« July 2007 | Main | September 2007 »
Yesterday I posted a story called “You know You’re Old When:” People submitted over one hundred suggestions—many are obsoletely hilarious. Here is an audio recording of my favorites brought to you by the HP iPaq 510 cell phone. Enjoy the weekend!
Trend Hunter is Facebook app from Trend Hunter magazine. It displays the “finds” of a community dedicated to spotting new trends and cool stuff. The app enables you to feature galleries of the latest trends or focus on your favorite category including: Technology Trends, Style & Fashion Trends, The Environment, Business & Marketing or Art & Design. You can customize the number of links and whether you want to display links, article summaries or galleries. You can download it here.
Last night a cute blonde girl bought me a drink. However, she knew me because she’s my kids’ summer camp counselor. This incident got me thinking about how you know you’re old—today is my 53rd birthday. So I decided to start a list: You know you’re old when…
A cute blonde buys you a drink, and she’s your kids’ summer camp counselor.
You have to leave the place where she bought you the drink because the music is too loud for your tinnitus.
You leave by jumping in your filthy minivan.
You stop on the way home to buy baby-bottle liners.
You cancel your babysitter at summer camp because you’re too tired to go out at 9:00 pm.
The only CDs that you buy are from Starbucks. (My wife thought of this one.)
Please add your ideas to this list so that we may commiserate!
You know you’re old when you feel like that you should answer your Facebook birthday wishes (over 100) and then Facebook smacks you down.
My buddy Laura Fitton pointed me to a terrific explanation of visualization techniques. The article is called “Data Visualization: Modern Approaches,” and it’s in Smashing Magazine.
The techniques and uses examined are mindmaps, displaying news, displaying data, displaying connections, displaying websites, articles & resources, and tools & services. This picture is an example from Time that the article used.
In ten years of watching entrepreneurs pitch their companies, I can recall maybe two companies using any of these techniques. Every other one either (a) used no graphics at all; (b) used a 2 x 2 matrix and guess what: they’re always in the upper right corner; or (c) used a matrix and guess what: they’re always the column with the most checked-off stuff.
If you like Smashing’s explanation of visualization techniques, you’ll probably also enjoy “45 Excellent Blog Designs.”
God help me, I’m going to start Twittering. Dave Winer and Laura Fitton convinced me to take the leap, so it’s their fault. This all started because I spoke at Gnomdex. Here’s my Twitter info. Now you can see how boring my life is. :-)
After reading my posting about how to get a job on Craigslist, my buddy Danny Kay sent me a link to illustrate what employers do wrong. I was amazed by the example that he sent me from the New York edition of Craigslist:
We seek a talented, highly motivated & resourceful individual skilled/experienced in web and print design. Minimum 1-2 years professional experience and examples of work done are mandatory for all applicants.
Requirements:
Degree in Graphic/Web Design with minimum 2 years of Web/Graphic design experience with both print materials and web site design/development.
Exceptional portfolio that showcases solid conceptual, color, layout graphic design skills as well as fully functional web projects.
Proficiency in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe ImageReady and Macromedia Dreamweaver.
Solid experience with hand-coding HTML, CSS and basic JavaScript knowledge required.
Experience in InDesign and/or QuarkXPress and good understanding of requirements, specifications and concept of the print production design.
Experience with Macromedia Flash and action scripting is a plus.
Must be a highly self-motivated team player, able to work independently and with direction as part of a team.
Work on PC based platform.
Supervisory experience.
Compensation: Commensurate with experience.
First, let’s analyze the compensation. I bet it pays $15-20/hour based on the line, “Compensation: Commensurate with experience.” This is recruit-speak for “we think we can hire someone great for peanuts, and we’d rather hire cheap, lousy people than expensive, good ones and risk screwing up our out-of-touch pay ranges.”
Second, let’s examine the desired qualifications. I don’t think that even The Russell Brown of Adobe would qualify for this position:
Proficiency with Photoshop, Illustrator, ImageReady, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, InDesign “and/or” QuarkExpress, and Flash. Only the kids of John Warnock who were suckled at the breast of Adobe could know all these applications.
