A few days ago I wrote a post about PR and soaring expectations that can lead to failure for many highly touted start ups. Today I came across a blog post called “Five Life-Changing Mistakes and How I Moved On” written by Julie Mainwright — the former CEO of one of the failed companies I referenced: Pets.com [thanks Brad Feld.]
Julie (currently CEO of SmartNow) identifies her 2 failures as the massively public closure of Pets.com and her divorce, both of which occurred in the same week. It sounds like she was in a complete whirlwind of pain. Julie goes on to identify her 5 biggest mistakes as well as how she has grown/learned/moved-on from each of those mistakes.
It was beautiful and touching to read someone discuss their failure/their recovery from failure in such reflective words. I think it speaks volumes about her strength of character and resilience under such conditions. It’s inspiring to hear someone go through all that and come out seemingly on top. Definitely worth a quick read for everyone.
With the English Premier League right around the corner, I’m pumped. Here’s a great compilation of the top 10 goals scored in the Euro Cup 2008. It’s interesting that 4 of the top 10 were scored by Dutch players. The Dutch were eliminated right away in the quarterfinals by a dark horse Russian team, coached by Dutch national Guus Hiddink. My favorite is goal #3 — I saw it live and I still have trouble fully grasping how he scored at such an angle.
This morning All Facebook is reporting that popular Facebook application Scrabulous no longer works for US and Canadadian users after Hasbro filed a lawsuit again the makers of the application. I just went to the application and got the same message:
Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.
That was one of my favorite applications. From the news out there, Hasbro offered the Aggarwal brothers (creators of Scrabulous) money, but the offer was turned down.
Hasbro/EA released their own version of Scrabble for Facebook, but the user counts are way lower than the original Scrabulous. Scrabulous has 509,505 daily active users. EA’s Scrabble has 14,956 daily active users (after only about a week though).
Guess we’ll see how this turns out, but it’s never fun to see a big company put an end to a well built, popular product with passionate users. There’s no clear answer on who is right or wrong, but I wonder how much sales of scrabble board games were affected by the massive popularity of the application. It seems like Scrabulous was a free and easy to use product that Hasbro could’ve leveraged somehow instead of wiping it off the map.
In the past week I’ve really changed 2 things on this blog. The first is that I try to blog every day. I feel like it helps me take a break from just working all day on Sport Interactiva business and it also helps me get a better perspective on tech/business/life by connecting to other people with varying viewpoints. I love reading the comments, e-mails, messages, and other respones that I get to what I write. I’ve learned a lot from the people who read this blog and it’s always nice to connect to new people. I’m not sure if I can keep this up once I go back to school and in general I’ve found blogging more frequently to be harder than I thought.
The second change that I’ve made is a bit more minor: I’ve overhauled my blogroll. I have removed all big professional tech blogs like TechCrunch from my list. I find them all redundant, not personal enough, and I feel like they are just information overload. Instead I’ve refined my list to mostly people I know either personally or virtually (with a couple exceptions.) I find that individuals tend to have more passionate and unique viewpoints than the tech blogs.
With that I want to welcome 3 of my friends from UPenn to blogging who all have really impressive backgrounds and intelligent thoughts. What’s even more cool is they all talk about very different things (i.e. not all technology) and I really enjoy reading all of their blogs for different reasons.
The article goes on to outline a bunch of high profile start ups that crashed and burned often with disastrous results like losing hundreds of millions of investment dollars and putting thousands of people out of work. Some of the more famous examples include Pets.com and WebVan.
One thing that really struck me out of the article was how much press many of the companies got before their disastrous crash. I see so many start ups out there that are dying for attention and exposure, even though there is no real substance behind their company. I also see many start ups with incredible teams and products that simply get ignored by the mainstream tech media like TechCrunch. And I think to a certain extent they’re better off for it.
