Motivatr

Bringing the ruckus to TV

It seems obvious that people should check in to TV shows/books/movies/etc just like they do places on Foursquare, yet so many smart people have tried in well-financed efforts (Hot Potato, Get Glue, Miso, TV.com, TV Guide and Philo) and no one’s seen an exciting level of traction.

While checking in to media makes sense to me intellectually, I’m starting to question if people will actually do it. The competition is just to tweet or FB status update about a television show. And that’s a great experience. I can’t make it though an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm without commiserating over Larry’s antics with fellow fans by following #curb.

Foursquare had a really creative answer to the location problem — Foursquare brought the ruckus to location. I don’t feel anyone’s brought the same level of original thinking to the second screen experience for TV as Foursquare did for location — most are just attempting to literally be the “Foursquare of TV”.

I wonder if there’s some entirely different way to help people communicate around TV shows and other media that we haven’t thought of yet. It’s time for the internet to bring the ruckus to TV.

Obituary: the bookcase

A well-stocked bookcase has been the most romantic sign of intellect for centuries, yet little is known about its origins. The bookcase likely got its start thousands of years ago, but only came into high demand after the invention of movable type in 1040 and the printing press in 1440.

It’s clear now with devices like the Kindle and the iPad that the bookcase is going the way of the LP. It will be a slow death, with paper enthusiasts holding on for decades. While the LP lived for less than 50 years before it started to be dwarfed by newer technologies, the book and bookcase had an extraordinary life.

The bookcase served three main purposes to us humans: to show status, store knowledge and help people express themselves.

Now that it’s possible to order any book with a few clicks of a mouse for a bargain price, a private library of books doesn’t show much status in life. The knowledge contained in dozens of bookcases can fit on a Kindle, if it’s not already searchable on the internet for free.

Yet there’s no replacement yet for the expression one can make with a bookcase. Showing off what books you read tells the world your interests, politics, philosophy and even religion. It’s acceptable for any houseguest to peruse your bookcase and even yank out a few books, while snooping around your Kindle or iPad at length would be intrusive.

To combat the risk of being too sentimental as we humans often do at sad times like these, it’s worth remembering that the bookcase as a form of self expression has always been paradoxical. Too many people left books they hadn’t read or didn’t like on their bookcase. If a book was really good, you’d have sequestered it to your bedside or insisted that a friend take it to read rather than greedily stockpiling it on your shelf. The best books didn’t last long on a bookcase. But the bookcase’s flaws are besides the point, it’s the best we had and we will miss it. 

While remembering what a good and long life the bookcase had, we can do it no higher honor than to invent its successor. Innovative purveyors of electronic books such as Amazon and Apple have not made it easy to promulgate the library of books we’ve read. If you want to get to know someone, you can view their last 20 tweets in an instant, but you might need to hack into their account to know their longterm reading habits. Moreover, borrowing an ebook out of its device is impossible. 

We won’t find a replacement for the bookcase at Ikea, but I think that the bookcase would have appreciated this irony. We’ll need to use our minds to devise a new way to showcase our intellect.

Photo credit: Writer’s Retreat by Gianni Botsford

Ben Franklin on patents

I’ve been enjoying reading Ben Franklin’s autobiography (free on my Kindle). Most of it feels like it was written today. As we all argue about software patents, it’s useful to read Franklin’s views on stove patents:

Gov’r. Thomas was so pleas’d with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin’d it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.

Call Me Ted

I just finished reading my first book on my Kindle, Ted Turner’s autobiography Call Me Ted. This is one of the best business autobiographies I’ve read. Ted’s honest in describing his triumphs and mistakes. Most strikingly, he includes stories written by ex-business partners, former employees and even ex-wives that occasionally contradict Ted’s own memories. 

As someone who was just a child during the rise of cable, it’s easy to forget that cable guys like Ted Turner were much like us internet entrepreneurs in their day. 

The constants are taking risks in “crazy” ideas that prove obvious in the long term, being audacious, staying a step ahead of changes in the market, shamelessly promoting your product and being good to your word. There are also some big differences between cable and web entrepreneurship: Ted had to put tremendous effort into financing and gaining distribution for his new ventures.