“Exceptional portfolio,” experience with graphic and web design plus familiarity with print production. Sounds like someone who’s been in the business for twenty years to me. But how hard could it be to master these skills?
“Supervisory experience”—so in one to two years the successful candidate has learned those applications and processes as well as supervised people? In my first two years at Apple, all I did was carry Mike Boich's (the first Macintosh software evangelist) bags.
Oh I almost forgot, the candidate should have gained all this expertise while using the PC-version of applications. What self-respecting candidate is going to admit that? What candidate is going to want to do this kind of work on a PC?
This job posting is fundamentally flawed. It casts far too big a net, so it will intimidate or exasperate the little fish (ie, people starting their careers), and the big fish (ie, people who truly qualified) either aren’t reading Craigslist or will smell a rat: “Compensation: Commensurate with experience.”
This is my advice:
Use the right tool. Craigslist might not be the best place for senior positions and for senior candidates at established companies. Better places are Creativeheads.net, Creativecircle, and I.D. However, it is great for contract work and entry- and mid-level positions.
Write honest job descriptions for honest job titles. Don’t try to entice candidates with promises of greater responsibilities or opportunities than is true. And don’t delude yourself: If the cat drags in over-qualified candidate, are you really going to expand the job?
Match the job and the background requirements. If you have an entry-level job, then write entry-level specs. If you have a mid- or upper-level job, then write more demanding specs such as five or more years of experience. Unfortunately, most help-wanted ads contain unrealistic demands for the position.
Sell. Almost every help-wanted ad focuses on buying, not selling—that is, the qualifications that candidates have to meet and the fences that they have to jump over. However, in the war for talent, this is ass backwards. This ad, for example, should mention things like “award-winning shop,” “work alongside famous designers,” “interesting projects for Disney, Apple, and Audi.”
Give young people a break. In the past of great employees are managers who gave them a break. Maybe they didn’t have the ideal educational or work experience—for example, an ex-jewelry schlepper. What’s more important than what’s on screen is what’s in the mind, soul, and attitude of candidates.
By the way, if you’re a wunderkind and want to apply for this job, go for it. $20/hour can add up.
Pollection enables Facebook users to create online polls. People can then deploy these polls in their Facebook profile, MySpace page, blog, or website. They can embed images, videos, and sounds into the poll. They also control access to the poll: private, friends only, and public. One intended use is to create gossip, celebrity, and rumor type polls, but Pollection is equally applicable to market-research tasks.
I recently ran a help-wanted ad on Craigslist. The position was a photo-editor job for a site that I dare not mention because some people will complain that I promote it too often. Here’s what I learned a lot from this experience—much of which you may apply to a job search if you respond to a Craigslist ad:
Apply fast. I posted the job at 11:19 pm on Thursday, August 2nd. The first response came in thirty-one minutes later. Fifteen more responses came in the next day. Therefore, 43% of the responses came in the first day or so. If you wait a few days, employers who advertise on Craigslist may already fill the job. Indeed, looking for a job is a job, so don’t take a few days off (for example, the weekend) from your search.
Write a cover email that addresses the position. Two people simply attached their resume to their response. I pushed back on one and suggested that he write a cover email. He copied and pasted my job description to, I guess, let me know which job he was applying for. Needless to say, both candidates didn’t get serious consideration. I don’t know about other employers, but the thing I can’t stand the most is laziness. Although, to be fair, the ad was for a position at the worst website in the world.
Rise to the occasion. The vast majority of the candidates were highly-qualified professional designers, photographers, and photo editors. My response to the first thirty-one applicants (who were diligent enough to write a cover email) involved a test to find pictures that illustrated five sample stories. Twenty-six (94%) of the twenty-nine immediately completed the test. Now you know that there are highly-qualified diligent candidates in the Craigslist talent pool.
Apply well. You should jump right on an opportunity because if the position is filled there’s usually nothing you can do. However, the three people that we hired did apply on the fifth and seventh days after the listing. The reason is that they simply picked the pictures that we liked best—which is to say either our tastes were similar or they figured out what we liked, both of which work for me.
