TeachStreet™

In the first of what we hope to be an on-going series of interviews with students and teachers, the TeachStreet staff talks with local Seattleite Daniel Etcheto about his life as a break-dancing instructor.

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TeachStreet: How in the world did you get into breakdancing?

Daniel Etcheto: I started breakdancing after I saw some dude doing it on the street. Then I rented Beat Street and practiced in a studio I set up in my barn. For the first year I practiced two hours every other day until I perfected the baddest breakin’ move, THE WORM!

TS: How long have you been teaching breakdancing?

DE: I’ve been teaching breakdancing part-time for the last 5 years or so. I also have a “day job” as an engineer, but teaching a few days a month makes sure that my master plan of making breakdancing the best dance on the planet becomes a reality!

TS: What types of students do you teach? How many?

DE: I currently teach about 40 students each month… varying from complete newbies to top notch athletes wanting some new tricks. I’m teaching everyone from 9-year-old girls who wanted something other than ballet classes to the teenage guys who think it “looks really cool” to adults in their 20’s and 30’s that have secret aspirations to break dance.

TS: What do you love about teaching breakdancing?

DE: Showing people how easy and fun it is to do!

TS: Any favorite moments from breakdancing class?

DE: Any time there are kids, there are funny moments. They are the most creative and inventive dancers, period.

TS: What’s the best way that you’ve found new students?

DE: Personal referrals, and from my website. The Kirkland Dance Studio also sends fliers out to all the schools in the area telling them about classes that they offer. Breakdancing is a little “abnormal” so a lot of people come check it out just because it sounds cool and different. A lot of folks are surprised that there is a method to learning breaking, and how simple it is once the moves are broken into pieces.

TS: Any advice for TeachStreet?

DE: The artist community doesn’t want to do the business side, nor are they/we terribly computer savvy as a whole. They don’t want to do marketing or advertising. I recommend creating tools that significantly limit the amount of administrative work; they are artists not business people. If the site works and gets folks new students, they’ll be loyal.

TS: Anything else you’d like to add?

The only limits you have are the ones you place on yourself! And, “Can’t” lives on “Won’t Street.”

TS: And “Can” lives on “TeachStreet“. We hear ya Daniel! We’re working hard to create a site that’s usable for real live humans. We think of it as our job to make your job easier. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Smart-y) is the motto that we live by. We’ll trust you to keep us honest if we’re not living up to expectations though.

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Daniel Etcheto currently teaches breakdancing classes at Kirkland Dance Studio on Tuesdays from 6-7pm, and at Cascade Elite Gymnastics on Wednesdays from 7:30-9pm. He also does private lessons ($40/hour) for folks living in and around the Seattle area. His website is www.breakdancingninja.com.

Or, you can also check out his TeachStreet profile here. Get out there and start breaking!

NOTE: This post previously included several roles we were hiring for. However, we found some superstars and we’re now all staffed up!

That said, if you’d like to convince us that we’d be making an an enormous mistake by not adding you to the team, sending your cover letter and resume to info@teachstreet.com will be more than sufficient. You can also jump to the head of the class if you find a personal introduction to our CEO (Dave Schappell) via his LinkedIn page!

You’ve all heard about the legend of Amazon door desks, right? The idea is that startups that haven’t yet made a profit shouldn’t waste their money on things that don’t matter to customers. Thus, Amazon pioneered the use of “Door Desks” — that is, using a door, 4 wooden legs, and a few metal brackets to create a functional and solid desk.

We share the belief that frugality is a great thing, especially since we’re investing our own money, and that of our families, in making TeachStreet a reality! Plus, we’re always up for learning something new.

So, we thought we’d share what it really takes to construct a Door Desk — we headed to our neighborhood Lowe’s and picked up the necessary materials:

• Doors - ~$20
• 4×4 Legs, which we sawed down to size - $10
• Brackets, per desk - ~$15
• Screws, per desk - ~5

TOTAL COST = ~$50 per desk, not counting the blood, sweat and tears that went into construcation, and the cost of the U-Haul rental.

I’m not sure if it was worth it, when you consider that you can pop onto Craigslist and pick up a fairly inexpensive collapsible table, but maybe we should just think of it as a team-building exercise!

And, not only is it useful, but that’s one handsome desk!

Below is a video of our newest employee, and some door desk leg cutting!

Noonhat and TeachStreet are two peas in a pod!

Gnomedex and Ignite Seattle presenter Brian Dorsey (Founder of NoonHat) today told us about his vision to make the world a better place by getting people together over lunch — the idea, while simple, is so grand — to connect us with people outside of our normal social, work, and hobby circles. The way it works is that you go to Noonhat, pick the area where you’d like to meet someone for lunch (maybe the 5 block area around where you work), and the day you’d like to do so. It then sends you an email that morning with a list of other people who have the same goal. You then set up a time and place to meet, chat for an hour (about anything and everything!), and then go your separate ways.

The idea is it’s easy nowadays to filter down to match on particular interests. Brian wants to help all of us open up a bit and have good conversations with a wide variety of people. Now, that’s an idea that TeachStreet can get excited about!

We wandered over to Ignite Seattle on Wednesday evening for a flurry (12+) of five-minute presentations — interesting talks ranging from ‘How to play Werewolf‘ to ‘Introduction to VC Term Sheets‘ (loved this talk!). Some things I love about Ignite events:

• the audience is so supportive of speakers, especially for those that are suffering from a bit of stage fright — it’s a great reminder that we’re all growing and learning, and that we love to root for those taking chances
• the fact that many of the presentations have nothing to do with technology (the presentation on ‘Hacking Chocolate / How to Make Truffles’ was especially tasty!)

I’m biased, but my favorite learning event of the night came from Master of 500 Hats, Dave McClure (full disclosure — Dave’s a TeachStreet Board Member and investor — he and I met via shared microfinance interests and involvement)
His talk was titled “Product Marketing Metrics for Pirates: AARRR!!! (Startup Metrics for Internet Marketing & Product Management)”

It was a fantastic 5 minutes — none of the material was new, but it was a great reminder about what all marketers and business need to keep their eyes on:

• Acquisition
• Activation
• Retention
• Referral
• Revenue

In a nutshell, establish your key metrics for each of these, and then spend 80% of your time on existing feature optimization and 20% on new feature development — this is the inverse of what most product folks, and CEOs tend to do — focus is measure, weblab, optimize, rinse, lather and repeat.
If you’d like to enjoy the presentation, I recommend catching Dave live at a conference sometime soon (subscribe to his blog… he’s got a few coming up… ) — or, check out his Product Marketing Metrics for Pirates presentation.

Hi there. Welcome to TeachStreet. Like the Big Dig in Boston, we’re under construction. Unlike the Big Dig, our financial coffers aren’t unlimited. So, expect to see some neighborhood improvements in the next few months.

Without fully pulling back the curtains, we’ll share this — Our goal is to make it easy to find great teachers to help you learn new things. We think that no matter what you’re interested in learning, or how old you are, you should be able to find someone who can meet you in a convenient location, teach you something new, and answer your questions.

And, we think that teachers should be able to do what they’re great at (teaching, tutoring, and coaching) and leave the technology stuff to folks like us. We admit it, we don’t get out in the sun too much; but, we’re whiz-bang with computers, search engine optimization, social networking, and stuff like that.

If that sound interesting, check back from time to time. Or, subscribe to our blog posts (hint… you can do that by email using the form on the top right of the blog’s right-hand column, or you can subscribe to our RSS Feed).

Also, if this sparks any ideas, please leave us a comment, or drop us a line.