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[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Crafting User Experiences

 I know it's been a while some we've blogged.  The reason is simple - we've been working on the market validation research mentioned in the last post.  In fact, Mr. Paul Mabray et al should be delivering our first interviews as well as final thoughts on the research before the roaster crows.

We do, however, have some news.  Since we've been working our ass off on the actual product as well, we're getting ready to announce to the six people now listening what, exactly, we are working on.  In fact, as we speak, our intrepid designed is putting the finishing touches on our logo and a nice little overview page for all who are interested.

In the meantime, I thought it would be of interest to many to mention a kick-ass design conference that took place this week in Atlanta by the List Apart folks.  I wasn't there, as I'm too cheap and busy to attend, but some cohorts were kind enough to share some presentations and one of the ones I've read thus far is amazingly insightful.

So I present you with a Sara Parmenter's "Crafting User Experiences," available for viewing here - http://www.cl.ly/350U0R0k3Y1t062Z0F29

It's an incredibly well done presentation about user design, psychology and experiences.  We are already wrestling with a number of the issues and points she raises, including the careful combination of simplicity with emotion and usefulness.

It's long but worth looking over.  Enjoy.

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Market Validation - Damn We're Moving

I apologize for the lag in writing.  It's been a crazy week.  I started a new job to help me focus on this start-up (weird right).  I know.  Sometimes you need to go inside out to go forward.

Anyway...

It's Decision Time

So I am under blood oath to not reveal the idea yet.  It's a whopper of a doozy and we've already begun working on it.  But before we get too far, we've decided to pause and do something that most crazy ass Interweb entrepreneurs don't do - ask our prospective audience if they even want this damn thing.

Who's Right?  Who's Wrong

If you listen to 99 of 100 VCs, Paul Graham, microincubator types they will tell you to run first, then walk later.  Just build they say.  Get out there and put something in front of your customers.  Then decide if you have something.

This is a GREAT idea, but primarily for them and their network.  Here's why:

When a micro incubator invests $15K in 20 start-ups a year, they are playing the odds.  If two start to gain traction by running first, they consider it a win.

Y-Combinator, TechStars and the Silicon Valley mafia are so tight and well respected that just launching a "YC start-up" gets press.  It gets momentum by association.  That's great if you are a YC start-up, but what if you are one of the thousands of others?

If you are doing nothing else and are a team of coders, you can crank something out within a few weeks or a month or so.  But if you are one coder, one dreamer, one financier it don't work like that.  Just try hiring a Rails dev shop for less than $20K for a legit project.  I double dog dare you.

And lastly - once you are over 24 years old, live outside the SV bubble and have spent years building up a solid reputation for yourself, which Vintank - our partner - has, wasting a contacts time with a half ass, we-think-you-might-like-this-so-pay-us alpha site is just bad form.  Sometimes you need to grow up.

It's A Balance Yo

What I believe Paul Graham and the like are saying is this - create SOMETHING so you can show it to potential users or clients.  You don't need to go live, you just need to be able to show some kind of prototype so that you can get some kind of feedback.  In essence, they are advocating grassroots market research, not launching something crappy.  And by doing this, you can move fast while still learning.

So given this, given Vintank's reputation and given the B2B nature of the idea, we've decided to take a SMALL step back and spend some time talking and interviewing our potential customers (wine sellers and wine buyers) to understand their pain points, present our (kick ass) solution and get their feedback.  

Cost Money?  Take Time?  Bad Bad In Start-up World No?

Quickly here, try to follow.

Yes it's going to cost us money

Yes it's going to take some time

Then Why God Why!?

Because if we do this correctly it will actually SPEED UP our time to market, ability to raise funds and the quality of the product.  We're going to start out by interviewing 15-20 wine sellers and buyers, presenting our solution and listening to their issues.  We can then use that feedback to craft a solution based on the actual CUSTOMER's needs and not what we think they might be.  I know, that's crazy talk in the web 2.0 start-up world.  Then we are going to go back to 2000 or so potential clients and present the refined solution to better understand their purchase intent, the value of each feature and what they would pay. 

Essentially, if done correctly, in two months we will know precisely WHAT to build and roughly HOW MANY clients we can expect when we launch.  We will also have a good idea of WHAT they will PAY.  Imagine having all that before you spend $$$ and time creating something you THINK people will want.  Nice idea right.

