Social Media & Entrepreneurship

Guest Post by Shehab Hamad. Follow him at @shehabhamad

Remember when the internet was supposed to be a dehumanizing anti-social force destined to turn mankind into this:

 
 
Turns out evolution’s work over millions of years creating our social beings couldn’t be undone quite so quickly even by a force as mighty as the internet.
 
From the very beginning the Internet allowed the blossoming of previously impossible transnational relationships and collaborations at a previously impossible scale. And yet in the early BBS and IRC days the focus was still on virtual relationships and virtual experiences. The virtualization theme dominated the internet’s evolution right through the dot com bubble. Yet the bubble also comprised more social aspects of the internet economy. These included informal and formal get-togethers of people involved in the industry such as the First Tuesday events and Josh Harris’ infamous parties.

These helped foster a real sense of community amongst the web practitioners of the day. As usual in those circles the natural urge was to take the idea and use the internet to spread it globally and make a buck. Meetup was launched in an America that was reading Putnam’s Bowling Alone

and more specifically in a forever changed NY post 9-11 with a renewed focus on community and in many ways fathered the long, slow rebuilding of the NY tech scene that’s currently one of the hottest outside of the Valley. Scott Heiferman cleverly married the internet’s decentralized dna to human’s social dna helping to turn latent interest groups around the world into real world communities.
 

Probably NY tech meetup attendees themselves, Perry Chen and Yancey Strickler took the community building potential of the internet and its ever powerful potential for identifying latent groups (HT Clay Shirky) a step further towards the decentralized participatory ideals of the web’s founding fathers when they launched a crowdfunding platform enabling like-minded individuals around the world to become micro-patrons of their chosen arts. They were inspired by this Kevin Kelly blog post:    
 

Patronage — It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead’s recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead’s case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.

Both companies are seeking to build real world participatory communities (made real and participatory by action: location and investments respectively) around interests utilizing the internet’s decentralized backbone.

Interesting to note that USV are investors in both.

Guest post by Magnus von Koeller. Follow him at @magnusvk. Read his blog at www.vonkoeller.de.

Chris Dixon and Fred Wilson visited our Social Media & Entrepreneurship class at Columbia Business School today. One of the points true entrepreneurs like Chris always make to MBA students is: Just do it. Don’t waste your time in banking or consulting, just start a business. And if you have to repay student loans, go work at a funded startup. But get into the tech startup world and do it now. This is something that makes a lot of sense to me: most of the skills learnt at “traditional” employers just won’t be very valuable in the startup world. But it is something that is apparently very hard for business school students to accept.

Chris elaborated on this today and made a great point: The fact that you have this amazing Columbia MBA should make you double down on your risks. After all, you have this great brand name as a backstop. You know you will never go hungry. You know that if you need a job, any job, you will be able to get one. You will be able to pay your bills, and you will be able to get out of a bad situation. I would add to that list: The amazing network a top business school provides you with makes life as an entrepreneur infinitely easier — you get so much access automatically that others have to work very hard for. And two years in school are a great opportunity to clear your head, do a deep cleanse of all the negative thoughts you gathered in your corporate job and come up with something great you want to start. 

I agree: If you are going to do it, do it now.

iortizfreuler:

Guest post by Ignacio Ortiz Freuler. Follow him on Twitter @iortizfreuler.

Social media is overwhelming. There is always a new startup developing a new product which aims to change how I procrastinate or, occasionally, work (were you among the lucky few who logged on to http://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html to use Google Motion?). I no longer wake up to the WSJ and my local Argentine newspaper.. I now read Twitter while still in bed. It helps me wake up slowly (not my typical method) and gets me thinking about the latest developments (news?) before I step into the shower or drink coffee.

So I recently got together for lunch with a friend who’s looking into joining the VC industry. He’d been given an interesting assignment for his interview and I thought it would be fun to tackle it together. He had to identify what he thought were five up and coming trends in the online startup space. And no, social media, social gaming, geo-location and/or crowdsourcing do not fall under this category. Groupon, I was told, is no longer news. We had to aim for where the puck is going (sound familiar?). In any case, I felt that dedicating time to such an endeavor was just what I needed in order to slow down my consumption of tech news. It would allow me to stop thinking about the valuation of Color and focus on more innovative, hopefully revenue-generating ideas.

