nick baily's two cents

I'm not usually one to worry about stuff much

But I have to say this news footage of Hurricane Irene is a little disconcerting: 

 

 

EPIC WIN FTW! (Also known as best presentation I saw at Launch Conference)

Why bother with an intro. Meet.... DOMO!

 

New York City

On the coldest day of the year (I'm told it's minus 5 degrees out there) let's quickly pause to remember why we live in the greatest city in the history of world civilization:

NYC - Mindrelic Timelapse from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

Advice to Startup Founders: Be Yourself (not too much)

In the many years I've known Adeo Ressi he's never failed to be an inspiration, for sheer energy if nothing else, but also an unbounded optimism, bias towards getting things done, and a willingness to toss aside the old in favor of a vision of how things could be. So its no surprise that his most recent endeavor, the Founder Institute, a "school" (or bootcamp?) for startup founders, has grown so rapidly.

It's a no-nonsense semester long class that takes in people at all stages, united only by their desire to be entrepreneurs. A crash course intensive, it covers direct hands-on issues and skills required to run a startup, as well as the intangible stuff that really matters but is rarely taught -- like dealing with stress, or partners, and how to explain yourself and what you do (a message Adeo has a gift for delivering with brutal clarity, as this video makes clear).

So needless to say it's been a blast to participate in this semester's NYC chapter as a mentor, with chapter head Gabe Zichermann. I had the pleasure of presenting at the semester's first formal class a few weeks ago, dubbed "Vision & Values," about the big picture questions that face every founder as they get started.

Here's the video, and there's a link to the slides below. Also you can see this clip as well as the great presentations on the same night by fellow presenters Carter Cleveland (art.sy) and Gary Whitehill (NYEW) too via this Vimeo link

Belgrave Trust Founder Nick Baily Speaks at NY Founder Institute Session #2

Slides also viewable here, as PowerPoint and PDF

A good summary of just about everything I find interesting

Now here's a hell of an infographic: a history, timeline, and taxonomy of complex adaptive system dynamics. I'll get to every bubble one of these days.... no I swear...

 

Huffington Post Story on Startups & "Contest Economics" (Stone-Age Blogging Edition)

So my piece this week for the Huffington Post has been generating some discussion. Well at least on Twitter, which people tell me is a quite important site on the interwebs these days. It was a fun post to write, the entire thing was actually just a riff on a single sentence that Jason Calacanis wrote for his email listserv, which was:

The proper protocol in the valley is to at least try and partner, or purchase, the startups who have innovated in a space you’re going into.

The idea of one of the most highly competitive sectors of business "playing nice" just wedged in my head. It's one of those against the laws of physics sort of observations that you can't help but struggle to reconcile.

But alighting on word "cooperation" reminded me of something I wrote a couple years ago for this here little neglected blog of mine, and it seemed like there was actually something interesting going on here.

Only problem was it was real late after a marathon day in the office and I was walking down the stairs to get on a pretty long subway ride. And my brain can become Swiss cheese when I'm tired, it wasn't gonna work the next morning. So... I became a blogger, except with a pen and my notebook, in longhand. 

Came out pretty much in final form, with one exception being the crack-brained idea of feeling like it just had to have poker as the main theme. That didn't work out (though I emailed that part to Jason and he used it, so all was not lost) but otherwise all was OK. 

Anyways, so I was wondering if I'm the first ever blogger to use this method. I think it needs a name, how about "offline blog leveraging."

Oh wait, I think it's called "writing."

Damm. 

Ah well, hard to be original in this world. Feel free click through and read for yourself if you're bored. Here's the first part: 

For decades, there's been a gentleman's agreement in the Silicon Valley. If you're the big guy, when small companies get some traction in an area you dominate, you partner with them, or buy them. Taking young startups' ideas and using dominance and power to overrun them isn't sporting.

"Microsoft killed Lotus, WordPerfect, and Netscape. But the recent hurricane of criticism is hitting Facebook, and not just on privacy. They almost got into an all out war with Zynga (makers of the extremely lucrative Farmville and Mafia Wars games) and have been accused of rampantly "borrowing" ideas from Twitter, FourSquare, and many others.

"That's just not how things are done."

...so, um, why?

Slice Of Life @ NYU, Skirball Center

Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman at the NY Tech Meetup forcefully making a point (that's a sledge hammer meeting a real iPad) that people should get off the web and create communities in the real world. 

I don't think I believe in "Marketing Guru" types...

I mean, I believe in marketing. I could even define it, it's basically a combination of messaging and outreach. Simple enough. Plenty of variations, like which message will motivate which people, and what medium will be effective in reaching them, and so on and so forth. But at root it's the message that matters, followed closely by who you're talking to. If either one are off the entire thing's a lost cause. 

Sometimes people confuse that idea of messaging. We often hear the "if you have a great product people will flock to it" and the converse which is that "if the product sucks marketing is just lighting money on fire."

All true, and doesn't conflict at all with what I said above. Your message has to be some elaboration on why what you're doing is of genuine interest to the audience in question. I added the extra double bold there for a reason. You have to communicate with your audience. But you also have to tell the truth. 

