The Post Money Value

Double Coupons = Double Opportunities

I promised more on this whole coupon thing, here goes. (long, sorry)

After stopping off at the Game Empire (www.gameempirepasadena.com) where I picked up a collectors edition of Pass the Pigs (thanks, Richard), I took a trip across the street to VONS, a grocery chain (owned by Safeway) here in California.

Double coupons are back according to the big sign plastered on the side of the building.  I wandered the aisles looking for people with piles of coupons.  Then, I watched the checkout lanes seeing who was using coupons.  There were some people in the lines with coupons and one nice lady with the coupon holders in the top of the grocery carts. 

For those of you that don't remember, your grandmother used to have a little file box crammed with coupons. She would wander up and down the aisles, grabbing items, pulling out the right coupons and doing all of this every week on the grocery run.  When I was first starting out, I took the coupon lesson from my grandparents and my mom seriously to heart.  We were rabid coupon clippers.  I could get you a bag of groceries for almost nothing by using double coupons, store specials, and generally counting on the manual system to goof things up in my favor.

Coupons are a big big deal in the U.S.  The Sunday paper is coupon Mecca along with the mid-week food supplement/insert.  Even today, with scanners, bar codes, sync'd UPC codes, etc, it is a huge business.  The conversion rates are dismal as an statistic of all coupons printed vs. redeemed yet the business remains and coupons are an essential component of the grocery business.

There is the obvious application for all of this that I'm sure you've thought of: Coupon Management Software.

Back when I could code without creating a hard drive failure (about the time electricity was invented), I coded up a Coupon Management System for my own use and, eventually, shareware.  Long long time ago.  You entered in all your coupons and then could enter a grocery list which got matched to the coupons.  I managed to link all of this to the local Stop & Shop where we lived at the time and could line the shopping list up so it matched the flow of the store.  I added other store layouts and soon was inputting specials from the newspaper to match coupons.   Yeah, as I said, hard core coupon person. 

I suffered from the occasional "Daddy, are we having chicken pot pies again?" but we saved tons of money.  I knew this was a big deal for families with small incomes. My software was designed to save you money and manage your shopping list. (Geek alert: Paradox, thanks for asking).

I thought I was going to be crowned Shareware king of the world. I was asking 10 bucks. I need 10 people a month and my food budget was taken care of.  Plus, we could expand away from the chicken pot pies. Not exactly.

Here's the problem: People won't take the time to do all of this nonsense, even tho the savings can be huge.

Along comes the Internet and you get web sites like dealcatcher.  And you get coupon trains. No, really.

From the site:

Coupon trains are a great way to trade all those coupons you can't use for coupons that you need. The person who starts the train gathers up $100 or more worth of coupons that she isn't going to use, and posts on the forum that she is starting a new train, and needs riders. The members who want to join send her a PM with their name, address, and any "wish list" they might have.
The leader types up a sheet with all that info, and mails it to the first person on the list. That person takes out whatever coupons she wants, plus any that have expired or are about to, and replaces them with new ones of equal value. Then she mails it to the next person on list. It continues on until it circles back to the leader, and starts over again.
I have a couple going now that I've had running for months. Some trains are better than others. A good train has members that follow some simple rules:
1. Don't put in a bunch of coupons nearing their expiration date.
2. Don't load the train with duplicates.
3. Pay attention to other people wish lists and try to put in coupons that they can use.
4. Be quick about getting the train in the mail to the next person.

Weird but you can read this stuff and realize, no brainer, put up your pile of coupons, stores you shop, stuff you are looking for, have others do it and then, presto, start sharing coupons to that everybody starts to maximize the savings as a combined group.  Local coupon clubs.  A local coffee shop acts as an exchange point for coupons, etc.

Same problem. Nobody will do this dance. Or more to the point, nobody has created a system that does two important things:

1. Value for effort.  Not enough people will dance for a $2 savings on a $40 grocery bill. 5% just isn't cutting it.  50%? 75%? Different story. For those kinds of savings you get the kids to input all the stuff and make it a kids game.

2. Big Revenue Stream. I believe that if you like Pepsi, you will grab the coupon for 50 cents off.  But I super, really, totally believe, Coke will pay good/serious money to target that Pepsi drinker with a  super larger coupon to try to convert that customer over to Coke.  So far, nobody has broken the code on how to get this done in such a way that protects privacy and generates big big results.

