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Posts on innovation, user experience, research and design 
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July 15, 2011
 

A perfect feedback loop

Outstanding series of videos covering how Jason Seats and Matt Tanase started SliceHost and eventually sold to Rackspace. Fascinating look into the trials and tribulations of this process. One quote from Jason, in particular, really resonated with me as pertains to design for customers in a small vs large company.

Sometimes enough parts of the organism aren't connected to each another. And so when we'd spend part of our day interacting with a customer in support, we would notice something. That's a flaw. Like a design flaw. To what we're doing. Later on in the day we're in the mode of being system architects and designing the system. So that feedback loop, when it's all in my brain, is a perfect feedback loop because it's the same brain seeing all these things.In a big company, you have to construct artificial ways to get information that your support people are seeing and connect that to other people that are making design decisions and architectural decisions about what you're doing. Anything you come up with is artificial and difficult.
 
I wasn't quite ready for how quickly I would lose track of and lose feel of seeing through the customer's eyes and knowing what they are doing and just inherently knowing what the next biggest problem is. Instead you have to be in a mode where you have to ask someone "What's the biggest support challenge right now with the product suite?" For me to even say those words, there was a point in my life where that would sound absurd. That would sound absurd for me to say that. But inside of a big company, that's kind of the mode you have to be in. That's the price you pay for having all this manpower.

The entire set of videos are outstanding... 

Filed under  //   37Signals   Rework   SliceHost   startup  

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July 11, 2011
 

Online community organizer

Came across a nice writeup on A VC today in which Fred Wilson and Joel Spolsky talked about the value of a key activity within a startup, that of the community organizer. As Joel notes, this is an entirely new type of role, which has a value that is only now being recognized.

Online communities require both software and people. Sometimes the software part is the easier part. Curating communities is hard work and requires people to do it. It is an inherently social behavior. This job will be sort of like being a community organizer at a non-profit. It combines elements of marketing, PR, and sales, but it’s really something different. I don’t expect that there are a lot of people out there who already know how to do this well, so I’m going to train them, personally. Everyone who joins the program (and survives for a year) will come out with an almost supernatural ability to take a dead, lifeless site on the internet and make it into the hottest bar in town. That’s a skill worth learning for the 21st century.

It's amazing to me, as someone who entered the job market ten years ago this month how jobs have changed over the course of those 10 years. Interesting to consider what cutting edge roles might be discussed in another 10...

Filed under  //   A VC   Fred Wilson   Joel Spolsky   community   curation   online community organizer   social   startup  

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May 2, 2011
 

Being unreasonable

Great quote today from Marc Cendella, the founder of TheLadders.com.

The more you read about entrepreneurship and innovation, the more you feel there is no right way to go about it, but there is one simple fact at the end of the day. If don't have any paying customers, you don't have a business. You may have a hobby but that's not the same thing. And it's just that simple. 

Being an entrepreneur is unreasonable.  It is arrogant.  It is unusual. You are asserting that, despite the presence of 7 billion other people on the planet, and a US economy that produces $14 trillion in goods and services each year, and over 100 mm white collar workers in our country, that you, little old you, have come up with an idea, a business, a company that none of those other wonderful human beings have thought to invent yet.

I mean, c’mon, there’s no denying that it’s arrogant to say that you are right and everybody else was wrong to not see the wonderful opportunity that your company is pursuing.  That they were fools to just leave the dollar bills waiting there for you to pick them up.

And part of that unreasonableness is realizing that you are in a fight for your company’s life every day.  Every day that you are not “live” is a day you’ve lost the opportunity to make an impression.  Every day that you’re not bringing in cash is a day that you’ve lost the chance to expand your payroll.  Every day that you’re not pleasing customers is a day that somebody, somewhere else, will.  Perhaps they’re not doing it as well as you know you eventually will, but the plain truth is that they are pleasing them today and you’re not.

Read the full article, which is outstanding, here.

 

Filed under  //   entrepreneur   innovation   startup  

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January 7, 2011
 

A digital park bench

Like many others, I've been a long-time fan of The Sartorialist. I didn't know much about the man behind the camera, but this video from Intel changed that. I love this concept of the Internet as a digital park bench.
 
Because the Internet is the world shrinking. Are we all becoming too homogenized? Milan hasn't changed. Paris hasn't changed, New York hasn't changed. So I don't think it's really homogenized anything, but I do think it's given us what I like to call a digital park bench. So many people you meet say 'Oh I love to just go people watch, to just go sit in the park and watch people. And before, you were limited to the people you could see right there in front you, at your park. Now, you can go on the internet and really the whole world is open to you now.

via 

Filed under  //   Internet   The Satorialist   art   inspiration   photography   startup  

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