The moment the media starts incestuously buzzing about your company, the moment the expectations about your future success skyrocket out of control. It’s easy to get caught up in the hoopla of being a high profile, important, well covered startup, but I think some of my favorite companies are the ones who stay low profile, scale, build up kickass products, and get ignored by the mainstream tech pundits.
This reminded me of an interview I read with Wharton alumni entrepreneur Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog and now Lookery). His #1 rule is something I love at it’s core: ” ‘Un-sexy’ ” is good business. Rafer’s Lookery provides social network application developers ways to monetize traffic with run-of-net advertising and CPM gaurantees. They go for a high volume model to grab huge chunks of inventory. Nothing sexy about it, but it works and they’re kicking ass by all accounts.
I’m proud to say my company is not sexy. Usually I get asked questions regarding what I’m doing next with my company or what our execution plans are. I always break it down simple:
We make high quality engaging sports games for people to play on social networks
People play our games in large numbers
We get paid from advertising or virtual goods/upgrades
We didn’t invent any new business models. We don’t have some crazy technology or Google-killer. Our burn rate is really low. We just make something people love and we make money.
PR and sexiness can sometimes bring a company to new heights, but I think it should be approached with a fool’s gold mentality. Every now and then you hit gold, but usually it’s a fleeting illusion.
At my heart, I am a marketing and advertising junkie. I believe that feeling and knowing the culture of consumers is what truly makes you a good marketer, so out of both practical reasons and enjoyment I try to keep up with the latest TV shows.
About a month ago, I heard from a friend about this new show called Mad Men. The show is on AMC and was created by a producer/writer from The Sopranos (which is easily my favorite tv show of all time.) Mad Men takes a look at the advertising industry on Madison Avenue in the 1960s through the lives of various characters involved at the fictional ad firm Sterling Cooper — everyone from secretaries to copywriters to executives. The show examines a time when men dominated the work place, when alcohol at work was not only accepted, but also encouraged, and when things like health risks from smoking or alcohol were completely dismissed as a joke.
I just recently finished watching all of Season 1. All I have to say is: awesome. I was satisfied on more than one level. Studying history is beautiful and from a historical perspective, it is absolutely incredible to watch how the advertising industry on Madison Avenue grew and to feel the cultural shifts that occurred since that time. This is the time period when advertising legends like David Ogilvy made their marks on the ad world. Even little things like Bill Bernbach’s famous “Think Small” campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle (rated the #1 ad campaign of the 20th Century by Advertising Age) are captured on the show. Now I obviously didn’t grow up in that era, but reviews that I’ve read about the show seemingly always talk about the historical details and attention to accuracy. I can’t help but look back from the current world of online advertising and see where it all started.
From an entertainment perspective, the show delivers on all levels and the writing is top notch. I particularly enjoyed the strong character development and the tight story lines. It’s just flat out fun to watch.
The premier of Season 2 is tomorrow Sunday July 27 (on AMC) at 10pm.
I meant to write a post about this a while ago and never got around to it, so here it is. If you run a business or you in any way want to have customers keep coming back: DO NOT BE CHEAP WITH THEM. Let me explain what brought this up.
A few months ago I was at New York’s Penn Station waiting for my train to take me home to Philadelphia after a few days of exhausting meetings and running around the city. I was hungry and all I had on me was a yogurt cup I had somehow managed to pack away. I took it out of my backpack and realized I had no spoon. I also realized I was way too hungry for just yogurt so I needed to find a place to buy some food. I walked up to the first eatery I could find and got in line for the cash register. I also saw the utensils were behind the register. Once I got up to the cash register, all I could think about was a spoon to eat my yogurt with. At that moment, I was beyond exhausted and nothing could not prepare me for the humorous/surreal conversation that followed. Looking back still makes me feel like I was in a twilight zone:
Me: “Hello, could I please get a spoon so I can finish this yogurt?”
Her: “That’ll be 3 cents”
Me: [realizing she may think I'm not ordering food and slightly annoyed that she would ask me for 3 cents] “Yea, I want to order food, but I just wanted a spoon for my yogurt”
Her: “Ok 3 cents for the spoon. What do you want to order?”
