I thought it'd be interesting to document how my role as founder/CEO changes over the time, and that it'd be a great way to educate future inDinero team members how I contribute to the team. Back when we were just getting started, my job was simple: design features in photoshop, program them in ruby on rails. Show them to customers, gather feedback, rinse and repeat. But since raising money, I've been doing more "business-y" tasks to take inDinero to the next level. I'm sure my role will change over time, so I'll do this again when I feel that my role as CEO has drastically morphed once again.

10AM - Scan inbox for important messages, archive anything that isn't directly relevant to work. Schedule calls with potential hires, references for potential hires, and customers.

11AM - photographer from New York Times comes to visit us at the office. Takes a bunch of photos over the next hour. Noon - Eat Lunch, chat with customers over olark chat. Nice influx of requests today because of the mentions we got in American Express' Open Forum and Mashable.com over the weekend.

1PM - Call references for several potential engineering hires.

2PM - Talk to potential engineering recruit by phone, sell him on the idea of joining inDinero.

230PM - Chat with reporter from Reuters. Interview was scheduled only 18 hours ago! 315PM - Talk to lawyer about everything from employee compensation to other more confidential things :)

4PM - Another reference call for a potential engineering hire. Yes, we do a lot of reference checking!

430PM - Getting my new assistant up to speed on how to help me with my inbox, scheduling meetings to make my life easier, etc...

5PM - Review designer portfolios, work on improving candidate-flow for potential lead product designers.

630PM - break for dinner with the team.

715PM - talk to engineering recruit who we're about to extend a fulltime offer to. Answer his questions on why inDinero is the best startup in Silicon Valley, convince him to join us.

9PM - focus on only product, design new functionality based on the customer feedback I got earlier in the morning from people I chatted with through the inDinero website.

1AM - shower, read a book (this week, it's "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller")

2AM - off to sleep, rinse and repeat process the next morning.

Everything I do for Indinero is about reducing its risk of failure. Everything. I hire people who are experts at what they do because their chance of doing a better job is higher than mine. I'm charging for the product upfront because it ensures that we're spending time on something we will make money from. I helped win us a grant from Lightspeed Venture Partners to show my team that we thought things through well enough for institutional VCs to give us money (and, of course, to have money). But in order to get that money, I had to show Lightspeed that we already had an established team. So basically, in order to have one, I had to have the other. It's an endless cycle of risk reduction. Team + Capital = Startup. No team = no capital = no startup.

Throughout my summer at Lightspeed Venture Partners' office, I learned that investors were risk-averse too. Their entire business is based on investing in the least-riskiest companies, and that seemed counter-intuitive. But it makes sense. Investors have a finite amount of time to spend with their portfolio companies, a finite number of investments they can make each year, and their job is to ensure a decent payoff for their investors. (yes, can you believe it? institutional investors have investors too) And this means precisely one thing for the entrepreneur seeking venture financing: Everything you do pre-funding should attack the things VCs think about when determining the worth of your company.

Investors like traction. They like a seasoned team, they like paying customers, they like CEOs who come from technical backgrounds, they like young founders, and everything that means that their colleagues won't criticize them for making a bad investment. Yes, your company probably won't need money and probably won't have trouble finding investors if it has all of the above, but it doesn't matter. The fewer risks there are in your company, the more likely you are to get an investment. And this comes to prove my point that investors are for the most part risk-averse.

Lets take a step back. In order to reduce my risk in life (to maximize my personal happiness and fulfillment), I need to build a great company that makes money. And to achieve that, I need to reduce risk for myself, for my (possible future) investors, and obviously for the team members who execute on this dream. People who work at startups have an interesting mindset. They enjoy independence, they like the idea of being an entrepreneur, but they want to come in at a stage with significantly less risk. For example, telling people that Lightspeed Venture Partners gave us money immediately changes the way they look at us, because it sounds like we have our heads on straight. Which means that there's a forever ending cycle of risk reduction: I have to reduce risk in my company enough for customers to signup at a rapid pace, which reduces the risk enough to bring on good investors, which therefore reduces the company's risk enough to hire smart talent, and the sum of all of these things will hopefully make us a low-risk, successful company. Phew.

Don't get me wrong. Starting a company is a risky endeavor, but succeeding comes down to mitigating all of your risks for failure. Instead of writing down a list of things that you should do, start a new list called "things that will lead to my company failing." And on the top of that list will probably be "running out of money." Then take each line-item, figure out how to address it, and then you know exactly what you should be focusing your time and energy on. It's a different way of startup management, but it has completely transformed my company's culture for the better. Remember - before your company has the chance to make billions, the CEO should eat and sleep risk reduction.

