On my first day of orientation at Stanford, the obligatory inspirational speaker told us “Collaborating with your classmates will be key to your success here at Stanford.” After a couple of years under my belt, I’ve realized that he might have sounded cliché, but he was damn right.

Whether it’s collaborating with a team or desperately emailing TAs for help at 3am the morning of a midterm, there isn’t a day where I don’t need to communicate with a group in college.  But, it isn’t always rosy. The constant need for group communication does have its fair share of problems, but when I get back to school, I think I’ve realized a few ways micromobs could be pretty useful.

#1 Somebody else knows the answer to your question… but you don’t know who

It isn’t uncommon to run into a ridiculously hard problem on a weekly problem set. Asking that friend down the hall for help isn’t enough—he’s stumped too. You could try asking a TA for help, but they can’t always give a substantial answer because they’re too busy being bombarded with emails by other desperate students.

If you get your class on micromobs, you could easily ask for help from anyone in your class. That way, your TAs and professor also have all the more reason to give you the best help because not only are they helping you, they’re helping your entire class. That’s like shooting 100 birds with one stone (kinda)! 

#2 You need to study… but can’t find a study group

It can be a bit of a pain setting up a study group before exam day without having your teaching staff facilitate them. It might be because you don’t know enough people in your class or you’re that sort of awkward person in the corner that doesn’t feel like asking random strangers in person if they’d like to study (it’s okay engineers, I feel your pain).

With a mob, all it would take is a one-line post in your class’s mob: “Anyone want to study tonight?” Or if you’d rather stay in your warm, cozy room, you could just collaborate with each other through your mob.

#3 Critical announcements get lost… and you end up going to the wrong building for your final

This one luckily hasn’t happened to me, but my roommate ended up being late for his final because he didn’t catch the announcement that our final’s location had changed.

Instructors, all it takes is an @all message to save your students’ pain (and GPAs). By typing 4 letters, you can get a hold of your entire class whether you need to announce something as urgent as an exam location change or just a small change in the homework.

#4 You piss off your group members by overlooking an email

We’ve all had to work on a group project and most of the communication ends up one way or another through email. This is fine… until you end up having to sort through email threads that make craigslist look like Olivia Munn.

Skip the ugly outdated email threads. Don’t miss your teammates’ messages by creating a mob for your group. Trust me, they’ll thank you later!

Have you figured out any other ways micromobs is useful for school? Is there any way micromobs can be better? Let me know in the comments or hit up our user mob!

 

We hate email threads! Hate them. That was one of the main reasons why micromobs was born. You can participate in discussions on your own time and ignore the ones that don't interest you. But sometimes you need to reach out to your whole group, like right now. Totally!

For example Imagine you're in a  "I love Vampire Weekend" mob that you started with you and 9 of your buddies. You guys just LOooOOve them and you just found out that they'll be performing at a local venue TONIGHT! You need to contact your whole group right now. Yes, right now! Instead of just posting it on micromobs and lettings the other guys read it when they have time, or @mentioning each one of them you need the message delivered to them right now as easily as possible! Ahh, right now! Enter @all.

When you use @all, the mob members will all receive an email alert with the urgent update. Wowza! Athos, Porthos & Aramis would be so proud. This feature is only available on private mobs. We don't like spam, in fact we hate spam, much like we hate email threads. That's why @all is not available for public mobs.

On to the next one...

Real time updates are for real. No need to keep refreshing the page. We know you spend hours on micromobs everyday ;-). Now if you're viewing your "all stream" there will be a real time alert that will pop up if there are new posts as such:

If you're in one of your mobs page, you'll see the alert regarding new posts as such:

Peace out friends. BTW go watch inception (spoiler alert) !

..Inline media sharing that is.

Now when you share a youtube video in your mobs, it will automatically be embedded in your post. We're working on improving this feature as I type this. "No wayy"--Thats what she said!

We will soon be supporting other media as well. Have fun being all fancy with your youtube videos in micromobs. If you're bored enjoy our awesome timesink mob Random/Crazy videos

 

What's up mobsters!

Do you get depressed when you're not around your computer and can't be on micromobs all the time? Do you try logging in via your iPhone and find the screen is too small for you to experience the awesomeness that is micromobs? Well, today is your lucky day! We just released the iPhone Safari browswer version of micromobs! Check out some of the screen shots below:

The site is now more mobile friendly. When  you log in, the home screen shows a list of all your mobs and the updates you have missed since you last logged in.

Also now you can reply to your own posts in micromobs. Why is that exciting, you might wonder? Well, friend, even twitter doesn't have that! So booyah!

Last Saturday Ajay and I had the pleasure of being at the BUILD business plan competition at Stanford university. BUILD helps students to start their own small businesses. Students learn the basics of entrepreneurship, develop a business plan for their business, secure seed capital by pitching to VCs and of course, run their own business.   BUILD’s 4-year program (9th-12th) is the largest youth business incubator in the nation. I volunteer as a mentor every Tuesday at the BUILD Palo Alto office. I'm a mentor to a business known as the Dream Team. They make eco-friendly pillows from cotton fabric & bamboo and buckwheat stuffing.

 

Ajay was selected to be a judge for the business plan competition while I was outside at the sales bazaar helping the Dream Team reach their sales goal for the year. It was an inspirational day, watching 14-16 year old young-adults speaking passionately about their business ventures, selling their goods and telling their stories.