Trust The Experts

You're gonna love this.  Anyone who ever tried to create a company or design a marketing campaign thinks they can build and run a market research survey.  They end up with questions like this:

"If your house was on fire with your child burning alive inside, how likely would you be to want to own our awesome fireproof noise maker thing?  How much would you pay?

Not at all leading right?

So just like we hired Paul and Vintank, we are going to be hiring a market research consultant to design the interviews and surveys we conduct.  Depending on the price, they might even conduct the damn interviews.

We don't pretend to be wine industry experts and we ain't gonna start pretending we are market research gurus either.  

What's Next

So I'm reviewing proposals from researchers and we will pick one.  We'll work next week with Paul and the researcher to craft and arrange interviews.  Then we start.  I'll keep you updated my kind four readers...

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Our secret weapon - Paul Mabray & @Vintank

The time has come for us to reveal our secret weapon, how we found them, and why it has changed how we will approach start-ups forever.

We Know Nothing

One of the fundamental mistakes that many MANY entrepreneurs make is thinking that they can easily replicate their success in industries they know nothing about.  This happens in online lead gen all the time.  For example, a company that masters the art of getting idiots to fill out forms to refinance their mortgage online all the sudden thinks they can start getting other idiots to complete online forms for secondary education.  They fail, often badly.

Anyway, the point is that just being smart, lucky, dumb, brave or confident is not enough to succeed.  Yes, it's possible to succeed, but the people who do what they are most passionate about and do what they know have a considerably higher chance of success then the rest.  Why?  Cause they have an inherent sixth sense towards what works PLUS the passion to make it work.  You can learn an industry, but that takes time, money and a ton of mistakes.  

Since we're idiots, that's the primary pain path we've taken.  We see a problem in an industry we know nothing about, think we aren't idiots and can fix it, and go and try.  Sometimes it does work but more often then not we never make it to the starting gate.  For example, I spent months trying to create a log you can throw in your fireplace that would extinguish a fire so you don't have to go to sleep with a fire in your fireplace.  Even trademarked the name ("Firedown" in case you're wondering).  Guess what - not really chemically possible and causes a hell of a mess.

What If You Have The Passion But Not The Knowledge?

When I returned buzzed, yet again, from Napa a few months ago and confessed, yet again, to Bill my love for wine we realized that we should explore this industry.  It's definitely old school, filled with archane compliance and shipping laws, an insane number of players, weird ass relationships and lots of pseudo winelebrities (yes I just coined that biatch).  Guess who had all the answers!  We rule!

So after almost two months of going full speed towards creating a Netflix for wine, direct to consumer shipping models, foursquare game system for wine, social wine apps, aggregate wine APIs, free shipping systems for wineries, etc etc etc and getting smacked down Rowdy Rowdy Piper (may he rest in peace) style, the steam was going fast from our sail.

One name, however, kept coming up.  "Have you talked to Paul Maybray?"  "You guys should really talk to Vintank, Paul Mabray would have some great feedback."  

What The $%^# is a Vintank!?

Vintank touted themselves as a "think tank for wine."  Having always wanted to be a think tank, JPL style, I was curious.  So I sent Paul an email detailing what I was thinking about.  Paul, you see, is this crazy wine insider who started Vintank after almost 18 years in the wine industry.  He is, simply stated, the expert on tech and wine having created the first eCommerce system for the industry.  He's also crazy passionate about all things wine tech.

Paul called me back as he was about to get onto a plane to NY for some wine thing.  We set up a time to talk the next day where he explained to me all that is Vintank and what they do.  Typically, they work with some pretty damn big clients, like the COUNTRY (yes country) of France.  Not dipshits who like wine and start companies.

We had a good call and I leveled with him.  I told him we've never used "experts" before, were a bit weary, and thought they were too big for us.  He said they are open to anyone serious regardless of size.  So I asked him if he's open to working on an hourly basis with two d-bags to explore, smack down and share all sorts of crazy ass ideas in the hopes of finding something.  The poor sap said sure.