I won’t go into details, but trying to take this step back and organize the online startup industry was interesting and hard. Only from a distance, we reasoned, would we be able to see how the puck is moving and, as a result, where it’s headed.

We came to several interesting conclusions, one of which has left me thinking. It has to do with reversing the current trend towards gathering user information and using it for retail and advertising purposes. If we look back at the origins of the internet, users were fascinated by its anonymous nature. Online, you could do anything you wanted to, be anyone you wanted to, and you were fine. It was an open space where unidentified others were handing out information and taking nothing in exchange.

But it had to change. The bubble burst and all of a sudden giving away time and money in exchange for eyeballs no longer made sense. Something had to be taken in return; and that something turned out to be what used to be a given in the online world. During 2010, the WSJ ran a “What They Know” series of articles (http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know-digital-privacy.html ) focusing on the demise of online privacy. The economist recently published another full page article titled “Anonymous no more” (http://www.economist.com/node/18304046 ) questioning the extent to which privacy has disappeared from the internet. More importantly, I recently heard someone say something which resonated with me. It went something like “I have a facebook account, but I rarely post anything.. It feels like being at a party where everyone I know is present and I am handed a microphone.”

Anonymity will come back. The market is demanding it and demand, I’ve been told to believe, drives supply (not the other way around). I would not dare say that I have a viable way of making a business model out of the return to anonymous browsing, but I’m sure that some under-aged brain will figure it out.

ganjon:

Tonight in my social media class at Columbia, we have Chris Dixon and Fred Wilson come in to speak to the class.  The topic of “tech bubble” came up.  Fred said that $1 million buys him less of a company than he did a few years ago, but he wouldn’t say that we’re in a bubble.  After Fred and Chris left, our professor (Rachael Sterne) polled the class and it was about evenly split.  It’s a really interesting question and was the subject of much debate. 

Personally I don’t know if we’re in a bubble or not.  Is Facebook worth $75 billion?  I don’t know, but they seem to be changing the way the world communicates.  And they seem to be replacing the tv as the dominate attractor of eyeballs.  Do they have revenue that supports a $75 billion valuation?  Of course not.  But when you think about the strength of a company and ability to drive above average returns on capital, you usually think of competitive advantages and barriers to entry.  So if you’re looking at those measures, then it’s hard to think that FB isn’t worth $75B.  The fact that they don’t have the revenue yet doesn’t scare me.  I think of it as their R&D phase.

However, I do think there’s some froth in the early stage funding.  It’s fairly well documented that there’s easy money on the streets right now (in new york at least) if you’re a young start-up.  Basically it’s a supply and demand problem.  It’s a lot cheaper to start a company these days b/c of cloud computing innovations and there’s more available capital (because the threshold to invest is lower so smaller investors are getting into the game).  So not only do you have more capital, but you have less sophisticated capital showing up to the party chasing the same deals as more experienced investors. 

In total, I think this is a good thing.  It’s lowering the barrier for entrepreneurs and investors alike.  But that’s not to say there’s no bubble.  I think there is a bubble in the seed stage tech world.  I think a lot of companies will fail and a lot of investors will lose money.  But as long as everyone knows this risks — this is a high risk game for both investors and entrepreneurs — it’s a game worth playing.

jessicaserbin:

I’m taking a class called Smarter Social Media for Journalists, Bloggers & Media Professionals, taught by Prof. Sree Sreenivasan (sree@sree.net * Twitter: @sree * Facebook: SreeTips) and here are some key takeaways from the first class:


All content should be “able”:
1.Clickable
2.Shareable
3.Embeddable
4.Linkable


-Aim to make tweets 120 characters or less, which leaves for people to “RT @UserName”
-Keeps people from editing your tweet.
-Leaves room for commentary.


The Good Tweets Test
When tweeting, use the qualifiers below to determine the value and effectiveness of your tweets! Take this test…score your last 50 tweets from 1-10 based on how many of the qualifiers apply. Your score could max out at 500.

•helpful

•useful
•informative
•relevant
•practical
•actionable
•timely
•brief
•entertaining
•fun

tienychesney:

Haven’t written a blog post in 2 years. Feeling cool.

So my musings on Square. Unbelievable idea. Can’t believe they thought of it and actually made it work. I wonder if the credit card companies are going to find a way to protest this? If I’m a small-time merchant, I would much rather use Square (hardware’s free and lower transaction fees) and deposit everything directly into my checking account rather than open some merchant account with a credit card provider. Unless I’m missing something, this should eat up a considerable portion of their future revenue growth.

