acm icpc regional finals talk re: drop.io, privacy, entrepreneurship by sam lessin

lessons from the ‘real’ worldACM-ICPC Programming Contest Discussion

Some perspective:

1. 3.5 years out of college

2. 1 year from founding drop.io

3. Not on a victory lap (yet?)

All I can offer is a view from the trenches…

+ just a few years where you are now.

1. My personal frame of reference

2. The course of events that lead to drop.io today

3. A few preliminary lessons

12 years of tinkering…

1. Zoltar (middle school)

2. Six Degrees (highscool)

3. LifeCapital (highscool – college)

4. CrimsonXchange (college)

5. Facebook (college)

6. Kinjunction (college & post college)

7. Essembly Causes (post college)

8. Bain (post college)

Pure theory and academics

1. Foucault

2. Habermas

3. Hayek

4. Locke

5. Rousseau

6. Claude Shannon

7. etc…

People & conversation

1. Teachers/Professors/Mentors

2. Friends

3. Real Friends FOF

leading to a few theses that gets me out of bed…

Pure theory: Value of information is

inversely related to how probable it is…

price

quantity

Your only photo of mom

millionth photo of baby

s

d

Historical context: For the first time

in history publicity is a negative cost

privacy

~years

cost

publicity

~2005

futureall of human history

security

People are missing the ball:

Privacy isn’t dead

Privacy isn’t Security

Authorization isn’t Authentication

This information is confidential and property of Drop.io, IncDrop.io, Inc 12070604-STH-Overview-v10 Official

And tech is creating openings:

1. commodity computing

2. the ‘cloud’

3. rapid development practices

2. The course of events that lead to drop.io…

Identified the tangible problem: Spring of 2007

at bain… how do I privately share information! why is this so hard!

A framework to solve itSimple Private Sharing

No social, no search, no identity

Strip metadata

Create single private points of exchange

In a manageable footprint

Inputs

Authorization

Outputs

Users ‘lifehack’ their specific solutions on top of us

Left Job, Built V1:four weeks

F.U.N.D.S: lower investor risk =

better deal

RRE Ventures: $1.2 M seed in Nov

RRE + DFJ: $2.7 M A1 in March

Motive Power (from 2 up to 14)

1. smart

2. problem solvers

3. driven

4. intersted in our thesis

5. ‘team’ players

6. (skills)

Grow

Create a virtuous cycle

DEVELOP(core innovaiton)

VALUE

Hire Great PeopleExpand ScopeRaise Capital

Upgrade & Innovate (this month)

1. Going 100% into the cloud = huge

new options

2. ‘Switchboard’ API – allowing you to

leverage all our outputs and inputs for your apps

3. Redesign - for more flexible front end

vocabulary and use

4. Much more…

3. A few preliminary lessons (which might be useful?)

Entrepreneurship is a whole different type of stress…

Can’t express it – you have to experience it, but be ready for it

Don’t jump in lightly

Tendency towards disequilibrium

Success breeds more success failure breeds failure

Set yourself up to succeed in the short term & cycle up

Team is everything

Only work with people you respectPeople in context of team is different than vaccum

Be involved with great people

Build small & variable

small = understandable & manageablevariable = acknowledge you are likely wrong

stay compact

You MUST CARE to act

Too much work, too manic not to

If you & your team don’t care you will fail

This room is well positioned

SignalingFrameworks for learning and thinkingSpecific language knowledge is over-rated

Don’t sweat the market, do what intrests you

If what we are working on interests you: sam@dropio.com

If not: hope the food is good and good

luck!

If the theory interests you: drop.io/swl, twitter/lessin

If entreprenuriship: come drop by

our office for a coffee…