Send In The Experts

I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty details (in this post) of everything that we've discussed.  What I can tell you is this - we are NEVER again going to go into an industry without hiring an expert or think tank.  Paul, his partner Evan, and all of Vintank are extraordinary.  They aint cheap but thus far it's been worth it and we are planning on actually partnering with them on the business we hope to create. 

And let me tell you this my fine three readers (if there are four, I'm humbled) - what we are working on together will change the wine industry.   This aint a joke.  This aint fluff.  This is real.  If you are a wine buyer, winery, restaurant, wholesaler or retailer, you're about to thank your fairy godmother that Vintank was kind enough to share this idea with two idiots that know how to create shit.  Cause this is going to make you happy.

Parting Advice To All

While this post is about Vintank, it's more about start-ups, being cheap, and being idiots.  

All start-ups should try to create something they are passionate about and knowledgable about.  If it's a new industry and you think you know cause you Googled a bunch of shit all night long, you're an idiot.  Get help.

If you have the passion but lack industry experience, check your ego and hire help.  Do you dry clean your own clothes?  Do you wipe your own ass?  No.  You hire experts.  Business aint different.  It's that simple.

Don't be cheap.  Experts might cost a few dollars, but they can save you a ton of time and money while you're getting started.  It's worth it.  

One thing of note - try to find people, like Vintank, open to sharing ideas and partnerships.  There comes a time (we're at it) where the relationship goes from "clients" to "partners."  If you're fortunate to find experts who share ideas with you they believe so strongly in that they say "screw the quick buck, this is going to be huge, we want in!" then go open a bottle of wine, make a toast, and drink.  Cause good times are ahead my friends.

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Can wine be offered as a prize?

The Idea - FreeWineWeekly.com

The Pitch - Each week people tell a story (in 200 characters or less) about who they would love to drink a bottle of eclectic wine with and why.  The stories are displayed publicly and voted on by the crowd.  On Saturday of each week, the most interesting story is selected and author PLUS the person they want to share a bottle with each receive a free bottle of wine.  We then notify everyone of the winner and which bottle of wine they will receive.

Why Would We Do This - For us it helps to build our relationships with those that appreciate and look for wine online (read: customer acquisition) and for the wineries, who would be supplying the wine and shipping it to the winner free of charge, it's a way to increase exposure and potentially gain new customers.  If hundreds enter each week, that hundreds of people getting introduced to their wine weekly .

What Else - It's *possible* that we could let people who didn't win buy the selected bottle at a steep discount, don't know, but that opens up a whole new business model.

So What's The Problem?  Bill thinks it's illegal to offer wine as a contest prize.  He's right, if we live in New Zealand.  No idea about in the states.  Bill also thinks that monkeys wearing little outfits is just about the funniest thing in the world, so we can't always trust his judgement.

Any thoughts?  Does anyone know what the "law" is in this case?

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Ohh the ideas are hot tonight!

It appears the bottle and a half of wine that my wife and I each drank has lubricated the old wheels in the head.  We've got and idea.  Oh boy do we have an idea.

Here's the problem - no idea really how to make money on it yet.

But long story short - we are going to make the awkwardness of picking a wine in a restaurant a thing of tomorrow.  How?  By crowdsourcing that bad boy - that's how.

Imagine having a team of wine experts at your immediate disposal to help you select the best wine for the Thai/Italian/Mexican/whatever you are eating.  No more being laughed at by the hot chick you're on a date with cause you don't know what to order.  It's crazy bed fun tonight after you impress her with your insanely awesome wine pick that you didn't pick but we helped you pick!

Confused?  I know.  It's just that cool!

Ok, more details later but suffice to say it will be an app that will help you leverage the crowd to immediately pick a good wine in a restaurant.  It's like food pickle, but better, cause there is wine involved.  

It ain't easy to pull off but we know what to do.  First, we need secret weapon Paul to get better so he can provide guidance.  Then, we need to break out the old business hats to figure out how to monetize this.  And finally, when we have it ready to go I'll blog about it cause we're just that stupid and transparent.

Why are we sharing so much?  Why not?  Right now it's an idea and maybe you can help make it better.  Check out Quirky.com if you don't get the point of sharing ideas so that others make them sick realities.

So let me know what you think of the idea.  Love it, hate it, want it, crave it?  Tell me tell me.

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

How idiots pick (and drink too much) wine.

