Motivatr

Tumblr Staff: There's still time to nominate your Tumblr blog for The Shorty Awards Tumblr Blog of the Year!

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:26:56 -0500

Tumblr Staff: There's still time to nominate your Tumblr blog for The Shorty Awards Tumblr Blog of the Year!:

We’re proud to be working with Tumblr staff on this:

The Shorty Awards, honoring the top content producers on the social web, are once again presenting the 2nd annual Tumblr of the Year Shorty Award. The winner will be honored at their ceremony in March in NYC. This year the Shorty’s are also honoring the best Tumblr Brand Presence…

Billing systems matter

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:14:17 -0500

I wrote a guest post for PaidContent titled How The Magazine Industry Can Save Itself (Hint: Not iPad Apps), in which I argued magazines would be better off letting customers subscribe easily month-to-month a la Netflix rather than focus on iPad apps.

I started thinking deeply about monthly reoccurring billing models as we launched Muck Rack Pro a couple months ago, which is Sawhorse Media’s first subscription product.

It’s an extremely powerful business model and a better experience for users in most cases. While I’m certainly not the first to figure it out, I’m surprised companies from Conde Nast to Salesforce still don’t offer it. Here’s my reasons they should:

—Monthly fees appear lower than yearly fees. Even cable companies have figured this out. Time Warner Cable is offering me cable and internet for about $150/mo. Would you reconsider your cable package if they asked for $1,800 a year? You can buy a MacBook Air and iPad for that! Subscribing to The Week at $4.13/month, or even $5/month (which would more than cover the additional credit card fees), sounds pretty good.

—More people will subscribe. If people know they can cancel anytime, they’ll be more likely to subscribe. Even better, offer a 30 day money back guarantee like we do.

—You never have to ask people to renew. With monthly reoccurring billing, the default behavior is renewing. If you don’t yet appreciate the power of defaults just read AOL’s income statement.

—Selling additional products is easy. If I want an additional DVD from Netflix, I don’t have to type in my credit card again. Magazines could let customers buy their books, tickets to their event and other new product with one click.

—It will make you better. Once you’ve moved to a cancel anytime model, there’s a huge incentive to invest in your product and provide great customer service to lower your attrition rate. All they money and effort that you spent spamming your subscribers with begging letters and weird gift offers could go into figuring out what the future of magazines truly are.

Be sure to read the full post.

Sometimes example text matters

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:24:12 -0500

Sometimes example text matters

Belief

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:33:00 -0500

I’ve come across a few stories recently about the importance of belief for entrepreneurs. What struck me most about all of the stories is that belief is both an essential companion and a fickle friend to anyone on an uncharted journey.

You can’t accomplish anything without belief, yet belief won’t always be there for you. Like a fair-weather friend, belief might abandon you precisely when you need it most. So what do you do?

Ben Huh, the founder of Cheezeburger, wrote a powerful post about his bout with depression and worse titled When Death Feels Like A Good Option. He recovered by, as he put it, leaving the room:

It wasn’t for several months that death no longer became an option, but leaving that room and dealing with reality was the best antidote to a make-belief world where life just wasn’t worth it. When I was fantasizing about death as the panacea, the harshness of reality actually helped — it presented me with problems that I could actually solve… 9 years after I left that room, I would call Brad Feld to invest $30 million in my odd-ball company… For those of you who struggle with this, I’d encourage you to keep walking out that door everyday.

Spencer Fry just posted Startups: Stress and Depression advocating having a cofounder as a way to share the burden:

I use to think that after having co-founded two successful startups I wouldn’t need a co-founder for my next one. I was wrong. You can be the most seasoned operator, but at the end of the day you need another shoulder to lean on… Without a co-founder to share the emotional side of running the startup, then, you’re left to bottle things up inside yourself. That’s not healthy and will negatively affect you as a person, which in turn will carry over to negatively affect your startup. You’ll take your stress out on your employees, the product, your loved ones, and your friends, all because you didn’t have a co-founder who could relate 100% with you about what’s going on. Don’t do this alone.

