh’s thoughts can be viewed here.

This video makes me tear up. “I don’t want to live on the moon” is her favorite song. She smiles everytime you sing it for her.

I’m making no claims as to our talent (actually, I’ll vouch for the other members of the band, they’re all talented ), however, here is one of our originals. Please try not to be too brutal in your comments, thanks :).

Update: I’m having problems embedding the video. You can watch it here

I really like MXC. Don’t ask me why :). Anyways, this is a very amusing video. I’m going to try to do a couple more of these little life snippet episodes that don’t require much editing. I’ve always liked these, hopefully I won’t grow tired of them.

For my first video in probably 6 months, this is our daughter, Katherine Elizabeth Sharp, along with appearances from the majority of the Dickens and Sharp families, who most of you have not yet seen in my videos. Expect more to come from little Katie. This is very home movie-esque, I shot it that way, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I’ve given up on caring about quality in my videos, since when I did care, I couldn’t manage to produce one.

Mike gives the new FireAnt Directory the thumbs up, along with mentions for Blip.tv and MeFeedia.com. As the guy who’s spent the last 3 or 4 months slaving over that directory, I really appreciate the positive feedback. We’ve got so much more in the hopper for the directory that you’ll need to write another article just for all the cool social features we have coming up. Keep your eyes peeled, new stuff is coming every day!

Thanks Mike! A positive review coming from you means a lot.

It’s been almost two months since my last video. Here’s an update about what’s going on. More video to come shortly, hopefully, as soon as I find some time.

Verdi pissed me off tonight with his post to the Videoblogging Group. I love Michael; he’s a great guy who gives himself fully to the community, but his attitude towards people who are looking to make money off of vlogging really grates on my nerves sometimes. It’s not that these people aren’t misguided, a lot of them are very misguided. Most of them will never make a cent, but I don’t see the problem with entertaining them, assuming they’re being respectful, civil and otherwise good community members. Perhaps I’m way off base here. Anyways, since I was pissed off, I filmed this rant, which basically sums up my feelings on the money thing. I want to make a living off of this, in whatever way possible, so I can do what I love doing rather than hating my job. I think most people agree and would do the same, but for some reason I’ve been labeled ‘the money man.’ Anyways, let me know what you think, I’m sure everyone will have an opinion.

At the August 6th Meet the Vloggers, Phillip Torrone graciously agreed to show up so I could interview him. My apologies for the audio quality, I forgot to grab my iPod and lavalier mic and the wind cut feature on my camera is doing weird things with the audio. We discussed a range of topics, and as always pt was entertaining and informative. Thanks so much to pt and MAKE Magazine for the interview. It’s a bit long, over 7 minutes, but trust me there wasn’t any more fat to cut.

*** WARNING *** Six Feet Under Spoiler in Video

This video was shot immediately after the most recent Six Feet Under aired. Six Feet Under is a television show that airs on HBO (for those not in the know). The show consistently produces the best Hollywood has to offer. I spend some time talking about our best and their best.

Check out the ad on the right side of pvrblog.com. Akimbo’s advertising for me! Awesome.

On my way back from New York, my wife and I were forced to stay overnight at a hotel room in Dallas. We had one Internet connection to share between us and two laptops. I setup a ad-hoc wireless network between the two computers to share the connection, and I thought it’d make a good subject for a Clint on Tech episode. Couple of things I’m trying different to improve the production value, so let me know what you think. First, I’ve purchased some additional lighting. I’m still trying to learn how to place this stuff in such a small room. Secondly, this is my first hybrid of a screencast and vlog entry, which I think worked out really well. Let me know what you think.

The third installment in this three part episode. Enjoy.

Second installment of Watch Life Happen, with Clint & Mel, Episode 2. This is footage from Vloggercue in Hoboken, NJ at Adam Quirk’s apartment. It was an excellent event, and much food, fun, and beer was had by all!

This is the second installment of my new video diary, Watch Life Happen, with Clint & Mel. This is footage from our trip to New York. I had so much footage, I decided to split up the episode into 3 parts. This is the first installment.

You’ve been waiting for it! Here it is, the debut of our weekly video diary, Watch Life Happen, with Clint & Mel. In this episode, we armwrestle. Pretty much ‘nough said there.

Here I do a hybridcast using my new Alesis mixing board. I show off my cheap home-made pop-filter as well. Audio turned out great. Look at the new intro and let me know what you think.

There, it’s done. I still it’s largely crap, but I think the last minute additions are pretty funny. Let me know what you thought of it. Love it or hate it, give me some link love baby!

Technorati Tags:
Gnomedex

Lampooned by the NY TImes!

Originally uploaded by Coccyx.

David Pogue features one of my videos in his recent, not so positive, review of the Akimbo. Obviously, he thinks my video is cheesy, but I got a good laugh out of it. He didn’t exactly pick my best work, but I think that was the point. Watch his video. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, though!

This week we’re going into my pet project, MediaFeedr. MediaFeedr is a service I’m going to be launching that takes an RSS feed in, scrapes the pages the links in the feed refers to and outputs RSS2 with Enclosures and Media RSS with the media it finds on the linked pages. This will go a long way to helping us all be filters for other people, since people will easily be able to link to the permalink of a blog entry and get a feed they can use in FireANT or their favorite podcatcher. This is an extension of my ideas on helping vloggers and podcasters build the web that were published as an instructional article on Videoblogging.info called “Annotated Bookmarks”. Watch the show, and let me know what you think (hopefully by following the instructions at the “Annotated Bookmarks” article ). Also, look for the premier of Watch Life Happen, with Clint & Mel next week!