Business Logs

Helping companies communicate better

Home

The Stupidest Idea Ever Was Writing This Article

When articles like this creep up you know it’s a slow news day. Or maybe that’s just the type of crap the San Jose Mercury News likes to write when no Valley-area companies are getting bought for billions at the moment.

“As managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, Guy Kawasaki funded all the really smart ideas he could find. None hit it big. So earlier this year the guru of Silicon Valley start-ups decided to fund a really dumb idea that cost as little as possible.”

I’ve written about Kawasaki’s venture before it was launched. This post isn’t about my opinion of Truemors, but the damage that this type of article does for the integrity (*cough*) of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in the Valley.

It seems that the crux of this article is that if you continually think you’re doing the right thing but are wrong every time, you shouldn’t readjust your initial assumptions, you should simply throw all reason out the window and do whatever you feel like doing since that’s obviously the answer you’ve been looking for. Kawasaki remarked in the article that although he has considered many of his company’s investments to be sound, few (if any) have panned out in any sort of remarkable way. Unfortunately for venture capital firms and the people who provide them with capital to begin with, investments aren’t judged by the uniqueness of the idea, or the founding team, or the technology, they’re judged with how they perform and if an exit strategy occurs yielding profit. Venture capital firms are companies who need to make money to stay afloat, just like any other company. Now does this mean that Garage isn’t a good venture capital firm? No, it simply means that they’re hurting for an exit like starving lion. All their portfolio companies could be happy as pigs in shit, unfortunately that doesn’t make Garage a successful investment firm it just makes them friendly and helpful business partners.

Perhaps their investments are made in good concepts and not good companies, or perhaps they’re investing in the team instead of the execution, I’m not the person to say, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want my investment firm featured in a newspaper piece where the basis of the article is “we thought all our previous investments were smart but we were wrong, so the hell with smart” because that doesn’t do much to bolster the morale of Garage’s current portfolio companies.

Imperfection and the Human Brand

Take a moment to think of all the great people you’ve known. Family. Friends. Teachers. Classmates. Coworkers. Clients. Within moments, you can bring up vivid memories of hundreds, probably thousands of people you’ve met over the years. You can see their face. You can hear their voice. You can remember conversations you’ve shared.

Why then, do so many companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in figuring out how to promote themselves with traditional media, and then hire mediocre people to be the face and voice of their company?

John Windsor, author of Beyond the Brand, relates an experience that left a last impression on him:

When I asked Chipper how to get there, Chipper started off by saying, “You’ve got it bro, ” and then gave me detailed, simple instructions on how to get there. When I told Chipper thanks, he said “Believe it!” It was magical.

Soon after we talked, I realized I was going to be early so I called back looking for a friend to borrow a surfboard and get some exercise before my meeting. I called Chipper back and he paged my friend. Unfortunately, my buddy was in a meeting. When Chipper asked what I needed, I told him I wanted to borrow a surfboard. Chipper said, “No worries, come see me and I’ll have a board ready for ya, bro!”

When I arrived, there was Chipper, stoked to see me with a board ready to ride.

Who is this mysterious “Chipper” guy? He’s the receptionist for Patagonia, an outdoor apparel and gear company.

If you saw a tremendously expensive ad for Patagonia products in a glossy outdoor sports magazine, you probably wouldn’t remember it for more than a few seconds. John Winsor, however, will probably remember Chipper for the rest of his life, as well as the positive mental associations he brought to the Patagonia brand.

Many years ago, I did most of my banking through a small supermarket branch of Wells Fargo. I usually went after work, when the branch manager wasn’t there. The late-shift tellers were young and notoriously silly. They laughed, exchanged jokes with customers, and had a great time doing their job. I loved going there.

I remember walking in one afternoon and finding them more somber than usual. I asked one of them what was up, and she indicated that they had been “caught” by the branch manager, who had arranged a secret shopper to observe their behavior after he left.

Now my favorite banking experience was reduced to boring sterility. They went back to calling me “Mr. Archer.” Banking was returned to its previous status of being a necessary chore, rather than a pleasant experience.

From a business perspective, that branch manager probably congratulated himself on making his tellers more efficient and professional. He optimized their performance by removing the minutes they spent chatting with each customer.

He also lost at least one customer, as I no longer had any particular attachment to Wells Fargo (and the wonderful human brand those tellers had created), and I eventually switched to Bank of America.

As social animals, our brains are hardwired to understand and appreciate the people around us. We respond to them on a profound level that can’t be approached by mailers, television commercials, or viral ad campaigns.

Who is the voice of your business? Are they imperfect? Are they memorable? Are they lovable?

Or are they merely professional?

The iPhone Is Inevitable, Give It A Try

Matt Asay just wrote an article about how his Blackberry recently died and he picked up an iPhone after quickly comparing it to the latest RIM offering.

“My reason was simple: I needed something that would sync consistently with my Mac. My Blackberry-to-Mac sync has been hit or miss for the past year (though I’ve been testing a beta of the new PocketMac and it is quite good) and I’m fed up. I just want something that works.”