Marten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL, gave a Stanford talk emphasizing the need to have others who believe in you, because sometimes you’ll stop believing in yourself. For Mickos that believer was overtime his mother, mentor, investors and even subordinates:

What I’ve learned only in recent years was that I reflected over the fact that thirdly you must always have somebody who believes in you. And you must have somebody who believes in you more than you do, more than you can believe in yourself, because a human being wakes up every morning asking him or her herself, am I useful? Am I needed on this planet? Am I okay, am I doing okay? And we have this nagging doubt, self doubt that follows us throughout life. And when we are in a startup business or in the entrepreneurial world, we will face challenges, challenges that seem insurmountable, really bad situations. And then you have this double whammy that just when it is bad, it also feels bad. And you’re sitting there as the entrepreneur and realizing that you don’t really trust yourself. You are not sure you can make it through the day. You’re not sure you can solve the problem or the challenge you have. So, you have those moments of self doubt just when you cannot afford them. And that’s the moment where you need somebody else who believes in you and who reminds you that you are capable and who reminds you that you are a wonderful entrepreneur

I’d love to hear more people share their stories.

"Amazingly, the reality distortion field seemed to be effective even if you were acutely aware of it"

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:36:33 -0400

“Amazingly, the reality distortion field seemed to be effective even if you were acutely aware of it”

- Andy Hertzfeld on Steve Jobs

The newspaper with only good news

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 12:04:23 -0400

Newspapers cover the planes that crash, but never the planes that land safely.

Of course the crash is news and the safe landing isn’t, but what a skewed view of the world it leaves us with. Bruce Schneier gave an interesting Ted Talk on how this way of understanding the world leads to a dangerous disconnect between perceived risks and real risks — we worry about a plane crash rather taking precautions to drive more safely on the way to the airport.

I often wondered, what if there were a newspaper with only common, mostly good news. Coverage of all the babies born rather than babies kidnapped, of planes that landed safely rather than ones that crashed, and of people who died peacefully after a full life rather than in horrible accidents. It would be an awfully boring paper and go out of business, but what a statement it would make.

Now we pretty much have that in Facebook, Twitter and the like. For the most part, people only post good news about themselves: vacations, promotions, new relationships, babies, parties, and even safe landings.

Facebook is publishing that impossible newspaper of mostly good news. And they’re making a load of money doing it.

However, this rush of good news isn’t all good news.

As Caterina Fake says, it exploits our basic human anxiety of FOMO (fear of missing out). We share our news of fun parties, successes, and vacations, rather than times of boredom, self-doubt and drudgery. How can one’s real life to live up to the imagined lives of others as informed by their Facebook timeline?

In another Ted Talk, Eli Pariser warns that we’re all in “filter bubbles” that rob us of a common front page experience. Pariser quotes a prescient though depressing observation by Mark Zuckerberg, “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.”

Five lightweight tools essential for managing contacts

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 15:48:17 -0400

I have always lived my life by making lists: lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to set up, lists of people who can make things happen. Each day I work through these lists, and that sequence of calls propels me forward.

- Richard Branson

We all know that our relationships and contacts are one of the most important assets we have, yet how much care do we really give to nurturing and keeping track of them?

I’ve tried a bunch of heavyweight tools such as Gist and Salesforce (which we use as a company), but I’ve found the lightweight tools have made a much bigger difference for me. Here are the four tools I’ve found essential:

Gmail (obviously)

This seems almost too obvious to mention, but I still come across plenty of people who aren’t using Gmail. And some of them aren’t even forced use to use something else by their company.

It’s a tremendous competitive disadvantage to not be able to search and pull up years of past correspondence in a matter of seconds. I remember from my days of using Outlooks/Exchange that it was almost impossible to search and would even take a few seconds to process sending or filing an email.

Almost more useful than Gmail itself is Gmail’s ecosystem, which all the tools below use. So if you’re at a big company, find a way to use Gmail by hook or crook.