I also wonder if the Square device itself will become obsolete within a year. I’m the least knowledgeable about these techy things, but Rich, a classmate, said that NFC technology (whatever that is) will likely soon be built into cell phones so that the Square attachment won’t even be needed. He estimated these new cell phones would hit the market in 6 to 12 months. Maybe he was speaking extemporaneously and the actual horizon is longer, but even if it’s 18 months, doesn’t that seem like Jack Dorsey should’ve just went straight to partnering with a cell phone manufacturer that will build this software straight in?  Those little white square attachments will be garbage soon. I’m sure there’s some logistical nightmare that prevents a straight-up partnership from happening (for instance, the cell service providers probably order certain specs from the manufacturers) but it seems like a lot of hard work for something that he knows (assuming the intel is correct), not even thinks, but knows will be obsolete very soon.  And from his talk, the development of Square took forever and had a million road bumps.

I’m also a bit fuzzy on how the automatic receipt works, but the gist of it seems to be that a receipt can be printed for any cash transaction now.  This could’ve been done in the past too but it was just annoying to manually write one.  If Square can generate one automatically, I wonder if this becomes a huge boon for government tax revenues?  If customers have the right to demand a receipt for any meager

One last thought - couldn’t they have chosen a more aesthetically pleasing name? Also, let’s hope someone else writes a post soon so that this doesn’t stay at the top of our tumblr blog for too long.

Guest post by Saurabh Arora. Follow him at @AroraSaurabh

At the outset, I would argue that increasing twitter followers should not be your objective. Instead, the high number of followers is a proof that your tweets are useful to your followers. Note that the title of this blog post could easily have been “How to Tweet?” since following best tweet practices will indirectly attract more conversations and thus result in more followers. Enough has been blogged about the ways to increase your twitter followers. This post is not going to repeat the most common and obvious ways. Having said that, there are some practical and highly targeted ways in which you can engage with the community and thus attract more twitter followers.

Here are three such ways:

1. Don’t just RT

One of the most common suggestions is to retweet other tweets by popular people. But the fact is that simple re-tweeting doesn’t help. You are more likely to engage in a conversation (and thus appear in other person’s social graph) when you are adding your own perspective to the tweet, summarizing the key points, or simply recommending a blog post. Consider this tweet from Chris Dixon summarizing the debate in the article. By summarizing, Chris has added another level of clarity, which is more likely to prompt his followers to either reply and/or read the article.

2. Tweet about events, even if you aren’t attending

Events are a great way to engage in meaningful conversations that are happening in real time. Engaging with people who are present at the event will have a higher response rate than just re-tweeting the tweets. Most of the events have hashtags but you can also do a simple twitter search to find people who are tweeting. Consider the response I received from Anil Dash who was present at thelatest NY Tech Meetup when I was at a class in school.

3. Talk to brands

Some brands on twitter have huge number of followers. Engaging with conversations with your brand on twitter cannot only help you achieve visibility but also help other followers of the brand benefit from your conversation. Consider the below example where followers of Tumblr benefit from a conversation between the brand and a user who is facing a problem with one of the product features.

Other ways of engaging with a brand include, but are not limited to, genuinely praising/complaining the brand, finding new ways to use the brand’s product, suggesting new features, and blogging about the brand.

It’s time to stop bothering about number of followers. Focus on ways to engage with others on Twitter. Happy Tweeting!

[Cross-posted on my blog here]

staceye:

Last week Alexa Hirschfeld, the founder of Paperless Post came to speak to our Social Media and Entrepreneurship class last week. I found this company interesting because, while it is an “Internet company,” its target market is not the same tech saavy crowd that regulary tweets or check in on Foursquare. In fact, the target customer is someone who is looking for a way to still retain the artistic flair and personal touch of an old fashioned (low tech) paper invitation. I feel like many new websites are addressing pains we didn’t even know we had. Who knew that some people would feel compelled to check in at every location they visit? While checking at Cipriani Wall Street made me feel “cool,” I doubt anyone cares if I check in at the grocery store, my apartment, or the dentist. And personally, I am not comfortable with people knowing where I am every minute of the day. It feels a bit creepy. Getting back to Paperless Post - this actually does fill a need. It fulfills the desire to send personal, artistic invitations, without the waste of paper, the large expense, or the time involved to go pick them out, address, and mail them. I could definitely see myself using this service. Perhaps I feel this way because I am currently planning a wedding, which involves a lot of invitations. But regardless, I have just identified a strong market segment for this website – engaged women. Are they advertisng on theknot.com? If not, they should be… Check it out at www.paperlesspost.com

