Category Archives: Tech

Real Entrepreneurs Get it Done

Consider this post the TL;DR of this great Inc article by Leigh Buchanan. The article itself picks insights from a University of Virginia study by Saras Sarasvathy of 45 serial entrepreneurs.

There are two extremes of successful business people illustrated by the study:

“Sarasvathy likes to compare expert entrepreneurs to Iron Chefs: at their best when presented with an assortment of motley ingredients and challenged to whip up whatever dish expediency and imagination suggest. Corporate leaders, by contrast, decide they are going to make Swedish meatballs. They then proceed to shop, measure, mix, and cook Swedish meatballs in the most efficient, cost-effective manner possible.”

This illustrates the difference between successful entrepreneurs (think scrappy startups) and successful business people (think MBAs). Going with the flow VS sticking to a plan.

Entrepreneurs prefer lean start ups:

“Rather than meticulously segment customers according to potential return, they itch to get to market as quickly and cheaply as possible, a principle Sarasvathy calls affordable loss.”

As long as they iterate fast and bootstrap, the cost of failure is time lost. Even then, valuable lessons are learned.

Your first customers are much more valuable than investors:

“Sarasvathy says expert entrepreneurs have learned the hard way that ‘having even one real customer on board with you is better than knowing in a hands-off way 10 things about a thousand customers.'”

This makes sense when you think about it. A customer is someone who has a demand for your product. Investors can help you scale or network, but they can’t prove the market as well as a legitimate customer does.

Entrepreneurs don’t worry about competition since they don’t see themselves competing directly:

“Entrepreneurs fret less about competitors, Sarasvathy explains, because they see themselves not in the thick of a market but on the fringe of one, or as creating a new market entirely.”

As this relates to online startups, don’t worry about the existing competition since your product won’t be the same. Ask any entrepreneur and they will tell you why their product/service is different and will revolutionize the space.

The whole article is a great read as it takes advantage of many successful entrepreneurs. Sites like Mixergy profile one person at a time, whereas this article draws upon business leaders in aggregate.

iPad 3 Coverage

The tech industry and the press that covers it never ceases to amaze. The pace at which news breaks is breathtaking, and then immediately forgotten for the next big thing.

John Gruber singlehandedly set off the iPad 3 launching with a “September release schedule” rumor. This is amazing because the 2nd generation iPad has not been confirmed by Apple. Make no mistake, the 2nd gen iPad coming in 2011 is as sure as the sun rising tomorrow. As Gruber writes, Apple has set itself up for a predictable June iPhone and September iPod refresh. This makes sense as the iPod can capture the holiday season. According to Gruber, it’s worth it for Apple to cut the 2nd gen iPad lifecycle short so they can use the iPad to headline annual September announcements.

I would imagine Apple isn’t pleased about iPad 2 in March and iPad 3 in September rumors. For those following the tech industry, the original iPad has already grown long in the tooth. The 1st gen iPad is a do-not-buy since the iPad 2 is coming out any month now. With 2011 iPad 3 rumors, if there’s any credibility to it (besides pure hearsay at the moment), consumers would be wise to avoid the iPad 2 and wait for the iPad 3. This helps depress current iPad sales while allowing the competition (RIM’s PlayBook, HP’s TouchPad, Motorola’s Xoom, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab) to gain market share.

If it were any other company besides Apple, debating the next, next iteration of a product would not be front page news. This rumormongering is great for pageviews, as there is nothing better for pageviews than unsubstantiated claims. On the iPad 3, Gruber disclaims that “[he’s] really guessing” and not “being coy and actually releasing information.”

Nowadays, Apple makes the news as much for things it has not done as the things it has done. Before the iPhone and the iPad came out, they were perennial Apple keynote bait. Again, great for pageviews and filler blog posts. Apple has so much influence in the industry that its presence is everywhere even when it tries not to be. Looking at this year’s CES, tablets were out in full force (a year after the iPad came out and the competition took the tablet form factor seriously). Heck, the Verizon iPhone confirmations by mainstream media (wsj, nytimes, bloomberg, etc) dominated the end of CES coverage.

The tech press is ruthless in its turnover. Yesterday, burning oil platforms was big news. Today, it’s the iPad 3 and HP’s webOS. Tomorrow, it doesn’t even matter what it is, because it will be old news the second it is posted online. Unless of course it is something Apple has not announced. Then it will never go away.

Reader Link Returns

Whoohoo! This is a good thing.

Gmail screenshot

Three Gmail things to note (from top left, clockwise):

  1. The Favicon Google Labs option is smart design.
  2. The Google Reader link is back! This deserves more exclamation marks.
  3. I’ve had the BETA tag on since it came out in Google Labs.

Regarding #2, people may say RSS is dead, but RSS is still an amazing, useful technology.

Pandora’s Dated Browser UI and Poor Monetization

As an iPhone user, I’ve been using Pandora for a couple years now. The mobile user interface (UI) works well.

Pandora iPhone UI

In this iPhone screenshot, we can see that the Kanye West station is currently playing. We can easily change stations by scrolling up/down and selecting a station. Adding or removing a station is intuitive. This is a solid, popular mobile application that makes great use of the environment.

My question is how come the desktop browser implementation is so poor? Perhaps they want you to use Pandora One? I don’t hit 40 hours a month and don’t need to pay for ad-subsidized radio.

Pandora browser UI

The current implementation works, but that’s like saying the DMV works. Don’t get me wrong, Pandora is a great service. If they spent time improving their free browser application, they could significantly improve the usability and monetization.

Pandora browser UI with Ad

Their current model is to frame the audio player with rotating ads, which is a perfectly fine business model. What is not acceptable is how little of the screen is used. It’s one thing to have a simple application with simple controls. It’s another to have a simple application with poor controls.

