So it looks like we should be filing our patent application sometime at the end of this week!

What does this mean to you?  Not a whole heck of a lot.  Except that we’ll finally be able to tell you all about Rogomo, and the exciting service that we’ll be bringing you this Fall.

Excited?  Trust me, it’s going to be legen…  wait for it…  DARY. 

Hello, everyone.  This is John from Rogomo.  I just recently joined the Rogomo team to lead product development.

While my primary focus is on designing and building our products (working with our developers in Argentina), since we’re a small team right now working together on just about everything, I think the title I’ll go with is “co-founder.”

My last gig was at AOL working in the instant messaging group.  I headed AOL’s developer and partnership programs.  For example, check out WIMZI, AIM’s latest IM widget.  And to my former team, I ask: when does AIM-Google Talk launch? 

AOL was actually a great job — great manager, great team and leading products.  So why did I leave?  Simply put — I really believe in what Rogomo is trying to achieve and wanted to join from (near) the beginning.  Stay tuned!

Marc Andreessen’s post on “Why Not to Do a Startup” inspired me to comment on why, for me, startups are far superior to well established companies.

Mark’s reasons “why not to do a startup” provide some compelling reasons why not to work for a modern large public company (lets call all modern large public companies Initech for purposes of this post).

1. The Rollercoaster Ride — Both the startup and Initech will put you on an emotional rollercoaster, and the ride isn’t very scary at either place if it’s successful. The differences appear when your car is offtrack and racing quickly down the slope. In a startup, you have a chance to put the car back on track. At Initech, the consultants, reorgs, shifts in strategy, layoffs, etc, will burn the car and the tracks before you have a chance to help save the children.
2. Nothing Happens Unless You Make it Happen — At a startup, nothing gets done unless you do it but you also have the ability to make anything happen. At Initech, you won’t be able to make anything happen no matter how hard you try.
3. Getting Told No. At a a startup, partners, investors, etc. may tell you no. At Initech, you will also be told no, but this time by your boss, and probably only after your team has worked nights and weekends on the project and was ready to launch.
4. Hiring. It’s a pain in the ass at any size company unless you have something valuable to offer. But at Initech, after you pick the perfect candidate and at precisely the moment your ready to make that offer, HR will close all open headcount on you.

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave that for another time . . .

You may have noticed that Neil hasn’t posted on the blog in a little while. That’s because he’s been down in Argentina for the last week working with our developers on the Rogomo website. While we still can’t say a whole lot about the product — we should be filing our patent applications soon, and can reveal all then — Neil tells me that things are going very well. We’re on target with the original development timeline, and we hope to have a beta up and running in early September.

What’s amazing about this process is that it really did not feel during the last week that Neil was halfway around the world. We’ve used Apple’s iChat quite a bit, and have been able to communicate just as easily as if he were here in the States. Even better, Neil set up his Mac during a presentation yesterday by our lead developer, turned on iChat, and I was able to watch the entire presentation from my living room in New York (and even ask questions).

The world truly is getting smaller, and it’s really exciting.

Megan McCarthy had an interesting piece over on Valleywag today about “stealth startups”. Her position is that “[s]tealth startup, as a term and a concept, needs to die.” As you can imagine, we don’t really agree with Megan on this point. We are, for all intents and purposes, a “stealth startup” right now, and there are two very valid reasons for it.

First and foremost, we’re in the process of preparing a patent application with our attorneys which goes to the heart of the Rogomo product. The patent rules are very strict, and if we make our invention public before filing our application, we can lose any chance of getting our patent. We can’t let that happen.

Second, there’s a real value to being the first mover in the market. The product we’re going to be rolling out has valuable concepts that we’re simply not ready to share. More importantly, there are big players out there with a lot of money who, if they knew about our idea (and liked it), could throw a few million dollars at the idea and be up and running in short order. Again, we can’t chance it.

So that’s why we’re proud to be a “stealth startup”. That said, we’re not one of those “stealth startups” like the one Megan is talking about that claim that they’re going to be so revolutionary that they can’t even disclose their own name. Our name is Rogomo and will be Rogomo and not Revolution (no offense, Steve Case). We’re just a plain startup trying to make it in the world, not a Web 2.2, 4.7, or Web X company. And, who knows, there’s every chance that if we told you our entire business plan now, you may tell us that we aren’t unique at all. But why give our competitors time to catch up to us if we don’t have to?

So, while Megan may be right that some companies need to calm down a bit and not take themselves so seriously, she should also understand that there are a lot of good reasons for going stealth.

Have a great holiday weekend everybody.

So we’ve been reviewing our 2008 financial plan and trying to anticipate how many employees we’re going to need to hire and which positions they’ll fill. It’s not an easy process.

We’ve been outsourcing our development and expect to keep most of our technology outsourced in 2008, as well as our customer service. However, the time is going to come when we need to expand our team in the United States to help carry the load. We haven’t decided what the first position we’re going hire internally will be, but since we’ll be a small company, obviously any outside hire will need to be someone who can assume multiple roles. If I had to guess, because Rogomo will be driven by our product (a web service) and sales/partnerships, our first hire will be in the sales/marketing or technology/development areas.

One thing is for certain, though. As we ramp up our team, we’re going to need to keep everyone as motivated as we (i.e., the founders) are. Taking a cue from Reebok’s brilliant commercial about Terry Tate, we should think about bringing in our own Office Linebacker.

On a serious note, though, if you’ve gone through this process and have any experience in making the first outside hire, we’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Michael Arrington of Techcrunch is no angel, but in this post he’s nailed Silicon Valley’s culture and the adverse effect of the current bubble mini-boom in start-ups.

Hi! My name is Neil and I’m the President of Rogomo. As Steve’s earlier post probably made clear, we here at Rogomo are huge Arrested Development fans (the brilliant FOX show that was canceled due to poor ratings).

So it was no surprise that, when we starting trying to find a name for the company, we relied on a little Bluth wisdom in finding a good name. While a good name will not ensure success, a bad name could ruin an otherwise good business. The reason that picking a name was so difficult is that almost every name (excluding dashes, hyphens and numbers) is already taken. Finding an available name requires some creativity and a lot of diligence.

Before we picked a name, we developed some guidelines:

1. The name must have a positive association. This excerpt from Arrested Development sums up my point:

Michael: What do you think of when you hear the word Sudden Valley?
George Michael: Salad dressing, I think. But for some reason, I don’t want to eat it.
Michael: Right, but Paradise Gardens?
George Michael: Yeah. Okay, I can… I can see marinating a chicken in that.

2. If your business will rely on word of mouth marketing (as ours will), the name must be relatively short. Long names are generally not memorable.

3. The name must be easy to spell.

4. The name should have some significance to your business (more on our name and our business at a later time) but not limit the services you may offer.

5. And finally . . . the name should not be offensive. Some names, when written down, could have unintended pronunciations. To see what I mean, write down Tobias’ title in the below Arrested Development clip.

At the end of the day, we think Rogomo fits these criteria pretty well. We hope you agree!