Enter Facebook.  Will coupon clippers migrate/be on Facebook?  I don't know.  Could a Facebook coupon app, coupon community, etc work? I don't know.

The larger point of this blog post is this:

Before the Internet and lots of always on/always connected people, Ebay was impossible. No chance of mass adoption trying to do Ebay on Compuserve.  So, with the Internet and "web 2.0" and "Social media" and all the rest of the buzz words; What's possible?  What can you do now that we couldn't do before.  Walk around and 're-think' it all. All those ahead of their time projects may have found the right time.

The coupon story is just to get you thinking.

And Rachel/Michelle: sorry about all the chicken pot pies. We did have beef ones from time to time.

From the Trenches - When to React

Last week, I put up a blog posting about the b5 advisory board.  Among some of the responses/blog posts, was one by "Pro Blogger News", generally authored by Ed Sutherland.

As a news story, Ed wrote up the facts and then added this:

"So far, no word on why the advisory board was established or their role in B5 Media’s future. The upcoming CES will host the first meeting of the advisory board."

When I read this, the first thing I said to myself was, "Self, Ed has gotta be an old school reporter, just has to be."  And, sure enough, on Ed's about us page we learn that he is "a 20-year reporter and long-time technology journalist."  Totally.

I point this out because one of the fallouts of all the blogging, mass friction free communications, is an endless supply of stuff to react to.  From ex-employees tweaking their former companies, to endless reporters, bloggers, et al offering up opinions on everything your start up does, says, doesn't say, etc.

Ed's post is benign. He reported the facts and added a comment that he was missing information that he would have liked to have offered up to his own readers.  Many, many times, you are going to see these types of blog posts with respect to your start up.  This is just a random example that caused me to think about writing this up.

Here's my council on what you should do when the blogging world rolls into your world. And, trust me, they will.

1. Does it matter?

Here's a big insight you might not realize about blogging and the readers of blogs. Blogs, with the constant flood of information pouring out everywhere, means things becomes old news way faster today, than they did yesterday.  So always ask yourself if what you see matters to the big picture and how fast will it blow over.  For example, Andrew Stess took over as CEO for MusicIP (a portfolio company) from Matt Dunn.  Matt had done a great job and was helping me get a full time, on scene person, into the company so he could go off and chase his own company that he has been working on. All above board.  Naturally, and as you'd expect, there were a few "turmoil" blog entries about the company.  In my view, didn't mater. Customers didn't care, users didn't care and the company pressed on.  Old news in 2 hours and on to the next thing.  Contrast that to PlanetEye and the commentary which created false impressions about both the company and my VC partner, Growthworks.  In that case, I made the judgement call that it mattered. It mattered because material facts weren't right and casual readers draw the wrong conclusions about some really great people.

2. What will Google think?

Robert Scoble, a few years back, made a fairly impassioned case that said you have to get into the conversation now (see point one) to matter.  He also believed that if it isn't on that first page of Google results, it never gets seen, nobody cares.  Strictly speaking on this point, he's generally right if you look to human behavior. 6 or 60 pages of results, I'm not looking at page 5.  So, if you were to Google b5 media, Ed's post is not likely to be on the first page (I'm writing this on the train, can't test this) but if you did a search on b5 advisory board, it's probably there.  So, before you press the send key, ask yourself what search results will bring it up, how will people find it, where will it rank, etc.

3. Endless ink = Endless debate.

I've been spending a lot of time recently looking at comments on blog posts and how to better capture, engage, and nurture that dialog because, in my view, there hasn't been a really great solution to taking those comments and letting me, the blog reader, factor them into what I am interested.  Simply scrolling/reading them, nope.  Subscribing to them, nope, too disjointed, etc, etc.  During this study/review, there are hundreds, if not thousands of blog posts that turn into raving, endless flame wars because somebody took the bait.  Don't take the bait.  If it matters, if it is material, if it needs to be said, respond politely with the facts as you see it and be done with it.  Yes, the blogging world is a wild place with ample opportunity to endlessly debate stuff.  My council to you and your start up is save your energy/time.  Instead of running around the blog world correcting everything and nit-picking what somebody wrote about you/your start up, devote your blog energy and writing of prose to the more mundane and boring subjects of Abortion, Stem Cell Research, Racial Profiling, and various religious "conversations" happening around the world. Better still, just go build a great business and ignore the noise.