Guest post by Jonathan Morgan. Follow him on Twitter at @Jmorganr

Over the last decade, the social networking juggernaut, Facebook has revolutionized the social media industry. Founded in 2004, Facebook skyrocketed from dorm room to board room into becoming a Fortune 500 company. Facebook now boasts more than 650 million users and continues to grow rapidly. The adoption of Facebook is a testament to its combination of easy to publish web pages and user generated content. Earlier this year, Goldman invested in Facebook using a $50 billion valuation (Goldman’s $50 Billion FB Valuation). Some even predict Facebook value will reach up to $234 Billion by 2015 (FB Valued at $234 Billion by 2015).

While Facebook may currently rule the popular crowd of the Internet social scene, what is preventing it from becoming an outcast at a future point in time? Given its youthful user base, Facebook is unusually vulnerable to keeping pace with the next new trend. Similar to a popularity contest, Facebook must continue to attract online users and stay current with the latest trends in the social networking industry. Unfortunately for Facebook, history is not on their side. Many successful online sites have experienced a wane in popularity as time progressed and other competing sites drove off frequent site visitors.

MySpace once ruled as the premier social networking site, having already secured 110 million users. However, eventually Facebook stole a substantial market share away from MySpace and then eventually replaced it as the leading social networking site within a relatively short period of time. Is it so farfetched to think that Facebook could follow suit? As quickly as users flock to one trendy Internet site, they can just as quickly move on to another. The long-term success of Facebook will depend solely on the company’s ability to retain the interest of its online users. The social networking site must ensure that new website changes will translate with its user base. 

While its growth has accelerated and its profile has risen rapidly, Facebook has many external threats. Although Facebook currently controls an extensive market share of users, there is a low barrier to entry. Given the recent success of competing start-up companies, Facebook has been forced to expand its application hoping to level the playing field in the industry. Foursquare serves as a prime example of a recently launched, successful start-up company that has challenged Facebook’s hegemony by acquiring significant market share.

Foursquare is a geo-location based social networking site that aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then rewards people for doing so. Foursquare is one of the more practical location-based social networking applications and its value can only truly be gleaned by actually using it. Foursquare’s seemingly mundane gaming elements have quickly turned into the next generation’s platform for proximity marketing. While on the surface Facebook and Foursquare can both provide efficient outlets for social media, Foursquare takes it a step further by not only factoring in where your friends are but also what they are doing.

When Facebook acquired one of Foursquare’s primary competitors, Hot Potato and subsequently rolled out its new Places check-in product, most tech analysts predicted that it would flatten Foursquare. Most experts in the industry grew skeptical when Foursquare released a statement outlining its plan to differentiate itself from Facebook’s clone by using gaming mechanics. Nevertheless, Foursquare has managed to withstand the competition and has surmounted the threat brought on by Facebook’s launch of Places. The company has recently expanded its operation by acquiring additional market share of online users. Foursquare currently has 7.5 million users, which is up from 3 million when Places launched (Foursquare Doubled Since Places).

So will Foursquare become the next Facebook? Will Facebook become the next Friendster? Foursquare has officially entered the scene in the social media world and is currently well-positioned to pursue its vision for a better-connected, mobile-centric world. Is Facebook too big to fail or destined for a downfall similar to that of MySpace in the years to come? It is possible that users will eventually resist using Facebook since they may feel it infringes on their personal lives. Facebook could also overextend itself and eventually become spread too thin and unable to keep pace with its competitors and create a substantial barrier-to-entry for new market entrants. So is Facebook built for speed or built to last? Only time will tell. However, one thing is for sure. Regardless of how its future takes shape, Facebook has already left a permanent mark on the social networking society.

marksbirch:

Over the past several weeks, I have found more incubator and accelerator programs for tech start-ups in NYC.  As I always explain to start-up founders, such programs are not necessary.  If you get in and use the program to its fullest advantage however, they can clearly provide a leg up. The mentors, connections and resources are invaluable especially when tough times arise.  If you know of other such programs, including university programs, please leave a comment and I will add it to the list.

