brinking.

Hi, My Name Is Mike And I Was A FishVille Addict I’ve never really understood why games as an...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:38:24 -0500

Hi, My Name Is Mike And I Was A FishVille Addict

I’ve never really understood why games as an entertainment medium elicit this kind of cultural shame.

When I was 13 I got really into comic books. I started spending most of my money on it, perhaps all of my spare money. I was showing up at the comic book shop the day a new issue came out. I worked at a comic book store for trade and maniacally collected every issue of my favorite series. It took no more skill to read a comic book than to play Fishville, but it was fun to lose yourself in that world.

It was called a hobby, and it was fun even if the serial nature of the books (”Tune in next week to find out how Batman gets out!”) was meant to keep me hooked. It’s not smoking, or drinking. It is entertainment.

When a person gets into other entertainment mediums he’s a movie buff, music buff, comic book buff, or a sports fan. Think about the pride people have in how much they love music. Somehow people who play games a lot get some kind of shame and then label it a crazy addiction. I’m not sure I really understand or care to understand the cultural elitism.

Don’t worry Mike, you clearly liked having those fish taken care of, and felt bad to let them go to waste. A little escapist nurturing now and then is perfectly fine, I won’t judge.

Goodbye Droid, I'll be Back.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:52:00 -0500

I bought my first Android phone the day the G1 came out. It lasted three days.

I bought the Motorola Droid and it lasted almost a month, until I finally realized I just couldn’t do it over breakfast with fellow former Droid owner Bijan last week.

First, what is better:

Email, for Gmail users, is the best experience on any phone. Also Calendar, Maps, Google Listen (I love podcasts including TED and TAL), Google Voice, and several others are just better than anywhere else. I also found Android innovating where I wasn’t expecting. Such as a feature to tell you exactly what percent of your battery is being used by what app, or the ability to return purchases from the App Store (ahem, Market) within 24 hours.

The killer (as in dead) feature:

However. There is something horrifically and terribly wrong at the task management level of Android. What you never want happening in any user interface is to initiate an action, and have nothing happen. In a mobile phone, that is even more critical - especially when you wait 10 seconds and then are met with “Force Close?”

How often does this happen? In my few weeks with the Droid it was happening several times daily. Often when doing something as simple as typing out an email there would be intermittent freezing. I disagree with Stewart Alsop’s overall characterization that the hardware is close but the OS doesn’t work — but I absolutely think he nailed the worst thing of all. After four days I picked my iPhone back up and knew whenever I clicked or scrolled it would respond and that makes a huge difference.

That wasn’t the only thing. For instance, apps were generally unpolished, the keyboard is useless, the battery cover falls off every ten seconds, and someone should tell Motorola that no one wants a masculine phone. Even guys want something sexy, a sports car not a Hummer.

But as I was returning my Droid I picked up an HTC Droid Eris and found that it felt great. Also, the HTC TouchFlo approach added all the OS-level UI polish, and some base apps (like Twitter) that I would have wanted. But, alas, HTC has not yet released a Droid phone with a keyboard.

But if HTC, or someone else (Google perhaps) releases an Android phone, with a keyboard, and software updates can manage to keep the thing from hanging then I’ll be back on Android for good.

(ps - do I have to return the t-shirt that arrived today?)

Music Hack Day Boston was one of the better little events I’ve been to in a while. Mostly...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:06:12 -0500

Music Hack Day Boston was one of the better little events I’ve been to in a while. Mostly because it actually felt like people were getting things done, there was soldering and coding and deals — it felt like the opposite of a chatter-fest. I was happy to have been able to contribute in my very minor way by speaking on a panel about Starting a Music Business.

For those who run events, you should chat with Jon Pierce and the rest of the group about what they did, or read Anthony’s little sum-up of the event.

How To Measure The True Stickiness (And Success) Of A Facebook App

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:05:20 -0400

How To Measure The True Stickiness (And Success) Of A Facebook App:

Just wrote a piece for Techcrunch on predicting the success of a product, the over-dependence on virality, and the nefariousness of Best Buy — all in one compact little post. Plus charts!

