Urban Technology: Rodney Witcher and his company Pluckshot are making the colorless Silicon Valley a little more hip and colorful

by @therealziti

TBUT: Hi Rodney. How did you start Pluckshot?

RODNEY: I got the idea for Pluckshot because I personally felt the pain of trying to find and discover all of the photos posted by people I follow on Twitter. I would often view photos on Twitter and then want to go back and view them again at a later date. At times I would end up visiting three or four sites, trying to find the photo(s). After going through this a few times, I said to myself, “I should just build something to pull all of my friends photos into a single place”. And with that, I began the planning for and the building of Pluckshot.

TBUT: How does Pluckshot work?

RODNEY: Pluckshot enhances the photo viewing and photo sharing experience on Twitter. Users sign in to Pluckshot using their Twitter account and it brings all the photos they and their friends have posted to Twitter into one place. The home page displays the most recent photos posted by people they follow. From here, users may view an album of all of the photos they have posted to Twitter, a listing of albums containing photos posted by their friends as well as the ability to view and upload individual photos that they find interesting. The “Friend Photos” section shows a thumbnail of the most recent picture posted by each friend ordered from newest to oldest. Clicking on the thumbnail takes a user to a view of all of the photos posted by this user. Users may also view individual photos by clicking on the thumbnail in a particular user’s album. This page shows a full-size view of the photo, along with the message/tweet sent along with the photo. Here, users can also comment on photos or share them back to Twitter and Facebook. Lastly, users have the ability to upload photos from Pluckshot to any of the supported photos-sharing sites. Right now, we only allow uploads to TwitPic, but we will be adding others very soon.

In short, Pluckshot a unified dashboard for all of a user’s Twitter photos, regardless of the site the photos were posted to. There are over 20 different Twitter photo-sharing sites, which makes it a hassle to find and organize all of the Twitter photos you care about. Now you don’t have to go to all these sites to see the photos you’re interested in. Now you just go to Pluckshot!

TBUT: With the "colorless" Silicon Valley constantly starting new tech companies … how did you break the mold?

RODNEY: Silicon Valley is a very unique place. It is a very diverse place, but even with that diversity, the Black population is underrepresented, and even more so in the tech industry. With this being said, however, there are quite a few people of color out here starting companies and/or playing integral roles in new tech companies. I know of many individuals of Latin, Indian and Arab/Middle Eastern descent that are starting companies, but I only know a handful of Blacks starting new companies.

With this being the case, I attribute much of my work experience since working in the Valley as one of the main factors helping me to start my own tech company. I came out to Silicon Valley right after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin to work for a large technology company. Following my time at this company, I worked at two other startups in the area. All of these experiences helped prepare me for the task of starting my own company. The experience at the two startups mostly helped me gain self-confidence. Working in the start-up environment, not only exposed me to so many different facets of running a business, but it also gave me experience producing work that I was able to see directly impacting these businesses in a significant way. Seeing my work have an impact on the businesses made me to start to realize my potential for one-day start a tech company of my own. Having this perspective helped motivate me to get to where I am now. While this realization was important, I also learned that it wasn’t about already having done enough to justify starting my own business. It was about learning what steps it takes to start a business and having the desire, discipline and determination to execute on those steps.

In addition to my work experience, I also credit my family history with aiding me in starting Pluckshot. From my youth, I always wanted to start my own business. My grandfather was a great entrepreneur in East Texas. He owned and operated a variety of business, including a barbershop, barbeque pit, and a grocery store. As a child, visiting my grand father included going to and sometimes helping work these businesses. In the 50’s and 60’s, it was extremely rare (and some might say, unheard of) to have a Black family in the South owning four of five businesses and owning so much property. His ability to accomplish this encouraged me to believe that I too could start a business. I often thought to myself, that if Papa J.C. could start multiple businesses under his circumstances, then I shouldn’t let any circumstances I encounter prevent me from starting a business either.

I have built other sites in the past, but I have never taken them beyond a personal project, until now. Once I started working on Pluckshot and sharing it with people, I was convinced that this project would be one that I should turn into a company. Now it’s up to me to make it a successful company and I believe I’m on the right path to do just that.

TBUT: How does twitter use the service?