Update: March 2011 - I added other categories of incubators as well as important tech focused workspaces / co-working locations.

Technology

• Astia - http://www.astia.org/content/view/1218/1111/
• Betaworks - http://betaworks.com
• Consigliere - http://theconsig.com
• Dogpatch Labs - http://dogpatchlabs.com
• DreamIt Ventures - http://www.dreamitventures.com/
• ER Accelerator - http://eranyc.com
• FinTech Innovation Lab - http://www.fintechinnovationlab.com/
• First Growth Network - http://www.firstgrowthvn.com
• Founder Labs - http://www.founderlabs.org/
• Founder’s Institute - http://www.founderinstitute.com
• Incubator at RTV - http://www.rose.vc
• NYSTAR - http://www.nystar.state.ny.us/incubators.htm
• NYU-Poly / NYCSeed - http://www.poly.edu/business/incubators
• Protovore - http://protovore.com/
• Startl - http://startl.org/
• TechStars - http://www.techstars.org/nyc
• Tipping Point Partners - http://www.tippingpointpartners.com
• WeWorkLabs - http://weworklabs.com/

Urban Tech & Clean Tech

• Urban Technology Innovation Center - http://www.nycedc.com/SupportingYourBusiness/EntrepreneurshipInnovation/UrbanTechnologyInnovationCenter/Pages/UrbanTechnologyInnovationCenter.aspx

Fashion

• CFDA Fashion Incubator - http://www.cfda.com/category/professional/

Food

• Hot Bread Kitchen - http://hotbreadkitchen.org/
• Mi Kitchen es su Kitchen - http://www.mikitchenessukitchen.com/

Workspaces (not full incubators, but share elements of incubators)

• General Assembly - http://www.generalassemb.ly/
• Greenspaces - http://www.greenspaceshome.com/
• Hive 55 - http://www.hiveat55.com/
• New Work City - http://www.nwc.co/
• Soho Haven - http://www.sohohaven.com/
• Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator - http://sunshineny.com/bronx
• Sunshine Suites - http://sunshineny.com/
• The Makery - http://brooklyn.makery.org/
• WeWork - http://www.weworknyc.com/
• Wix Lounge - http://www.wixlounge.com/

Remember that everyone is required to post two blogs posts to the class blog.  To do this, you will need a Tumblr account. As we are down to just 3 classes left, you should have your first post up as soon as possible.

Every post should be prefaced with “Guest Post by xxxx. Follow him/her at @xxxx” (including your real and Twitter names). 

Students who attended SXSW are required to post on their SXSW experience only. 

UPDATE: Note that all students are welcomed - and encouraged - to post on their own Tumblr first, and we will simply reblog here.

Guest post by Arvind Srinivasan. Follow him on Twitter at @arvindx007

A few weeks ago, Facebook announced that they would be expanding their movie rental business. It’s no surprise — Facebook’s stated mission is to be the singular online destination for content discovery and consumption. Yet the move signals the advent of a more interesting trend; namely, the “app store” model has emerged as the pre-eminent paradigm for content distribution, and not just for apps.

The app store economy, as opposed to direct distribution or subscription services, refers to a content distribution model wherein content creators delegate the point of sale to a third party, whose role is to curate a large corpus and then use a set of heuristics to optimize content discovery for the end user. As with the iOS App Store, this curation is often both manual and crowdsourced — exposure is determined by Apple personnel (featured apps, the app store submission process), but also by human provided ratings and reviews.

With this in mind, then, the power structure inherent in the app store model is oddly reminiscent of the much-maligned “bundled” distribution structures of “old” media. In a January essay, Om Malik wrote, “In reality, [media companies’] barrier to entry was ownership of distribution platforms. Just as telecoms of the past maintained their near monopoly by controlling the last mile of the network, the media companies maintained their money machine by controlling the distribution network: trucks, radio waves and television frequencies.” His conclusion was that the internet has unbundled media, insofar as the barrier to creating an online distribution network for content is both low hanging and transparent. In other words, the power shifts to the content creators, and consumption becomes distribution-agnostic.

The fact that big social media companies are trying to control the distribution network through their own app stores reflects a collective, ill-conceived, belief that the pendulum is swinging back. With their movie deal, Facebook is trying to create a highly vertical distribution network under the premise that they “own” a highly lucrative audience. YouTube had the same argument when they launched their (albeit less successful) movie rental service. The same goes for Apple, Amazon, Mozilla, et al. If any of these services can monopolize their distribution vertical, they can also manipulate the price controls. For example, Apple takes a 30% cut of purchases, and Facebook wants to do something similar through their Facebook Credits policies. Yet Apple’s success may be an isolated instance, because the ecosystem has changed dramatically.