Apply really well. The person who was the most obvious “right candidate” did something that no one else did: He not only chose good pictures, but he also resized them to approximately 140 x 105 pixels. This is the size of the pictures that we use on our site. Thus, he figured out what kind of pictures we liked and what size we used.
Several other candidates said something to effect of, “These aren’t the right size for your site, but I figured you just wanted to check my taste, not my ability to resize photos.” Actually, we wanted to see how much initiative candidates had too. Most companies would love to find the one candidate that stands head and shoulders above the others, so be that person by applying really well. Ask yourself this simple question: “If I were hiring for this position, what would impress me?”
Don’t be stupid. I mentioned in the ad that Macintosh expertise was highly desirable—specificially with a handful of apps. One person wrote back, “Quite frankly, I’ve never even heard of FlySketch, Skitch or MarsEdit (or Ecto or Qumana).” Honesty, is not the best policy: either don’t mention your lack of qualifications or spend ten minutes to go figure out what these applications do. My conclusion from the candidate’s response was that he was lazy, and laziness wasn’t in the job description.
By the way, the ad cost $75, and it yielded approximately thirty-seven good candidates—therefore, at a cost of a mere $2 per candidate. I’d heard from other companies about the extraordinary effectiveness of Craigslist, but now I “know” this is true. And if you’re a candidate for a job on Craigslist, now you “know” what you’re up against, so apply fast, write a good cover email, apply well, apply really well, and don’t flaunt your lack of qualifications.
LicketyShip provides courier-service shipping. Its prices are comparable to, and often less than, companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHL. Basically, LicketyShip acts as a aggregator of multiple couriers: it’s researched couriers’ reputations and prices for you.
When you want to ship something, go to LicketyShip’s site to enter what you need delivered, where, and when, and it helps you select the best courier. Then you place an order with a credit card. You can even track your delivery just like with the big boys/girls.
Maybe you don’t have anything to ship right now, but from a purely marketing perspective, you should check out the company’s testimonial page featuring K&L Wine Merchants and the Los Angeles Times. Compare this to the usual bull shiitake that companies write to “prove” their worth. And you have to admit that the name is clever: “Lickety” for speed, “Ship” for what it does.
This is last week’s top ten truemors—sponsored by the HP iPaq 510 cell phone.
Today’s featured product is Photobucket Postcards. This Facebook app enables you to send postcards to Facebook friends. The postcard can include a photo, image, slideshow, mashup, or video plus a greeting. You can pick content from your own Photobucket album or from Photobucket’s online library of images and videos. Click here to learn more.
Facebook reduced the number of people that a developer can invite to add an application. The limit went from infinity to ten; thus, it is much harder to achieve critical mass. However, if a developer can evangelize people to invite ten friends each, the outlook is brighter. The question is, “How do you get people to do this?”
As the saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat (with all due respect to PETA). Here’s my offer: if you install Truemors for Facebook, invite ten friends to install it, and post a few truemors, I will send you an autographed copy of The Art of the Start. You might wonder how I’ll know if you installed Truemors and invited ten people. The answer is that I am going to trust you.
There’s one limitation. I will only ship books to addresses in the U. S. because I don’t have the bandwidth to figure out shipping and customs to every country in the world. Note: I said I will only ship to U. S. addresses. For example, if you live in Kazakhstan and have a friend or relative (“Borat”) in the U. S. who can get the book to you, go for it.
Please proceed by installing Truemors. After you’ve invited ten friends and posted a few truemors, send your name and address to this email address. This offer is limited to the first two hundred people.
Let’s see if I get disabled by Facebook for doing this. :-)
My buddy Ray Schraff from Hyland Software pointed me to this site containing a comprehensive list of management theories. It is an “MBA in a page,” and I mean that in a pejorative way.
Here are some examples from the page: GE/McKinsey matrix, Kaizen philosophy, Capital Asset Pricing Model, Business Process Reengineering, and Scenario Planning.
You can use the page as a test: Anyone who knows all these theories is someone you shouldn’t hire.
This posting has generated a lot of anger. Many MBAs unsubscribed from my feed because of it (perhaps I can now raise my CPM—I’ll check with Federate Media). That said, today my feed count is the highest it’s ever been. Tomorrow I am going to post a Truemors promotion, so I expect even more people will unsubscribe.
