It was just like any other day, and I was going out to lunch with some coworkers in downtown Davis. We decided to get Thai food at Sophia’s Thai Kitchen which I can’t recommend enough, and as we were walking through the courtyard I happened to glance up towards the second story to see a logo on a piece of paper taped to the window on the door. The logo was for the virtual-world computer game called Second Life, which is created by a company called Linden Lab.

About a year ago when I was pitching to VCs, I had a day with two presentations in San Francisco basically back-to-back. One was in the financial district and the other near North Beach which was about 20 minute walk, so I just walked. I ended up accidentally finding out where Linden Lab’s HQ is, so I was definitely surprised when I found out they have a satellite office in Davis. It makes sense really, there’s a lot of talented computer scientists and graphics/visualization researchers at the university. Once upon a time I was actually part of the big visualization research group at Davis called IDAV, but I was doing 3D audio research rather than graphics.

So this begs the question… what about Davis for a startup? There’s plenty of discussion about Sacramento as a potential tech hub and a hotbed for startups, but nobody ever mentions Davis. For Tubes I’ve had my eye on Davis and Berkeley, and since I already know Davis well and it’s cheaper maybe that’s the starting point for us. Why not Sacramento, San Francisco, or Mountain View?

1. Davis is cheaper than the Bay Area. The commercial rents are relatively high and housing is still insane, but salaries are much less and there are many surrounding cheaper areas to live in. Measure K just passed and Target is going into Davis, so maybe that will help stir some growth and thus lower housing costs.
2. The town is alive. The downtown is full of great restaurants and everything is walkable.
3. Everything is walkable. In the downtown area you can walk anywhere in less than 10 minutes. Anywhere else in Davis is very reachable by bike. This is important if you hire people who don’t drive. Maybe they just don’t own a car, or maybe they’re coming from an environment like San Francisco where many people tend not to use their cars. Many companies are going primarily virtual as well, and if I brought anybody over from Europe they’d likely not be used to driving.
4. While Davis may have no resemblance to reality, it’s close to it. The Bay Area is a doable day trip, and Lake Tahoe is close. There’s also a shuttle that goes back and forth between Davis and the Sacramento airport.
5. There’s a whole university to draw help/talent from. And I’m starting to use it. Tubes’ newest advisor is one of my former Music professors.

So there you have it, 5 great reasons why Davis is an optimal place to start a company. Please make a comment if you have more reasons and want to add to this list.

It’s time for another crazy Sac Geek Dinner, and this time it’s going to be in Folsom at Dos Coyotes on December 1st. Please RSVP via Upcoming.org so we know how many people to expect.

One thing I’ve really noticed is how much I dread doing the stupid stuff. I don’t dread it because it’s boring or useless because it’s not, but there’s something highly ineffecient about doing a startup the old-fashioned way.

Before I had a team, the support of good advisors and a good lawyer, or any kind of technology demo, I wrote the business plan. At this point in time it’s literally 40 pages of shit. Maybe I’m lazy or maybe I just have a strong attraction to doing things efficiently, but now that the business plan needs a re-write I sure as hell don’t want to do it. I just don’t think it’s a very smart time/energy expenditure.

Many of the core values and influences and goals that Tubes was born out of are still the same, but the actual product and business goals have evolved. I’ve kept the financial plans up to date but the executive summary and Powerpoint deck both need some TLC as well. The question now is do we need them?

Things are different now. I have many things in place including the start of a really amazing team, and we have a lot of code written that does what it needs to do. There is definitely a general path that we’re following, but it’s very difficult to put everything on paper. As impressive as the original business plan might have been, is it a failure because things didn’t materialize as planned? Of course it’s not because we’re farther along now, and some of the kooky ideas in the business plan have been laid to rest while we’ve put focus on the real important and compelling stuff. Maybe it wasn’t a good plan to begin with… or maybe the business plan isn’t such a great format anymore for web startups. Also… do I even want a description of what we’re doing on paper or electronically that can be passed around to competitors? I think I prefer to show people and give them the story in person.

I have a lot of friends in startup-land, and for the most part their strategy doesn’t even include an inkling of Powerpoint or business plans or even financial models. Their strategy is to build and release, and hopefully people like it. If they do then hopefully the application or service can generate revenues… somehow. I don’t think that’s a good model to follow either, but there has got to be a better way!

I’m going to stop this post right now, because I don’t have the answer. If anybody has ideas on better ways to manage business development and direction, acquisition ideas, or anything else then please contribute and add your comments. Right now I can tell you that our internal development wiki for Tubes has become absolutely essential for keeping track of all kinds of shit.