Incidentally, I’m loving the Kindle experience for two reasons. The Kindle truly puts the book in the cloud; I alternated between the Kindle device at home and Kindle for iPhone on the subway and it synced what page I was on seamlessly. It also makes it very easy to highlight parts of the book and download them as a text file. I’m stealing an idea from my friend Derek Sivers and posting my highlights for my sake and yours (all said by Ted unless prefaced otherwise):

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“Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.”

After Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid rob a railroad company one too many times, a team of experienced lawmen are commissioned to hunt them down. Butch and Sundance are cornered and outnumbered on a ledge (at least in the movie), with seemingly two bleak options: “fight or give [up]”.

Suddenly, Butch (Paul Newman) has a great idea: jump off the ledge hundreds of feet into the rapids of unknown depth. The following conversation ensues as he tries to convince his partner Sundance (Robert Redford) who seems set on the idea of shooting it out: 

Butch Cassidy: Alright. I’ll jump first. 
Sundance Kid: No. 
Butch Cassidy: Then you jump first. 
Sundance Kid: No, I said. 
Butch Cassidy: What’s the matter with you? 
Sundance Kid: I can’t swim. 
Butch Cassidy: Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you. 

And they jump.

This should be familiar conversation to any entrepreneur.

At the very start of something new, there are an endless number of questions to consider anticipating the product is a success: Will you have the capacity and scalability to keep your service up with demand? Will your product be able to make a profit and be defensible from competitors? Are you violating any patents? How will you deal with people who want to use your system to spam? Will future innovations disrupt your hypothetical business model? What’s the exit strategy to provide liquidity to investors and shareholders? Can you swim?

But none of that matters if the market doesn’t want what you’re making. You’re unlikely to drown in success because the fall will probably kill you. Think about the swim, but focus on the jump.

Email: the social network of last resort?

I have two old friends who email all their friends in one BCCed mass an update of their lives about once a month on average. One works for a large consumer packaged goods company and the other is a deployed Marine. They don’t know each other well, and I doubt they’re on or even aware of each other’s list.

The emails cover updates on their work and personal lives, including stories about their coworkers and daily battles — literal and figurative. The kind of stuff you’d tell any good friend on the phone, or maybe even a friend of a friend you met at a party. But because of their jobs, they can’t take the step many of us entrepreneurs have taken in being a little more public.

And to be fair, even those of us who blog and tweet need to hold back a lot of personal stuff and work details.

I appreciate the emails. It lets me keep up with their lives even if we go a while without a phone call or one-on-one email. And when we do talk we don’t have to catch up on all the details and can jump straight into meatier topics.

Both friends are on Facebook and one had a blog in the past. But if they distributed the updates on Facebook they’d have to be very careful about locking down the privacy, which is complicated. 

One of these friends told me email works particularly well because when she feels a friend is dropping off the map, she doesn’t have to unfriend them. She just removes them from the email list. And for all dropped friend knows, the emails stopped for everyone.

These regular mass emails to friends make a lot of sense when you think about it. It’s almost surprising that more people don’t do it. Yet I don’t do it myself.

I’m wondering if anyone else knows of people doing this, and if it’s actually a widespread human activity. If you have stories let me know.

My five minute rule for evaluating advice

A friend of mine who is starting her first company asked me for some advice over coffee on how to structure her angel round. She found an investor who said he wants to invest a significant sum, but they haven’t talked about the terms of the deal yet. The question most pressing on her mind was how to structure the deal: convertible debt or equity.

This friend has a great network. She told me she’d already asked for advice from several successful entrepreneurs and was confused because the advice was conflicting. Different advisors made impassioned arguments for each structure to her (which is no surprise since smart people disagree on this issue).

Resisting the urge to weigh in I just started asking more questions about: the company, her expectations in the fundraising process, the prior conversations with the prospective investor and how much money she thought it would take to get the business off the ground. 

It quickly became clear she didn’t really understand exactly how either device works or even how the legal process for closing a deal works. The very experienced people she talked to before me just spouted off advice (i.e. what worked for them) without asking questions or getting a basic understanding of her situation.