This is last week’s top ten truemors—sponsored by the HP iPaq 510 cell phone.
By the way, I’m speaking on Tuesday night at a BayCHI event at PARC in Palo Alto. It’s free, so register here.
I am going to feature a Facebook app every Friday—“Facebook Friday.” (An evangelist never rests.) Today’s app is Celeb Heads from Fafarazzi.com.
Celeb Heads enables people to send their friends free celebrity heads (also known as “fafa heads”). These heads mark a mood, attitude, event, trait, or feature of a friend. There are currently sixty-two different celeb heads with different themed messages ranging from "Hello" to "You need rehab." The celebs used so far go from Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears to Jake Gyllenhaal and David Beckham.
You pick a celeb head, type in a personal message, and select your privacy option. The recipient will receive an email notification with a link to view their celeb head. The celeb heads will also be featured on his or her profile in the Celeb Heads profile box. Click here to install it. You may think this type of app (“Send celebrity heads?”) is crazy, but this is the nature of Facebook apps, so we all need to get used to it. :-)
By the way, Fafarazzi.com
The Discovery Channel Team dominated this year’s Tour de France with three riders in the top ten (Contador-1st; Leipheimer-3rd; Yaroslav Popovych-8th) and first place in the team classification. The team used Trek bikes called Madone. Honestly, the most bike riding that I do is to a park less than a mile from my house, but I recently visited Trek. It was a most facscinating place, so join me on this photographic tour.
Trek was formed in 1975, amidst an energy crisis that aided a resurgence of the bicycle market. The vision of the company arose out of a meeting between Richard Burke, a former accountant, and Bevel Hogg, the owner of a Midwestern chain of bicycle stores.
“Schwinn dominated the specialty retail market at the time, which is where most bikes were sold,” said Burke. “But the mid-to-high end business was going to Japanese-made bicycles. We saw an opportunity to sell an American-made product in that category.” Burke convinced Roth Corporation to fund the venture with $100,000 in seed money, and Hogg provided the insight into the bicycle industry.
The duo chose to headquarter their new business in rural Waterloo, Wisconsin halfway between Burke’s suburban Milwaukee home and Hogg’s home in Madison. A humble, 7000-sq. foot barn, formerly a carpet warehouse, served as the launching pad for the company. The symbolism of the original red barn is reflected in the Trek shield logo in place today.
After a hot debate, a name was selected one evening in a bar just outside of Waterloo. Hogg suggested Kestrel, and Burke Intrepid. They settled on Trek, a word derived from Hogg’s native South Africa that was memorable and would later have global appeal. In 1976, Trek Bicycles was incorporated.
Lance Armstrong History Wall 1999-2005 in the atrium. One bike represents each year of the seven Tour de France victories. Each bike was used by Lance for a portion of each year’s race. The Tour was founded as a publicity event for the newspaper L’Auto (predecessor to the present l’Équipe). The “yellow” jersey color was because the L’Auto was printed on yellow paper.
Lance Armstrong’s 1999 stock OCLV 5200. When Lance joined the US Postal Service Cycling Team in 1997, this was the “stock” bike he was provided. This was a bit of a surprise to Lance, as pro riders were typically given a custom crafted bicycle. He ended up pleased with this machine. In fact he said “It is hard to believe this is a stock bike.”
Fact: This bike was pulled directly off of the assembly line, so it very well could have ended up in a bike shop in your home town. Instead, Lance piloted it to his first ever Tour de France victory.
Since then bikes have designed and developed specifically for Lance. Notably the 2000 Trek Time Trial machine. This was the first ever Trek custom bike for Lance. The bike was created for one event, and Trek only planned to produce four frames. It replaced another manufacturer’s titanium time trial bike that Lance used in 1999 that was painted with Trek logos and colors. After the 2000 Tour, the Trek Time Trial machine was in such demand, the frameset was made available to anyone at retail for $5000.
