uberlife Real Champions series: Hanging out w/Dennis Crowley
uberlife’s Real Champions interview series has seen us getting face-to-face and hanging out with inspiring individuals from tech, media, music, design and fashion to to learn a bit about them, their motivations and how they have achieved such awesome things.
First up is one of our favourite people in the world, Dennis Crowley, who we caught up with at Le Web last month - the co-founder of foursquare, and a majorly humble guy who first founded dodgeball, one of the first mobile social service in the US, which was acquired by Google in 2005.
foursquare has reached 15,000,000 users in less than 3 years - a service that combines social networks, location awareness and game mechanics to encourage people explore the world around them.
uberlife (Sanchita): Who’s the most inspiring person or people that you’ve hung out with in the last 12 months, how have they inspired you and in what way?
Dennis: I’ve always been inspired by my Dad, who was also an entrepreneur, and I think a lot of the stuff that we are doing now, like generally doing your own thing, starting your own business, I think I learned a lot of that from him. More recently I think the team that we’ve assembled at foursquare is really inspiring in a sense, it sounds like a corny answer but we’ve assembled this great team of almost 100 people that are all really excited by what we’re doing and everyone’s pushing so hard in the same direction.
Sanchita: I hear one of your criteria for hiring is that they have to have been on foursquare for a certain amount of time or have a certain amount of check-ins, is that true?
Dennis: Yea in the early days we wanted potential hires to be fanatic foursquare users because they‘d have to really be into the product. But now we almost like it if the candidate doesn’t like foursquare for some reason because we want people who can come in and find better ways to do things for us. Maybe they would use it more if it were like this or that, and these kind of people are pushing us to evolve and improve foursquare in different ways.
We’ve done a great job with the early adopter crowd, we have 15 million users so not quite mainstream but on the way, and therefore we still need a little help with tweaking the product to get it there.
Sanchita: Ok, so if you could hangout anywhere in the world where would it be and what would you be doing?
Dennis: I’d probably be snowboarding in Canada, I love working for foursquare but I love the idea of snowboarding in Canada just as much if not more!
Sanchita: We spend so much of our time on online social networks, where do you see the value of offline networking, going to events like Le Web, meeting new people and engaging with your fans and peers in person?
Dennis: We come to stuff like this to promote what we’re doing in Europe, right now we’ve got some business development in London and we’re excited about working with some companies in Europe who like our product and vision. It’s also great to come and connect with other entrepreneurs in different start-ups spaces and cultures, like London, Berlin, Paris etc.
It seems like everyone happens to be at LeWeb right now, and a lot of these contacts turn in to interesting opportunities for us, maybe not next week, but a couple of months down the road. For example I cant even tell you how many people I’ve been in touch with from last year because they’re doing stuff which builds off the foursquare API or they have a business contact they want to introduce us to. This whole event is just great for connecting with people.
Sanchita: Looking back at the last 12 months what has been your highest moment and your lowest moment?
Dennis: From a business perspective it’s touch to pick one highest moment for the year. Anyone who’s created or worked in a startup will know that it can be a roller-coaster life day to day - like Monday can be really lousy and then all of a sudden Tuesday is fine so the whole thing is a lot of up and downs. That said, probably one of the best moments was going to SXSW in Austin, Texas, and seeing just how much foursquare has grown in the last year. In terms of bad moments…
Sanchita: Any head in the hands moments in the last 12 months??
Dennis: Oh, like three of them every day! Like when we are trying to hire someone and we can’t get them or we want something to launch and the date slips a bit or sometimes we’ve done an interview and the person didn’t get the message we wanted them to get from it etc. These moments happen all the time, literally every day.
For those people who think that our journey is and has been a rocket ship ride with rainbows and unicorns everywhere should know that it’s actually really hard. People have arguments from pushing back and forth from each other with product decisions, as the company gets bigger it breaks and we have to fix it, so it’s an ever-present work in progress, it’s a lot of work.
