Quipol Blog

How to Change the Name on the Bottom of Your Quipols

When you register for Quipol, you tell me your first and last name.

I take that information and append it to the bottom of your Quipols.

Most of the time, this works out well. Sometimes, though, people want to use their pseudonyms or business names instead of their real names. If you’re one of those people, here’s how to make it happen.

Just log into your account and click your name in the upper-right corner of your screen. From the drop-down menu, select “Account settings”.

Then, clear the “Name” field and change it to whatever you’d like. Just try not to be nasty, and, please, don’t impersonate anybody.

A writer from Forbes might change their “Name” field to Forbes, and the result would look like this.

All of your Quipols will update to automatically reflect your change—no manual updating or re-embedding necessary. Hope this helps!

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Meeting Fred Wilson

I hadn’t planned on telling anyone about my meeting with Fred Wilson. I figured I’d share the secret with Carolyn, my family, and a few close friends, and that would be that. It just didn’t seem all that polite to go yelling anything from the rooftops—even if it was an exciting moment in my life.

Turns out, I didn’t have a whole lot of say in the matter. The day after our meeting, Fred wrote about Quipol on A VC, and the cat was out of the bag. Believe me, I wasn’t complaining. In fact, you couldn’t have punched the smile off of my face. 

For the next twenty-four hours, I read and responded to the hundreds of comments that came in on Fred’s post. I received a lot of great advice, some solid critiques, and a whole lesson on color theory from the A VC community. It was a blast and an honor, and Fred’s 108 words have made a huge collective impact on Quipol and myself.

Since then, a lot of people have asked me how I landed the meeting, so I’ll try to clear that up here. But before I get to the how, I should probably get to the why.

I’ve admired Fred ever since I started reading A VC about a year and a half ago. My former boss, Kristian Andersen, once said, “If you can pair humility with confidence and intellect—that’s the holy grail.” Fred, in my mind, does just that. He’s the kind of guy you implicitly trust and want to befriend, which I’m sure does wonders for him as a VC (and rightfully so).

Anyhow, when I realized how accessible the world can be, I decided that Fred would be a great guy to get to know personally. My network outside of Indianapolis didn’t really exist, so I figured I should start growing it with a guy I really admire.

I sent my first email to Fred telling him just that. I explained what Quipol was, how I’m funding it, and added, “I’m contacting you because I don’t really know anybody in the tech scene, and I’d like to get to know nice people if at all possible.”

He got back to me about an hour later, asking me a bit more about Quipol. I filled him in, and he responded again three hours later with a note that exemplifies his character. I won’t copy it here, but it basically said this: “There might be some conflicts of interest here. I invest in things that may compete with you, and I just want you to know that. I want you to be aware that you’re talking to a potential competitor.”

I replied with, “I know, and I appreciate you making that clear. I would still like to meet you.”

He replied again, saying (I’m paraphrasing all of this), “Okay, I will meet you. I just want to make sure that you understand that I have ownership in companies that might be your competitors.”

It kind of made my heart melt. Fred was assuming that I knew very little about the facts at hand, and he very carefully spelled them out for me—even repeating himself just to make sure I got it. He was showing his integrity, and I thought it was super, super cool of him. His clear replies of, “Hey, you might want to stay away,” just made me want to meet him more.

So I responded with some dates that we could meet. Over the next few days, I didn’t hear back, so I kept following up. This went on for two months and roughly 25 more emails. Fred’s a busy dude. In fact, just a few days ago, he commented on his blog that he had 901 unread messages in his inbox. That’s insane. At the time, I figured a lot of my emails were falling through the cracks (and now I know it was for good reason), so I just kept sending him short, one- or two-sentence notes. I’d get responses to some of them, others would go un-responded to indefinitely.

Eventually, around our thirtieth email, Fred replied and asked me again what days I could meet. I threw out six times, and, a few days later, his assistant confirmed that January 25 at two o’clock would work. (It was the day after my birthday, so I considered it a present.) She followed up with the address of Union Square Ventures, I got excited in a really non-macho way, and I booked my ticket to NYC.

I won’t take up too much more of your time, but I will say that Fred was cooler than I hoped he would be. He was humble, polite, and honest. If you’ve built something that makes sense for him to invest in, you’d be lucky to have him on your team. It should be noted, though, that his friendship comes investment-free. Just be sure to say thanks.

