The Post Money Value

If You're Bored

So, coding problem got you bummed out?  VC snoring during your presentation? Another Excel circular reference impossible to find?  Do you feel like you need some excitement in your life and/or you want an overflowing email inbox, blog comments, etc?

No problem.

Tre Merrit, Dad Merrit, and Grandpa Merrit have come to your rescue.  You see, little five year old Tre shot and killed a 440 pound bear.  Grandpa lined up the shot with a whistle to the bear, Dad had tears of joy streaming down his face, and Tre squeezed off the shot. The picture is that happy family giving the bear a big ol, well, big ol bear hug. Sorry.

I ask you, is this a lay up or what.. Just post "congrats Tre" or "shoot the parents" on your blog or the header of your email and link/forward this story.  Everybody will cough up an opinion, call you names for whichever side of this you come down on and generally, you will get enough attention, hate/love email, etc, to make you long for a nice quiet evening having to re-build your laptop from scratch while answering inane VC questions like, will Microsoft buy your Linux app and add it to Windows?

When it comes to controversy, after abortion, nothing beats guns and kids.

 

Now back to my day job.

Friction Free Habits

Fred Wilson is going short on concert tickets.  First, Lead Zepplin and now Neil Young tickets bite the dust.

His blog was the process. Nothing fancy, nobody gets a cut, just put it out there and see who wants them.  Totally a reverse trust thing.  Fred is a public (by blog standards) figure so the odds are zero that you will get ripped off by him. He wants Paypal only so the odds HE will get ripped off are also effectively zero.

What he didn't do was use Ebay, try out that new Mark Cuban thing on Facebook, Amazon auctions (are they still active) or any other means, just put em out on the blog and first come first served. Done.  He could have done Ebay and posted the Ebay link in the blog postings but nope, write the entry and be done with it.

I point this out to you, kind start up people, as you are putting together that plan where you tell the VC suits why people are going to a) flock to your site/service and b) pay for it.  If there is an existing habit/behaviour you have to change, you need to plan for it.

People's habits are very hard to break.  Friction Free is even harder.

Reading the tea leaves - mycarpoolstation.com

Your mandatory weekend reading is story of mycarpoolstation.com  from the co-founder Phil Chrun.  There are tons of lessons in here for you and your start up. No homework assignment, just read Phil's story, walk around the block, and read it again.

 

Like Carleen Hawn over at Found/Read, I also wish Phil and crew the best of luck.

Zuckerberg - Let's stop kicking the kids

I've been quietly watching all the bouncing up and down over Facebook and the Beacon incident.  This is, of course, a reminder about just how little anonymity there is once you make that first step of plugging your computer into the Internet.  None of these issues are new.  The credit card companies have, for years, been the center of all that is you.  Purchase information, returns, credit limits, spending habits, etc, etc.   Tivo knows a ton about your TV habits and by watching what you skip, etc, can infer things about your lifestyle and interests.  Google probably knows more about you then any entity out there.

We have bookends when it comes to these issues.  Jeremy Wright, the CEO of b5, deleted his Facebook account because he thinks the whole thing is creepy. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, believes that the Beacon information is an extension of the news feed that people check a zillion times a day. 

The core phreaking out issue was around implementation. Was in opt in or opt out or double secret probation, etc.  That is a solvable problem, oops, tweak the plan, etc.

The larger issue and concern for me is the piling on from Bloggers and questionable Political Action Groups when it comes to pounding on Mark Zukerberg.  I turn fifty in 22 days so I can clearly say  Mark is a kid. He is going to make lots of mistakes and he will continue to learn and grow.  Focusing in on him and how he personally handed it, dissecting his blog posts, etc, is just silly.  Many of the blog posts, especially from the "A" list types, have that twinge of arrogance and smugness which is normally seen when the business of business turns into the blood sport of watching somebody fail.