What Batman can teach startups

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:56:00 -0400

A little while ago Brad Feld turned me on to the book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Basically, it’s a book, about comic books, that is about entrepreneurship.

I have no idea if this passage is going to translate for those that have not read the book, but it is as good a piece of startup advice at the early idea stage as you’ll hear. The context is that the two main characters, Joe & Sammy, are discussing what kind of superhero to create in the heady days just following the launch of Superman. To translate, think about that energy around creating a social network a few years ago, or a social game right now.

“And no matter what we come up with, and how we dress him, some other character with the same shtick, with the same style of boots and the same little doodad on his chest, is already out there, or is coming out tomorrow, or is going to be knocked off from our guy inside a week and a half.”
“So…” Sammy said. “So…”
“How? is not the question. What? is not the question,” Sammy said.
“The question is why?” Joe asked.
“The question is why.” Sammy said, ”Why is he dressing up like a monkey, or an ice cube, or a can of fucking corn.”
“To fight crime, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, to fight crime. To fight evil. But that’s all any of these guys are doing. That’s as far as they ever go. It’s the right thing to do, how interesting is that?”
“I see”
“Only Batman, you know… see, yeah, that’s good. That’s what makes Batman good, not dull at all, even though he’s just a guy who dresses up like a bat and beats people up.”
“What is the reason for Batman? The why?”
“His parents were killed, see? In cold blood. Right in front of his eyes, when he was a kid. By a robber.”
“It’s revenge.”
“That’s interesting.” Sammy said, “see?”
“So we need to figure out the why.”
” ‘What is the why.’ ” Sammy agreed.

It’s not the how. What is the why.

"When we were building Flickr, we worked very hard…a lot of what we then considered “working..."

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:09:00 -0400

“When we were building Flickr, we worked very hard…a lot of what we then considered “working hard” was actually “freaking out”. Freaking out included panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn’t have worried about, thinking about fund raising rather than product building, building too many features, getting distracted by competitors, being at the office since just being there seemed productive even if it wasn’t — and other time-consuming activities.”

- Caterina Fake - Working hard is overrated - Sept 25, 2009

Startups are hard. They require an insane amount of hard work and stress. But I like how Caterina calls out the difference between freaking out vs working hard.

(via bijan)

"What about iTunes? Doesn’t that show people will pay for content? Well, not really. iTunes is more..."

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:07:00 -0400

“What about iTunes? Doesn’t that show people will pay for content? Well, not really. iTunes is more of a tollbooth than a store. They offer a convenient list of songs, and whenever you choose one they ding your credit card for a small amount, just below the threshold of attention. Basically, iTunes makes money by taxing people, not selling them stuff. You can only do that if you own the channel, and even then you don’t make much from it, because a toll has to be ignorable to work.”

- - Paul Graham - Post-Medium Publishing

From the perspective of Paul Graham’s description, wouldn’t all virtual goods transactions be “a tax?”

They seem to follow the pattern PG sets up with the iPod. Create an audience that is highly engaged in your product (such as Apple’s iPod, or a social game or MMO) and then offer a convenient set of additional content (music in iTunes, new items in Pet Society, new music and clothing in Loudcrowd). In that case, I’m not sure how you would argue that “even then you don’t make much from it” because there is a preponderance of evidence showing the opposite.

The lifetime value of a paying customer in these models is anywhere between $100-$200. Indeed, well performing social games are charging a “tax” that results in $.50-$1 per average daily active user a month. PG has investments in the space so I’m sure he’s aware of these numbers.

The lesson is not that digital content won’t sell, but that there are different types of digital content — and some won’t survive. There are particular characteristics of the $1b+ in music sales revenue in iTunes. Instead of dismissing iTunes as an abberation, we should study those characteristics, because they are replicable. Hardware is not even a mandatory trait, just a highly dedicated and engaged audience, along with some of the other conditions I’ve discussed in the past.