Oy vei... firstly, eBay had been getting a lot of crap lately from angry sellers. Why?

Buyers can leave negative feedback for sellers. Sellers cannot leave negative feedback for buyers. Many sellers are outraged, showing their comments on auctionbytes. Sellers don't seem to hate the fee changes, but they absolutely despise the feedback rule. In another video, Kipp Knight and John Donahoe speak about eBay from Washington. They both speak like robots, but in person, they're as normal as can be.

And although all of the sellers are going ape-sh*t about this, I can look at things from eBay's perspective. I wanted to start a company that would be a marketplace to buy and sell services, and it would have many similarities to eBay. However, every minute change made to the system would result in major ramifications. For a site of eBay's scale, the problems are only multiplied. No matter what you do, some sellers will be unhappy. It's fact, it's nature, and it's something that eBay has been dealing with since the day it was launched.

This change represents the first of many by the new CEO, John Donahoe. It took me a long time to make the mental connection: but basically, I had lunch with the guy back in July! I was in Boston, looking for a place to eat lunch at the eBay LIVE conference. I didn't know anybody, but this very friendly guy asked me to sit down with him. We chatted, talked about many topics that had absolutely nothing to do with eBay, and wished each other well. Ends up that the guy (at the time) was the President of eBay Marketplaces! I honestly had no clue until the end of lunch, at which point I asked him what he did. Wow, I'm pathetic. But in any event, I'll advocate for him: He's interested in his users, he wants to learn about the issues they're facing with eBay, and figure out creative solutions to them. That's one of the most important assets that a CEO can have. Although he may sound like a robot and (somewhat fake) in his public speeches, he's nothing like it in person.

I'll try to contact him and get a follow-up on this. On another note, 10 minutes before meeting John, I also ran into the President of Stubhub. Purely accidental, I promise! We were on the escalator and we said hey whats up blah blah blah. Anyway, more to come!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

In a nutshell, Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA franchise and Chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network. [wikipedia] He recently wrote on his blog about how he was pissed off about an interview he recently had with Deadspin.com sports blogger Will Leitch, who wrote a somewhat nasty critique about him on valleywag.com.

And as usual, valleywag.com went back to critique Mark Cuban even more for critiquing Will Leitch! I don't blame valleywag for doing that, because it's what they do best. However, Mark Cuban has every right to complain that a blogger took advantage of the interview and spun it off, basically into writing nasty comments about Mark.

I'll take a bold stand: I like Mark Cuban. I respect him, and I think he can teach us a lot about running an organization, whether it be a basketball team or an internet start-up. I especially loved his recent blog post about honest and respect: being absolutely honest with evaluating yourself and others. Going back to topic, his interviewer might have had a lot of fun bad-mouthing him on valleywag, but that's a permanent action that will prevent others from wanting to work with him.

I'm used to speaking to business execs and start-up founders, and I don't blog about the stuff they explicitly tell me NOT to make public. Sure, I would love to tell all of you about so-and-so's latest and greatest projects, but that would completely destroy my credibility. I was nasty about Meg Whitman two blog posts below this, and that probably hurt my credibility. If I sat down and learned about what she did, I probably would have had more respect for her as a CEO. If I sat down with Mark Cuban and I disagreed with him on something, I'd tell him on the spot. I'd tell all of you about it if I had the permission to.

Looking back at this issue from blogger Will Leitch's perspective, he needs to be fun and entertaining to keep the traffic flow coming. Mark Cuban just so happens to be an easy target because of his personality and the fact that he's incredibly rich. Ethically speaking, I'll say that Leitch has the right to bad mouth Mark Cuban without Mark's permission, but I don't see how it'll pay off in the end. If anything, having not blogged about Mark or posting some sort of apology would clear up his reputation if he wanted to speak to another CEO in the future.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Woowee, word around the blogosphere is that BlogNation is dead! And I thought Sam secured extra funding and promised to pay all the debt he owed? When you screw up a company, not only do you lose valuable time and money, but your reputation is in need of total repair if there are accusations of you not paying your employees accordingly.

Doesn't look like Mr. CEO, Sam Sethi will have much luck with getting funding for his next company. Mr. CEO, I know you're reading this. Why not share your part of the story and I can post it for the world to see?