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Mashable: "Polling App Makes Blog Feedback Painless"

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Simply Marketing

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Bruce Pavitt (and Setting Out to Meet Fred Wilson)

Two months ago, I hopped on a plane to go to one of the most exciting meetings of my life. I was flying to Seattle to meet Bruce Pavitt, the co-founder of Sub Pop Records. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Sub Pop, it’s widely considered to be one of the most successful indie record labels of all time. Bruce and his partner, Jonathan Poneman, were the two guys who gave Nirvana their first record deal. They brought us Soundgarden, the Postal Service, the Shins, Iron and Wine, Fleet Foxes, Mudhoney, and many more. All of these bands played big roles in my growth as a musician (I play in my spare time), and I’ve long admired Bruce and Jon for both their musical tastes and their entrepreneurial abilities.

Here’s the thing: these guys had plenty of opportunities to throw in the towel. They were bootstrappers, grateful for every week of their existence. They knew what it was like to beg the power company to keep their lights on—to wheel and deal with Japanese distributors just to make ends meet. Bruce and Jon embody what is, to me, the American ideal—that belief that you can take something you love and turn it into something amazing through hard work and hard-nosed determination

Anyway, I’m in Seattle. It’s 7:55pm PST, and I’m sitting in this little tavern called Linda’s. The interior of the place is something out of a film noir set, but the musical ambiance is grunge. It’s an interesting combination. I’m tired as hell, because it’s 10:55pm in Indiana, and I’ve been awake for about 20 hours. But, at the same time, I have this crazy, nervous energy flowing through me. I know that Bruce should be walking through the door in the next few minutes, and I’m a little bit sick with worry that he’s going to be bummed that he traveled all the way from his remote island to have a drink with me. (Yes, he really lives on a remote island. I asked if it was like LOST—it isn’t.)

So, I’m crumpling a napkin in my hand when, right as the clock hits 8pm, Bruce strolls in with his wife, Jyoti. We say hello and have a seat in a booth. I order a stout, they order tequila and some finger foods, and we talk.

It’s unreal.

We get right down to music. We start explaining to one another the way all of these different songs and artists make us feel. Every now and then, I remember that Bruce actually knows these people that we’re talking about. That is, he’s not just an excited observer—he’s one of the reasons they’re famous. But you’d never know that by talking to Bruce. He doesn’t harp on his rolodex—he just loves music.

We move on to entrepreneurship. I tell Bruce about Quipol, about my tight finances, about how nervous I get every day over this trouble or that trouble. He tells me five or so stories that all start with, “So Jon and I are about to go out of business,” and he takes me through the dramatic, draining, skin-of-the-teeth resolutions. He tells me how lucky he’s been—how many fortunate breaks came his way. He tells me how glad he is that he risked everything he had over and over again.

An hour and fifteen minutes flies by, and pretty soon it’s time to go. I give Bruce and Jyoti big hugs of thanks, I flip up the collar on my coat, and I begin walking to the train station that will take me to the airport.

Halfway down the block, I take a deep breath. I had been trying to get that meeting for over a year, and it had finally happened. I’d imagined meeting Bruce somewhere close to 10,000 times, and now I had. And he was normal—just like everyone else—but he was also so damn enjoyable to talk to. I had learned so much.

The whole experience woke me up. It helped me to realize that this is a small world—that I shouldn’t artificially limit my opportunities by convincing myself that certain people are out of reach. Bruce taught me that I can meet anyone, so long as I’m diligent enough and the reason for meeting makes sense. With that, I set out to meet Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and AVC fame. I’ll explain that story next.

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Will Pinterest Live Up to the Hype?

I think Pinterest is smart. I’m not alone, of course. It seems everyone is writing about just how awesome the service is and just how much people love it. Still, we’ve seen this next-big-thing hype before, and we’ll see it again.

Just yesterday, The Next Web published an article that gave us perspective around Pinterest’s user-base growth. It seems Formspring, a great Q&A social network, actually hit the 10-million-user mark months faster than Pinterest. Formspring is still growing, and today it reaches over 26 million people (wow!), but it’s had a tough time gaining the mainstream prestige of Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, which are the ranks that Pinterest is gunning for. (It’s worth noting that I believe Formspring has some great ideas up its sleeve that will soon wow folks again.)

On the other side of the coin, where most social networks focus on revenue growth later in the game, Pinterest is already making some cash by appending affiliate links to applicable Pinned items. The company isn’t being totally up-front about this practice, which isn’t ideal, but they’re showing their business acumen and vision by capitalizing early without jeopardizing their users’ experiences.

So, you’ve heard my perspectives—now, let’s hear your thoughts.

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