Sanchita: And what is it in you that helps you get over these never-ending challenges?
Dennis: It’s probably that if I wasn’t doing this I have no idea what I would be doing. The reason that I actually started foursquare was that there wasn’t another company out there that I wanted to work for, and if foursquare went away today there still isn’t another company I’d like to work for. We have these ideas and visions that we don’t see in other companies, so the opportunity that we have at foursquare is such a great one.
Considering the 15 million users and that we have this platform that people listen to, we find it super motivating and rewarding. Just today riding in a cab with these Russian guys and telling them I worked at foursquare and their reaction, like, “oh we love foursquare” is awesome and a great reward for all the hard work.
Sanchita: Thanks so much for hanging out with uberlife.
Dennis: Thanks so much, it was fun.
Fast forward with the iPhone app.
We just launched uberlife and this started with an awesome article in Techcrunch by Mike Butcher. We know not everything is right yet in our iPhone app and a few bits on the web app. But we are working hard to create a much better experience as fast we can. Within a few days our new updated app might be in the app store.
A big change we made, is in the navigation bar of the app. We added a big + icon in there to make it even more clear for new users that it’s all about creating hangouts and joining them. We also made the icons a little bit more rounded and friendly to make the design smile more to you.
Apart from the new navigation bar the hangout screen might be the biggest update. Now once you start scrolling the activity in a hangout uses more space then before, scrolling happens now between the tabs and whole bottom of the screen. The going list of attendees also went back to the drawing board. Now we take more advantage of the size of the screen and fill it up with the attendees, which will make it easier during the hangout to browse people faster.
Hey and don’t forget to follow me so when we are nearby each other we can grab a beer.
Keeping it real with offline networking
We here at uberlife are on a mission to knock down social barriers to make the real world a more connected place.
There’s nothing quite like getting to know someone new. It’s amazing how much you can learn about and from that person within such a short amount of face time. We humans are social animals and interacting up close and personally with each other is something we were born to do, not only to learn and collaborate efficiently but also for the survival of our race.
This potential of connecting with others encourages us to get out there, do new things and build up a group of friends and people around us that make our lives richer.
However oddly the last 4-5 years of compulsive online social networking has made it commonplace to spend more time talking to people via a screen online rather than face-to-face offline. Whilst your “network” of friends might be getting bigger the actual real life social connections between you and these friends might just be getting weaker.
The main difference has to lie in how genuine the connection between two people is when interacting online and offline. An online connection has certain limitations when compared to an offline connection, there’s a sense of anonymity behind the online connection due to the fact that social networks allow people to hide behind their profiles. Remember that the average person’s profile is made up of information that they’re happy for a stranger/acquaintance to see.
A recent Cornell University study found that Facebook allows users to put their best faces forward in their online profiles and compared the revolutionary social networking site to a mirror image of ourselves, only better. By editing and filtering what information the virtual world sees, users can portray an enhanced version of themselves.
In stark contrast, there is a genuine nature to real life social situations: the unique aspects of people’s personalities are plain to see and it’s these tiny bits of information that are what make us, as people, so wonderfully complex and interesting to each other with our defining character traits and intricacies. As a result, real world connections between 2 or more people is where the deepest value lies, this is how solid friendships and relationships are cemented, and this cannot be achieved online.
So for us at uberlife, we believe that we cannot live truly rich lives by prioritizing our online relationships over offline. It is our mission to use the power of our online networks however to spark more real world interactions and relationship building so we can enjoy the best of both worlds.
Oh, what to do…
Today we’re introducing an exciting feature. We call it “Oh, what to do…” or “Hangout Ideas”.
When we want to hang out, we find ourselves checking other sites to see what’s going on around us, like gigs, movies, festivals, some other types of happenings and when we want to explore new places. So we figured why not just drop a bit of that capability on our own site and make it fun.
This is our first shot at this feature. It randomly shows you new movies, upcoming gigs in your area from last.fm and random venues close to you from foursquare. Then you click on “Let’s do this!” and automatically create a hangout from the idea, making it much easier.