Me: [Looking at her in disbelief mixed with exhaustion] “Wait, are you seriously asking me for 3 cents?”
Her: “Yes 3 cents for spoons”
Me: “Well seeing as I only have a credit card, how about you charge my card 3 cents and you can pay a 25 cent credit card processing fee, because I’m no longer ordering food here.”
Her: “No, 3 cents. You have coins?”
Me: “I can’t believe you’re asking me for pennies. Are you serious?”
Her: “Yea, we charge 3 cents for spoons”
Me: “Ok, well thanks. I waited like 10 minutes in line so I could order food here. I asked you for a spoon. See that place right over there? [pointing] I’m now going to walk over there and order my food there and I’m pretty sure they’re not going to ask me for 3 cents for a spoon.”
And that’s exactly what I did. I walked across to that place, asked for a spoon which they gave me right away and then I proceeded to order a large chicken hoagie with a bag of chips and a bottle of water. I devoured my yogurt cup while I waited for my order to come out. And then I devoured my meal and got on my train.
Looking back I realize the worker may have thought I wasn’t a paying customer, but I had stepped into line and waited for my turn. I had full intentions to order food. I was also exhausted and starving — I just wanted a simple plastic spoon and then my food. Instead I had to deal with some stupid policy of charging customers 3 cents for a spoon. Now I can also understand that this place probably doesn’t have as many repeat customers as a typical place not located in a busy public transport hub, so maybe they just don’t care. I don’t think that really makes a difference. They lost me as a customer instantly. What kind of business in their right mind messes up a customer at the point of purchase? I had my credit card in my hand ready to BUY.
If prices on plastic spoons are going up, here’s a really easy way to fix it so that you don’t hassle your customers: factor it into the price of your food. Would I have noticed if the price of my meal was $0.03 higher? Absolutely not. Did I notice when I was treated cheaply/rudely to pay for a spoon? Absolutely.
Don’t be one of those people or businesses that cheaps out on customers. It’s just not smart business.
The buzz today across the sports world is Josh Childress. He’s the 6th man on the Atlanta Hawks and was a desired restricted free agent in the NBA this off season. He is not a superstar, but instead of getting a new deal from the Atlanta Hawks or finding a new home with an NBA team willing to outbid the Hawks, Josh Childress just signed a deal with a Euroleague team: the Greek Olympiakos for a reported $20 million (after-taxes) for 3 years. Atlanta wasn’t willing to pay him that, but it’s easy to see how this happened:
That’s a nice picture which shows the value of the US Dollar plummeting against the Euro in the past 2 years.
But this is America. We are a country built on sports. I can deal with higher gas prices. I can deal with higher food prices. I don’t want to pay higher taxes, but I guess I’m ok with that too…. just please don’t take away my sports stars. Now Josh Childress isn’t exactly a superstar, so this isn’t really about him. I just know that I want the best of the best staying in America. It’s always been the case that guys like Beckham come over here for extra money once they’ve gone past their peak or international hockey/baseball/basketball stars come to the states for big paydays.
This post is going to be quick. I was thinking today about what really makes good business ideas stand out to me. I always feel like certain business just pass the gut-check test with flying colors. People ask me to hear their business ideas all the time. By now, I feel like I can judge something within 5 seconds.