Last night I went out to a cool french place in Charlotte called LuLus for my wife's birthday.  Today we hate ourselves.  Here is our story.

Knowing little about wine in general, especially French wine, we resorted to our typical three step approach to picking wine and one novel hail mary:

Show me the screw stops.  That should narrow it down

Give me buy the glass in the sub $10 range

What has a cool label?

Well French wines dont appear to have that many screw top options.  Damn fancy bastards.  And given that we were sitting in a nice restaurant they seemed less than thrilled with the idea of showing me every wine bottle they had so I could pick a fun label.  That left price, which worked fine as they had a bunch of options.

I was still left with a bunch of stuff so I did something new, I took a picture of the wine list and IMed it to Bill, who responded with "what ya pick?"  Dick head.

So I picked a cab/syrah blend and something called "old vine blah blah" cause it sounded cool.  They both cost $8-$9.

Then the wine came.

And it was easily a double, possibly triple pour.

And I did what idiots do, I drank it.  Then ordered another.

And today I hate myself.  And my stomach hates me.

You see the problem is that *apparently* in Europe they drink in something called "moderation."  Im assuming they mean smaller amounts and not a bar called Moderation, though that would be a cool name.

Anyway, they drink a normal serving, then fill the glass with water and drink that.  Then they repeat as often as they want.  In the morning, they feel fine.  It seems smart.

So instead of smart Im an idiot and have visited the toilet three times this morning and it's only 9:10.  I might vomit or just keep going with the wine shits.  Lovely I know.

In case you're wondering, here is a link to the restaurant and damning wine list:

http://www.luludinewine.com/

http://www.luludinewine.com/menu/2011_winelist.pdf

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Gary V, Starting from Scratch & Experience

Here is a copy of an internal email that I just sent to Paul (secret weapon to be discussed soon) and Bill.  It's current and relevant to TechCrunch's series on Gary V, an eclectic personality.  It's also universal to start-up web biz.  

I just finished watching the Techcrunch series on Gary V.  That guy is definitely dynamic and interesting, but what kept popping into my mind is something Bill and I have discussed a number of times - if you don't got the audience, you're model is that much harder. When I bought Lowfares I did it because there was naturally 500-800 unique visitors a day.  I had an audience I was able to start with, listen to, understand their needs and create for.  This helped Lowfares grow.  When Bill started the domain channel for New.net, which grew to a $20M+ a year biz in mostly profit, he saw a ton of traffic going to thousands of domains and worked to meet their needs.  Conversely, when I started DMVCheatSheets.com I had to (and continue to) spend thousands upon thousands of dollars each month to drive traffic to the site, constantly fighting new entrants who think they can just show up.  I recently got some SEO traction, but it comes and goes.  The point is, I stop advertising and the business dies. As we think about exploring consumer ideas - correct - IF we decide to explore consumer ideas we need to very aware of this point.  I personally DO NOT want to start from scratch.  I'm completely open to acquisitions, partnerships, whatever - but I don't what to rely on "PR" or "Adwords" to build our business. I truly like the direction we are currently exploring with Paul's B2B idea.  I can't wait to learn more from Paul about this and discuss more opportunities.  The REASON I like it is because it's not a traffic, consumer play.  We form a bunch of partnerships, start very targeted marketing and build a niche audience.  Then we shop that audience around.  Unique visits and volume of visits don't matter in this model, it's about the audience and service, which we can control. When I watch and see what Gary V has done it's fantastic, but make no mistake, the massive following and audience he built from WineLibrary affords him the luxury to try new things.  Lowfares spun off two additional businesses as well, because we had the audience and could afford to.  While Cinderella Wines and DailyGrape and whatever might be good ideas, if he didn't have the initial WL audience, they would never have taken off.   Just look at Lot18 (i.e. Snooth audience) compared to The Wine Spies if you need further proof. -j

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Flash, aha, master of the universe

Seriously - tell me that Queen's soundtrack to Flash Gordon doesn't kick serious ass.

It's my wife's bday so I'll keep this short and too the point.  Then Ill go drink.

As mentioned, we have an industry with 110,000 skus and no centralized way of obtaining all of them.  Add to that the fact that you can only ship to 37 states legally and you have a cluster F of the highest proportion.  So if you can't let the wine drinking world pick what they want to drink, why not pick it for them?  Damn we're smart!  Oh, what? it's already being done.  Damn it.