Instead of waxing philosophic on what an ideal angel deal is, I just explained what each structure really means and the logistics of closing a deal. It was a huge relief to her because she now understood the choice at hand, and I never told her what to do (aside from get a good startup lawyer!).

It made me think back on the precious good advice and the plentiful bad advice I’ve received since becoming an entrepreneur. 

The good advice usually came only after the advisor took the time, even if only a few minutes, to understand my situation.

The bad advice came quickly, sounded good at the time, but often turned out not to be relevant or appropriate. 

My only unconditional advice to you is not to take advice seriously if the advisor doesn’t spend at least five minutes understanding your situation first.

Some ideas need multiple headlines

I wrote a post on this blog about a week ago contrasting good and bad design, titled Kickstarting your marketing. It wasn’t a very descriptive or compelling headline, but it didn’t matter much for my blog. If you’re subscribed to my blog, you’ll probably (hopefully) give me the benefit of the doubt and read a least a few lines in to see if the post is worthwhile.

The title of every episode of Seinfeld had only one word or term in it. The reason: Seinfeld co-creator Larry David didn’t want the writers wasting time thinking up clever titles for shows.

I feel the same way about writing headlines for blog posts.

However, when syndicating out to new audiences, you need to have headlines that capture attention.

Business Insider picked up “Kickstarting your marketing” but changed the title to “Pitch The Benefits, Not The Features”. Not very exciting, but definitely descriptive and more appealing to their business audience.

I submitted the post to Hacker News with the title “Why Kickstarter’s design kicks ass (take note Diaspora)”, which caused a bit controversy in the comments but did get attention.

Philosopher entrepreneur

So that whole philosopher king thing Plato envisioned in The Republic never quite panned out, but I think us philosophers* might have found a calling in starting and running tech companies.

During breakfast this morning with fellow philosopher entrepreneur Bostjan Spetic of Zemanta, we discussed all the people with philosophy backgrounds running tech companies.

I thought I’d try to crowd source a full list by soliciting your thoughts in the comments or over Twitter.

List of philosopher entrepreneurs in alphabetical order (in progress):

• Fred Benenson, Kickstarter
• Patrick Byrne, Overstock
• Chris Dixon, Hunch
• Greg Galant, Sawhorse Media
• Damon Horowitz, Aardvark
• Andrew Kortina, Venmo
• William Lohse, Pivot Conference
• Ken Reisman, Tlists
• Amol Sarva, Peek
• Bostjan Spetic, Zemanta

I’ve also started a Twitter list of of philosopher entrepreneurs.

*It’s debatable if someone can still be a philosopher while fully engaged in a real profession. Even many of the philosophy professors I had probably wouldn’t qualify as philosophers.

Kickstarting your marketing

The big news today is that four NYU students raised over $100k for a project to challenge Facebook (fueled by geek rage about Facebook’s new privacy changes) on Kickstarter with a project called Diaspora. To me the big take away isn’t this particular project, but rather the potential for Kickstarter and group fundraising services like it.

Four years before Kickstarter launched in 2009, Fundable launched a service that does pretty much the same thing. Fundable’s now shut down and latecomer Kickstarter’s thriving. A quick look at the top couple hundred pixels of both service’s homepages offers a great case study in good and bad design. Pitching the benefits vs. pitching the features. Marketing 101 that’s so easy to forget.

Fundable’s message is “Group Pledges” (why do I want to make a pledge?) and “You pay only if everyone else wants to too” (who cares?). That’s just details of how the service works. But why should I use it?

Kickstarter just tells me it has “a new way” to fund ideas and endeavors without resorting to to cheesy marketing speak like “Get money for your ideas!”. It’s intriguing. Raising money is the most painful part of the creative process, at least for creative people, so a new way is all you need to say.

Most notably, Kickstarter makes no mention of how their “new way” works on their homepage. They could have used the same line as Fundable: ”You pay only if everyone else wants to too”. But that’s just a feature.

First you need to be seduced by an endeavor.

But Fundable makes no mention of even abstract projects to get involved in. Their search box simply says “search” (search for what?). Kickstarter’s menu (“discover projects”, “starting a project”) and large copy (“Ideas & Endeavors”) is all about the causes.