We need to use care in beating up Zuckerberg and Facebook in general because we want these folks to push the limits of finding new ideas and trying to make sense out of all the data flowing everywhere.  Try it and get some reactions, adjust, find the happy center, rinse and repeat. That's what Facebook should be doing and all the users and give feedback about the business.  If they go off sides, it will get corrected, it always does.  If they do really bad things, people vote with the mouse clicks. Just ask MySpace or AOL's GeoCities. People vote and have no problem moving.

On the privacy world, I've been clear with the companies I have an interest in.  Use care. If you get somebody's email address simply ask permission to have a conversation with them.  A shocking number of people will say yes.  Then be relevant, respect the customer's time and focus on the intention(s) of the customer.  People want to be in control of their own data and information. Respect that and people will listen and, hopefully, respond positively.

Permission marketing is not a fad, it works.

Piling on and proving you can write great prose to dump on a 24 year old kid isn't particularly helpful.

When in Doubt - Real Life Wins

I love smart people. I love dedicated people.  I really love smart, dedicated people who are all over a problem and trying to make an amazing business.  What worries me is that sometimes, these folks don't get out much.

New company pitches me this new web site.  Lots of hard work, looks good, fun stuff to buy. Got it.  Has gift certificates, cool.

In fact, some of this stuff is really cool so I'm going to get a one for my niece and one for my nephew.  Live.

I do the first one and use dad's email address.  Get ready to order up the second one and no can do.  Huh?

Founder: You can't send two certificates to the same email address for the same amount.

Me: Why?

Founder: Well, just seems like a good security move.

Me: Really? You sell kids stuff and it's likely grandma (or the uncle) will use mom or dad's email address.  How's that gonna work?

Founder: <blank stare>

Me: You're single, aren't you? Niece? Nephews?

Founder: <blank stare>

Lesson for you: Test your product/service with the real customers, not friends, family, etc. You'll be amazed what comes out

Snow in Toronto, 80 here in LA. I look goofy with this Arctic coat on.

GPS = Get Phreakin Solutions

I believe the vast majority of mobile devices will have GPS capabilities in them over the coming months (maybe a couple of years).  Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, I know.  When a technology slides into the mainstream, there will be lots of frustrations in how devices exploit it. 

Consider this scenario:

A friend wants to meet you at a bar.  To get you there, several possibilities happen.  One, Sally sends you the full address along with instructions on how to get there. Two, she sends you the address and the Google map link which allows you to create a travel plan based on wherever you are at the moment.  Three, she just sends you the address and you drop it into Google Maps to figure out how to get there.

Enter GPS. I have a Blackberry 8800 which has GPS capabilities. I also pay for the Telenav application which, when given an address, will give you the turn by turn directions starting from where you are at.  The application works great in the US and Canada.

As you look at the above scenario and look at the devices, you can see we have a big gap.   When I land in LA, I'm supposed to be meeting some people at some place called Panera Bread in Marina Del Ray.  It's on Lincoln blvd, I'm told.  Just prior to boarding, I went online, fired up a search and got the actual street address, copy/paste into the Outlook appointment which sync' d with my Blackberry. When I land and get the rental car, I fire up the Telenav application, copy/paste from my Outlook appointment, and I'll be on my way.

Are you kidding me?  Not exactly the high watermark of efficiency.

If you look at scheduling, for the most part (don't nit pick),the meeting requests that fly out of Google or Hotmail and land inside of Outlook, generally show up as properly formatted scheduling messages that calendaring applications just take in, process, and put results on your schedule.  The V-card thing was supposed to do the same for contact managers.

We need a standard "package" that can be delivered and acted upon by my GPS applications.  When you send me an email with an address of a place, either a smart tag or some such should flag it so that when that message hits my blackberry (or any mobile device with GPS/Mapping), I can just click or tap or right mouse, whatever, and the GPS gets passed that address and I'm off.  Simple.  It requires a standard set of APIs and a willingness of the vendors to make this work.

On my Blackberry, today, when a phone number is in an email message, the device is smart enough to allow me to dial up the number.  There are menu features for "Map it" and "Driving Directions" when you have an address in the location field of you appointment.  As I've pulled the battery out of my Blackberry to reset it on the three times I've tested this, I'd say there are bugs in this attempt at a solution.