Check it out and ping us on twitter to let us know how it works for you in your area.
What an end to 2011!
We’ve finally recovered from our week of hanging out euro-style at Le Web in Paris and then in Berlin. They were both awesome experiences and we met so many great people. At Le Web we heard from some of the most successful startup CEOs and founders (see below) that got us really inspired and ready to kick ass in 2012.
We also managed to grab interviews with the super-nice Dennis Crowley (foursquare) and Alexander Ljung (SoundCloud) that we’ll publish on our blog in the new year as part of our upcoming Tech Champions series to inspire others starting out. What we can say is that these guys are so down-to-earth and the challenges they face daily are the ones that we all as startup founders go through, so it was great to hang out and keep it real with them.
Karl Lagerfeld was the opening keynote! An interesting choice for sure and certainly the first (and possibly last) time we’ve ever been in the presence of such a fashion legend. These were the really cool live drawings from the guys at LiveSketching.com capturing some of the main messages from each interviewee, including Kevin Rose below…
Kevin Rose live sketch (Digg, Milk Inc)
Bill Gross (CEO of UberMedia) was one of the most inspiring speakers at Le Web. So much great advice in 12 steps!
Our favourite founder and CEO Dennis Crowley (foursquare) - such a genuine and humble guy. Probably the most inspiring person we had a chance to hang out with at Le Web.
And then there was Berlin…. The hangout that we arranged in Berlin straight off the back of Le Web to meet some local startups went better than we could have imagined with around 15 - 20 people from the tech, music and design scene coming down for a few beers to say hello.
And - serendipitously enough, London’s very own Mike Butcher happened to be in Berlin that night and made it along to hang out with us too! It was a great night and we made so many new Berlin friends, we’re looking forward to coming back soon for our hangout number two there next year.
It has been an incredible 2011, loads of challenges, highs and lows and most significantly the year that we saw the conception and birth of this, our newest project, uberlife.
We’re so excited about 2012 and everything that we want to achieve. But for now we’re going to power down for a few days. When we come back in the new year we’re kicking off with our second “Meet the neighbours” all-American BBQ in Old Street, for Silicon Roundabout’s best tech, music and design companies to get together, chew the fat, catch up on all the Xmas and NYE goings on and set our 2012 resolutions in place.
In the meantime, have a wicked Christmas everybody and here’s to hanging out more in 2012!
Meeting the neighbours
It’s been just over 3 weeks now since the uberlife team moved to our new home in Old Street and we’ve pretty much got everything in our office sorted – furniture built, fridge stocked, IT/broadband nightmares sorted, boxes packed away, rubbish thrown away…
Now that all the boring bits have been done it feels like time to get to know our new neighbourhood a bit better. Yea yea, there are a whole bunch of apps and online guides to tell us what’s what, we know that.
BUT, we prefer to hear things from the horses mouth and do what we love doing the most – hanging out with new and interesting people. So we thought: how can we get to know as many of our neighbours as quickly as possible?
We know first hand that life, particularly for the awesome companies in and around Old Street doing awesome things, is busy. Very busy. But something everyone has to do is eat right? Right!
So we’re arranging a laid-back, drop in when you like, lunchtime hangout on Wednesday 14th December at Red Dog Saloon and inviting some select companies down for an all-American BBQ feast.
The plan is to lure as many lovely locals down as possible to say hi and get them to give us their personal lowdowns on the news, tips and goings on in the area.
Let’s see what happens…
uberlife hits Berlin - come join!
Following hot off the heels from our trip to Le Web, Paris we’ll be heading off to Berlin to hang out and say hi to as many of our startup counterparts over there as we can.
So much great stuff is coming out of Berlin - not just the tech scene and the amazing startups that are choosing Berlin as their home, but the whole music and creative scene that’s been bubbling away there for years makes it one of the hottest cities on the planet.