Now it’s important not to overlook all the other things that might have caused one business to succeed where another failed. If you google “Fundable” you’ll see they made a number of execution missteps. Fundable also didn’t have the advantage of launching in a time when high quality video creation is so easy and sharing is so powerful over platforms such as Twitter and, well, Facebook.

Nevertheless, it’s great to see a venture that’s executed well and in Kickstarter’s case its competency certainly extends to its design. First thing I’m going to do is review all of the design and copy that’s on our network of products and make sure we’re not bogged down in feature speak. I suggest you do the same for yours. The benefits are tremendous.

Who is this asshole?

In William Goldman’s excellent book Adventures in the Screen Trade he describes what’s going through a studio exec’s mind while making small talk at the beginning of a first meeting with a writer:

During this sizing-up time, the executive is trying to answer one question: “Who is this asshole?” He knows you’re not Mario Puzo because Puzo wouldn’t be there talking about taking twenty-five thou for an iffy project like this.

The “Who is this asshole?” question is the biggest challenge today for the real-time web. We now have thousands of pieces of content (tweets, status updates, links, etc.) coming at us every day. Do we have time to really consider their source? Even The New York Times and MSNBC haven’t quite mastered analyzing sources.

One of the biggest challenges with following other people’s Twitter lists is that you don’t know why each source was added to the list. For example, CNN put together a nice list of people and organizations worth listening to on the oil spill, but if you look at the list timeline you’ll see tweets like these:

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I’ve never heard of Venmo

I’ve always been suspicious of get-rich-quick schemes, but I’ve finally found one that really works. 

A while back I was having breakfast with my friend Andy Weissman. He asked if I’d used Venmo yet — a service that lets you send money to friends via text message (you can send money to anyone with a cell number, even if they don’t have a Venmo account). I’ve known Venmo’s founder Kortina for a while, but hadn’t yet tried Venmo. So I told Andy no, and he immediately pulled out his cell phone and sent me $5 over Venmo. A few months later I’d found out Andy’s Betaworks went ahead and invested in Venmo.

Since then, I’ve come across many other passionate adopters of Venmo and VCs interested in it as an investment down the road. They all ask me if I’ve heard of Venmo. I give them the same answer I gave Andy: No. Invariably, they say “Let me give you a demo…”

I just ran into Kortina last night and told him this story. He got a kick out of it and encouraged me to blog it. I was hesitant to do so since it’d ruin my scam, but now I figure the cost of not reading my blog will be to pay me money during an unnecessary and costly Venmo demo.

Riding the bear

It was just part of, as we used to call it, the time riding the bear. You just had to try to stay on the bear’s back and the bear would twist and turn and try to buck you and throw you, but darn, we were going to ride the bear because the bear was the biggest, the most important you just had to be with the bear, otherwise you would be under the bear in the computer industry, and IBM was the bear, and we were going to ride the back of the bear.

That underdog quote is from Steve Ballmer’s interview in the 1996 documentary Triumph of the Nerds. I was in my early teens at the time Triumph was released and I learned a lot from it since I had no connections in the computer industry. I launched my first Internet (we capitalized internet back in those days) company shortly after. That line from Ballmer always stuck with me.

You can now make a Mad Lib using Ballmer’s quote. Just replace “IBM” with “platform provider”. Maybe you’ll want to fill in Apple, Facebook or Twitter. 

In light of Twitter’s and Apple’s moves this week which place the said platform providers in further competition with some of their developers, many pundits are reminding us of how risky it is to start building a company around someone else’s platform.

They’re right — it’s very risky. Just look what happened to Microsoft (MS-DOS relied almost exclusively on IBM in the early days), Paypal (mostly a payment tool for eBay during their entrepreneurial growth phase), Google (most of their traffic came via powering Yahoo’s search for a while), Intuit (mostly reliant on Microsoft Windows while competing with Microsoft Money) and Zanga (reliant on Facebook). They thoughtfully took on tremendous risk and worked hard to mitigate the risk. All fast growing tech startups take on risk, and often a platform risk is a significant part of it.

Building on other people’s platforms is a big risk for a startup. The far more terrifying risk is that no one will use what the startup builds.