WriteThat.Name

We all know how it goes: You connect with someone you want to build a relationship with, so you spend 5 minutes copying and pasting parts of their email signature into the right fields in your contacts manager (first name, last name, phone number, title, zip code, etc.). Enter WriteThat.Name, which automatically goes through the email signature of people who email you and adds their info to your Google Contacts. Its user interface is minimal, its graphic design is ugly, but it just works.

WriteThat.Name costs $3 per month after the first month, and if you get someone else to sign up then you get a free month. Speaking of which if you click the link in this blog post I get a free month.

Rapportive

Rapportive gives you a view of the latest social activity of anyone you’re receiving an email from or sending an email to. This information is essential. If it’s someone you don’t know well (i.e. Who is this asshole?), you can get a sense of who they are with one click access to their LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles. Even if you know the person well, it’s helpful to see their latest tweets right in Gmail to know if they’re on vacation, just back from the dentist or recently got a promotion.

Boomerang: Send Later

Boomerang solves two very different problems in one package, so I decided to cover them separately.

An entrepreneur might write emails at 3am and want them to send at 9am to appear professional, and the corporate ladder climber might write an email at 9pm and want it sent at 3am to appear a workaholic. Outlook solved this problem over a decade ago by allowing users to schedule email. It’s a feature so basic you think Google won’t even launch the Gmail beta without it, but they still haven’t added it. Boomerang gives you this simple but powerful functionality.

Boomerang: Reminders

Often times we send emails that we know we should follow up on if we don’t get a response but never do because we forget. Boomerang will return an email to your inbox if no one responds to it within a given period of time. Simple, but knowing the importance of persistence and following up could change your career and maybe your life.

The first Facebook POTUS

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:37:53 -0400

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while and Sam’s Facebook Timeline feature reminded me to finally do it.

In about a decade or so, we’ll have our first Facebook President of the United States. I’m not talking about a president like Barak Obama who’s increasingly embraced social media. I’m talking about a president who’s been using Facebook since at least college, before she ever thought she’d even enter politics.

In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton admitted to trying marijuana. I don’t think Clinton did this out of a sense of duty to tell the truth to the American people, but rather to earn the trust of his fellow baby boomers. No baby boomer would believe someone who grew up in the 60’s didn’t do it. (Or they at least couldn’t relate to someone who didn’t.) George W. Bush, Al Gore, John Kerry and Barak Obama followed suit by admitting to smoking weed.

Facebook is my generation’s marijuana.

In college we’ve all been tagged in drunken photos, posted pompous status messages and friended slackers. We probably poked people we shouldn’t have too. Pretty soon, every presidential candidate will have all of these undignified moments in their Facebook Timeline. If they don’t, we won’t trust them.

"Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly."

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:47:06 -0400

“Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.”

- Reed Hastings (via entrepreneurwisdom)

The great shakeup

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:40:49 -0400

Despite all the joking about it, I found yesterday’s earthquake quite humbling. How many New Yorkers woke up yesterday worried about the stock market or their jobs, or totally consumed with some due project, never expecting an earthquake. As innocuous as it was, who knows what could have happened had it been only a magnitude or two larger. We were helpless during the shake.

I write this not to cause fear, but as a reminder of how arrogant it is to assume we know enough about the future to even know what to worry about or be excited about.

The very fact that humans exists, if you believe in evolution, is a mathematical wonder. Yet we’re still fragile, able to survive only as long as fortune continues to smile upon us.

Today I’m going to spend a couple extra minutes enjoying the taste of my coffee and the beautiful New York City weather. I hope you do too.

There are two kinds of social networks. Those that support...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:09:00 -0400

There are two kinds of social networks. Those that support animated gifs and those that don’t.

Supporting animated gifs:

Censoring animated gifs:

PS: I made the gif above with Gif Shop, which I highly recommend.

"Over the past 10 years, technological advances dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a..."

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:16:23 -0400

“Over the past 10 years, technological advances dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.”