Again, Ed's post was merely a catalyst for me to write these thoughts down.  His post, as I said, was benign.  It was an interesting observation that I thought, in early posts about getting your business going, I answered. 

So, thanks for asking Ed, here's some additional information that I hope answers your questions.

In my opinion, one of the best things you can do when you are starting and growing a business is surround yourself with smart people who can add value to your management efforts and the business objectives.  An advisory board is a great vehicle to do this.  Typically, my council in setting them up, consists of these general guidelines.

Paid.  Make sure you compensate people for their time. You can ask for some specifics deliverables (be on calls, make a meeting, etc) and compensation places value on the individual's time/efforts.  If you can't afford cash, stock grants (or options) can work.  The b5 advisory board members are paid.

Objectives. Clearly spell out the objectives so the individual can determine if they have the time and can make the commitment.  b5's advisory board was asked to commit to two face to face meetings a year, some guest blog posts, and to be available for a couple of hours a month for telephonic matters, email, etc.

Fit.  If you know em, great. If you don't, go have a meal, etc, with them before you sign em up. Don't ask, get em and then, oops, no fit.  Happens all the time. Take your time to build your advisory board the right way.

Advisory boards act as a sounding board, feedback mechanism, idea catalyst, and a non-governance group that can help the company as she grows and evolves.  I think there are essential ingredient of any growing company.

Thanks, Ed!

The b5 Advisory Board

As I've said to many start ups, one of the more important things you can do to build up the knowledge pool around you is to get yourself a super smart advisory board.

Jeremy Wright, our rocking right along CEO, of b5 media has pulled together an amazing board of advisors that I'm delighted to be telling you about.

Stowe Boyd

Stowe is an amazing guy who 'gets it' when it comes to social media and all of this Web 2.0 stuff.  A great blogger, visionary, and terrific guy; Stowe brings all of this insight and knowledge to the b5 team.

Renee Blodgett

As the founder, cook, and chief bottle washer of Blodgett communications, Renee has forgotten what lots of people know in totality about communications, PR and the convergence of technology into all of it.  I've spoken to many of her clients and the consistent message is always stated: Professional, brilliant and a delight to work with. We are honored to get a small slice of time for b5.

Hugh Macleod

Hugh is a world class cartoonist and the perfect out of the box, curmudgeon that forces people to think and act differently as all this blogging social stuff continues to evolve.  As a good friend, I'm especially pleased that we will get to share notes on b5 together.

Doc Searls

Doc and I have known each other for over 12 years.  Anytime I have some brilliant idea, pretty much Doc was involved and when I screw something up, its because I didn't call the guy.  Doc, in addition to being on the board of PlanetEye, Doc has signed on to assist the b5 crew as they continue to grow.

Robert Scoble

Two words describe my friend Robert: Passion and Intensity.  Taping into those veins are really like striking gold.  Robert gets the core, is smart and always kicks it up a notch.  Robert is a super person and will add much to the b5 team.

All of the folks mentioned here are, in a word, amazing.  All of us on the board and the team are delighted to have our advisory board in place and ready to rock!

Welcome aboard, folks, fasten your seat belts.

So Close and Yet

This seems obvious: You are listening to a radio station and you like a song. You want it.  The obvious solutions that pop into your mind might be:

A. Text *97.7 while the song is playing, the radio stations commerce provider gets the text and the song is emailed/dropped in your music locker.

B. Press the magic "I want it" button on that new car radio and the broadband connection dials up the provider and gets the song delivered to you.

C. Press the OnStar button and say "that song" which gets the song currently playing on your radio delivered right to you.

Right. Not exactly.

So, here is an example of pretty close but, major oops.

If you like 'smooth jazz', there is a great radio station in LA. 94.7, The Wave.  A really well done station.  The web site is here.  They have an option so you can listen to the station live. They use streamtheworld.com to power the streaming radio. Canadian company, thanks for asking.

In addition, 94.7 has a e-store where you can buy the songs they play.  That store is powered by TuneGenie which is really powered by Puretracks.  You can see the store here.

The store basically has the play lists of what the station is playing and for .99 each, you can buy the tracks as WMA files.  All fine and dandy except for one glaring brain fart: Nothing is linked together and the UI for all of this is a disaster. 