Enter The Flash Wine Sites

There are almost too many to discuss but here's the top line idea.  Business picks a winery and asks them what they want to move.  This is typically overproduced or stuff that just didn't sell due to the "economic meltdown" situation.  Bad times breed opportunities no?

So the winery has 200 cases of something or other and wants to move it.  They discount it 60% (how can they do this?  I'll explain in a bit) and allocate it for a "flash sales site." The site lets people know they have 3 days to get such and such vino at 40% off (ahh the revenue model) and people come a flocking, or in theory.

It does work though.  You need to have an audience to show the deal to or some clever hook but the idea is the same as the infamous Groupon - heavily discounted item for a limited time.  It's actually more Woot! then Groupon, which brings us to the player:

You're gonna like this, cause it's damn smart.  Not as much the idea but how it started.  So Woot! was killing it selling old electronics and gadgets at heavy discounts.  They were featured in the WSJ and all over the place as revolutionary and had a TON of people coming to the site.  The economy tanks and two guys get the idea for the wine flash sales site.  They contact a few wineries and they have inventory.  All they need is distribution.  So they contact Woot! and tell them they want to start this wine "channel" for them.  Woot! agrees and wine.woot! is born.  And it takes off like gangbusters.  F-ing genius.  These guys knew who to call and when.  Golf clap everyone.

These guys are slick.  They've already raised well over $12M for their flash sales site.  Simple model, same as the others.  Where did the audience come from?  Snooth.com, the web's first wine "social network."  Yet another niche social network that was started as the Facebook was taking off so people jumped on.  They gained an audience and leveraged it for Lot18.  Throw in a refer-a-friend for $25 off wine and you gots some viral goodness.  Not bad.

If you know this space you are probably asking, "Wine Spies?  Really."  Yeah cause it's a good example.  These guys decided to create yet another flash sales site but instead of focusing on making it look good and professional (like Lot18) they focused on the wine maker.  You get a daily email with the same crazy discounts and a whole bunch of nonsense about where the wine comes from.  Seriously, who cares?  I guess the fraction of the audience that wine.woot! and Lot18 have that buy from them care.  Interesting idea but not the best time to rap rhapsodic when you are just trying to get someone to click buy.

And There's More...

Yeah yeah, there are a ton more.  So I promised some insight into what else makes these models work for all parties.  Ill explain quickly:

The COGS (cost of goods sold) for wine is 30% of retail.  So a $30 bottle of wine costs $10 for the wine maker, on average.  It gets marked up by distributors to wholesalers to retailers and restaurants, which is why it's so damn expensive.

HOWEVER - if the winery can sell it themselves for $30, they keep it ALL.  If they go through a flash sales site, they only need to pay them.  Not bad eh?

Like I mentioned you can only ship to 37 states and their are a ton of RULES.  It's a pain in the ass.  Most wineries, however, use services like ShipCompliant.com to handle this.  The point is the wineries, not flash sales sites, know how to ship wine.  So the flash sales sites are smart - they just do the marketing and hand the orders off to the wineries to ship.  Then they take their cut and issue a check.  They don't all work this way but the smart ones do :)

So Why Aint You Idiots Doing This?

We might, but where are we going to get the audience?  The market is saturated already.  We could aggregate the deals, like winehoarder.com, but in a more Kayak way (thanks secret weapon to be revealed soon) but then we are taking a piece of a piece.  We could address a major wine online pain point - shipping - and offer all wines shipped free but that's easily replicable.  

Also, the model might not hold in the long term if wineries run out of over produced supply and feel that their brands are getting hurt.  

But there is something there.  

So What Have We Learned Thus Far?

Don't ship it yourself.  Shipping sucks and we don't want to have a big refrigerated warehouse anyway.

If you are going to do something eCommerce wise, figure out a model where you select the inventory.

Wineries make serious profit off of DTC (direct to consumer) sales, so that should also be a focus.

Let's table the flash sales idea and move forward shall we...

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

The ideas begin - Follow what my friends drink

This is what we knew:

We wanted simple.  We're not wine people, we're just people that drink wine.