Lance’s 5900 Super Light used in 2000 on the Hautacam stage. This was Trek’s first use of OCLV 110 gsm carbon fiber frame material. Lighter and stiffer carbon fiber produces a more efficient racing machine. Since 1999, Trek has found ways to remove around a pound from the overall weight of the bikes each year. Considering the frame comprises only 20% of the total bike weight, this is an big achievement for Trek Development team.
With any type of professional racing, there are strict rules in place for the equipment. Bicycles used in pro racing cannot weigh less than 14.9 pounds. Over the years, Trek’s bike designs have become so light, that weight has been added at the start of race to satisfy the judges.
Lance’s 2001 Team Time Trial machine. Part of his”Tour de France Defense System.” This is the same frame design as the 2000 Time Trial machine. Aerodynamics are the major feature of this bicycle, with airplane wing shaped cross sections. Virtual and physical wind tunnel testing were used to design and develop this machine. The design saved twenty five seconds in a fifty kilometer race.
Lance’s 2003 5900 Super SL. This was one of at least five different bicycles used to defend the yellow jersey. Circumstances forced Lance to abandon the Madone and choose this prototype 5900SL. This was the first use of 110 gsm OCLV material. During Stage 15, Lance was temporarily delayed en route to the summit of Luz Ardiden when a spectator’s bag caught the handle bars. This sent Lance on to the ground in front of Iban Mayo, who crashed directly into Lance’s bike.
Lance’s 2003 5900: broken drive side chain stay through the “N” in the Shimano logo. After the chaos of the crash, Lance remounted his bike and continued on to win one of the most difficult climbs of the race. Unknown to anyone at that point, the impact was severe enough to crack the drive side chain stay. However, the Trek OCLV frame still was able to withstand the grueling punishment of the day. After the tour, Lance was delivered a new frame in keeping with Trek’s lifetime warranty.
Lance’s 2004 Madone SL (Plata Negra) affectionately nicknamed “Plata Negra” (Black Silver) by team mechanic Juanito Lujan. The Madone series of bike debuted in 2003 as a ground up rewrite of the dominant Trek 5000 series of bicycles. The 2003 Madone was designed and developed to blend the aerodynamics of the Time Trial machine with the super light weight of the 5900.
A blend of OCLV 55 gsm material and boron make this the lightest and stiffest Trek to date. The only other application for 55 gsm carbon fiber was in satellites orbiting the earth. The Madone series has undergone another blank sheet redesign for 2008 modelyear. It is currently the daily driver for the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team.
Lance’s 2005 TTx Time Trial Machine As other projects were being completed for Lance’s attempt at an unprecedented 7th Tour de France victory, a special request came into Trek’s Advanced Concept Group: What can be done with the Time Trial machine?
Could it be faster? Lighter? Stiffer? Could it be ready in time for the 2005 tour? Lance wanted to make a statement about winning in the time trial event. In only four weeks, the Advanced Concept Group designed and developed the TTx. The machine that would help Lance claim victory in the 2005 Tour.
Cables on the TTx are internally routed to add to the aerodynamic system. The rear brake cable exit port was symmetrically designed, with the intention that a rearward facing television camera could be mounted inside the frame. This could have provided Discovery Channel with very compelling content, especially during the Team Time Trial event. The idea was shelved due to existing high definition cameras being too heavy and the time crunch to simply deliver the bike before the Tour.
Greg LeMond’s racing bike from one of his three Tour victories during the 1980s. He was the first American to ever win the Tour de France. Today Trek designs, manufactures and distributes bicycles for the LeMond brand. Greg was arguably the first of the “technologists” of the 1980s. He experimented in the wind tunnel and with radical frames of his own design.
This the Trek product development area. Underneath one roof sits a collection of designers, engineers, strategists, and other bicycle industry wizards. They tackle over 150 projects annually—from trikes to Tour winners!
This is the “commuter garage” for employee bikes. There is a two-bike per employee limit.
Within the Bike Garage, there is a bike wash so employees can keep the equipment clean and ready to go. There is a 160-acre private “testing grounds” across the street from HQ. In addition to Moab or Whistler, this is where “Off-Road” bicycles go for testing. There is quite a bit of testing done at lunch. It can take up to two hours or more sometimes. After all, testing is important.
