High Tech Weekly

The Best Hobby in the World

Keith Cowing — Sun, 1 Nov 2009 23:05:28 +0000

I had the pleasure of attending a dinner last week with a great venture capitalist and one of the entrepreneurs he funded. During introductions, he mentioned that he had the best hobby in the world. So we waited in suspense while he explained. It was a longer story than expected, but definitely interesting and unique.

A number of years ago he sent out a request to hundreds of his contacts: neighbors, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, friends from elementary school, students, etc. He asked them all to submit a list of the 10 best books they had ever read. In return, he would compile these lists and send a printed, bound volume to each of the respondents with everyone’s 10 favorite books. He received over 150 responses, compiled them, and sent bound volumes to everyone as promised. Many of the lists were accompanied by notes or personal stories. His friends were touched by the responses and read a variety of books they never would have explored on their own. He started repeating the exercise every year with different subjects: 10 best restaurants, 10 best movies, 10 most memorable places, etc. The responses became more literary as people started sharing personal stories from their lives. He was pressured by his contacts to host a party where they could all meet each other. So he began hosting an annual party, with an average of 150 people coming from all over the country (sometimes the world) and spending the weekend at his house. Many would meet with huge hugs as if they’d known each other for years, even though they had never actually met before. They shared so many stories that many already had a sense of mutual respect and interest.

My explanation doesn’t do justice to the story or to his unique hobby. But throughout the evening, what I found was that above everything else he was proud of the people in his life. He had experienced financial success as an investor, but that wasn’t what made his life fruitful. It was all about the entrepreneurs he had helped, the business partners he had worked with, the family members he spent time with, his neighbors, his friends, etc. Looking at business icons it’s easy to find people who gained the world but gave up a piece of their soul in the process. I am in pursuit of a rewarding career, but I hope to look back at the people and adventures in my life more than any money I make.

You can also find Keith on his personal blog, Keith Cowing: The Journey of Entrepreneurship

Video of the Week

Keith Cowing — Sun, 1 Nov 2009 22:53:08 +0000

Jason and Gary are so energetic it's almost overwhelming. But their entrepreneurial spirit is great inspiration for any startup to keep fighting the good fight.

Know Where You're Aiming Before You Pull the Trigger

Keith Cowing — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:19:25 +0000

In the startup world, speed can count for everything. You have to be quicker and nimbler than the big players. That's your key advantage. But it's easy to get caught up in the urgency and move without thinking. In the beginning, you put together a road map of where you want to go. Like any entrepreneur, I'm always anxious to light the fire and get going. I like action, progress, products, sales, anything that keeps things moving. But some recent conversations reminded me how important it is to re-focus on your end game.

While it sounds obvious, it's easy to lose sight of exactly what you're building and why. You may build a product because it's useful and has a potential market, but miss an even bigger opportunity. After launching my first company, I felt under the gun to hire a development team and build a product. While that's true, I should have felt even more pressured to keep talking to customers. You need to know what your customers want and and how to approach their problems. You don't build a product for yourself, you build it for them. Pulling the trigger on a development project is exciting, but may be the wrong move if you still have some research to do.

With one core business idea, there are probably at least four different paths you could take with it. Each path will end with a slightly different product and a slightly different set of market conditions. You should do some rough calculations (back of the napkin assessment) and investigations into each of these markets. You might have started down one path which is interesting and has potential, but find another that has the true golden opportunity. So before you pull the trigger and build something, make sure you truly know where you're aiming and why.

Post from Keith Cowing: The Journey of Entrepreneurship

Find Hands-On Investors to Help Grow Your Startup

Keith Cowing — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:26:22 +0000

One thing I've learned while becoming an entrepreneur and looking for funding is that there are drastically different types of investors out there. Money is not just money. Yes, if you only have one option for capital (which can frequently be the case), then by all means take it (if you need it). But if you have any choice in the matter, there is a gigantic difference between passive investors and hands-on investors. I don't mean that just in terms of how much time they spend looking at your business and helping you grow, but also whether or not they're hands-on in your market.

If you're a web company, for example, it's great to have an investor who blogs, experiments with web services, loves the Internet, and is an active participant in your field. These "hands-on" investors can get you a lot farther than somebody who is only looking for a financial return and is indifferent about your market.

This is more applicable to early-stage companies, where the path is treacherous and a lot of work is done molding and building the business. For more established companies that need growth capital, it's not as important where the money comes from as long as there aren't too many strings attached. But if you're an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur looking for cash, try to find a hands-on investor who knows and loves your market. It'll make a big difference.

You can read more about Keith on his personal site, Keith Cowing: The Journey of Entrepreneurship

Video of the Week: "Did you know?"

Keith Cowing — Wed, 9 Sep 2009 18:35:01 +0000

This is a pretty crazy video. Definitely worth a watch.

The Beauty of Simple Marketing

Keith Cowing — Mon, 7 Sep 2009 22:42:25 +0000

Post from Keith Cowing: The Journey of Entrepreneurship

I saw this sign in a coffee shop last month (City Beans in Jersey City) and had to take a picture with my blackberry. It was such a perfect example of simple marketing. Espresso beverages can be confusing and not everybody knows the terms (I was extremely confused the first time I walked into a Starbucks). So City Beans made a very simple poster that visually describes all of their products. Not only that, but you can quickly glance at it without admitting to anybody that you don't know what a macchiato actually is.

Simple, yet powerful. As an entrepreneur, I hope that I can advertise my products as clearly and succinctly as that. If you can describe your entire product line on one page, with minimal words, then you've accomplished something great. Long live simple marketing.