We wanted trust.  We trust our friends, even though they are idiots.  If they like a wine, we will hopefully like it.  Hell, I've been narrowing the selection at the grocery store for years by only picking from screw tops with cool labels, so adding friend recs would be a step up

We wanted easy.  Just send us the damn wine

So the idea was "let me use this iPhone gadget (easy) to post what I'm drinking and then follow what my friends post (trust).  Then let me click a button to order a bottle (simple)."

In retrospect this idea still rocks, but the industry sometimes kicks you in the nuts and tells you to leave - but more on that soon.

How to Rapidly (Not) Build an iPhone App

So I did a half ass search, found nothing, and then bought the domain eatdrink.me from name.com for $10.  Simple enough to do.  I then started searching in the app store for apps that I liked, ranging from games to news.  Doesn't matter.  The key is that when you are searching for a dev shop find stuff you like and then figure out who built it.

The second benefit of this exercise is competitive research, which often turns a half ass effort into a pretty decent job.  I quickly started finding other apps that related to my quest, specifically a beautifully designed app by Catheline Liao called Corkbin (note: get this app now in the App Store.  If you have an Android, you can get it also, but you're better throwing that crap out and getting an iPhone, it's a much better toy).

Corkbin is simplicity.   You take a picture, enter some notes and click the recommend button (or dont if its crap). No name, no "how acidic was the wine" blah blah just a picture and notes.  Then you post.  The other side is following friends.  Enter a friends name and if they use the app, you can follow what they drink.  And look how pretty it is:

But it's not without it's problems:

While you can follow friends, inviting them stinks.  There is no invite via twitter/facebook or address book.  There is no "auto find friends on twitter/fb/address book already using corkbin."  None.  

When a friend posts a wine, you cant comment on it.  It's static.

There is no way to buy the wine

But I contacted Catheline anyway and started to chat.  She is one awesome chick...

Just Send A Damn Email

People starting up companies always get freaked out about sharing their ideas or randomly calling people that might be useful.  So stupid.  Just call.  An idea is just that, an idea.  Execution is key.  If you keep everything to yourself you miss out on very VERY valuable feedback from others who might know something important.

Anyway, I emailed Catheline and before long we started discussing working together (which we still might do).  She explained that the next version of CB will have almost all of what I mentioned above.  She created it for the same reason I wanted it - she likes to drink wine and wanted to share it with friends. 

Her growth is solid and she's super focused, but the problem is BUYING the wine.  There is no simple way to do that.  Here's why:

There are 70,000 wineries in the world

There are 110,000+ labels produced

There is NO central source to order ANY wine and get it sent (due to the sheer number of labels and crazy ass mormon wine laws that prevent shipping)

People drink lots of random stuff, not just a cluster

So what this means is that if friend A is drinking a 2007 Something Something and friend B is following, there is no easy way for Catheline to place an order for friend B.

We Smelled An Opportunity

The obvious next step for idiots like us is to say:

let's create a centralized system for ordering wine.  we can offer it to all apps and sites like Corkbin and take a piece of the action.  we'll just use drop shippers and wholesalers

Of man that makes us laugh in retrospect.  The stats I quoted above werent know at the time.  We thought there was an Amazon.com of wine that had everything.  Nope.  Everyone's inventory is different (wine.com, wineaccess, winetasting, etc) and STILL even if we combined them we would be missing a ton of wine.

How many times will a person who is unable to order the bottle of wine that their random friend happened to get direct from a vineyard while on vacation give a service that is supposed to let them order any bottle of wine!  Not many.  Look at Apple TV or Netflix when they launched - the biggest criticism was their catalogs incompleteness.

What Next?

So where are we?

Huge number of SKUs (products)

No centralized system

Hmmmm....

This post is too long.  Ill post what's next later. (hint - Groupon for wine)

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

What I'm drinking tonight.  Got it cheap from Lot18 with free shipping, the only way to go when buying online.  (free is good)

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Some Background

For anyone who starts reading this you will be wondering what the hell is going on.  I'm gonna tell you.  There are two of us, Josh (me) and Bill (other guy).  Tumblr doesn't allow multiple authors on the main blog so you're stuck with just me until we make $17 to move to Wordpress.