Bike tune ups are free for Trek employees!
Out in the factory raw OCLV bikes ready for paint. OCLV is Trek’s proprietary and patented carbon fiber construction method. This method yields some of the lightest frames in the world—weighing less that a one liter bottle of water! All Trek OCLV branded product is hand made in Waterloo, WI USA.
Let’s hope there is no tornado between 10 and 10:30 (or anyone in the shower).
This area is where all aluminum processes are completed. In the background is the age oven, used to “age” aluminum frames. This process returns the frame to T6 hardness after the welding process “softens” the material. It is instrumental in providing the desired ride quality of an aluminum bicycle.
This the OCLV carbon fiber finishing area. After each OCLV frame is hand built, they receive meticulous individual care. These finishing stations are where workers prepare the frames prior to being painted.
I am holding a 2008 TTx Equinox frame prior to it going into the paint shop. It’s not that I’m strong—the frame weighs “nothing.” This frame may be the one that Discovery Channel Pro cyclist George Hincappie used in the time trial for the Tour de France.
This is the paint line. Note the “track” close to the ceiling. Like the automotive industry, a conveyor system is used. Each frame is individually painted by a highly trained frame artist.
“Project One” is Trek’s online custom paint offering. By using the Project One configurator at the Trek website and working with a local dealer, a customer can specify a bicycle to their exact paint scheme. There are over one million combinations of colors and schemes. Right down to having your own name on the frame!
These frames are ready and waiting after painting. These are frames ready to be packaged and sent to the assembly plant.
Packed and ready to move on to the assembly plant. The bikes are built to a 80-90% complete state and from there shipped to over 5,000 world wide Trek Dealers.
On the truck and on to the assembly plant. Trek sells over 1,000,000 bikes annually across a world wide distribution network.
Trek staff heads out for the evening commute. Employees make good use of the commuter program. Each day someone rides, walks, skates or car pools to work, that employee receives credit for Trek products or cash for the cafeteria. This is an incentive to keep in the latest gear and promote general wellness. Between the commute to and from work and the “Lunch Time Ride” my friend at Trek used to average 50+ miles a day during the summers.
Michael Sagan was my host at Trek. On his last day at Trek, Lance Armstrong came by for the launch of the 2008 Madone. This picture shows Michael and Lance riding together (Michael is in blue; Lance in white to the left of Michael). Michael asked Lance what he thought of the new bike, and Lance said, “It’s awesome! I don’t know how you could do any better. I love it.”
I introduced you to Matt May in January. He’s the author of The Elegant Solution
Shortcutting. Leaping to solutions in an instinctive way or intuitive way—i.e. the “blink” method of problem-solving—seldom leads to an elegant solution because deeper, hidden causes don’t get addressed. Watch CSI and House: first they collect the evidence, then diagnose, and then solve. It’s never the guy or the disease you initially suspect.
Blindspots. Blindspots are the umbrella term for assumptions, biases, and mindsets that we cannot see through or around. Our brain does a lot of “filling in” for us because it’s a pattern maker and recognizer. Ths cn b hrd fr ppl t cmprhnd, hwvr, mst cn ndrstntd ths sntnc wth lttl prblm. But clear thinking involves more than simply filling in spaces in words.
Not Invented Here (N.I.H.). NIH means that you refuse to consider solutions that are from external sources. It means “If we didn’t come up with it, it won’t work. It is of no use.” Next time you’re waiting for an elevator, watch someone walk up and hit the button even though it’s already lit. We often don’t trust others’ solutions!
Satisficing. Ever wonder why some solutions lack inspiration, imagination, and originality? It’s because by nature we satisfice—satisfy plus suffice. We glom on to what’s easy and stop looking for the optimal solution. What’s the least number of “sticks” you need to move to make this Roman numeral equation correct? XI + I = X If you answered anything but zero, you satisficed. Look at it upside down.
Downgrading. Downgrading is the close cousin of satisficing but with a twist: a formal revision of the goal or situation. Reason? No one likes to fail. Result? We fall short of the killer app, so we pick the one that allows us to declare victory. Next time you’re playing hockey or football, try winning the game by hitting the outside of the post or taking the ball down to the one-yard line.