ZEXSports: Your One Website for Action Sports Events

Keith Cowing — Wed, 1 Apr 2009 02:37:17 +0000

ZEXSports is becoming the go-to website for action sports events. ZEXSports is an interesting startup, leveraging social media and viral marketing to build a loyal following. I can't tell if there is a more in-depth business model, aside from the obvious advertising. However, I think that ZEXSports is building a community that is more valuable than the website itself.

Action sports enthusiasts are extremely passionate and highly impressionable. While typical advertising programs can be effective, I think that ZEXSports is opening a possibility for something more powerful. Large events and celebrity sponsorships, dominated by companies like Billabong and Oakley, are extremely expensive. But if ZEXSports can tap into the influential players in each neighborhood, there might be a new product placement opportunity.

Upstart sports apparel brands, and big names alike, can reap major rewards from placing a few products among influential bikers, snowboarders, and surfers. When ZEXSports reaches critical mass, they'll have a lock on a very valuable demographic. I think they could even act as a broker between action sports brands and local influencers. Giving a neighborhood skateboarder a "sponsorship" would be great bragging rights, even if it just involves $50 and a couple hoodies. But if you place those products on the right person in each neighborhood, something ESPN can't do on a micro level, you've got a great marketing program. Brands would be happy to place their products among the leader in each social circle across the country. Up-and-coming athletes would love the attention and ZEXSports could get a slice for brokering the transaction.

On a similar thought, Sportgenic is a platform that specifically places ads on sports websites. This sounds like a great potential partner for ZEX (if it isn't already).

SlideShare Offers Mobile Version

Keith Cowing — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 05:43:01 +0000

SlideShare just announced mobile access to its presentation-sharing website. I expect it to work particularly well on iPhones, which are featured in the presentation shown below. I haven't tried it on my BlackBerry yet because I need to install a new browser (Opera) for it to work.

Despite a few drawbacks (tiny screen, extra downloads), this is a great enhancement to an already useful platform. SlideShare is an amazingly efficient way to share information and find useful presentations. The ability to embed presentations within your site or social networking page is probably the most important part. It's unclear whether that will work on a mobile phone or not (when viewing a presentation within a third-party site and not on SlideShare's homepage). Perhaps an embedded presentation will show up as a link to a mobile-friendly version. That's unclear. But one way or another, SlideShare provides a valuable service and is making great progress. Startups might be benefitting the most from SlideShare right now. They get great, free exposure by posting pitches on the web and promoting them with services like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Introducing SlideShare Mobile: use SlideShare on the go!

View more presentations from Amit Ranjan.

Web of Trust: How to Survive in a Recession

Keith Cowing — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:21:41 +0000

WOT (a web security startup in Finland) recently landed a new investor, Michael Widenius. Widenius, the founder of MySQL, is a major score for WOT. Aside from money, via his investment company OpenOcean, he'll bring great insight on how to buid and monetize web communities.

MySQL is a fantastic example of how to build a free product, leverage your user base, and then create a valuable business (MySQL recently sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 Billion). His desire to fund WOT is a great sign for the company. Stay tuned because you may see some powerful security innovations coming out of Helsinki.

Choosing the Right Cloud Computing Environment

Keith Cowing — Wed, 4 Feb 2009 02:50:18 +0000

Cloud computing environments are going to have a profound effect on web hosts, startup companies, and Internet architectures. High Tech Weekly happens to run on Google App Engine and the user experience has been wonderful. I'm building a new web service, with very different requirements than HTW, and am searching for the proper cloud. Here are the three front runners at the moment and a few pros and cons for each.

Google App Engine

Pros:

Super easy to use.
Good analytics tools.
Ridiculously cheap usage fees (free for development and even modest traffic).
Database is easy to work with and extremely scalable.
No need to touch the web server.
Deployments and version control work like a charm.
Great API's (Image, MemCache, Mail).
Supports Gmail logins for authentication.
Active user community for Q&A, help, feedback, etc.

Cons:

Not very portable (design will be Google-dependent for now).
Database is not built for large reporting or queries with > 1000 results.
No cron jobs (ability to run scheduled tasks).
May not have the credibility yet to run enterprise apps.
Currently only supports Python.

Microsoft Azure

Pros:

.NET environment is very robust.
Supports Microsoft SQL Server (Great reporting).
Easy to scale.
Don't need to touch the web server.
Will likely be aimed at supporting enterprise apps as well.
Supports LiveID's for authentication (such as hotmail accounts).

Cons:

Still in beta.
Only supports .NET.
Deployments are slow.
No proven apps yet for reference.
Waiting for a user community.
Pricing hasn't been announced (though it's supposed to be "competitive").

Amazon Web Services

Pros:

Most mature product of the bunch.
Direct access to a machine (full control of web server and all applications).
Good user community.
Reasonably priced.
Lots of flexibility, not locked into any particular development environment or programming language.

Cons:

Have to deal with the web server (can be a pro or a con, just depends).
More expensive than App Engine (not sure about Azure yet).
Slightly longer setup time.
A little more difficult to build persistent storage (if not using their proprietary database).

There are other options as well, but for now it's important to have a household name behind my infrastructure. Salesforce (Force.com) happens to be out of my desired price-range (and a little too high-end for my needs). I'm very interested to see how Azure plays out over the next year. Most of the negatives are simply due to the fact that it's brand new. For now I'm leaning towards using Amazon Web Services and building everything in .NET so that it can later be ported to Azure if there is ever a major reason.