As you might have already read, BlogNation really got dicked over today when the US editor Oliver Starr posted a public letter of resignation on the front page of the blog he was resigning from. It talked about how the CEO of BlogNation, Sam Sethi, wasn't paying his people anything.

The validity of his claims are irrelevant. He's gone, the world now thinks that Sam Sethi is a terrible CEO and shady person to do business with. What's Sam Sethi to do?

1) First off, Mr. CEO needs to take a stand. He needs to openly discuss the situation at hand and either make a full blown apology that discusses in detail why he hasn't paid, or deny it in its entirety and possibly provide proof that he did in fact pay and that Oliver Starr is just trying to screw him over. Either way, Mr. CEO needs to say something to the world, or else people will take his silence as a guilty confession.

2) Mr. CEO needs to make sure the other editors are happy. Discuss openly with the other editors what happened and how to assure that such a thing won't happen again. If they too start posting open letters of resignation, BlogNation might as well just pull the plug.

3) Or the best of the solutions... PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES AS YOU PROMISED!!!

On another note, after TechCrunch posted Oliver Starr's letter, an editor from BlogNation China posted a comment:

Ladies and gentlemen –

1. We express our concern about Oliver deciding to air his own concerns on blognation.

2. Readers may wish to note that reports about blognation on TechCrunch may contain bias. It most certainly is not the “neutral point of view” that we expect from the Wikipedia.

3. As part of the blognation team we are experiencing difficultings in launching and in being with a new startup. Our determination to establish the brand and to aim for victory after victory, however, remains unchanged and will remain unchanged.

4. Quite a bit of content on blognation (and blognation China at that) are unique, as we have good roots in our community. We grow with the community.

5. Please rest assured that blognation (and in particular blognation China) will continue to provide you with news every day of the week like we have been doing for the past two months.

I do realize that some of you have different opinions. We will respect each other’s opinions knowing that responsible freedom of speech is a good thing.

Your support is appreciated.

Best regards,
David Feng
Editor, blognation China
http://cn.blognation.com

I'm sure you've already found some flaws in the above comment. This David Feng is giving the absolute lamest excuses for Mr. CEO's problems. TechCrunch readers are definitely biased, but the post itself didn't have so much. Just cause you're a startup doesn't excuse you from paying employees you've promised to pay. If they were under an equity agreement or barter, that's different.

Unfortunately for Oliver, I'm not sure if there's much legal recourse for him. He didn't sign a contract with his employee which leaves him utterly screwed. I'm sure he'll learn for next time. as for Mr. CEO, best of luck.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

AT&T made the fake and *smart* move to allow everyone in Southern California free Wi-Fi access. Kieran Nolan, AT&T vice president and general manager wants to help the community during this rough time and recovery. If for whatever reason you don't know, Southern Cali was affected by pretty bad fires.

Everybody hates AT&T, including three unnamed employees I've spoken to who work there. The obvious thing to do is for me to question their true motives behind offering free Wi-Fi to SoCal. First off, their brand image has been terrible in the recent years. They gobbled up Cingular (which for some reason, people liked better) and decided to drop the name in favor of AT&T. There's been a management change, logo change, marketing attitude change, and it seems to be working... sorta.

AT&T gets a new logo. PayPal recently changed the graphics on their website too. Why? To help eliminate the bad rap associated with their old (and current) brand. Notice the change in graphic and shift to lowercase letters...

Then the move to work with Apple's iPhone. All of a sudden, AT&T is associated with iPhone. iPhone = Cool, AT&T = Still lame.

Recently, AT&T started posting up internet ads and city billboards advertising how their cell service works in more places than before. Notice the advertisement I saw on Gizmodo the other day:

Fail. And now, they're trying to be nice by offering SoCal residents free Wi-Fi. Does it make them look like a kind and caring company? To be honest, to me, it came off as being a fake way to gain more loyal customers for when things settled down and Wi-Fi costs money again.

I'll give these AT&T people some credit. The change in branding is good. The change in management still sucks, but better than before. The agreement with Apple was brilliant. The advertisement campaign was a pathetic attempt to look like a cool, young, hip company. The decision to allow SoCal residents free Wi-Fi was also a smart move.

All in all, AT&T is improving. Their numbers are up. (probably because of the Apple agreement) However, I still thing they have a lot they need to improve on. Inner-company efficiency is terrible. Their branding still looks lame. I'll continue to critique them until they get it right.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.