If the product is amazing but nobody knows how to use it you have problems. If its benefits aren't immediately apparent you have to communicate. If it doesn't have benefits to someone and you tell them to buy it anyways you're not marketing, you're lying. And if you present your product to an audience in a way that they find offensive or just stupid or silly you've lost your shot, the product won't save you if you lose them on the way in. You always have to communicate clearly and compellingly and to the right people -- in the right way. 

That's kind of it. 

There are tricks: like how to time media, how to augment free press (PR) with targeted advertising. How to respond to a crisis or disaster or product failure. How to change entrenched perceptions of you or your company as you move into a new sector, etc. There's also process stuff that just plain works, as this very highly recommended article about QVC in The Atlantic gives as one great example. 

Then there are the other kind of tricks. The ones where trick is synonymous with gimmick. Where it's all about some "system" or obsessing about logos and mission statements and gobbledygook. 

Now -- in fairness -- there's something called "Corporate Culture" which matters a whole lot. I read Tony Hseih's book "Delivering Happiness" and it's one of the best I've ever read on management philosophy, with a concentration on the employee and workplace culture as paramount. Get it. 

But I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about this:

 

 

 

But to be honest, hey, it is a nice card I suppose.

In my opinion that's not actually as insane as an idea I heard from a billed "Marketing Guru" recently, and I don't think they were kidding. It was bizarre enough that I finally just decided I had to see what it was like to try and execute, just out of sheer morbid curiosity. 

Want to know what it was? I already wrote a blog post on that one elsewhere... read all about it here if you're interested. Here's a sneak preview:

 

A Tiny Apartment Turns Into 24 Rooms

Favorite video in a long while. New Yorkers could learn a lot from this architect, check out the Optimus Prime impression by the apartment walls: 

 

Economic Systems, Simplified

And now for this blog's first official joke:

Q: What happens when you cross a mafia boss with an investment banker?    

A: They make you an offer you can't understand. 

My Huffington Post Essay On Financial Reform & The Green Economy...

...is live. Wander on over for a (hopefully) interesting read titled "Nicholas Baily: Financial Reform? Sure. Kill America's Future Green Economy? No thanks." 

Here's a preview:

In the State Of The Union address, President Obama outlined a plan for economic growth, with green jobs as a cornerstone. Saying "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy" the president directly mentioned jobs in clean energy and technology no less than six times. And his vision was clear.

In his own words: "We should start where most new jobs do -- in small businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, or a worker decides it's time she became her own boss. Through sheer grit and determination, these companies have weathered the recession and they're ready to grow."

The rest at The Huffington Post

Quote Of The Day

A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was."

The Buzz on Google Buzz

If there's one maxim in the world of tech media you can count on it's that when Google sneezes, it's news. So when Google makes a bold move to create a next-generation social media platform, it's really big news. This week's announcement and debut of Google Buzz was met with the expected level of breathless hype and cataclysmic predictions. Longtime commentator and internet celeb Jason Calacanis was among the first to weigh in with an unequivocal first impression:

BREAKING: Google Buzz is brilliant, Facebook just lost half its value.

My 30 second review of Google Buzz:

1. Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years.

2. Facebook’s history is one filled with stealing other people’s innovations and doing them better (i.e. Zuckerberg has stolen every idea Evan Williams and the Twitter team have released). How ironic now that Google has out “Facebooked” Facebook.

3. Google has excellent privacy record and Facebook is a disaster. Most folks do not trust Zuckerberg and Facebook any more because of their privacy record (filled with lawsuits) and because they steal every good idea they see (i.e. Twitter’s innovations and FourSquare’s checking in).

4. Google Buzz auto generates your network–this is MUCH better process than Facebook’s.

5. Google Buzz is way faster than the sluggish Facebook–this is a HUGE advantage.

6. Google Buzz puts relies and updates into your GMAIL as threads–this is BRILLIANT and a HUGE advantage.

Facebook is going to see their traffic get cut in half by Google Buzz.

This really is game over for Facebook because you know Microsoft and Aol are going to copy Google Buzz as quick as they can. In fact, Aol would have a HUGE renaissance if they simply knocked off Google Buzz’s exact feature set. You would than have a reason to keep your @aol email address.

This could actually derail the Facebook IPO. It’s that serious. Facebook usage is going to plummet in the next year or two because of this. There really is no reason for non-game playing people who useGMAIL to log into Facebook.

If Google Ads social gaming to Google Buzz Facebook is 2012’s Pointcast.

Wow…. this is just stunning.