The audio player takes up a ballpark of 600 x 300 (w x h) pixels. It’s debatable whether your site should have a minimum width of 800 or 1024 pixels. It’s inefficient to only use 600 x 300 for your audio player and force your users to scroll up and down within the tiny box of radio stations.

I wanted to make the point that Pandora should allow you to flag songs into a wishlist for easy purchase later. Apparently this exists as their bookmark feature. After reading the FAQ, I’m unable to access my bookmarks or my profile. This is because Google Chrome blocks new windows by default. In this case, I’m siding with Chrome, because there is no reason that Pandora has to open a new window/tab so I can view my bookmarks. How about using some of that screen real estate, outside of the 600 x 300, to display page elements. Crazy right?

Pandora is a great, free service that works. They could improve their monetization by explaining bookmarks and improving their UI. Their browser conversion rate for song purchases would be significantly higher with a better browser UI.

An Exercise in Sharing

This post is more thinking out loud (what I like to do on this blog). Free association with services and sharing.

Snoop Dogg on Instagram

Many sites serve to provide information (such as Wikipedia). Other sites share info (such as Fmylife). What I want to focus on are services that share info in a defined social group. Meaning that you can cultivate lists of friends and share with them. These social sites may enable you to share publicly. In fact, they may be incentivized to make everything public (à la Facebook).

Here are some services I came up with in no particular order:

Service Sharing
Instagram Photos
Twitter Text/Links
Ping (from Apple) Music
Foursquare Location
Group Me Txt
Buzz (from Google) RSS, etc.
Yelp Reviews
Foodspotting Food Photos
Facebook User Updates
Blippy Purchases
Scribd Documents

Clearly there are services I’ve missed.

For any unfilled areas, there exists a startup opportunity. Instagram is a newcomer that has gained significant traction, so anything can be done given proper execution.

Is there a search engine that shares all your searches on purpose? What about an Instagram for short video?

Recommended Blogs Dec 2010

I subscribe to several blogs on Google Reader. I want to take a moment to highlight some blogs that I read.

Honorable Mention

Not exactly a blog, but Hacker News is great for startup coverage. It’s not Reddit, and it’s more helpful than TC. I’m not a fan of their RSS feed since I like reading the articles and then deciding if I want to read the comments.

Google Hotpot

Just came across Hotpot.

Google Hotpot

The UI is very simple to use once you get into it. You simply search for a location and then rate/review. The list of locations has already been pre-populated by Google Map’s places.

This site wants to be social, but nobody I know has accepted my Hotpot invite yet. This includes a Googler who I assume is too busy swimming in money.

Early Adoption

One gripe I have upon my first visit, Hotpot was stuck on a page requiring me to update my Google profile username before it would let me review places. While I can see why you’d need a public username, it was a speed bump holding me back from instantly using the site.

(via HN)

Installing Rails 3 on Windows 7

This post is to document, how I got Ruby on Rails 3 up and running. Each time I have had to install this, (due to my non-technical background) it has been an arduous process. Note that I am reading the free online Rails book as my rails tutorial and I’m using generic Windows 7.

  1. Install Ruby 1.8.7

    I downloaded the .exe file for version 1.8.7-p302.

    
    After googling for a few seconds, I still can’t figure out the difference between: 1.8.7-p302, 1.8.7-p299, and 1.8.7-p249. No matter, moving along now.

    Run the installer that you downloaded by double clicking on the file.
    I opted to check both of these boxes during the installer:

    When the installation finishes, check the Command Line to verify that Ruby is installed. To get to the Command Line, press the Windows Key, type “cmd” and press Enter.

    Type “ruby -v” and you should get the box below. Ruby is installed.

  2. Install RubyGems 1.3.7

    Download the .zip file for version 1.3.7.

    Extract the .zip file and place the the folder “rubygems-1.3.7”  in your Ruby directory. For me, the Ruby directory would be C:/Ruby187/

    Open up the command line and navigate to your “rubygems-1.3.7” folder. To change directory, type in “cd” followed by the location. In my screenshot, I typed in “cd C:/ruby187/rubygems-1.3.7/” since the location of my “setup.rb” file was in C:/ruby187/rubygems-1.3.7/

    Type “ruby setup.rb” to install RubyGems

  3. Install Rails

    In the Command Line, type “gem install rails –version 3.0.1”

    When the installation finishes, check the Command Line to verify that Rails  is installed.
    Type “rails -v” and you should get the box below. Rails is installed.

    Congratulations, you’re all RoR’d ups in this place.

  4. Install Git (Optional Step)

    Grab the latest version of Git. I went with v1.7.3.2. The installer was pretty painless and just involved clicking through the options.

In retrospect, installing Ruby on Rails 3 was not so bad. While I did spend a few hours googling, installing, and documenting the process – the good news is that the process itself is not so bad if you know what files to grab, what to click, and what exactly to type.

Paul Graham’s Upwind

As a new reader of HN, I was poking around PG’s site and this blurb really stood out to me:

I don’t think people consciously realize this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are downwind. The market price for that kind of work is higher because it gives you fewer options for the future. A job that lets you work on exciting new stuff will tend to pay less, because part of the compensation is in the form of the new skills you’ll learn.

PG’s essays are usually good, insightful reads, but this blurb just jumped out at me.

His concept of Upwind vs Downwind is about maximizing your potential. If you’re upwind, you have many possible paths forward (since you haven’t specialized yourself into a niche). While you’re downwind, you don’t have as many doors open to you, but you should be making the big bucks.

I find myself in an “other” category, since I don’t consider myself in a high potential upwind or highly compensated downwind position. I’m downwind yet I’m making peanuts. My solution to this is to gradually get upwind by expanding my skills (reading about UXD and RoR) over time.