Ryan Mickle Blogs Here

Hey, I’d wear it. With pride.

Women 2.0, a cool network of young female entrepreneurs (and those aspiring to escape their cubicle shackles), is hosting an event to conclude their Biz Plan Napkin Challenge. During the challenge, participating young female professionals submitted napkins with their business ideas on them, in hopes to win a grand each and a date with Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson or Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital (okay 30 minute meetings, not dates). Anyway, the event should be a lot of fun. They have a great panel of judges and sponsors lined up, so there should be lots of interesting people to meet there.

Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2007, 6pm - 10pm
Location: CNET, 235 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA

In a recent front page article of the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, Dan Fost wrote a really interesting article about the emergence of neo-nomadic worker culture, describing the new breed of workers that is starting businesses in coffee shops of cities like San Francisco. Jessica Guynn, another writer for the Chronicle who interviewed me about dotherightthing for her upcoming article about us, knew that I fit into this group and referred Dan to speak with me about my experiences as an entrepreneur who reeks of coffee at the end of each long workday (coincidently, I am writing this post as my clothes soak in coffee bean fumes at Espresso Roma Cafe). This was my first article in the traditional media that I actually got to speak to the reporter before seeing it in published form. I lived to talk about it, but the experience unfolded an interesting lesson, which I would like to share with you.

The article features Kevin Burton and Niall Kennedy, who have worked to popularize the term “bedouins” to describe members of this emerging army of laptop carrying coffee shop entrepreneurs. These guys are two of the hundreds of people in San Francisco who know every coffee chop with free Wi-Fi within a couple mile radius, as well as the operating hours, clientèle (a.k.a. scenery), food/coffee quality and prices, and internet connection quality of each cafe. Fost concludes the article with a section discussing the obligation of bedouins to purchase. “Almost every mobile worker interviewed said they try to buy something at least every hour.” Then, the article turns to me, the only interviewee who allegedly doesn’t make a purchase every hour:

But not everyone.

Ryan Mickle, 26, moved to San Francisco last month to run a Web site he co-founded, DoTheRightThing.com, which lets users rate companies on their social value. But Mickle can’t always afford to do the right thing himself.

“We’re bootstrapping entrepreneurs. We don’t have any funds,” he said. His Web site is not yet bringing in any money. “I’m reluctant to pay $9 for the overpriced food that tends to be in the cafe,” he said. “It’s the Wi-Fi user’s dilemma. … It’s a mind game I play with myself: How many coffees is fair? I need to be sure to invest in them as a consumer or they’re not going to last very long.”

While every interviewee for the article lied about their purchasing habits, I was singled out for honestly describing mine, which are no different from virtually all coffee shop patrons. I buy based on the price and quality of the food and coffee (and often when quality is low and prices are high, in order to support a cafe that is serving as my temporary office that day), and in my significant experience I am not alone–few people ever return to the cafe counter to purchase a second cup of coffee, snack, or meal, and the majority tend to stay for periods of 3 hours or more.

The Starbucks experience sells, but so does their coffee

Offering free Wi-Fi to customers is part of providing customers with a great cafe experience. Yet, not all cafes offer free access to the internet, since it does typically attract those who will stare uninterruptedly into their laptop screens for hours (but will buy at least some coffee and food, regardless of quality and price). I often frequent Royal Grounds, which offers mediocre coffee, priced higher than Starbucks’, average-tasting $7 sandwiches, and is actually pretty dirty. Yet, (more importantly) it offers free Wi-Fi and lots of tables and power outlets and receives a steady flow of business as a result. Depending on bedouins to drive the sales of a cafe, however, is not the best model. I was recently made aware that one of my favorite cafes, Canvas Cafe, a large, open cafe, filled unmatched chairs and tables, sofas, and a constantly-changing gallery of local artists’ paintings on the walls, is closing at the end of this month. This cafe reminds me of why I moved to San Francisco–the venue and its patrons are of an eccentric, intelligent breed, and it is located across the street from the Golden Gate park, in case you’d like to search for inspiration in over a thousand acres of beautiful trees and gardens. Unfortunately, despite the great coffee and food (which, of course, aren’t sold cheap), Canvas hasn’t been able to generate enough foot traffic to provide its owner with any substantial returns on his or her investment. The not uncommon mistake made by the Canvas Cafe’ s owner was losing sight of focus on sales that create the highest returns. If my goal is to maximize my return on a cafe, should I attend more to the physical experience of the cafe itself (which I offer free to customers to compliment the coffee and food I sell), or to the coffee and food itself? When was the last time a car salesperson took you to the dealership lobby to offer you a cup of great, free coffee, and maybe a donut, but never once asked if she could help you with your next car purchase? Cafes are businesses, and it is irresponsible for their owners to expect their products to sell like crazy if they don’t work to create an environment in which their sales are maximized. The owner of a business is responsible for “tweaking” this model, finding a balance between creating an experience for those who will stay for a few hours, and those who will buy only to walk right out the door, and to keep people buying (at the Grove, which makes up for its lack of free Wi-Fi with its “scenery” and great food, busboys proactively ask customers if they’d like anything else, and we often do, because the food and drinks are great, however overpriced). If you are a cafe owner, sell your coffee, not just the experience.