Usually it’s a No, sometimes its a Maybe/I’m not sure, and rarely it’s a WOW YES! So here are some thoughts on what really marks a good idea in my mind:
It is simple: you can explain it quickly, succinctly, and on the first try
It doesn’t require feedback: you don’t need to go around asking everyone for their opinion. Most of them don’t know any better than you do. So when the idea is good, it really will only require iterating as you execute
It is executable tomorrow: you can wake up in the morning and get cranking on it. There is no need to wait around thinking about how good it is. It’s a clear idea and all you need to do is add execution
It is something you are intimate with: I always love hearing ideas from people with intimate knowledge of a market building ideas for that market (i.e. a former ad-sales executive building a company to provide tools for ad-sales teams)
It gets you excited: you get a warm fuzzy feeling that overwhelms you and makes you jump when you think about it
It is scalable: this is something that has growth potential with room for upside
There’s a reason why Carl Icahn is worth $14 Billion dollars. This 72 year old maverick knows how to seize opportunities and play strategy. Just like Rupert Murdoch, this guy is awesome. Yesterday, Yahoo and Icahn announced a settlement over control of Yahoo’s board. Yahoo will give Carl Icahn 3 board seats and in exchange Icahn has agreed to end his proxy war and alternative board. Definitely not what Icahn had started out hoping for, but it’s still a really great position for him to shake things up a bit and influence the future of Yahoo (of which he is a pretty large shareholder.)
Jerry Yang, Co-founder and current CEO of Yahoo, has out-manuevered the slow to the punch Microsoft on this one. By grabbing in Icahn, Yang has effectively sealed off the proxy threat and isolated Microsoft by removing the 3rd party. Plus it puts pressure on Microsoft to make a move. Yang has come under fire for making decisions in the past and in all honesty he should’ve sold Yahoo way long ago for $30-34. He is a huge shareholder of this company and he has wiped billions off of his net worth as Yahoo’s stock dropped. For him though, this isn’t as much about the money — he loves the company that he built from the ground up. I’m obviously not a publically traded Yahoo, but my company feels like my baby. I love it. It seems like Yang has the same love for his company and wants to keep it out of the paws of Microsoft.
I think Microsoft will wait for Yahoo’s stock price to fall and I wouldn’t be surprised if they start buying up shares. It seems as if this is a pride/ego thing for Microsoft or something, but they have been relentless in getting a deal done.
Guess we’ll see. For me this is an interesting exercise in corporate strategy. It’s like a big game of chess, but with billions of dollars flying around. The best part is that the lawyers and bankers advising Yahoo have already raked in $36 million. That’s a nice tab to pay for defending the castle.
My good friends at DropCard launched their service the other day and I thought it’d be great to share their startup with everyone (they’re backed by DreamIT Ventures.) Their service allows you to lose your business card forever by replacing it with a virtual card that you can easily send to other people. You setup a profile on DropCard with all your networking information. When you meet someone new, you can quickly send them all your information with a simple SMS message to DropCard. They’ve been getting some big press coverage, but I think the coolest thing is this video that they made to show you what you can do with your old business cards now that they are on the scene. Go here to signup. Enjoy the video:
I’ve done a fair amount of traveling lately and I noticed I just noticed something about myself recently. I hate spare change. I’m talking about the shiny metal coins you receive when you pay for something whose price includes fractional parts of a dollar. So this made me think about my demand curve and I started noticing that I’m willing to pay more for something that doesn’t involve change.
Easiest example: One time I went to the ever delicious Lorenzo & Son pizza shop on South Street in Philadelphia. The slices are larger than normal and cost $2.50. I wasn’t particularly hungry and really only wanted 1 slice, but wouldn’t mind eating an extra slice. The added convenience of not having to have change jingling in my pockets made me order that second slice for a nice clean even $5.00. No change. I almost felt like that 2nd piece had higher utility than the first.
I also notice that if I do get something with change, I’ll just throw it in the charity cup or tip jar in front of the cash register. This also means I get the convenience of carrying around a money clip instead of a bulky wallet.
I looked around and couldn’t find any studies about purchasing or utility theory involving spare change. I think it’d be cool to see some numbers on how people make purchasing decisions involving fractional dollar pricing.