In any event, there is an opportunity to get a common language/format, etc, that should work for everybody and allow these GPS devices to become super useful.

Since Al Gore already invented the Internet and Dave Winer did his part by inventing RSS, who will step up and fix all of this?

Opportunity knocks.

Kindle: As the Airlines Try to Keep Up

You've all been on plane trips and know the drill:

"Please turn off and stow all portable electronic devices including Game Boys, cell phones and Blackberries."

Then the flight attendants walk the aisles yelling at crackberry addicts (like me) to shut the devices off.  Well, Kindle fans (and presumably Sony Reader fans), rejoice.  I've been on 6 Air Canada flights since I've gotten my Kindle and nary a peep from the flight attendants.  They see text, see I'm reading, and, well, nobody is telling me to turn it off.

As I type this, I'm on a flight to LA. I mentioned this phenomenon to seat mate who had this observation:

"It looks all plastic and cheesy so they probably don't think it is an electronic device."

Ouch.

Non-Competes and My View

Bijan Sabet has a post up about getting rid of Non-Competes and Fred Wilson suggested that other VCs chime in with their thoughts. His thoughts are here.

If you are just spending dollars for something you don't intend to enforce, well, don't waste the money. I think that is something everyone will agree on.

I would not give up non-competes.  To be even clearer, if the founders of the company pushed back hard/refused, I'd probably question the deal.

The key points for me:

Tightly defined.  Mark Evans had a non-compete in his b5 agreement and when he moved over to PlanetEye, there was no issue even though he is blogging and working with community at PlanetEye.  If Mark had left to run a blogging network, nope.  The key is very very tight language that narrowly defines the specific circumstances under which there is a competitive or imminent harm issue.  Don't let the lawyers go crazy here.

Tight confidentiality.  The big issue is confidentiality, trade secrets, etc.  What I care about is somebody leaving with customer lists, marketing plans, etc, and using that information as a direct attack on a company.  The NDA, Trade Secrets, super hush hush stuff also should be defined and the impact of disclosure should be made clear to everybody.

Pay to bench.  You can not simply deny somebody a livelihood. If I want a 6 month or 12 month non-compete, there needs to be compensation to the individual as part of the enforcement.  If you bench somebody, they have to be paid.

Applies to key people.  A star developer is super important as is a start sales person. Both should be covered, both should sign and both should get paid if you decide to let them go.

So, no, I don't believe you should do away with them, sorry Bijan.  I do believe they should be narrow, tightly defined, and properly implemented.

WebFives/Vizrea - Winner

In reading Alec Saunder's blog, I saw that WebFives/Vizrea got sold to Microsoft and the CEO, Mike Toutonghi's, will head back to Microsoft.  There is an article by Matthew Miller here which also talks about it.

Some observations for you.

First. Alec used two, what I would call, 'hot phrases.'  In the title he said the site is 'shutting down' and in the first sentence he used the word "pity."

Alec's implication is that Mike failed. He didn't.  Like any big company with lots of talent and a nice amount of Not Invented Here mentality, Microsoft doesn't do charity work and pass out checks to crappy developers for crappy code/patents, etc.  If Mike's stuff sucked, he would have shut it down and simply gotten a job back with Microsoft (he's very good) or some other company.

Second. Mike's a winner.  He now an experienced start up guy with all the trials, ups and downs that comes with these gigs.  MSFT is getting an already senior guy who now gets to add some street creed to his reputation and that, frankly, is gold for a big companies trying to stay ahead, relevant, etc, etc.

Third. If Don Dodge or any of the Microsoft guys come along and want to buy your code/company, score!  Seriously, it is not a "pity" to get bought out by any company, pretty much regardless of the reasons.  I know, there are some exceptions, this is high level.

It's technical true that as part of the sale the site will shut down, however, Alec's blog post does not do Mike's hard work justice.