Best Entrepreneurship/VC Tumblr Blogs

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:46:39 -0400

Best Entrepreneurship/VC Tumblr Blogs:

benjaminpalmer:

TUMBLR PARTY! Adding the 1/2 of this list I wasn’t already following. Nice work

Flattered to be included amongst an excellent group. Nice little community forming here, eh?

"The company was on the rocks. We had zero revenue. We had been trying for four years to make..."

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:40:58 -0400

“The company was on the rocks. We had zero revenue. We had been trying for four years to make something work. We were out of ideas.”

- One can never be reminded enough of the “long and winding road” that startups take. Thanks for sticking with it Alex & Eran. We’re looking forward to playing Beatles at the office.

From: How ‘horrendous failure’ led to Rock Band

Only at Google would “near future” just be an...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:14:06 -0400

Only at Google would “near future” just be an estimate. If you want to kill Google, it’s pretty simple, try adding customer support.

The quickest path to $50m in revenue? Build fun.

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:21:00 -0400

The Wall Street Journal has a good piece, based on Christian Chabot’s blog post, about how long it takes to build a technology empire.

Turns out it takes an average of eight years to hit $50m in revenue, which is about the point when you can start thinking about things like going public. And this is for the top 100 largest software companies, so we’re talking about the biggest winners here. One of the most valuable companies ever founded, in any industry, in any country, took 8 years to hit $50m in sales, Microsoft. Oracle took 10. Locally I often point to the timelines of successes like iRobot and Harmonix and the time it took them.

But hey, let’s say you’re still trying to hit the obviously unrealistic five year projections of a typical venture capitalist (unrealistic only from a purely factual, statistical basis you understand), what’s the fastest way to the top?

Thankfully Tableau’s study breaks down the companies by market segment… so I did a little extra simple math. Here were the averages for how long it took to hit $50m in revenue by market segment:

Network (Rackspace, Echelon): 10.6 years
Security (Symantec, Sourcefire): 8.2 years
Database (Netezza, Oracle): 8 years
Content Management (Adobe, Digital River): 7.5 years
Entertainment (Activision, EA): 6 years

Feeling impatient? Don’t start a networking company, start a gaming company. Of course, this is a limited study and breaks with our deep-seeded need to be working on “serious stuff.” But it’s actually not just historical, it seems to be repeating itself right now. At least three Social Gaming companies founded post 2007 will be, or already have, hit $50m in revenue in their first three years of business.

The interesting dichotomy that the data suggests is this: it will take longer than you expect to hit success, and building fun might actually accelerate that path.

"While the members of the Beatles camp may not be avid gamers, they are savvy navigators of culture..."

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:09:35 -0400

“While the members of the Beatles camp may not be avid gamers, they are savvy navigators of culture and commerce. With music sales in a freefall and radio’s clout on the wane, the vibrant video game industry is a prime source of exposure.”

- A Fab Four reunion for a new generation

Secrets of the Amazon Cart

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:34:00 -0400

Secrets of the Amazon Cart:

Comprehensive look at the tiny design changes that add up to mattering in conversions, great overview

12% Of Americans Purchasing Virtual Goods

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:46:08 -0400

12% Of Americans Purchasing Virtual Goods:

Study: 12% Of Americans Purchasing Virtual Goods

Design of Playfish Games

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:32:00 -0400

Design of Playfish Games

Digg's quiet domination

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:39:00 -0400

45% of diggs from registered users now come from the Diggbar, a switch that happened overnight. A full 75% of incoming Facebook Connections are new Digg users, and 30% of all new Digg registrations come through Facebook Connect.

Before we all get too caught up in Twitter (too late), Forbes has a good, brief, profile on the movements that Digg has made outside of buzz machine of Techcrunch. Coincidentally I was actually just looking at their stats earlier this week and surprised to find it had grown so much. It’s close to 40m people a month in the U.S. (Compete data), that’s 1/3 of the size of Facebook and almost double the size of Twitter.