Here is one UI Turd:

As you click around the store, load up some songs into the shopping cart. Then type in your name. Then put in an address from any country except the US. Yeah, you can't buy anything.  But, for sure, they make you go through a bunch of hoops before telling you about it.  The TuneGenie guys clearly blew this despite trying to be major cute with all the flash stuff in the application. It's annoying but thanks for getting the province thing right.

But the bigger issue?  None of this solves that instant gratification problem.  The exact moment somebody is grooving on a song and wanting it is the exact moment you should be providing an instant, friction free way for the customer to get the song, not 25 clicks.

Memo to Streamtheworld: new revenue source; aisle 3.  Add the buy it now button to your streaming app, take a cut, and off you go. Or buy the TuneGenie guys, get some UI help, and make one app.

Memo to the rest of you: There are tons and tons of opportunities to pull pieces together, get it right, and make some coin.

[Side note on Internet Radio] I have to give 94.7 credit for really doing a great job of exploiting the fact there are people listening from around the globe. On the morning show, Pat Prescott make references to listener comments, requests, etc, from the Internet crowd.  She calls out the contest and makes a point of telling the Internet folks, come on, sign up.  I listen to the station when home in Toronto and it's a great piece of work.  Listening to LA traffic reports and the commercials about Empire Carpet being able to deliver to my house tomorrow is also good for a snicker or two.

Peter White - I have your forty bucks

I like Peter White and his music.  When I have somebody tell me they can build a 50 million dollar business and they only need 500 dollars and the business involves building then selling hardware to Computer Stores, it is nice to play some relaxing music.

In looking into several music technology companies as well as thinking about this whole music ecosystem, I tried a little experiment.

Ripping CDs is a pain in the butt, iTunes, CDBaby, etc, don't have all of the albums I wanted so, presto, I just hit the world wide web and I have the 26 or so Peter White songs I want.

But, and here's the twist, I want to pay for them.  Now, let's stipulate and agree I could drop a check in the mail to the physical address on Peter's web site.  But that wasn't the point.  That's a pain, most people would never do it, and lots of new artist probably don't get paid when people like me would do it if it was as close to friction free as possible.

RIAA

I called the RIAA :

RIAA: How may I direct your call?

me: I grabbed some music off the Internet and I'd like to pay for it.

After a ton of umm, errr, and general confusion, let's just say I think they thought it was a crank call.  So, no process there to help.  I checked the RIAA web site and I couldn't find a PayPal account to pay for songs either.

ASCAP

I called ASCAP:

I checked the contact us page and there are people who deal with claims, signing up for expos, newsletters, change of addresses, estate claims, legislation and jobs. But nobody to collect my forty dollars.  When you call into ASCAP and ask, who can I send my forty bucks to as Peter is owed the money, again, they think it is a crank call.  I tell you, folks, we have become a seriously cynical society. No PayPal account either.

Amazon.com

I called Amazon:

Just for grins I called Amazon customer service.  I said "Hey, I've got some Peter White songs. Can I just have you take my money and pass it on to Peter? Why, no, I didn't but them from you, so what, you sell music, just add my money to the pile and make sure Peter gets his money." No? Really? Not set up to handle that? Okay, well, thanks.

Agency

No, not the CIA, Jim Gosnell & Josh Humiston.  They run an agency in Beverly Hills.  Since I'm in California and heading back to the Airport for my usual RedEye flight home, I thought I'd just drop by and see if they'd take my money.  Well, on second thought, given everybody tends to conclude this is a crank and since I've seen all the Beverly Hills Cop movies, I'll skip dropping by unannounced to avoid getting arrested as some riff raff hanging out in Beverly Hills.  The rental car is a sub-compact which is already causing people to stare. What? Nobody drives a Yugo in Beverly Hills?

Management

Steve Chapman (and associates) appears to be Peter's manager.  No phone number but email.  Sent email mentioning I have money for Peter and just need an account, paypal or something to send it to.  Haven't heard back but I'm thinking my email might have had that Nigerian, I'm the son of dead motistue, etc, sound, so that's a dead end.