First, the technical barrier of self-distribution is increasingly trivial. Content hosting is getting exponentially cheaper, DRM technology can be licensed from third parties, and free content management systems (WordPress, Bandcamp, Drupal, etc) are both robust and well-maintained. Thus, content creators no longer need engineering teams to maintain a distribution portal.

Second, in the long run, content will prove to be king. For high value content (think television shows, books from popular authors, titles from large game studios, or music from pop stars), it makes more fiscal sense for the content creator to distribute directly. Not only will a lack of a middleman mean that they get to keep that 30% cut, but they will also avoid the non-transparent, relatively arbitrary curation that may actually mitigate discovery of their content.

Third, the advances of social media mean that content creators can leverage network effects without resigning control to a third party. It’s not unforeseeable that EA, for example, would have a Facebook page and a Twitter account to promote a new Call of Duty game, which would then be sold directly from the EA website, as opposed to on Steam or the iPhone app store (caveat: at least in the short run, Apple’s control of the hardware represents an immovable barrier to external app distribution). This means that app stores have a nonunique value proposition — exposure is being increasingly democratized.

The lesson to entrepreneurs, then, is to carefully assess the value of any content distribution network that you want to create, because in the long run, viable content distribution networks will be focused on the long tail, as opposed to high value, high volume content. Content will only become increasingly unbundled. Nine Inch Nails, MineCraft, and Radiohead are the future.

Funding and Control

 

Speakers:                  

Fred Wilson, Partner, Union Square Ventures

Chris Dixon, Founder, Hunch and Founders Collective

 

Discuss Week’s Lessons and Progress in Groups

 

Required:

READ(In all readings below, comments are required reading.)

Case: Founders Fund (Stanford: E-309)

Dixon, Chris. “Ideal First Round Funding Terms.” CDixon.org. August 16, 2009.

Dixon, Chris. “The Problem With Taking Seed Money From Big VCs.” CDixon.org. August 14, 2009.

Wilson, Fred. “Angel Vs. VC.” A VC. July 25, 2010.

SCAN

Chris Dixon Blog: http://cdixon.org/contents/

A VC: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/mba-mondays/

DO

Play Twitter Predictor Game: http://hunch.com/games/twitter-predictor/

Follow @cdixon @fredwilson

 

Suggested:

Arrington, Michael. “So A Blogger Walks Into a Bar.” TechCrunch. September 21, 2010.

Arrington, Michael. “The Kleiner Perkins sFund: A $250 Million Bet That Social Is Just Getting Started.” TechCrunch. October 21, 2010.

Graham, Paul. “What We Look For in Founders.” Y Combinator.

Wilson, Fred. “Collusion.” A VC. September 22, 2010.

 

APRIL 6

The Next Big Thing: Skate Where the Puck Is Going

 

Discuss Week’s Lessons and Progress in Groups

-        Note: Be sure to continuously “capture” visual proof of your work in screenshots and links.

APIs, Mobile, Location-Based Startups, Digital Socializing

 

Speakers:                  

Alexa Hirschfeld, CEO, Paperless Post

Doug Imbruce, CEO, Qwiki

 

 

Required:

READ

Shah, Shaival. “Cannibalize Business Development by Popularizing your API.” Posterous, August 28, 2010.

Suster, Mark. “Skate Where the Puck is Going.” Both Sides of the Table. October 17, 2010.

DO

Follow @alexahirschfeld @dougimbruce

Create a Paperless Post

Search for your hometown on Qwiki

 

Suggested:

READ

McGee, Celia. “Your Invitation Is Not in the Mail.” New York Times. June 10, 2010.

Popper, Ben. “New Yorker  Doug Imbruce’s Startup, Qwiki, Wins TechCrunch Disrupt.” New York Observer. September 30, 2010.

Schonfeld, Erick. “Disrupt Winner Qwiki Arrives In Private Alpha (1,000 Invites).” TechCrunch. October 22, 1010.