RODNEY: I actually view it the other way around. Pluckshot uses Twitter. Twitter gave rise to a new way of sharing messages, 140 characters at a time. Some of these messages are photos now, but they’re spread across over 20 sites. So, the idea behind Pluckshot is to take the activity that is going on in Twitter and organize it in a way that enhances the photo-viewing and sharing activities on it.

TBUT: Do you have any plans to sell your company?

RODNEY: That is definitely an option, but as of right now, I’m just focusing on building a useful product that meets the needs of people desiring an enhanced photo viewing and sharing experience on Twitter. I believe that meeting this need will create value for these users and, in turn, create value for Pluckshot.

TBUT: What are the goals of Pluckshot?

My primary goal for Pluckshot is for it to be THE one stop shop for finding socially relevant multimedia content on the web. Currently, Pluckshot is just about photos on Twitter, but the ultimate vision is for it to reach much farther than Twitter and to be about more than just photos. I want to incorporate these same concepts around audio and video files. This will make Pluckshot the unified dashboard for user’s socially relevant multimedia content.

Goals I have for Pluckshot to achieve within the next 3 to 4 months are:
- Expand to supporting 2 non-twitter related photo sites
- Create an API to allow other developers to leverage the Pluckshot platform
- Establish 4 to 5 partnerships with other sites

TBUT: How does one start a tech company?

Rodney: I touched on this topic in one my previous answers, but here are a few other items. Before going into the tech portion of my response, I find the following three points key in starting any company or providing any solution.

- Have an idea that solves a problem
- Be able to articulate the problem to your target market
- Be able to articulate how your company will solve this problem

Answering these questions help guide the process of building the company.

The next step is to build something. The important thing is not to build the perfect product or the final product. It’s just about building A product. If you don’t have the skills to build a product then partner with or hire someone to build the initial version. This initial product, often referred to as the MVP or minimum viable product, should be something that appeals to a small core set of users and has a minimum set of functionality to make the product useful to these users. Once you have this, you have a good starting point to build from. Starting with this product, you can get feedback and use it to repeatedly iterate and improve the product. Using this method, you’re sure to build a product that users want, rather than what you think they want, because you’re taking their feedback and letting it shape the product.

TBUT: How did you get started getting involved with IT?

Rodney: I began getting involved in IT in elementary school. Around the 3rd grade, I learned how to program in the language, BASIC. From that point, until high school, I dabbled in programming as a hobby. It wasn’t until my junior year in high school that I began seriously programming. That year, I took a computer science class and found that I had a real talent for it and decided to take the Advanced Placement level of the class my Senior year. That eventually led me to double major in Computer Science and Management Information Systems at the University of Texas. In addition to this, I had internships in the IT industry each summer during college, which helped further my involvement in the industry.

TBUT: What do you foresee happening in social media in the next 5 years?

RODNEY: Wow, this is a TOUGH question. 5 years is a lifetime in the tech industry. 5 years ago, Youtube was just starting; MySpace was the hottest social network out there and Twitter wasn’t even founded yet. Needless to say, I think it’s close to impossible to know exactly what will happen in the next 5 years, but I’ll give it a shot and tell you what I think we’re in store for.

In the next five years, I see Social Media permeating the web. Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare will be a natural part of most web sites and not limited to their own domains. Features and functionality from these sites will be present on most every site and application

New forms of social media will also arise. I believe a majority of these new forms of social media will revolve around real-time micro sharing. What we’re seeing now is that companies are being created around the execution of very simple actions that, when taken, answer simple questions. With Twitter, users post their unique 140-character or less answers to the question “What’s happening?” Foursquare and Gowalla essentially ask, “Where are you?” and users answer by checking in. People are becoming more and more comfortable with answering these questions because they only require taking simple “micro” actions to respond. Many new social media companies will invent new micro actions for answering questions.

Examples of new questions:
• “What am I watching?”
• “What am I buying?”
• “What am I eating”
• “What sport event am I attending?”
• “Where am I going?”
• “What am I listening to?”

There are startups being created right now that allow users to take micro-actions to answer each of these questions. I think this will be the direction new social media will start moving in the next 5 years.

TBUT: any shout outs? (Twitter names only)

RODNEY: I’d like to shout out to my family that’s on Twitter as they’ve definitely played a larger role in encouraging and motivating me to follow my dream of starting my own company.

@cbonam – my wife
@witcherhe – my sister
@thenicwise – my brother
@dwise007 – my brother

TBUT: Thanks Rodney and good luck with Pluckshot!




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