With the preceding tongue now removed from my cheek, I point out a big big opportunity:

I believe that most people are honest. Most people will provide compensation to those who provide value.  I believe that if there was a single, simple, friction free way for people (like moi) to pay for stuff, like songs, we'd do it.  Those that will steal will always do so, ignore them.  I missed Boston Legal this last week because I was traveling.  Thank you bit-torrent.  1 hour and presto, I was watching it.  If ABC had provided it to me, I'd have watch the commercials because it is easier than using the fast forward button on the media player. They didn't so somebody was kind enough to record it, edit out the commercials and I watched it.  Could ABC get one buck in the tip jar having this available? In a second.

The person who creates this friction-free way to do this will find happy customers, send money to artists, and generally have a great business.

At least that's my theory.    Note to Peter: Will you take Canadian? It's worth more these days?

You have to at least appreciate the irony

Not that I would ever use such a web site, but I'm told the mega pirate site www.tv-links.co.uk was shut down with a bunch of arrests included for effect. There is a story here which talks about it.

 

If you head over to the site, you get a 'site down' message from the OpenDNS Guide folks.

The page has, in part, this catchy observation:

Bummer...

The Wheels on the Bus

I've been doing the public transportation thing when going to/from my office in Toronto.  I live north of the city which is served by a commuter train service (Go Transit). In my town, there is bus service which can get me from the train station to my house, within a block.  Not back, when you think about it. They charge 50 cents for the bus over to the train and the train is 200 bucks for a month of all you can ride on the network.

I do this for a number of reasons, hating traffic being one of them.  The others are more relevant to my VC gig.  It is an excellent way to 'gut check' the many theories, business ideas, etc, with real people living real lives.   Here are some examples of what I've been seeing/doing.

TVs on the train.

You'd think, this would be a big deal, right. Captured audience, nothing to do for an hour, perfect target. Well, not so fast.  I've seen (and turned down) a number of these captured screen things.  The ones on the bus, trains, elevators, and gas pumps have all come by our office and we've passed.   On the train one, I counted heads and 'eyeballs' to see who looked up for any portion of time. Who stared at the screens?  For sound, they have an interesting idea, use low power FM signaling.  Given that almost every MP3 player has an FM radio built into it, this seemed to be an interesting/low cost way to get the rider to tune in.  The screens, flashed, sound is on 92.5 FM often, etc.  I saw nobody tune it.  What I did see was sleeping (snoring!), gabbing with friends, and reading.  While this might be a good idea and maybe scrolling sports scores or some other information stuff will get people's attention, I'm doubtful.  The TTC - Toronto's aging subway system - has those types of flashing screens with ads, news blurbs, etc and I'm not sure how much that gets remembered.

To further sniff test this, I asked random people if they could remember any of the ads.  I also did this when I was looking at Elevator News Network.  I stood around asking people in offices, etc, if they could remember any of the ads.  In Canada, when say I'm taking a survey, people are really nice and give you an opinion.  In times of major world events, all of these things are ways to get information out.  The TVs in Airports, interestingly enough, get watched and people pay attention.  My hunch is the sound. It closely resembles sitting around watching TV.  The train thing doesn't really do that.  It is a bit of an 'unnatural act' to hop on the train, break out the FM tuner, etc.  I note that the Heathrow express train has a TV display with sounds and people do watch it.

An interesting start up lesson for you: Watch how whatever you offer impacts people's habits.  Getting somebody to change is a big deal and needs a serious value proposition.

Wifi on the train.

In my view, dead issue. The uber-geeks will have wireless broadband cards either built in to the latest laptops or a plug in PC card.  There is no value/major business in putting 802.11 on these commuter trains.  Again, you'd think this would be a big deal but in my sniff tests, I don't think people would pay for it and I further don't believe adding it would dramatically increase rider ship to cover the costs.  Here again, I walked the length of the train's 9 cars multiple times, on various hours, and counted the number of laptops in use.  Lots of Apple Laptops these days and good ol  Solitaire continues reign supreme.  Asking the survey question, would you use it, I didn't get the I'd kill for it responses that would have me jump onto an investment.  The side observation is that the road warriors were thumbing away on the blackberries always telling me that it was good enough and they didn't want to drag the laptop out, etc, etc.

