Startup Grind Tbilisi Hosts Ex-Google Software Engineer & Startup Expert
On February 16, Colin Donohue, the Tbilisi Director of Root Deeper Marketing, held a “fireside” chat with startup expert and ex-Senior Software Engineer at Google, Adam Dingle. Present in the audience was a plethora of young Georgians eager to learn more about what it takes to set up and maintain a new enterprise. The event was held within the frames of the Google-sponsored global community ‘Startup Grind,’ designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs.
Adam Dingle is a software architect and entrepreneur based in San Francisco, California, with a diverse experience in high tech. From 1994-96, he taught computer science at Charles University in Prague. From 2002 to 2006 he worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Google when it grew from roughly 550 employees to 9,000 and went public. At Google, he worked on various products including Google Desktop, Firefox (and planning for Chrome), and served as Technical Lead for Google Toolbar. After Google, he moved into his own startup work, founding Parking Hero as well as the open-source Yorba Foundation, and more recently Roundtown, an event aggregator.
GEORGIA TODAY sat down with Adam Dingle before the talk to find out more.
How did you come to be in Georgia and what are your impressions?
Georgia is a fascinating mixture of old and new: you’ve got crumbling buildings that probably look exactly like they did in the 60s, that 1980s metro, and hidden cafes, stylish stores and restaurants. I lived in Prague for three years in the 90s; I moved there a few years after the revolution when things were in rapid transition. Here in Georgia, you can feel some echoes of that.
I came to talk at this event at Colin’s invitation- we’ve been friends for years. Plus, I have a fascination both with Eastern Europe and technology. That led me to Startup Grind and to meeting Georgian startups.
What do you think of the Georgian startups you’ve seen or heard about so far?
People are doing the right things. The entrepreneurs here seem sharp. It’s still a small community, and the government program Startup Georgia is good to encourage more innovation in this direction. And it reflects what other governments have tried to do- I remember Startup Chile- offering $50,000 to any US startup that moved to Chile for at least nine months. Even in the US, the home of big internet companies, the internet was originally created with state-funding back in the 1960-70s. There’s definitely a role for the government to play in nudging private enterprises.
Tell us about your most recent startup
I founded Roundtown.com, based in Massachusetts near Boston, with my cousin. It lasted three years. Our goal was to list every event happening anywhere on the planet- from concerts to sports. It took us a year to develop before launching. You start out optimistic- and that passion is key to getting it going and keeping it going- even though statistics are high that you’ll fail. And we did. We watched the metrics- after two years I thought we were doing pretty well as visitor numbers seemed to be going up, but it turned out they were mostly one-off visitors. We didn’t have enough visitor traction- of millions of people who clicked on us, only around 1,000 came back regularly and knew what we were and what we could do. Another mistake was that we tried to go too big, too soon. In retrospect, we should have started out just covering our own city, and expanded from there. When you start a company, you should start small, build your base, then expand.
What other advice do you give those wanting to start a business?
Well, the youth I’ve met in Georgia seem smart, educated. Some speak excellent English- the absolute foundation for communicating with the West. So for that, I tell them to speak as much as possible, and travel. Maybe even try to work for a foreign company to broaden their experience and perspective. They should educate themselves- use the internet. And if they read only one book, let it be Startup Playbook by Sam Altman, an American entrepreneur, programmer, venture capitalist and president of Y Combinator. The book takes about an hour to read and can tell you everything you need to know about startups- what to do, what not to do, based on mentoring thousands of entrepreneurs.
What else? Well, I’d say it’s essential to hire smart. It takes time and effort. But you, as the hirer, have to be selective and careful- the cost of a bad hire is very high. You need to be conservative about who you hire. The ideal candidate needs to be:
1) Sharp- gets it quickly, deeply understands what you’re asking of them.
2) Smart- educated, seeks to self-improve.
3) A good communicator.
I’d also say it’s important to make a product that a few people love, over making a product that a lot of people “just like.” People who love something are more likely to tell others about it.
A last point is to find mentors who have been through the fire, and learn from them so you avoid making the mistakes they made.
What would you say Georgia needs more of to make a success of the startup sector?
In the two weeks I’ve been here, I’ve seen a real hunger for connection with Western Europe and the US, which is very wise- in isolation you can only do so much and the Georgian market it’s small at 4 mln people. Georgia, among EU countries, is still seen as relatively poor. It needs more exports, more things to sell to the rest of the world. There should be more public-private partnership. There is a lot of potential. Salaries are still very low, combined with low talent, and other countries have taken advantage of such a situation in different ways. China, Ukraine, India all have that to some degree- China exported the service of building physical products, India has its call centers, Ukraine exported a lot of software development. For Georgia, a model where technology is exported, or where there is cooperation with Western companies who outsource operations in Georgia, would be ideal.
My last startup, Roundtown.com, had at its peak eight employees. For the cost of hiring those eight, we could have hired maybe 30 in Georgia. The challenge is communication. To someone in the US, Georgia sounds very far away. Even in a big city like New York, maybe only 1 in 3 could say which country Tbilisi is in. Building bridges is essential for any kind of economic leverage.
Adam was educated at Princeton and UC Berkeley, and is a passionate believer in sharing knowledge. The effect of this can be seen in the successes of his students, including the blossoming of a student project he led as professor at Charles University into NetBeans, a Java IDE which Sun purchased in 1999.
Katie Ruth Davies