About Josh

Most of it you can get from http://about.me/joshl but here's the short end.  Started doing online stuf in '97 out of college.  Created first online market research company and sold it twice, meeting me wife first time and corporate world second.  Wife stuck, corporate not so much, so I left.  Bought Lowfares.com while drunk off rum and cokes, fixed it up and built it into a top online travel marketing company.  Sold that in LA in '07, packed up young family and moved to Charlotte, NC.  Where I reside, drink wine, make bread and figure out this wine biz thing.

About Bill (http://about.me/billstrong)

Grew up in the sunny California area but never learned to surf.  He's odd that way.  Went to Hawaii to sell coupon machines to grocery stores but decided to be a CPA instead, which didn't take.  Instead he joined Idealab, mostly due to a known fetish of his involving sock puppets that look like pets and became an acting CFO for many of their companies, the good and bad.  Ended up creating a new division for one of their start-ups called New.net, which kept the company alive and got it sold.  After numerous denials for "private time" with the Pets.com sock, he packed up his family and traveled the world, where Josh and him started a new biz in the domain marketing space.  Sold that while floating adrift a boat in the deep blue and has been drinking wine since.  He now lives in Santa Barbara, CA where he was CFO of Estelea, the incubator behind Savings.com and others you've never, ever heard of.  He has a large collection of socks.

Why The Wine Biz?

We've been f-ing around for three years now trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.  Bill even took a job, which scared a lot of people, mostly himself.  We decided in 2011 (that's now right?) that we would focus on something we were passionate about, even if it took a while to find.

On a recent trip to Napa to visit all my b-school friends that are having them babies, I realized that I like wine.  Not so much the whole snobby thing, but the actual drinking of it.  I like the mellow buzz and the stress releasing effects.  

I also realized that the business side was intriguing.  Here was something thousands of years old, super niche, that people were willing to pay good money for.  Despite this, other than going into my local grocery store, BevMo or Total Wine, my methods for finding wines I would like and getting them were limited.  It seems like there were opportunities afoot.

Fortunately, Bill and his wife have been on a doctor prescribed bottle a day habit, so convincing him to explore the wine biz was as difficult as "let's explore the wine biz."

So we have, and are.  The ideas have been pouring out and we've recently gotten some expert help.  More on all this tomorrow.  Back to my glass of red stuff.

p.s. grammer, spelling, etc

As my good friend Jeff will say, "I want to kill myself when I see your typos."  I don't proofread and I spell like an uneducated monkey.  I write what comes to my head and don't look back.  Deal, and mourn for Jeff.

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

The color orange.  Not sure why.  I think it was my nursery but my parents claim that I never had an orange nursery.  Maybe I was adopted, or stolen.

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

This is what wine is all about.  

[idiotsdrinkwinetoo-blog]

Who you calling an idiot?

It's about bloody time that we start blogging about what we're up to.  Long story short - we're too guys that like wine.  We also like beer, cocktails and the occasional milk shake. We're not heavy drinkers, we're normal 35-year old putzes with kids living the American dream and trying to make our way through the world around us.  As part of this journey, we come into a lot of things that annoy us and have had the good fortune of trying (and sometimes succeeding) at fixing them.

Buying wine, my dear friends, is one such troubling herbie in the road to happiness for us.  We know crap about wine.  We know we like to drink it.  I know that I like red more than white and Ill be damned if most whites I taste ain't sugar water (of course what do you expect for $7.99 a bottle).  I know that I trust what my friends tell me to buy more often then some snobby ass in the store.  And we also know, in our heart of hearts, that we have ZERO interest in becoming versed in the difference between a 2007 Pinot Noir and a 2008 Syrah.  The fact that I know that Syrah and Shiraz are the same grape just one (Shiraz I think) is from Australia is amazing.

So we are trying to fix this problem.  We are trying to figure out a way to make wine more accessible to the common man since, well, we're the common man.  We're going to be exploring all sorts of crazy shit from general wine ideas to what we learn about the industry to issues and lessons when starting an online "bizness."  

And yes, we've done this before (the online bizness part) and yes, we've done relatively well (one of us owns his very own pontoon boat while the other has a view of the Pacific) but we're relatively lazy and opinionated and spin more cycles then we should.  Like I said, pretty common man like.

We have no idea if anyone will ever read this but we need an outlet so its this or yoga.  And we ain't that damn flexible.