Complicating. Why do we overthink, complicate, and add cost? And why do we ALL do it so intuitively, naturally, and (here’s the killer) consistently? Answer: we’re hardwired that way. Our brains are designed to drive hoarding, storing, accumulating, and collecting-type behavior. We are by nature “do more/add on” types. Don’t believe it? Watch the customers at Costco or Sam’s Club buy thirty-six rolls of toilet paper.
Stifling. We do naturally do the “Yeah, but..” dance in which we stifle, dismiss, and second-guess ideas. It’s ideacide, pure and simple. And it’s not just others’ ideas we stifle; we often do it to our own and kick ourselves later when someone else “steals” our great idea. Remember how Decca Records rejected the Beatles? “Guitar bands are on the way out.”
The last one is the deadliest of the sinful seven. Because it is the most destructive. It’s the hallmark of the bozos!
I came across a very interesting blog called Life Remix. Actually, the site represents a bunch of bloggers who have banded together to make “enrich people’s lives.”
Here’s an example of the type of articles you’ll find there:
Why I started keeping a daily “one-sentence journal” (ok, a not-quite daily journal).
How Does a Bestseller Happen? A Case Study in Hitting #1 on the New York Times
Do check the site out. It’s a rich vein of gold within the mountain of dirt called the blogosphere.
Here’s a video featuring editors and reporters from the Wall Street Journal, Wired, TechCrunch, Seattle Times, and Seattle Post Intelligence discussing how entrepreneurs should pitch the press. You can also read the wrap up if you’re too busy to watch the video. Also, here's a video featuring only Michael Arrington from November, 2006.
The short story: Create something great, throw out all the marketing bull shiitake, and explain it in thirty seconds.
This is the week's top ten truemors--sponsored by the HP iPaq 510 cell phone.
I love the concept of Facebook applications based on my limited experience with Truemors for Friends. One bummer is that people can only invite ten friends per day to try a new application—which is problem if you’re just getting on the bandwagon. To help my fellow Facebook developers, I’ve decided to help them promote their application (there is one catch: they help me promote mine too). This posting is about an application called Books.
Books enables Facebook users to manage the books that they’ve read and to learn more about books that may interest them. The product’s key features include:
Share books with friends or the entire Facebook network.
Post comments and assign star ratings.
Discover new books to read based on real-world feedback.
Books is a great way to find new books and to share your knowledge and opinions with the Facebook community. There are currently approximately 50,000 users. It is available for installation here.
Finally, if you’re a Facebook developer, here are two great posts that you should not miss:
This is a guest posting by Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, a company that enables people to buy homes online. He offers a counterpoint to my posting about how easy it is to make millions of dollars with "user-generated, long-tail, Web 2.0, social-networking, open-source content."
Last month, Guy called James Hong and Markus Frind heroes for running multi-million dollar websites like Hot or Not and Plenty of Fish in their underwear. Their stats are jaw-dropping: twelve billion page views, 380 hits per second, two hours of work a day.
Lately I've been thinking how hard, not how easy, it is to build a new company. Hard has gone out of fashion. Like college students bragging about how they barely studied, start-ups today take care to project a sense of ease. Wherever I’ve worked, we’ve secretly felt just the opposite. We’re assailed by doubts, mortified by our own shortcomings, surrounded by freaks, testy over silly details. Trying to be like James or Markus has only been counterproductive.
And now, having been through a few startups, I’m not even sure I’d want it to be that easy. Working two hours a day on my own wasn’t my goal when I came to Silicon Valley. Does anybody remember the old video of Steve Jobs launching the Mac? He had tears in his eyes. And even though Jobs is Jobs and I am nobody, I knew how he felt. I'd had the same reaction--absurdly--to portal software and more recently to a Redfin, a fledgling real estate website.
“The megalomaniac pleasure of creation,” the psychoanalyst Edmund Berger wrote, “produces a type of elation which cannot be compared with that experienced by other mortals.” Jobs wasn’t just crying from simple happiness but from all the tinkering, kvetching, nitpicking, wholesale reworking, and spasms of self-loathing that go into a beautiful product. It was all being paid back in a rush.