DO

Try The Wilderness Downtown. From Google, Arcade Fire and Chris Milk.

alexandergordon:

Over the past few weeks I’ve been lucky to see a few great guest speakers at school:

• Jack Dorsey, Head of Product, Twitter; CEO, Square
• Nathan Estruth, VP, P&G’s Futureworks
• Phil McKinney, CTO, H-P’s Personal Systems Group

Consistent across each of the talks was a discussion of the ways these leaders contribute to fostering and managing innovation — which seems to have a lot of commonality from Fortune 500s to startups — and how entwined innovation is with culture. 

I found a great encapsulation of this in Dorsey’s response to a question about focusing on barriers to entry at a startup’s inception: he doesn’t.

“The biggest competitor for any startup at the beginning is themselves,” Dorsey said; a nugget even more salient in the context of what McKinney said is his main preoccupation at H-P: fighting off “corporate antibodies” who would quash innovation in favor of the status quo. Which is to say, some of the biggest challenges in entrepreneurship are internal.

At P&G, Estruth repeatedly noted that because the company never hires outsiders its corporate culture is uniquely uniform: employees can “finish each other’s sentences” no matter where in the world they are. That enables Futureworks to hand projects off to individual business units with minimal friction. (He admits that, as a trade-off, he has to fight against “groupthink” as well.)

Under some definitions of competitive advantage, superior internal capabilities is a big one — especially in the fast-changing worlds of digital media and technology. That Dorsey would focus more on the workings of his teams than McKinney and Estruth is not surprising, given the much smaller sizes of Twitter and Square vs. H-P and P&G.

Indeed, the challenges of how to manage internal teams diverges when talking about organizations of massively different scale. Dorsey talked about his role as an “editor” at Square and at Twitter, “reviewing, asking clarifying questions, etc.” I interpret this as saying that, because management can see more clearly across a smaller organization, everyone on Dorsey’s teams are moving in generally the right direction and they just need to be guided occasionally.

McKinney, on the other hand, said his other major initiative at H-P is to get everyone at the company — tens of thousands of people — to treat innovation as part of their job and not something concentrated with management. He’s put in place a number of systems to help, including a central repository for ideas from anyone in the company. It attracts 2,500 submissions per year.

There’s a saying I like that I think sums all this up (often attributed to Peter Drucker): “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Guest Post by Kunal Shah. Follow him on Twitter at @coolmonk.

So I like Social Media but one company that I have been critical about is Zynga. I hated getting Farmville notifications on my Facebook feed. But right after the Japan disaster, I read an article which made me change my mind about Zynga. Through their game, they raised $1.1 MM in a matter of 36 hours. AMAZING!

You can read my blog post here:

http://koonal.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/z1/

A couple of days ago, I read an article on “Angry Birds Rio” - the latest game in the Angry Birds franchise. It was downloaded 10 million times in 10 days.

Inspired by the article, I opened my old Angry Birds game to play it again and noticed that they had introduced an interesting monetization strategy. They now have an icon called “The Great Eagle” (or something like that). The Great Eagle can help you solve a level if you are stuck. To buy the services of the Great Eagle, it costs you a dollar.

I personally think that this is a great monetization strategy. We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.

Guest Post by Shehab Hamad. Follow him at @shehabhamad.

Mason asked @Jack a great question last week.
 

Paraphrasing:
 

Should a business be designed around a product or a product around a business?
 
Dorsey’s response went something like this:

You build a product, you figure out you need people, now you need money, and then you need to spend money on supporting the biz, advertising, then all a sudden you have 100 people and all the expenses that go with it. Suddenly this business emerges around it. So of course we always have to think about monetizing and revenue streams.

‘Suddenly this business emerges around it’- it seems obvious to me both from looking at how Jack has built businesses (or products I should say) and by reading between the lines of his response (it wouldn’t befit a CEO to play down the importance of making money too much) that Jack comes from the school of build a beautiful product first, figure out how to turn it into a business later.

Silicon Valley myth and lore plays deeply to this product-centered approach. With all the obvious problems of survivorship bias we’ve learnt about here at school, the legends of businesses like Google and Facebook (and Apple, Microsoft, McAfee and Hewlett-Packard before them) all revolve around building beautiful (maybe not in Microsoft’s case) products and then later figuring out the lucrative business models around them.  

I love the idealism and romance associated with this approach (watch The Social Network to see it wonderfully captured on celluloid) but it’s sobering to remember that startup-land graveyards are full of companies that built beautiful products and made no money.