Considering that many of the ideas for monetizing Twitter involve its power to drive traffic to a URL (search ads anyone?), Digg should certainly not be overlooked. For all it’s non-hotness, it is clearly dominating the space of link sharing. StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz, and Reddit combined together reach almost Digg’s size, and is also averaging more visits per person (2.7 visits a month) than StumbleUpon (2.3) or Reddit (2.16).

It sounds like a lot of this is thanks to excellent integration with the Facebook ecosystem, an interesting case of using FB for growth outside of their system.

Team Conduit, stopping for oysters on the way to Ptown. PS -...

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:37:00 -0400

Team Conduit, stopping for oysters on the way to Ptown.

PS - sorry for the spam of photos, that was an overzealous Tumblr importer, won’t happen again. I’m leaving this photo for posterity.

Building platform companies

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:34:00 -0400

RIM recently paid $8.3M to buy the once highly buzz-worthy Dash Navigation. Dash was a GPS-masquerading-as-in-car-software-platform company. And, you know, there is no better way to instantly sound bigger than to say, “we’re a platform for…”

I personally loved the Dash as a product, but just was never quite sure about the whole platform focus. There are two problems with the “platform” approach, one is that platforms are hard - you need to both create a killer product and convince others to build killer products for you. The second is that the tactic is often more about ego and makes your life harder for little benefit, no matter how instantly sexy and “big” a new platform sounds.

Dash Navigation could have built on a pre-existing platform, as Stacey over at GigaOm points out. Slacker radio (which I love) and Kindle have similar issues. Do their separate devices warrant an entirely new platform or is being on the iPhone/Android/etc close enough?

We went through this several times at Ambient Devices, where we got regular questions about whether we should just be embedded in cell phones and laptops - a tack that our major competitor Microsoft Spot took before they ultimately died. Despite the ill fate of Spot as part of another platform, which I chalk up to execution, I’m still not sure the separate device (new platform) was the right answer.

Over in social gaming land, I was talking with James Currier last week and he made an empassioned point about building inside of existing social networks. Why build a new platform from scratch when your customers are already coming back to Facebook (retention), already have their friends there (acquisition), and spend more time there (engagement).

Is your idea really worth trying to be one of the 10 URLs an average person visits in a day? Is your idea really worth being one of the three devices an average person purchases in a year? If not that doesn’t mean it is a bad idea, most $100m+ revenue companies do so without creating a platform - it just means you need to look for the best ecosystem to exist in.

A Startup is like a Pirate Ship

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:28:59 -0400

A Startup is like a Pirate Ship:

As Cap’n of this particular ship, I’d like to add that it’s great sailing the windy seas with Mr. Sivak. Also, this is an apt companion to using Dave’s Startup Metrics for Pirates to navigate your ship.

"Instead of watching TV or playing Grand Theft Auto, work on your idea. Instead of going to bed at..."

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:59:00 -0400

“Instead of watching TV or playing Grand Theft Auto, work on your idea. Instead of going to bed at 10, go to bed at 11. We’re not talking about all-nighters or 16 hour days – we’re talking about squeezing out a few extra hours a week.”

- 37signals advocating doing your startup on the side, to which I respectfully disagree vehemently. If you love your idea enough, make a damn commitment. Ideas are hard to grow, and if you’ve got an out you are likely to take it. Commitment breeds success, or as paul graham put it, “The startup may have more long-term potential, but you’ll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now.” As Paul points out, committing also causes a lot of other good behavior - like getting “ramen profitable” as quicly as possible.

There are certain, very rare individuals, who seem to be able to be parallel entrepreneurs but I am not one of them. Whether the idea was mine or I’m on board with someone else’s idea, I am not smart enough to have figured out a way to be totally committed to more than one thing at a time. And I’m not willing to work on something that I’m not fully committed to.

For me the idea is very simple. Life is short, don’t work on anything if you don’t believe in the vision. And, if you believe in the vision, don’t compromise that vision by cheating on it with other ideas.