Like the souls in Dostoevsky who are admitted to heaven because they never thought themselves worthy of it, successful entrepreneurs can’t be convinced that any other startup has their troubles, because they constantly compare the triumphant launch parties and revisionist histories of successful companies to their own daily struggles. Just so you know you’re not alone, here’s a top-ten list of the ways a startup can feel deeply screwed up without really being that screwed up at all.
True believers go nuts at the slightest provocation. The best people at a start-up care too much. They stay up late writing Jerry Maguire memos, eavesdropping on support calls, snapping at bureaucracy, citing Joel Spolsky on Aerons, and Paul Graham on cubes. They are your heart and bones, so you have to give them what they need, which is a lot. The only way to get them on your side is to put them in charge.
Big projects attract good people. If you aren’t doing something worthwhile, you can’t get anyone worthwhile to work on it. I often think about what Ezra Pound once said of his epic poem, that "if it's a failure, it's a failure worth all the successes of its age.” We’re not writing poetry, but it matters to us that we’re trying to compete with real estate agents rather than just running their ads. You need a big mission to recruit people who care about what you’re doing.
Start-ups are freak-catchers. You have to be fundamentally unhappy with the way things are to leave Microsoft, and yet unrealistic enough to believe the world can change to join a start-up. This is a volatile combination which can result in group mood swings and a somewhat motley crew. Thus, don’t worry if your start-up seems to have more than its fair share of oddballs.
Good code takes time. One great engineer can do more than ten mediocre ones especially when starting a project. But great engineers still need time: whenever we’ve thought our talent, sprinkled with the fairy dust of some new engineering paradigm, would free us from having to schedule time for design and testing, we’ve paid for it. To make something elegant takes time, and the cult of speed sometimes works against that. "Make haste slowly."
Everybody has to re-build. The short-cuts you have to take and the problems you couldn’t anticipate when building version 1.0 of your product always mean you’ll have to rebuild some of it in version 2.0 or 3.0. Don’t get discouraged or short-sighted. Just rebuild it. This is just how things work.
Fearless leaders are often terrified. The CEO of the most promising start-up I know of recently used Hikkup to anonymously ask his Facebook friends if we thought his idea was any good. Just because you're worried doesn't mean you have a bad idea; the best ideas are often the ones that scare you the most. And for sure don't believe the after-the-fact statements from entrepreneurs about how they "knew" what to do.
It'll always be hard work. Most start-ups find an interesting problem to solve, then just keep working on it. At a recent awards ceremony, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to think of the secret to Microsoft’s success and could only come up with “hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, work.” This is an obvious cliche, but most entrepreneurs remain fixated on the Eureka! moment. If you don't believe you have any reliable competitive advantage, you're the kind of insecure person who will work your competition into the ground, so keep working.
It isn't going to get better--it already is. In the early days, start-ups focus on how great it’s going to be when they succeed; but the moment they do, they start talking about how great it was before they did. Whenever I get this way, I remember the Venerable Bede’s complaint that his eighth century contemporaries had lost the fervor of seventh century monks. Even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, people were nostalgic for...the Dark Ages. Start-ups are like medieval monasteries: always convinced that paradise is just ahead or that things only recently got worse. If you can begin to enjoy the process of building a start-up rather than the outcome, you'll be a better leader.
Truth is our only currency. At lunch last week, an engineer said the only thing he remembered from his interview was our saying the most likely outcome for Redfin--or any startup--was bankruptcy, but that he should join us anyway. It’s odd but the more we've tried to warn people about the risks, the more they seem to ignore them. And since you have to keep taking risks, you have to keep telling people about them. You don't want to be like Saddam Hussein, who never prepared his generals for invasion because he couldn’t admit he didn't have nuclear weapons.
Competition starts at $100 million. A Sequoia partner once told me that competition only starts when you hit $100 million in revenues. Maybe that number is lower now. But if you do something worthwhile, someone else will do it too. Since you can’t see what’s going on behind a competitor’s pretty website, it’s natural to assume that all the challenges we just went over only apply to your company. They don’t, so keep the faith.
Subscribe to RSS Feed
