A basic truth of startups is that there are many important tasks that aren’t always fun to do. Another basic truth is that no matter what role you play in the organization, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of these. One great example is partner category mapping.

One of the really fun parts of aggregating local deals is the need to map the category trees of your partners to your own. And when I say fun, it’s about as much fun as getting your wisdom teeth out. It’s especially awesome when working with local data providers because the local classification systems are so granular. For example, there are categories for things like “Junior’s Wallets and Accessories Cases” and “Miscellaneous Sprinkler Systems.” Sometimes you can automate the process of mapping inbound data to your category structures, other times, you have to review a list of thousands of items and make judgement calls.

While this is painful, it’s important to do it correctly to ensure users have a good browse experience. Otherwise, you either end up with data in the wrong place or your ‘uncategorized’ bucket getting incredibly large.

Dave and I were talking about a complex mapping that is on the horizon and that will take a good chunk of time to do correctly. We were exploring automated ways to do it and drew a blank. At that point, I said that I was ‘happy’ to do it by hand. Dave corrected me and replied that while I was probably very willing to do it, he’d be surprised if I was happy about it. He’s right. I don’t think I’d ever choose to do this for fun, but it needs to happen and it will get done. Actually, come to think of it, I’m willing to do it and Dave is happy that I am.

Wait a second. What’s wrong with this picture?