The Post Money Value

Fonolo – Happily Proven Wrong

Shai Burger is the co-founder of a company called Fonolo. Canadian Company.  Company basically does all the press one, press two, your call is important to us stuff and rings you when there is somebody on the other end.  They present you with a visual map of the phone tree, you pick what/where/english/etc, and the computer does the rest and get you right to em.

In 2007, I said, naah, not for me but kept in touch with Shai because he is a very smart person.  Time Magazine thinks I was wrong as they picked Fonolo as one of the best/top sites for 2009.

I love being wrong in cases like this. Happily wrong because a very smart and persistent entrepreneur is getting the recognition, growth (and revenue) they have worked so hard for.

Congrats, Shai, well done, you told me so!

GigPark – Score (another) one for Canada

Noah Godfrey and Pema Hegan, founded a company called GigPark along with their wives.  GigPark was born out of a very simple idea; people would much rather get a handyman/services from people they know and trust. Mathew Ingram nicely coined the phrase ‘word of mouth online’ and wrote up something nice. 

“In many other recommendation networks, such as TripAdvisor or Epinions.com, it's difficult (if not impossible) to know whether the person who is gushing about a particular product or service is genuine or not. One of the attractive things about GigPark is that those recommendations come only from people you know or have added as friends, making them -- at least theoretically -- more reliable.”

That was written in April of this year. Yesterday, CanPages got super smart and bought the company.  You can read about the acquisition here.

I had the pleasure of meeting up with Noah and Pema during a No Harm No Foul meeting when they first got started.  It was a great conversation and I followed the company while doing the VC thing as I knew these two guys would be successful.  They are super smart.  You can read their collective history here, but this is my favorite part which I can share as they’ve documented it.

“GigPark is the brainchild of Noah Godfrey and Pema Hegan. The two founders were the Founding Publisher and Founding Editor of Dose Magazine and came up with the concept when looking for an employment lawyer to review their termination package after Dose was closed.”

Well done, guys, well done.

Quote of the Day – Hugh MacLeod

My friend, Hugh, is on quite the roll these days.  Pretty soon it will be Mr. MacLeod!  From a great article written by The Big Bend Sentinel:

“The great adventure of being alive is being engaged in what you’re doing, being who you are, instead of sleep-walking through life,” he said. “If you’re really passionate about what you do, people find you interesting.”

Amen and well said, Hugh.

The article also labels Hugh as “Alpine writer Hugh MacLeod.”  That and his book sales (25,000 to date) make him Alpine’s rock star.  Excellent or as Hugh says, Rock on.

Full article here.  Oh, “Ignore Everybody” is an amazing book, go buy it.

EYODF Part 3: Thank You Sir, May I Have Another

In my multi-part series, Eat Your Own Dog Food, I’m attempting to walk the talk and try, as best I can, to document much of this adventure with commentary aimed at the start up community. I hope it will help those of you looking to start/run your own thing.

Today’s installment is sub-titled “Your idea sucks but I’m not going to tell you because I want to be nice and polite.”

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been meeting with people from three loosely categorized groups: Users, Investors, and potential employees.  All of these people are trusted, keep things confidential, etc, etc.

Shock #1 (not): Uh, yeah it is totally personal.  I always thought this was the most important value I could provide as a VC: feedback and constructive criticism.  As I started getting this ‘friendly advice’, I did have both sides of the kneejerk reactions.  I soaked up the love and “dude that is so awesome, let me sell my kids and give you the money” feedback.  I also bristled at those ‘people’ who ‘didn’t get it.’  Yeah, it can be personal.

Advice:  Frame the discussion to get value.  To try and get more clinical, I’ve started to show people a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) chart with the threats/weakness part almost empty. I then say, you’re good, help me fill out these two sections.  I get great feedback with this introduction. Since I’ve framed the discussion a bit, the person I ask feels good about giving solid feedback and I get into intellectual mode (mostly). The net result is solid feedback with the receiver (moi in this case) being in the right frame of mind to get it.

Shock #2 (not): You really want people to speak freely.   Joe Catalfamo from SummerHill Ventures, is a good guy and exceptionally smart.  When he gives feedback, he ties it to experiences he’s had in the field directly, with portfolio companies, or both.  This is exactly what you want.  Joe will give you data points that even if you disagree with, are points you need in your bag of answers.

Advice: Ask the right question(s): This is a variation of my first advice point.  “What have you seen out there which tracks along my path” OR “You’ve invested in this space, why do you think the space is hard?”   My point is to get the feedback.  It all goes into the mix.

Keep in mind this has nothing to do with a VC saying yes or no. This is about the process of getting feedback.  I mentioned Joe, not as a VC, but a trusted guy who’s opinion I trust. 

It’s on you (and me) to create a framework/environment where this frank/open/detailed feedback can be obtained.

[Update]  A guy sitting here in the airport asked me what I do. Gave him the pitch.  Said "Son, that seems prety dumb, mobile phones are going to get back to just being phones. You kids try to make things too complicated." See, feedback... <sigh>... I can take it.

Personal Belongings to Your Shit

I was on the early (really early) flight from Toronto to Newark this morning. When we landed, the standard, please make sure you take all your personal belongings with you, commentary was blurted out to everybody.