An interesting start up lesson for you: Keep a close eye on technology and those working people's habits. Four years ago, text messaging was for kids flipping messages back and forth. Today, lots and lots of people on the trains were text messaging to friends, family and business folks.  This was the norm four years ago in Europe/Asia and only started taking off in North America within that timeframe as it applies to Adults.  What this means is that, today, putting up a sign in the subway or commuter train that has a text messaging call to action can work here in North America.  Four or five years ago, not so sure.

Facebook came to the Train

I've listened (overheard, snooped) on a number of conversations with the groups of people talking about last night's facebook adventures.  Given the demographic and the responses, it tells me things about usage and application opportunities that you don't get from user groups, surveys, etc.  Those very same people who talk about Facebook, give me blank stares when I ask "how many blogs to you read". Even today, this morning actually, 'what's a blog' was a response.  While I didn't panic, it tells me that for all the noise we (you the blog reader and I) live in, we are still a very very small thing that isn't man on the street stuff.  Many years ago, I knew my alma-mater Microsoft was fixing to get a can of whoop-ass from the general population when I was in a computer store and overhead a mom talking to her two kids about buying a replacement mouse. She said "No, we're not buying that, Microsoft is a mean company, we'll buy this other one."  It was in the mid-90s and it was spooky.

An interesting start up lesson for you: Walk among the people; the real people. Watch, ask, listen, ask again, listen again.  You can spot trends, solutions, validate ideas, etc, by taking the train and bus to work.  For example: In the U.S., the Sunday paper has an insert section that contains a big pile of coupons and flyers from local grocery stores. Millions of households base the shopping plans around those flyers. Who has the hamburger on sale, etc.  Nobody has successfully pulled off a comparison site that let's you put in your shopping list and simply tells you, go here, take these coupons and save this much.  Massive audience of rabid people who try to squeeze every penny out of the grocery budget. There are actually some good reasons why and I'll cover this in another post but the larger point is that in talking to people, I know this is a big deal based on hundreds of hours of research on this one.

Sorry for the post length, I'm currently at 32,000 feet heading to LA. 

I hope the larger point of getting  out of your bubble has been made.  There are tons of problems looking for solutions that can make good money.  Grab a bus ticket and check it out.

The Wheels on the Bus

I've been doing the public transportation thing when going to/from my office in Toronto.  I live north of the city which is served by a commuter train service (Go Transit). In my town, there is bus service which can get me from the train station to my house, within a block.  Not back, when you think about it. They charge 50 cents for the bus over to the train and the train is 200 bucks for a month of all you can ride on the network.

I do this for a number of reasons, hating traffic being one of them.  The others are more relevant to my VC gig.  It is an excellent way to 'gut check' the many theories, business ideas, etc, with real people living real lives.   Here are some examples of what I've been seeing/doing.

TVs on the train.

You'd think, this would be a big deal, right. Captured audience, nothing to do for an hour, perfect target. Well, not so fast.  I've seen (and turned down) a number of these captured screen things.  The ones on the bus, trains, elevators, and gas pumps have all come by our office and we've passed.   On the train one, I counted heads and 'eyeballs' to see who looked up for any portion of time. Who stared at the screens?  For sound, they have an interesting idea, use low power FM signaling.  Given that almost every MP3 player has an FM radio built into it, this seemed to be an interesting/low cost way to get the rider to tune in.  The screens, flashed, sound is on 92.5 FM often, etc.  I saw nobody tune it.  What I did see was sleeping (snoring!), gabbing with friends, and reading.  While this might be a good idea and maybe scrolling sports scores or some other information stuff will get people's attention, I'm doubtful.  The TTC - Toronto's aging subway system - has those types of flashing screens with ads, news blurbs, etc and I'm not sure how much that gets remembered.

To further sniff test this, I asked random people if they could remember any of the ads.  I also did this when I was looking at Elevator News Network.  I stood around asking people in offices, etc, if they could remember any of the ads.  In Canada, when say I'm taking a survey, people are really nice and give you an opinion.  In times of major world events, all of these things are ways to get information out.  The TVs in Airports, interestingly enough, get watched and people pay attention.  My hunch is the sound. It closely resembles sitting around watching TV.  The train thing doesn't really do that.  It is a bit of an 'unnatural act' to hop on the train, break out the FM tuner, etc.  I note that the Heathrow express train has a TV display with sounds and people do watch it.

An interesting start up lesson for you: Watch how whatever you offer impacts people's habits.  Getting somebody to change is a big deal and needs a serious value proposition.