Yesterday I wrote a post entitled “Inspirational Rap Quotes”. Today I noticed my blog got a nice spike in traffic and I decided to look at the keywords people were using to find my blog. Wow, I guess that blog post really hit some sort of sweet spot. As of right now I have the following rankings on Google among search results for various rap related search queries:
inspiring rap quotes #3
business rap quotes #1
inspirational rap #6
inspirational rap song lyrics #2
rap inspiration #4
and my favorite of all: quotes on hustlin #3
And here’s something you will enjoy, if you’ve ever listened to rap, that a reader kindly shared with me.
Music is beautiful. I grew up listening to a lot of rap. I always feel like I find beautiful rap songs that just speak to me on a primal level of passion. A bunch of rappers like Jay-Z ($547 million net worth), 50 Cent ($440 million), Puff Daddy ($358 million), etc. are international moguls with business in everything from music to restaurants to drinks to clothing lines. They’re entrepreneurs.
Now I also love quotes and rappers tend to throw out great quotes in their song lyrics which often capture the “entrepreneurial spirit.” If you’ve read Freakonomics, you’ll understand that things like dealing drugs and other illicit activities share a lot in common with legitimate business practices. I love listening to rappers talk about their “business” struggles and their goals/dreams. So here are some of my favorite inspirational quotes with my brief thoughts:
“Everyday I’m hustlin’” -Everyday I’m Hustlin’ by Rick Ross [Work work work. Then work some more. Intensity and persistence]
“Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted-One moment Would you capture it or just let it slip?”-Lose Yourself by Eminem [This whole song is about startups, if you fail you're done and it's back to the drawing board]
“I’ve got to formulate a plot or I end up in jail or shot Success is my only mothaf**kin option, failure’s not” -Lose Yourself by Eminem [You either live or die. Failure is not an option. That's what a startup feels like]
“If I can’t do it, homie, it can’t be done Now I’ma let the champagne bottle pop I’ma take it to the top” -If I Can’t, 50 Cent [Confidence for an entrepreneur is essential. It's you or no one to do it. Take it to the top!]
“The world is yours and everything in it, its out there get on your grind and get it” -Let’s Get It, Young Jeezy [The world is full of opportunities so get moving and get off your butt]
I can post more later, but that’s all for now that really jump out at me.
Feel free to leave some of your own favorite music quotes in replies.
The first time I saw it, I shrugged it off. The second time I saw it, I took a mental note. The third time I saw it, I realized this was a trend. I’m talking about the hipster Obama t-shirts I keep seeing everywhere I go. This really hit me hard when I was in DC the other week at Georgetown and I’d see kids in $250 True Religion jeans and a multi-colored Obama t-shirt.
Just today, NBC News reported their findings that Obama merchandise is outselling McCain merchandise by a staggering 5 to 1. I did my own quick look at CafePress, which is one of the largest online platforms for custom designed products, and I quickly found that Obama has 1,090,000 t-shirt designs available compared to McCain’s 317,000. Also interesting. Just looking at the front pages of each section, ALL of the designs tagged as Obama are pro-Obama t-shirts with positive messages about Obama. Looking at the McCain designs, many of them are not out-right pro-McCain, but rather anti-Obama.
I have mixed/conflicted feelings about this:
As a marketing fiend I find it exciting that business has found a way to profit off the aura, ferver, and emotions that surround Obama. This is awesome. These t-shirt companies and merchandise vendors are making lots of money. It says a lot about how people perceive Obama and McCain. Reality is nothing. Perception is everything. From a marketing merchandise perspective, Obama comes off trendy, hip, and fresh. It’s brilliant of the Obama campaign that they are CRUSHING McCain with such strong merchandising/branding efforts.
Now as a citizen who loves following politics, I can’t help but question if some people just wear the Obama t-shirts as a trendy fashion item with no real political feelings behind it. I love to see when people have conviction in their beliefs — when people have passion, but does the trendy fashion nature of Obama pull people in who at their core don’t care? People who may just wear this shirt as an expression of how “hip” they are? Perhaps because my parents grew up in a communist, propaganda filled regime I always grew up with politics being a subject of seriousness and I cynically don’t like the merchandising hype of something political. It’s a free and beautiful country, and I’m not one to say what people can and can’t wear; I can’t help but feel some sense of political apathy around me when people wear things that they may have no idea about.