A kid (6-8) stuffs a half eaten apple into the seat pocket in a seat a few rows in front of me. Some guys yells at mom about the kid taking it off the plane. Mom says it's trash and not a personal belonging.

Maybe if we changed the announcement "to take all yer crap off the plane" might help.

Probably not.... http://ricksegal.typepad.com

Beware of Surveys

Surveys.  We take em, we send em out, we pour over the data and make decisions based on what we think the people want.

Use care.

You can conclude 86% of people keep a seat belt fastened during a flight, yeah, ok.  But what about the 24% of the people who take the seat with them to the bathroom? Who are these people? Do 24% of all flyers get on the plane, buckle up and unbuckle only after the flight comes to the gate and the pilot has turned off the seatbelt sign? Really?

My (overly sarcastic) observation is you need to use care when you draft those survey questions so you don’t end up with 4 out of 5 dentists wishing they were the fifth one.

The Best Defense: Friction Free

I’m sitting here at gate 83 at the Vancouver Airport. I’m waiting for a flight down to San Francisco. Sitting off to my right is a very well dressed elderly women and her daughter. I know this only because the daughter used “mom” 4 times in one of those New York sound level conversations. 

Anyway, daughter is telling mom about the HBO series called True Blood. Apparently, she heard about it from a friend who said it was amazing.  Daughter says she needs to get the DVDs.

This was priceless:

(In a very New York, Brooklyn, type accent)

“Whattaya crazy or something? Go online and just download it.”

Now, I know you are thinking, big deal, everybody does it.  The reality is everybody doesn’t do it. Yet.  This was average, non-technical, grandma, talking about grabbing a torrent and getting the series.  I’m not talking about the philosophical issues of this (Mom tells kid steal it, film at 11), no, this is a bigger deal. 

The mainstream (grandma) is now getting into this “download it” stuff and the movie/tv industry has a serious hurt sandwich being served up. 

There is only one defense: The industry has to be more friction free than the pirate/hacker.

Here’s what I mean and with apologies to Chris Anderson, it doesn’t have to necessarily be free:

Somewhere in the world as I type this, somebody has recorded a TV show (or movie) and is currently in the process of editing it to remove the commercials, etc, and uploading it.  Millions of people wander the internet, play cat –n- mouse games, put up with flaky torrent search engines, bad downloads, etc, all in the name of getting what they want, when they want it.

In survey after survey, it has been shown that if people can get what they want, when they want it, presto, they will pay for it.

If you could simply go to one place, click on the shows you want for an evening viewing and could get them, on demand, in whatever order, etc, you’d pay.  You’d pay 20 or 30 bucks a month.  You might not but that nice grandma would.  I know because I asked her.  She ranted about HBO not having it on when she wants to watch it and went on about wanting to be able to simply get some shows and settle in to watch whatever.  She’d pay.

I’d pay.  Instead of relying on Miro (great app) to grab stuff so I can watch it on the plane or whatever, I’d gladly have a reliable source of the content that I’d pay for.  It’s not the itunes store, I’ve looked.

It’s the friction free part that make it so compelling.  Like RSS feeds, I’d like to subscribe to my shows, get em put onto a hard drive for my viewing pleasure.  Reliably? Good Quality? Excellent, I’ll pay a monthly fee.  Or it can be free with commercials, whatever.

My macro point is here is twofold.

One: Highly Personal. Being able to watch “In Plain Sight” followed by “The Closer” with a “Nurse Jackie” chaser makes those 2 1/2 hours personal.  I set up my evening with my shows and it’s my way.

Two: Friction Free. As I’ve said, make it easy and reliable, I’m as lazy as the next person, I’ll just get it and not futz with all the P2P stuff.

I know, pipe dream, but who knows….

Why You Want the CrunchPad to Get Made

You’ve probably heard about Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad. If not, you can get caught up here.  This is a really important gadget you might not want, might not buy, but should care about.

Custom Hardware Solutions:  Take standard, off the shelf components, and make me what I want.  I want an HD Movie Camera was big hard drive and an MP3 player built in. You want your toaster to have a connector where your Zune can be plugged.  As I said, really custom stuff.  This world of made to order gadgets is exciting and I believe full of potential.  The CrunchPad will be a nice, high profile, way to get that ball rolling.

Group Solutions:  Dan Frommer is taking a dump (“it’s toast”) on the device for all the obvious reasons, no storage, web only, need Internet, etc.  And, of course, if Apple comes out with a cheap device, Michael’s device gets clobbered because of the marketing machine that is Apple. None of this, in my view, matters.  Arrington, love em or hate em, has enough fans or put generically, has enough like minded people that want what he is building to get it built and make it a success to the extent it needs to be for the people that want it.  At least that’s the working thesis and, for sure, I could be wrong.

No, this probably isn’t the next Apple or Motion Computing, but here’s the secret.

Let’s assume there are just 1000 people out of all the TechCrunch people in the world that want this device.  If this device gets made and sold to 1000 happy people and the result is a manufacturing world and process which can now do these “one off” type devices, the game changes.

That’s why I want this device to get made. It begins a high profile (and positive) disruption at the point of manufacture and that can mean exciting things to you. Good luck, Michael.

Enjoy your weekend, everybody.