Wifi on the train.

In my view, dead issue. The uber-geeks will have wireless broadband cards either built in to the latest laptops or a plug in PC card.  There is no value/major business in putting 802.11 on these commuter trains.  Again, you'd think this would be a big deal but in my sniff tests, I don't think people would pay for it and I further don't believe adding it would dramatically increase rider ship to cover the costs.  Here again, I walked the length of the train's 9 cars multiple times, on various hours, and counted the number of laptops in use.  Lots of Apple Laptops these days and good ol  Solitaire continues reign supreme.  Asking the survey question, would you use it, I didn't get the I'd kill for it responses that would have me jump onto an investment.  The side observation is that the road warriors were thumbing away on the blackberries always telling me that it was good enough and they didn't want to drag the laptop out, etc, etc.

An interesting start up lesson for you: Keep a close eye on technology and those working people's habits. Four years ago, text messaging was for kids flipping messages back and forth. Today, lots and lots of people on the trains were text messaging to friends, family and business folks.  This was the norm four years ago in Europe/Asia and only started taking off in North America within that timeframe as it applies to Adults.  What this means is that, today, putting up a sign in the subway or commuter train that has a text messaging call to action can work here in North America.  Four or five years ago, not so sure.

Facebook came to the Train

I've listened (overheard, snooped) on a number of conversations with the groups of people talking about last night's facebook adventures.  Given the demographic and the responses, it tells me things about usage and application opportunities that you don't get from user groups, surveys, etc.  Those very same people who talk about Facebook, give me blank stares when I ask "how many blogs to you read". Even today, this morning actually, 'what's a blog' was a response.  While I didn't panic, it tells me that for all the noise we (you the blog reader and I) live in, we are still a very very small thing that isn't man on the street stuff.  Many years ago, I knew my alma-mater Microsoft was fixing to get a can of whoop-ass from the general population when I was in a computer store and overhead a mom talking to her two kids about buying a replacement mouse. She said "No, we're not buying that, Microsoft is a mean company, we'll buy this other one."  It was in the mid-90s and it was spooky.

An interesting start up lesson for you: Walk among the people; the real people. Watch, ask, listen, ask again, listen again.  You can spot trends, solutions, validate ideas, etc, by taking the train and bus to work.  For example: In the U.S., the Sunday paper has an insert section that contains a big pile of coupons and flyers from local grocery stores. Millions of households base the shopping plans around those flyers. Who has the hamburger on sale, etc.  Nobody has successfully pulled off a comparison site that let's you put in your shopping list and simply tells you, go here, take these coupons and save this much.  Massive audience of rabid people who try to squeeze every penny out of the grocery budget. There are actually some good reasons why and I'll cover this in another post but the larger point is that in talking to people, I know this is a big deal based on hundreds of hours of research on this one.

Sorry for the post length, I'm currently at 32,000 feet heading to LA. 

I hope the larger point of getting  out of your bubble has been made.  There are tons of problems looking for solutions that can make good money.  Grab a bus ticket and check it out.

Smackdown: Arthur Frommer vs. well, you

Okay, here's a shock, Arthur Frommer thinks user reviews just suck.

"Ever heard of www.yelp.com? It confirms, to my mind, every slam I've ever directed at the recommendations or critiques in the so-called user-generated travel Web sites. In the massively popular Yelp, the overwhelming number of user comments are so juvenile and over the top that I can't imagine any mature person giving them a moment's attention."

That was from Oct 9th.

Prior to that was a Sept 27th rant about users generally sucking at the review process.

"Subsequent to the debate, I vacationed for a week in Montauk, Long Island, N.Y. I casually visited several of the leading resorts in that location, and then later looked at the discussion of Montauk and its resorts that appears on TripAdvisor.com. And the views I expressed in the earlier debate are now even more strongly held by me. To put it briefly, I found that Trip Advisor was virtually useless in providing an adequate picture of the resort situation in Montauk."

So, look beyond the conflict (he is the travel guide machine, after all) and read both articles as well as a few really well thought out responses in the comment section.

The opportunity is screaming at you.

I love my gig....