The "Facebook-killer" meme spread quickly (check Google News for proof) but is this revolution, or evolution? Let's take a look at some of the key features, straight from Google themselves:

• Auto-following: You don't have to build or rebuild your friend network, it happens organically as you send and receive email.
• Rich, fast, sharing experience: It pulls together a stream of information from your friends, media, photos, comments, in a dynamic way that feels more like a conversation.
• Public and private sharing: Self-explanatory, though it's hard to see how this is a huge differentiatiator. Twitter is of course public, Facebook is mixed (and a bit opaque on this point), but nonetheless.
• Inbox integration: This is the "killer" that threatens to make this a killer app. Let's face it, how much patience do people have to join yet another social network, especially a very generalist/aggregating one like this. It's a tough hurdle to jump -- but boy does it help to have 176 million unique users a month and a war chest of about $32 Billion in cash. Or so I would have to imagine.
• "Just The Good Stuff": This sounds like marketing hype, and is to some extent, but they're aiming for at least some substance with this point. The social media feed is prioritized, at least according to their claims it shows you the posts and updates you're most likely to read, and buries the stuff you least likely to be interested in. An innovation, but interestingly also something that Facebook ramped up hard as well, just this month.

So then -- what's it like? Well here's a quick overview primer:

   

And their five marketing points above leave quite a bit out. Integration clearly is core to the philosphy, leveraging Google's basket of heavyweight online properties such as YouTube, Picasa, and Blogger. The mobile integration looks to be one of the most formidable aspects to Buzz, when coupled with a GPS enabled mobile phone it enables functions ranging from finding people near you (perhaps a little creepy) to your own private Google Map that's like a bookmarks bar for the real world, geotagging your camera phone shot so you can remember where that little out of the way dumpling place was next time you're in the neighborhood. 

OK, so back to Facebook's 400 million users and near total dominance of the core social network space. Is this a threat, a complement, an eventual also-ran? Here's a little more of what the experts are saying:

Techcrunch sums it up well:

The Battle  

Without having had a chance to play with it yet, it would seem that the core idea behind Buzz is to take on Twitter and Facebook as the easiest way to share content online. Google is offering a number of compelling features such as smart curation (it gets better as you tell it what you like and what you don’t), and a rich mobile experience including location.  

Because of the features it adds on to what Twitter does, and its overall look, it’s hard not to compare Buzz to FriendFeed. That service was arguably the better product than Twitter, but never took off in the same way for whatever reason (though I would argue that simplicity was a big factor). You could say the same thing for Twitter rivals Pownce and Jaiku (which Google actually bought) in the past. But by adding it to Gmail, Google is giving Buzz a great weapon to succeed where all of those others could not.  

The big question is: will Gmail users buy into this quick sharing? Google thinks so because it’s a part of the evolution from email, to IM, to status updates. It’s also, in their eyes, a part of the evolution to the next step, Google Wave. So far, the public has proven to be not ready for Wave yet. But Buzz might be the perfect tool in getting people to think about communicating in a way beyond email and IM. Or it may be another misstep in Google’s social quest.

Core social media news source Mashable is measured, tackling the "zero sum game" question head on, but ultimately concluding that "Buzz Won’t Win the Social Web Without Facebook Integration"

We ought to consider the consequences of Buzz’s relationships with Twitter and Facebook. What are the relationships? Will Buzz, Twitter and Facebook co-exist elegantly or is this a zero sum game with a winner you can place your bets on? 

... 

I predicted at the end of last year that Facebook is well-poised to try to pry web dominance away from Google in 2010. Buzz doesn’t change my mind. Facebook is threatening Google, but Google isn’t threatening Facebook because it doesn’t offer any features so great that they incentivize people to leave behind their existing networks or spend their time updating and following yet another one when their friends are already all on Facebook or Twitter.  Facebook now dominates the social web so completely that it’s difficult to imagine an exodus to a competing service, unless that service offered some revolutionary new features that Facebook couldn’t possibly match — Buzz doesn’t. 

I can picture one other success scenario, though: a service that aggregates other services’ features and content, and then offers up its own set of unique perks (like Buzz’s noise-control algorithms) that make the social web experience better. People would feel comfortable switching for the extra perks, because they wouldn’t have to leave their existing connections behind. 

The outlook could change if Buzz integrates with Facebook the way it does with Twitter. Unless that happens, though, you’re better off keeping your bets on Facebook in the coming year or two — at least if your standard of success is something greater than niche appeal.

And tech guru Kevin Rose is witholding judgement as well:

Not sure where Buzz fits in my arsenal of social media tools, how often I’ll use it, or if it will eventually feel too much like unread email — but I’m happy to see Google taking social media seriously. It’s early days, let the attention/follower wars begin.

Indeed, let the games begin -- my thoughts as well. This was what I wrote late Wednesday night as a first take, before I read what everyone else was saying:

10 minutes in. Snap reaction -- they've got this more right than wrong. It'll stick. I don't know if it's going to kill Facebook. It actually doesn't feel that much like Facebook to me -- but I have this feeling it's going to kill something.

It's a fast moving space to say the least -- in fact just as I finished writing this post I hit refresh and saw two new headlines pop up on (where else) Google News:

"Google Snags Social Search Service Aardvark" 

 and 

 "Google Buzz Surpasses 9 Million Posts and Comments" 

Nine million? Hmmmm.... this story is just a little over two days old. It's going to be interesting.

Slice of Life @ Street Corner, USA

I think this one speaks for itself just fine.