Part of starting a business is making mistakes along the way and learning from those experiences. I don’t condone lying–it’s much more effective to earn the respect of people through honesty. Instead, be mindful of what you do share, especially with reporters, who only have limited time to get to know you and whose opinion will be read by thousands of other strangers, and assume that everyone else is going to lie their pants off to make themselves look good. Be careful. Everyone lies to reporters.

Here are some thoughts on which to begin your Monday. You’ve thought about diverging from the traditional path. You’ve considered packing up your Swingline stapler, your family photos, and leaving the comfort of your cubicle to attempt something that the world might even find worth remembering.To diverge from tradition is to be different, however. As you take your first steps, you’re sense of freedom will be overcome by fear as you consider the elements of financial and emotional security from which you are walking away. You will realize that people are watching you.

They are watching because they are considering following your lead.

Think about it. You have to take risks to earn great rewards. Let them watch; they’ll follow your lead once you prove that the path is clear for them to travel.

While eating lunch at the Wharton Technology Conference in Philadelphia, I received a call from Brian Dunn, a producer of Life Online, Bob Parsons‘ (CEO, GoDaddy) radio show inviting me to be a guest on the show to talk about dotherightthing. Prior to the show, I invited Bob to check out the site and even respond to some of the dotherightthing community’s concerns about its recent activity in taking websites offline for ethical reasons. I was told that GoDaddy had made its official statement on the issue and “closed the books,” on the issue, and given a list of 15 questions that would be asked by Parsons and his staff during the show. Of course, when I spoke about how brilliant, level-headed, and extremely informed dotherightthing users are, Parsons challenged this description by bringing up the users’ criticisms of GoDaddy for using its power to take a site that was “sharing the passwords of children’s Myspace accounts.” The idea that all Myspace users are children is a bit dramatic, but let’s go with it. I got excited by the discussion, as people who know me well are very familiar with, and began to still question whether or not there was still room for concern.

While it is arguable that GoDaddy would have received more negative press had it knowingly ignored its opportunity to prohibit these Myspace users’ passwords from being shared, it is also reasonable to say that GoDaddy used the internet equivalent of a presidential executive order and that people are concerned about the principles considered in the determination of what justifies a site’s removal from the internet. While GoDaddy may have done the right thing by taking down the site, it made internet users and GoDaddy customers concerned by failing to communicate that it would use this power in the future according a strict code of principles or even soliciting the input of internet users to create this set of principles.

About two sentences into my argument, I realized that I was, ironically, about to get censored in a discussion on a topic of ethics in policing information on the internet, as jazz music began to play in my ear, the signal on a radio show that it is time for a break, as I learned.

I’d like to thank Bob Parsons for the opportunity to join him on the show, despite our disagreement, and apologize for quasi-hijacking his show, as my enthusiasm and interest in the discussion grew. While the show might not have been the forum for a spirited discussion about GoDaddy’s role in policing the Internet, I have learned from the experience. People who know me well know that I can be long-winded, passionate, and somewhat argumentative… but I do it with a big smile on my face, due to the respect I have for the people around me. This situation was no different, but on someone else’s show, perhaps I could learn to be a more gentle. I am thankful for this lesson.

You can listen to the show here (fast forward to 42:20 to hear my interview).

In his blog today, Seth Godin writes about the hardest part about creating something is not coming up with the idea that no one has thought of before… it is actually executing what you thought of.

After dreaming about creating an online community platform that keeps track of how companies impact our lives and the environment in real time, and strapping on our parachutes a year ago, I’d like to proudly announce that dotherightthing.com has launched to the world.

I’d like to dedicate my portion of the vast amount of time and thought that went into making dotherightthing a reality to all the aspiring social entrepreneurs out there with great ideas. Find your team, strap on your parachutes, and jump. Otherwise, you’ll wonder what it feels like to skydive for the rest of your years.

(yes, this is of me)