A friend asked me recently "If you got fired by Microsoft, where would you go work?". I thought for a second and then replied "Jackson Fish Market" ¹. Not surprised by the confused look I got, I went on to explain why Jackson Fish Market might someday be the next Pixar. Or at the very least, the next 37Signals.

Why am I so gung-ho about an unknown 3-person startup in Seattle which hasn't shipped anything yet? Very simple. I'm a huge fan of its founder - Hillel Cooperman.

Longhorn, Max and a PDC talk

The first time I came across Hillel Cooperman was in this Paul Thurrott interview. At that time, Hillel was the Product Unit Manager of the Shell Core team. For those among you who remember Paul Thurrott's coverage of the PDC 2003 keynote, you would remember Hillel showing off a very early version of Aero Glass. My interest was piqued because unlike most other senior Microsoft folks, Hillel wasn't talking about 'productivity' or a 'ecosystem' – he was talking about building experiences.

The next time I saw Hillel was at PDC 2005 where he demoed one of my all-time favorite Microsoft products – Max. Max was a popular prototype for several reasons. It showed off what WPF and WCF could do, it had really cool photo sharing abilities, etc. But I liked it for a completely different reason altogether. You could see that Max was different the moment you kicked off the setup. Instead of spouting the usual text about 'Installing Foo – this could take a few minutes', it would say 'This could take some time – go grab a cup of coffee'. This quirkiness extended to the error messages it would display. The text was friendly and informal, rather than saying 'Operation could not be completed'. The entire application had a warm and comforting feel to it, the same kind of feeling that Kathy Sierra keeps talking about.

Hillel also gave a very unusual talk (and very popular) at PDC 2005. It was titled 'Getting users to fall in love with your software' and was completely different from the usual technology fare that you would see at the PDC. Poking fun at bad error messages and usability mistakes, it was a fantastic talk about a topic close to my heart – software that makes an emotional connection with users. It also has to be the only PDC talk where a slide had the word 'Sex' in a big, bold font. I'm still not sure how Hillel managed to get that past the slide reviewers :-)

Jackson Fish Market

Hillel was on my 'must-meet' list when I visited Redmond last year. You could imagine my disappointment when I learnt that Hillel had left Microsoft. I soon ran into his curious little startup. Here's the 'hello world' post which explains the reasoning behind the name.

…why is it named for a fish market? (snip) … There aren't many people in my family who run their own businesses. My parents' generation has seen plenty of doctors, lawyers, and professors. My generation has much of the same, with the obligatory high tech careers thrown in. But not a lot of people who have put their heart and soul into owning and running their own business. As I contemplated entering the business world I thought back to my grandparents' generation as well as of their parents before them. These were all immigrants or children of immigrants. And almost all of them ran small businesses. A grocery. A clothing store. A furniture store. A butcher shop. And of course… a fish market.

The store sold a variety of fresh lake fish on ice for customers to buy. There were also pickled fish like herring, and smoked fish such as carp. A variety of dairy products were sold there as well. My grandfather's homemade pickles occupied a spot near the front door (I still have the recipe.). Each of these small businesses was run by family, with everyone pitching in as best they could. I wasn't born early enough to see them for myself. However, that hasn't stopped me from listening to the stories, and piecing together a detailed mental image of a small and focused tight-knit group of folks working hard together to create and deliver fresh hand-crafted products to customers with a personal touch. Products that both address a core customer need, but also make them feel emotionally satisfied, content, and… happy.

I found this quite interesting since I was pitching the same message internally – making software that makes people 'happy' (as opposed to making them feel 'productive', for example) and with a personal touch. I called it 'hand-crafted software' which was the exact same phrase Hillel uses to describe what his company is doing. Hillel also seems to have a knack for attracting talented folks from Microsoft – I just saw that Jenny Lam has become the third co-founder (yes, the same Jenny Lam).

Watch out for these guys. My bet is that they'll probably become the next 37Signals or Delicious Monster. For all you know Microsoft might wind up acquiring them in the future and bring Hillel and Jenny back to the mother ship :-).

Notes:

1. If you're a recruiter, please note that this was a hypothetical question. I love my company and I have no intention of leaving anytime soon. All hail BillG :-)