Adii Pienaar

As we'd all expect: having a new baby changes your life. I guess that bit was expected for me and I kinda settled into my own comfort zone of perceptions during Jeanne's pregnancy last year. What I didn't expect is how this would completely change me.

I'm typing this with Adii Jr strapped to me chest in his sling; "we" (it took me a little while and 2 cups of coffee longer) have been up since 5:30 in what has now become our default morning routine.

If you told me before Adii Jr's birth that I'd be waking up at 5:30 / 6:00 every morning - without the option to sleep in every now & again - I would've scoffed at you. I've always been an early riser, because I love the first 2 / 3 hours in the morning for productive work, but being my own boss I also had the option of sleeping in if I needed or wanted. 

The thing that has however surprised me is how these couple of hours every morning have become one of the most special parts of my day and if I didn't get that time to spend with Adii Jr, then I feel a little bummed throughout the day. There's just something special about peering down to my chest to see a beautiful baby peacefully sleeping, whilst I catch up on everything that I didn't get to work through the day before.

These are new emotions & experiences to me and what it's made me realize is that my work-life balance has been mostly crap in the last couple of years. It always felt that I needed to run from the one to do, to the next and it even sometimes felt that "time at home", "go out with friends" etc. felt like to do's rather than stuff that I wanted to do.

I'm slowly learning that sometimes it is okay for me to just spend time with Adii Jr: no computer, no iPhone, no TV. I'm learning that slowing down is a good thing and that I don't need to compromise on my ambitions & dreams to be able to do that.

Every now & again, it's okay to just take a moment, spend it with someone special and truly cherish it without having to worry about the next item on the to do list.

In the past, I've been very critical of (some / most, but not all) South African startups that tend to work on ideas that are either a poor man's version of an existing (international) product / service or just completely lacks any kind of quality. Stumbling onto new startup, MoneySmart, has restored my faith in my fellow countrymen.

I've not even got to the point where I've signed up and used the product, but everything else just oozes quality: the design on the sales page looks quality, the sales video is nicely done and previewing bits of the UI via the feature tour makes the product look mightily inviting. If it wasn't for the .co.za domain or the fact that they just support South African banks at this stage, I wouldn't have known it is a South African startup. This is actually something that I might use myself.

This has always been something that I've tried to do with WooThemes: create an internationally recognized product, whilst still being proudly South African. Fact is that I designed & developed the first product (which eventually lead to the creation of WooThemes) from my small apartment in Stellenbosch whilst I was studying. Yet very few people - and I'd bet a fair chunk of change that 99% of WooThemes customer - know that we've been born & bred in South Africa.

So what's the lesson here? Make quality shit and always aim to be on par internationally with the quality of your design & code.

I'm 26 years old now and ever since I can remember, computers have been billed as "the next big thing" in the way that we will integrate it with our daily lives. And so it has too; computers are being used by more people, doing more different things than they did at any given stage in the past.

In the last couple of years, the internet has taken over that moniker from "computers". We've seen platforms like Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare that have managed to integrate itself into our daily lives and actually change some of our social behaviour. For just a minute, consider how much time you spent online and how much of that time actually applies to physical, real-world stuff that you're doing: communicating, shopping, doing business etc.

One thing that is changing at a rapid rate at the moment, is the attractiveness of the internet to the mainstream masses. Before some of the things that the early adopters were doing online, were considered too "geeky" for the Average Joe Public. It kinda felt like if you were working online in some way, then you'd be the only type of person interested in some of these products & services. But this perception has changed significantly, since new online(-based) ventures have started to disrupt traditional industries. 

Seeing Uber, the luxury, personalized car service, raise another $32m in funding reminded me of how many great new ideas are truly disruptingthe  traditional status quo for transportation. I'm then quickly reminded of Hipmunk, who has done the same for travel booking, and AirBnB, who have revolutionized accommodation. This is online in the wild.

I'm excited to see this trend continuing and see a few more traditional industries disrupted.

I've always been a firm believer in supporting companies and brands based not on the mistakes they make, but on the way they rectify those mistakes. That in my opinion has always delivered that lasting impression which gets my brand loyalty & commitment going.

Well-known publisher, GigaOM, had a case of e-mail blues today as they sent out truckloads of the same newsletter to subscribers (or in some cases, non-subscribers). I got 40-odd copies of the same newsletter.

It turns out that MailChimp is their newsletter provider and the issues GigaOM were experiencing was a result of a deployment issue on MailChimp's side. It would be easy for MailChimp to hide in a situation like this; if they didn't put up their hand and claimed responsibility, then nobody - except them - would've known that they were at fault. Instead they post a very public apology, pulling no punches in acknowledging their mistake and also rectifying the underlying issue ASAP.

That in my opinion is the magic stuff that great companies & brands are made of: transparency, honesty & accountability. I'm not a MailChimp customer today, but if I were ever to switch away from CampaignMonitor, MailChimp's actions in this regard would've greatly influenced that move. Kudo's to MailChimp for impeccable customer service.

Celebrating the birth of my son, obviously hasn't brought enough "newness" to my life lately with a bunch of exciting things happening elsewhere too. Heck, when it rains it pours.

One of my ambitions this year has been to step up my angel investing activities and literally just get a couple of toes into the water; mostly to learn and just expose myself to more startups (preferably in various industries). In addition to this - and acknowledging that my investment budget is still very limited - I decided to find startups where I could offer value as an advisor (something which I'm also publicly advertising here).

On both these fronts, I have some exciting news to share and would like to introduce you to three new startups that I'm involved in... 

Dress Rush

I was first introduced to Dress Rush a couple of weeks ago when I saw their amazingly designed investor pitch deck. From the very first moment I interacted with the brand, business & ideas, I knew that I wanted to be involved. I subsequently reached out to the team and a couple of weeks later (having been made to jump through hoops to get funds transferred internationally), I'm now officially an investor in Dress Rush.

Two things make me specifically proud about this: 1) Jeanne & I made this investment together, as she was just as keen - if not more keen - to get in on this action; and 2) I get to experience a whole different industry and business model.

Having also got married a little more than a year ago myself, I could've most definitely used something similar to Dress Rush. I bet I would've saved a lot of time and even more money.

Buffer

I've been using Buffer for a couple of months now and have actually been an early user since the first time I stumbled onto Joel Gascoigne's, one of the co-founder, blog. Having found Buffer to be incredibly valuable to my own workflow and online activities, I'm honoured to be joining their team as an advisor.

I love the idea behind Buffer and I see them going from strength to strength.

PressTrends

PressTrends is a little closer to home and is already something we're trying out at WooThemes. Considering how big the WordPress ecosystem has become and how many people are buying themes, I believe PressTrends fills a massive gap for developers in giving them crucial data & analytics to fuel proper, data-driven decision-making.

I'm advising the PressTrends team and even though these are early days, they've already laid the platform of a very exciting business. These guys will be adding a very valuable component to the WordPress ecosystem.

And in addition to all of this, I might be working on a little side-project of my own that should see the light in Q1 2012. All I'll say for now is that the project was one of the ideas that remained after Radiiate was closed down earlier this year.

Finally, if you wanted to get in touch with me on any of these fronts, feel free to have a look at my AngelList profile or my startup services.