Doc Searls joins the PlanetEye Board

My partners at Growthworks and I are pleased to tell you that Doc Searls, has joined the PlanetEye board of directors.  PlanetEye, while being a play in the travel space, is a big attempt to bring to life, what Doc calls, the intention economy.  In simple terms, when you want something, ads and material from a seller become desired information.  Doc is bringing years of his experience and out of the box thinking on the world of e-commerce, travel, community, and identity to the PlanetEye team.  Him being at the board table has already resulted in a number of key breakthroughs which we believe will significantly add to the PlanetEye model.

Welcome aboard, Doc, we are delighted to have you on board.

And speaking of Email

In speaking to an MBA group recently, I had some observations/discussions on Email that may be of interest to you.

The new SPAM Free Email? Facebook.  Yep, the walled garden is back.  The fastest way to get a hold of my University entrenched daughter? Facebook.  Those that have designated me as a "friend", pop me messages inside Facebook.

Bloggers answering their email and this is a huge positive for large corporations which is probably not getting noticed. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, GM, etc, all have bloggers and in several experiments, 'random' people from these companies (and others) have been very positive. 

Like other times, I have students grab various bloggers from companies and hit em with a piece of low priority info/help type email.  In almost all cases, a good response is sent in a timely manner. Guys in my space, Fred Wilson (post email bankruptcy), Brad Feld, and Jeff Clavier, just to name three, answer email and are always helpful.  Don Dodge of MSFT gets a special hat tip as he actually answered, researched, and corrected a response.  Nice..

There are still massive pockets of brain damaged entities out there who don't actually get it.  The latest example is from a company called Data Champions out of Houston, Texas.  On my system, I have Outlook's spam stuff as well as the enterprise cloudmark.  Still, I check the spam box just in case.

Found inside the SPAM folder, a Cindy Parker from Data Champions had sent an email with "Rick, Conference call confirmation" as the subject line and the body of the message telling me how they can do amazingly effective email campaigns, discounts on lists, etc.  Of course, Cindy isn't using a Data Champions email address (using mail1.com) and, duh, it was sent, non-stop, to the spam folder.  I think rule one of being effective in the email space might be getting past the spam filters.  Yes, I know, in the end, look a blog entry, hence PR, but Data Champions and SPAM in one paragraph was probably not what they had in mind.

An Interesting Exercise - Bug mail

An interesting exercise I've been doing with start ups that I've come across is to sanity check the feedback loop(s) they have with customers (or potential customers).  bugs@, feedback@, sales@, help@, etc are all generally 'tested' by me especially when I see the we love our customers, are in touch, etc.

I normally get a couple of students to ping the various email addresses and record time to respond, bounces, the response, etc.  It's all part of trying to get a feel for the start up.

For example, I'm amazed at how many companies who are in the free business (we take advertising) either bounce sales@ or simply don't respond to requests for a rate card.

Company comes in pitches us on a portal strategy, advertising based.  Looks interesting.  I have one of the students hit the sales@ email of this portal with a simple request for an advertising rate card.

Got this answer back:

"Thanks for your interesting in advertising on [].  We price the ads based on how much money you will spend with us.  Tell us the amount you are committing to and we will tell you what we will give you.  The smaller the amount, the crummier spots, sorry, that's the game. "

Or sending in a bug report.  A student sent in a spelling error and a grammar item.

Got this answer back:

"Dude, spelling and grammar aint bugs.  If you find something of actual value, send it, else don't use this email address for nits like spelling."

I'll take a ton of heat over this because your natural response that I shouldn't be taking points off for the actions of some random employee deep in the bowels of the company.  I, of course, disagree.  These types of things tell me lots about tone, who is getting hired, what messages people think are supposed to be sending out the door.

The lesson for you and your start up?  These pro-forma things you are setting up for your company are important and can set tone both positive and negative.

Yeah, but where is your Facebook app?

I had a couple of PhD types in the office a couple of days ago pitching me on a particularly interesting set of network analytic tools.  Trying to predict bandwidth and storage usage patterns, routing options, load balancing, etc, all are really ugly problems that only, well, only a couple of super brains (aka PhDs) could really love.

About half way through the quantum physics and mathematics lesson, I tried to lighten it up a bit by asking the question that appears to be the only relevant one these days: How's this work on Facebook?

Proving that these two didn't waste all that money on education and without missing a beat:

"We have a 'My ISP sucks, does yours?' Facebook app we could deploy to show this stuff off."

I love my gig...