The winner of the business plan competition, known as the Fantastic Five, had one of the most creative products.  They are the creators of Sweet Sushi made of rice crispy treats, sour gummy worms, and fruit roll up. Keep in mind these are FRESHMEN in high school! The panel of judges for the final round included people like Jack Dorsey, co-founder/Chairman of twitter, Kai Huang, Co-founder/CEO of Guitar Hero, Jim Lussier, Managing Partner, NorWest Venture Partners, among many others.

BUILD does a commendable job of instilling entrepreneurial spirit and drive in young kids. I am proud to be a volunteer at such an amazing organization that teaches students to be self-sufficient and believe in themselves and their ideas. It also provides the students with the guidance and support needed to apply to college. 100% of their students attend college after senior year. Some students are first in their family to do so. 

I leave you with this remarkable video of how to raise kids to be entrepreneurs.

Launching beta. Two little words that do not seem so important at first glance, but to those select few who work for months developing an idea from the ground up, these two words mean that the next step has finally come. To conceive an idea, that is the easy part. From that point on- your project, your future business- becomes your baby and the ugly monster that can reside in perfectionism has the potential to come out and inhibit the next step in your journey. While we undoubtedly wanted micromobs to be unveiled to the public without a glitch in sight, we had to bite the bullet and just do it. We put it out there for the world to see, and more importantly for them to use, and what we got in return proved invaluable.

Since then we've received a new outlook. The beta launch showed me the true power of collaboration, the very thing we are building our entire business upon. The new users saw what we didn’t see, they caught what we missed from months of looking at our product with the same set of eyes. From their feedback were were able to gain insights into our users needs.  While it hasn't changed our roadmap drastically, listening to our users is something we plan to continue as the product evolves. Ultimately this feedback will help us along the path to product market fit, as we strive to build something users can't live without. 

If we can leave you with anything, we'll leave you with this- perfection is an ideal, but development is never complete. While it is difficult to "release fast and release often", once the pattern is set it becomes a critical piece of day to day operations. At first it seemed daunting to release something to the world for criticism, but we soon realized that criticism was exactly what we were looking for and what we need to truley make our product something that will better people's lives.

Speaking of launching, congratulations SnapItTo.me!

The idea of starting your own company may seem all good and fun, but let me tell you, it’s not as easy as one may think. While the idea of being my own boss and working on a product I am beyond passionate about makes it worth it, I was not quite prepared for the reality of pursuing this dream. I soon began to see my precious savings quickly diminishing, leaving me grasping at any chance to extend my runway by decelerating my burn rate. While this was far more difficult that I had imagined, given my penchant for all things nice, I have learned a few helpful tips I thought I’d pass along to the next brave group of risk-takers on their journey to start-up success.

 I know moving home is less than appealing to the vast majority of us, but trust me when I say that you are going to want to save your moolah whenever possible. Just remember, nothing soothes the soul more than having little or no rent. Plus, you can look at it as an extra incentive to work hard so that you can get the eff out of your parents place as soon as possible.

            Another tip we have all heard before, Network, Network, Network… there really is truth in this age old saying. Don’t waste your money posting ad’s on Craigslist or LinkedIn (especially if you don’t have any money to pay for it). Your best bet in finding good people is to ask everyone you actually know.

A way to widen that network, get out there! Go to tech events or any event really that’s related to what you’re working on, it’s a great way to find what you need. There are ways to get around paying full price if you try hard enough, yet another way you can save that money that you will undoubtedly need for something else. Consider volunteering at an event, not only will you make the necessary connections for free, but you could also rack up some Good Samaritan points while you’re at it. If all else fails there’s always the after party, everyone will be loosened up by then, giving you a chance to really meet people.

            One last tip I leave you with, is try to work out of a cool/affordable place like the hacker dojo. Not only will you meet interesting people, but its only $100 bucks a month (probably less than your coffee shop budget). As an added perk, there’s usually free coffee and food, you know you love that idea. But remember, be a good dojo member and make some donations once in a while. Best of all, being in that type of environment will not only motivate you, but connect you to fellow risk-takers who will feel your pain and help you on this seemingly never ending journey to start-up success.

micromobs went to a Jobnob happy hour today. What's Jobnob, you ask? It's an online job board that brings startups and those interested in volunteering their time(or work for "alternative compensation") at startups together. They do happy hour events where prospective volunteers can meet startups that need the help. Did I say volunteer? Yes I did. Swweeeet!
Volunteers work for free, and that makes sense because -we gots no monies! But guess who does have money great companies like Linkedin, Meebo, Yahoo!, Playdom, RockYou!i.e. the other jobnob employers that were present. My estimate of the ratio of number of people that talked to those 5 companies compared to all other companies present at the event was 4:1.
Breathe. Stretch. Shake. Let it go.
The highpoint of the night for me was when Jesse Hammons, the CEO & founder of (bootstrapped) Zaggle, while pitching his company to the room, said something so incredible and inspiring:

"We[Zaggle] don't have money. We run 100% on passion. That's all we ask for and that's all we give you."

Startups, especially younger ones, need to not feel crippled due to the lack of funds when competing for talent. We might not have money YET, but we do have passion. Oh, yes we do.