I’ve had an iPhone since Day One and I think people who don’t like the iPhone may simply change their tune when they handle it, use it, and analyze the overall device when it’s in their hands. Like many others have said, it’s difficult to compare an iPhone against Competitor X by solely looking at a feature comparison chart because the overall experience of the iPhone goes far deeper than just features. It’s lacking some tangible things like a 3G radio, Flash, MMS, but it has many positives like “best UI on any phone”, “simple to figure out how to do things” which are difficult to measure on any kind of chart.

Much has been made of the iPhone SDK and what is and is not allowed, and I believe that it’s just too early to be throwing platitudes around since much will be changing in the next few months leading up to the 2.0 software update. I’ve already found bugs in the SDK and have been in touch with engineers at Apple, and they have assured me that a fix is in the works. The SDK is in beta so Apple may still be figuring out a solution to allow background application processing, who knows. So many people are upset about not being able to run interpreted code but that’s like getting a brand new car and being upset it doesn’t have seat warmers; so much is offered up front and yet the angry voices of the few rise up against the happy developers mainly because those happy developers are under NDA and are busy creating killer applications.

So if you’re in the market for a new phone and need it do more than just make calls, I suggest taking a look at the iPhone. There are refurbished iPhones available for less than the normal cost, so if price is a factor perhaps take a look at those deals. I actually saved about $9 per month when switching from my Blackberry plan to the iPhone’s plan, so for me, getting an iPhone was also an economical decision!

My Data Is My Memory

One barometer for being in the web game for too long is when one can remember a blog entry Jason Fried wrote in August 2005 that relates exactly to what one is currently writing about. The entry to which I am referring was an idea the 37s crew had about information and why you should or should not keep certain types handy:

“Why not read an email and then instantly delete it? Why do we save emails? Why do we archive them in folders for safe keeping? We don’t save phone calls. We have a conversation on the phone and then we hang up. If we need to take notes for whatever reason we do, but 99% of phone calls are completely ephemeral. And if we forget something, or we need it again, we just make another call.”

I was in the camp of people who don’t think this is a good idea, at least for me, since I have an absolutely terrible memory. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for technophiles, almost every piece of information that is now transferred between human beings is stored somewhere. For me, the most important pieces are IM conversations and email, and here are my stats for those:

  • I have every IM conversation I’ve participated in since December 27, 2004 stored and fully searchable by query, date, or participants.
  • I have every email I’ve received/sent since May 2, 2004, which can also be accessed in various ways.

These large data sets may not be as important for normal people, but because my memory is so poor, they’re a necessity in my life. Email search is one of the “killer apps” that I use every single day, and IM conversation search is used at least weekly.

So is memory tied to “being a pack-rat” in regards to technical storage? I’m not sure if it’s a causal relationship but if my computer can store things and keep them out of my brain, then maybe I can use my empty brain cells for other important things. Like Albert Einstein once said:

“Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it.” –Link

Pre-Launch Blogs

When preparing to launch a website in the future an organization/individual has two likely choices. They might decide to not put anything up on the domain they plan on launching and only announce the site once their is an actual site to show. On the other hand they could put a placeholder page (splash page) up on the domain and whoever visits the site will place it in the back of their mind like the other million sites that people forget to go back and check on.

However, now there is a third option that shouldn’t be ignored. With today’s technology organizations are capable of putting up pre-launch blogs to help maintain the visitors that come to their site.

Most recently I visited the website of my favorite magazine, Play, to find that they had a more sophisticated splash page then one may think. However, I also found that they are missing a great opportunity to improve their image and traffic while also saving a lot of time when their official site launches.

Their target audience consists of people who enjoy video games and technology and the number of people who visit their site is not known, but seeing how this crowd uses the web extensively you could imagine the loss of people their site experiences daily. What they could do is setup a little blog that has frequent updates so that people have a reason to return to the site.

They already have a basic layout on their site and they could fit a blog in there and start writing industry newsbits or keeping everyone updated to the inner workings of the magazine. They may plan on doing this already with their official site, but why not begin that process now?

The Benefits

What this does is help keep people interested in your company. More and more companies are going the route of releasing beta products, software, and websites and a pre-launch blog could be looked at in the same way. You could find out what type of features users want and what they expect to see or you could choose just to write small entries/articles for your readers to enjoy.

More importantly you get your site in search engines immediately. If you type in “play magazine” into Google you won’t even find their website in the first 50 results returned. Obviously, search engine traffic is something that cannot be overlooked, but this is exactly what they are doing. They spent the time to put together a basic website and by the time the real one launches, they will have to invest even more time in getting it established in the search engines.

If you put up a website like they have and then spend 5 months finishing the real one and assuming it takes 2 months to get your site thoroughly established in the search engines, you find that your company has lost 7 months of traffic. However, if you did the basic site with the blog, not only will you get in the search engines, but assuming quality content you will also find your site linked to by other sites. Once the official site launches your website is already moving in full-force with an established customerbase and all it took was a small blog.

If you were to use a hosted service such as Squarespace, you could easily setup a blog that provides interesting content and helps to maintain and grow a customer base before your official site even launches. Even though your site may not be done, it doesn’t mean your ability to win an audience can’t begin now.