I think the business side of me loves watching and analyzing the image, branding, and development of Obama as a marketing character, but my feelings on how politics should be make me wary of the magnitude of merchandising involved in this campaign.
The past few months haven’t been heavy sports seasons (let’s face it, no one likes Baseball) for our users, so we’ve focused on gearing up with new changes/features on our existing games for the upcoming seasons.
Today we launched a new re-design of the most popular football (Soccer) game on Facebook: Fantasy Football.
It felt like we had created a new baby. It was magical. It had a lot of work put into it behind the scenes. It was magical. I’m in love with it. I finally felt a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time: the rush and thrill of launching a new product. I remember last summer when I first started Sport Interactiva, I would sit around and just hit refresh on my user counts and my invitation counts. It was crazy watching my applications double in hours.
Today David and I sat around watching as new users rolled in and invites started flying out and users started generating leagues to compete with their friends in. We watched as we sent out e-mails to hundreds of thousands of people across the world to let them know that their favorite game was back and better than ever.
Wow. Feels like just yesterday I kicked off my blog and my company. As of last week, it’s been a 1 year anniversary for this blog. I don’t think I could have ever predicted where I’d be right now and what I have in front of me.
Since then I’ve built up a company I am really proud of and learned a lot about myself, business, and life in general. We’ve been able to close deals with big time advertisers like Time Warner and Adidas, etc. I’ve faced all sorts of crazy ups and downs that I can only look back on and grin. I’ve had the opportunity to work with David, who has been an incredible partner on this company. I’ve traveled all over the place, met entrepreneurs of all ages and levels of success, sat down with some of the top investors in the world, got knocked on my head more than a few times, and left Wharton to work on this full time (I’m coming back this fall.)
I know this past year wouldn’t have been possible without a lot of people in my life. Primarily my family who has kept me grounded and safe on the roller coaster that is inherent in the very nature of a startup. Similarly, I have to thank all the people who have given me guidance and advice both personally and for business. I got a ton of support from all the people in Wharton’s entrepreneurial community and in particular the staff of Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program, several Wharton alumni, and some awesome Penn professors.
And I can’t forget all my friends who sometimes remind me I’m still in college.
Life is beautiful, and there is so much more to do and learn.
The New York Times this morning had an article about Google. The title reads: “Google and Creator of ‘Family Guy’ Strike a Deal.” The article goes on to explain that Seth MacFarlane, creator of the Family Guy series (the Simpsons-of-my-generation), will make 50 two-minute clips of a new animation series called “Cavalcade.” The cartoon will then be distributed by Google through the AdSense network with revenues being split up between Google, Seth MacFarlane, and the publishers.
If Google can figure out a way to pull this off and scale this, they won’t need to worry about the fact that YouTube isn’t making much money and that their head of monitization quit. There are a bunch of often mentioned reasons for why YouTube has struggled to monetize effectively, 1 of which I find really pertinent:
User generated content creates risk for advertisers who want control over where their ads appear to prevent embarassing PR where their ad appears next to inappropriate material
These cartoon shows aren’t annoying injected video advertisements that no one wants to watch. No. People will actually want to watch these videos. This has the potential to give Google a platform for the syndication and distribution of HIGH QUALITY ORIGINAL web content that can monetize because it’s licensed content that people want to watch. Now when they ad on the contextual advertising and work in any behavioral data from YouTube preferences or other services, Google can literally sell advertisements against freshest/hottest new content that hits the web. Content creators will be vying to get their content pushed out, while advertisers will be vying to get their ads pushed around the highly sought after content.
It’s exciting. I look forward to seeing what they pull off.
Posted by Boris M. Silver 
Posted by Boris M. Silver 
Posted by Boris M. Silver 