Plus, being one of the most sociable and friendly cities ever to boot, along with London and New York, it’s one of our most favourite places in the world to hang out in - so what better place to get to know some local players and share ideas.
We’re arranging some free drinks on Saturday 10th December at the infamous Kim Bar, an underground uber-cool Berlin bar, and inviting anyone and everyone interested in tech, music, design, art and hanging out to come down and say hi.
We have it to ourselves for a couple of hours before our friends at 900 Seconds take it over for their awesome night!
Bring on the music hackathon.
We’re especially excited about Music Hack Day this weekend as a) it’s taking place in London for the first time in over a year and b) we’ve submitted the uberlife API as a sponsor of the event.
In the last year Music Hack Day has travelled the globe to be hosted in New York, San Fransisco, Berlin, Barcelona, Montreal and Boston to name just a few cities. Each time bringing together some of the best coders in the world for a full weekend of hacking to explore and build the next generation of music apps, conceptualising, creating and finally presenting their projects in a full-on 48-hour session.
Music + software + hardware + art + the web - anything goes as long as it’s music related and we’re keeping our fingers crossed to see if the uberlife API gets picked up for use in some crazy mashup or other.
But, regardless our guys will be getting their hands dirty and getting creative with our code to see what we can come up with there too. Better get some sleep in.
Off to Le Web - SOLOMO all the way!
Less than a week now until our first trip to Le Web, Paris and we’re so excited to be going there. This year’s theme is SOLOMO – Social-Local-Mobile so a perfect year for us to be there with uberlife.
In recent years we’ve tracked Le Web closely and this years conference is playing host to one of the highest calibre of speakers and panelists ever.
We’re particularly looking forward to hearing and learning from the founders of some of our favourite apps and services - Brian Chesky (AirBnB), Kevin Systrom (Instagram), Daniel Ek (Spotify), Phil Libin (Evernote), Kevin Rose (Milk Inc). Such early days for us but if we can achieve just a fraction of what these guys have then that would be awesome.
Plus we have our fave bloggers/writers Robert Scoble, Fred Destin and Om Malik and our lovely backers Brent Hoberman and Jonathan Goodwin of PROfounders Capital speaking too so so much to look forward to.
We’re also looking forward to hanging out with as many of the other 3000 people going along and it’s going to be a great opportunity to meet so many new likeminded people and make some new friends and connections from around the world.
We already arranged a couple to get together with other LeWeb attendees for the Tuesday night when we arrive in Paris, and then the Thursday night for a pre-official LeWeb party hangout.
Paris here we come!
Presenting uberlife
uberlife was borne from a vision of the world as a place where we can connect and come together with each other in the real world as easily, instantly and frequently as we do online.
Next to our product vision is our community vision for uberlife that is to always have people to do something with if you want to, wherever you go – to work, to home, to the other side of the world; with your friends, your peers or new likeminded people around you.
How amazing that world would be.
Our basic site and app is now up and running in private beta, and we’ve started with a few features that highlight some of the fundamentals of achieving our vision:
» Trust. An important one for us to get right and what every great friendship and community is built on. So for now, uberlife is a friend-of-a-friend network that you can join either through an invite to come join a hang out that someone in your network has arranged or from one of 5 direct invites that each new member gets to send to the people they love hanging out with the most in the world.
» Connectors. Anyone that arranges hangouts and gets people to connect with each other is a winner in our book. And in uberlife you get to see who they are from their Connector Score and follow them to make sure we get a shout when they arrange their next one!
» Friendship. The meaning of the word friendship is much looser in the online world. But at uberlife we believe that true friendship can only be reached when you have hung out at least once – just to be sure that you really DO get on. So although you can follow everyone you know, in uberlife you’ll only be friends if you’ve been to the same hangout and they follow you back.
We’ll be touching on these points individually in later blog posts but for now we’re really excited to start testing, learning and improving on our basic product to realize our vision of how truly awesome uberlife could be.