- Ben Horowitz

How Yipit removed its first key risk

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:23:47 -0400

“

Every startup has one key challenge to overcome first. Focus 100% on that challenge, hack/ignore everything else

vacanti
July 20, 2011

“

@vacanti What was @yipit’s?

gregory
July 20, 2011

“

@gregory @yipit’s first key risk was that people wouldn’t open/click on emails. We hacked/ignored every other risk

vacanti
July 20, 2011

“

@vacanti Nice. What was your most clever hack?

gregory
July 20, 2011

“

@gregory not building a crawler, just waking up at 3am to copy and paste

vacanti
July 20, 2011

“

@vacanti Love it!

gregory
July 20, 2011

PS:

“

@vacanti That’s awesome

fromedome
July 20, 2011

“

@fromedome yeah, waking up at 3am sucked.

vacanti
July 20, 2011

All the Best Daily Deals, Coupons & Discounts | Yipit

Get all the best daily deals from Groupon, LivingSocial, Tippr in just ONE email that’s filtered for the stuff you want.

"They were called nerds. But I could never have built the business without them"

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:18:28 -0400

“They were called nerds. But I could never have built the business without them”

- Mayor Bloomberg (via entrepreneurwisdom)

"Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you’re like, Oh, my God, I wish all these..."

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 15:17:07 -0400

“Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you’re like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.”

- Marc Andreessen

"Standing next to Clarence was like standing next to the baddest ass on the planet. You were proud,..."

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 14:23:00 -0400

“Standing next to Clarence was like standing next to the baddest ass on the planet. You were proud, you were strong, you were excited and laughing with what might happen, with what together, you might be able to do. You felt like no matter what the day or the night brought, nothing was going to touch you. Clarence could be fragile but he also emanated power and safety, and in some funny way we became each other’s protectors; I think perhaps I protected “C” from a world where it still wasn’t so easy to be big and black. Racism was ever present and over the years together, we saw it. Clarence’s celebrity and size did not make him immune. I think perhaps “C” protected me from a world where it wasn’t always so easy to be an insecure, weird and skinny white boy either. But, standing together we were badass, on any given night, on our turf, some of the baddest asses on the planet. We were united, we were strong, we were righteous, we were unmovable, we were funny, we were corny as hell and as serious as death itself.”

- Bruce Springsteen

Who does the Google+ dude remind you of?

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:57:57 -0400

Muck Rack's Facebook Page 1,000th Liker

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:15:07 -0400

“

Congrats to @JJMalina on being the 1,000th person to like Muck Rack on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/muckrack Someone send him a toaster.

muckrack
June 23, 2011

“

@muckrack well, you’re down to 999 again. I’m jumping on the opp. Somebody send me a toaster. #opportunity_knocks #toast_it

jjsimonCNN
June 23, 2011


	UNBELIEVABLE. @muckrack team sent me a toaster! Now I hafta be the 300th like on some page to win some bread. #toast_it http://yfrog.com/gyzufmcj
	jjsimonCNN · June 29, 2011

“

Not sure how today could possibly be better than yesterday, considering I received a toaster at my desk yesterday. cc: @muckrack

jjsimonCNN
June 30, 2011

muckrack: This is a list of the email clients people use to...

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:32:07 -0400

muckrack:

This is a list of the email clients people use to read Muck Rack Daily, our daily summary of what journalists’ are tweeting about. It’s shocking the iPhone’s at nearly 50%.

I interviewed Reid Hoffman for my podcast Venture Voice back in...

Mon, 23 May 2011 17:23:18 -0400

I interviewed Reid Hoffman for my podcast Venture Voice back in 2006. You might have been able to guess the year the interview took place by my description of his fledgeling website, LinkedIn, as “Myspace for professionals”.

The file sadly had gone missing for over a year due to a server error and bad backup procedures on my part. I put a plea out for help on the VV Facebook page, and Jason Brady of Play Entourage came to the rescue.

The interview’s back up for your listening pleasure here and on the Venture Voice interview page.

My favorite antidote as a recovering philosophy major is that Reid’s original career aspiration was to become a public intellectual. Smart pivot!