GrandCentral

This morning phone replacement GrandCentral (owned by Google) was down. Several blogs reported on the issue. It appears the service is back up now but no word yet on what caused the outage.

GrandCentral is listed as a "beta" and it's also a "free" service. What should we expect for a service in beta or a service that is considered live but is free? I printed business cards with my GrandCentral number on them. Was this a mistake to trust a service in beta? When Skype was down, they too handled the outage poorly - they blamed Microsoft.

Twitter for example is free and not in beta. It's been down a good bit (though more stable now) and we've all bitched and moaned about their downtime. With a service that apparently has no revenue model yet, is downtime allowed? If so, how much?

What I'd like to see is an expectations document (i.e. a contract) that explains what can be expected from a startup. I am guessing these documents would need a legal stamp but they would be very effective for setting guidelines and customer expectations.

Lastly, for any service that we rely on (e.g. GrandCentral, AIM, Skype) these services should have a status page that we can monitor at any time. Non-essential services (e.g. Google search, Mahalo, CenterNetworks) a status page isn't required but an explanation of any outages would be beneficial.

Check out our interview with GrandCentral Founder Craig Walker along with his top tips for startups.

When NY-ers think of GrandCentral, most think of the happiest place on earth with all of the trains coming in and out and the black and white cookies from Zaro's. But techies think of another GrandCentral, that is the very powerful telephony service now owned by Google.

The service is still in private beta and it's been hard to find an invite but today Blogger has a post with a juicy link to grab an invite. GET INVITE NOW

Also, check out our interview with GrandCentral founder Craig Walker.

Congrats to Craig Walker and the entire GrandCentral Team. Wesley Chan from Google's product team has just announced that Google has acquired GrandCentral. I have been a big fan of GrandCentral from the beginning, not just because Grand Central Terminal in NYC is the best place on earth.

GrandCentral gives a lot back to the community and really listens to their users. One example, I have been nagging Craig about the voice recorder options and this weekend they updated the service and it's awesome. Check out our previous GrandCentral coverage including an interview with CEO Craig Walker and Craig's tips from Startup Tips Month!

On a personal side, Craig has been a great advisor for me with regards to CN. I look forward to seeing what he touches next.

Of course, now we will hear ads on our telephone calls and now Google will control our phone records. Hmm.. makes for another interesting post, eh?

Day #13 in the CenterNetworks Startup Tips Month come from Craig Walker from GrandCentral.

Craig's Tips

Tip 1 - Hire Good People.

Don't just hire people who are good on paper or who have "done it" before. Hire people who are willing to work hard and have a ton of common sense. You'll need them to do much more than any single job description can tell so find ones who share that start-up mentality of doing anything necessary to get the job done. And who can figure things out!

Tip 2 - Fix Hiring Mistakes Immediately.

In a start-up, you'll quickly know if you made the right hiring decision or not. It's too small of a team with too much to do. If somebody isn't carrying their weight, it will be obvious...to everybody! Keeping a poor performer on board can serve to de-motivate the others, and you'll have to redo their work later. Fix problems immediately.

Tip 3 - Don't worry if you don't have all the answers.

People will try to poke holes in your ideas from every angle. Regardless of your answers, you can't convince everybody it's the greatest idea in the world. Just keep working and executing. The answers will come or you'll learn to make adjustments on the fly.

Tip 4 - Hire "hungry" people.

There's a temptation to hire the rock star employees who have been with other startups that have become huge successes. These might be great hires, but they might also be difficult to get cranking as they might already be loaded and not willing to put in the effort needed to get your startup cranking.

Tip 5- Find good investors.

No matter how great your idea is or how smoothly things are going, there will come a time when your investors want to see results. Or want more of one thing and not another. Having investors who understand the startup process (the best ones usually have been in your shoes before so they know what you are going through) and who can really be helpful in challenging times are priceless.

Tip 6 - Don't kill yourself trying to find the perfect partner.

Getting a deal with a marquee name is great, but large corporations move at a pace that is much slower than a start-up and can drain tons of resources from your small team and rarely pan out. Often when they do it becomes a great press release for you and may help with fundraising, but rarely turn into great business opportunities.

Tip 7 - Did I mention hiring?

It's the first and most important thing you can do. Do it well and fix it if it's not working. I can't say that enough.

Craig Walker is the co-founder and CEO of GrandCentral. In 2001, Craig became the CEO of Dialpad Communications, where he led the company out of bankruptcy and transformed it into the most profitable VoIP company in the industry. When Dialpad was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, Craig became Senior Director of VoIP and successfully merged the Dialpad team with the Yahoo! Messenger group.

Prior to Dialpad, Craig was a technology venture investor at Sterling Payot Capital and a corporate attorney at top tier law firms in Silicon Valley, where he represented companies ranging from early stage start-ups to Cisco Systems. Outside of work, Craig spends his free time with his wife and three kids and is a board member of the Ascent Russian Orphan Aid Foundation.

Earlier this week, GrandCentral celebrated their one year anniversary of their Project CARE program in San Francisco. The program gives voicemail accounts to homeless people in San Francisco and to-date they have given over 400,000 voicemail messages out. I have no idea how much this costs GrandCentral but it's a great service. With more and more cities removing payphones, this service becomes even more critical.

Craig, GrandCentral CEO notes, "The government can throw tons of money and resources at the homeless problem by providing housing, job training, medical care, etc., but if there’s no way to contact a person to let them know they got the job, or the room became available, or the TB test came back negative, then that money is MUCH less effective than it could be."

I have been in many cities in the U.S. and in Europe and I don't think any city has a worse homeless problem than S.F. It is great to see a startup doing what a big company could have been doing for years. Think about ways you can help your community.

Hats off to Craig and the team! If you want to learn more about GrandCentral, check out my interview from late 2006.

The last stop on this train will be Grand Central Station. Please check to make sure you have all of your phone numbers in one place before exiting the train.