Jed White's Blog

Phil's Law - Moore's Law Meets Murphy's Law

2010-02-06T12:59:00.000-08:00

This is from a really interesting post from Todd Sattersten interviewing Phil Libin from Evernote.

Evernote is a fab little note-taking, image and life capturing app/website/iphone app.

The post has some incredibly useful real numbers from Evernote on freemium conversions / active users / costs. They're discussing a mistake in the calculations for Todd's ebook Fixed to Flexible, but the conversation has some golden nuggets:

Active users are people that have used Evernote in the past 30 days. That's important because someone who doesn't use the system in a given month, doesn't cost us anything that month. So that 9 cents per month figure is for active users, but you did the math as if it was 9 cents per month for all users. Only about 30% - 40% of our users are active in a given month, so the mistake makes our margin looks a lot worse than it really is.

I ran the numbers from January 2010. At the end of the month, we had 2,335,676 total users and 41,598 premium users. Total variable expenses (hardware + software + hosting + network + operations staff + support staff) were $68,641. Total revenue from active premium users was approximately $145,000. I say "approximately" because this is recognized revenue, which trails cash, but is more relevant for gross margin calculations. The gross margin comes out to about 53%.

But my favourite thing in it is the great line from Phil:

... you have to multiply Moore's Law by Murphy's Law; "The number of things that will go wrong will double every year."

Well worth a read:

http://toddsattersten.com/2010/02/fixed-to-flexible-interview-with-evernote-ceo-phil-libin.html

Why the iPad is going to be the killer tool for one-on-one presentations and sales

2010-01-27T15:02:00.000-08:00

One of the things I missed in the initial flurry of news about Apple's iPad tablet is the fact they're releasing it with Keynote, Pages and Numbers from the iWork Suite.

The killer there is Keynote, Apple's incredibly powerful, stunning and easy to use presentation package.

Having Keynote on an iPad is going to make it a real killer for doing one-on-one presentations out on the road.

Keynote gives the iPad a serious business audience, and I think that it could be Apple's backdoor to get the iPhone and App Store economy into a lot more corporate and enterprise environments.

Imagine, now if you're pitching or selling, you have all of the following:

- a gorgeous, cool, sexy tablet.
- easy to carry, ultra portable, light-weight
- runs the best presentation software on the market
- allows you to present "with" a prospect, sharing the tablet like a booklet or piece of paper, rather than both staring at a computer and keyboard or throwing the projection on a wall.
- 10 hours of battery life - you can be out and about with this thing all day.

I think it could give "let me take you through this together" a whole new meaning for presentations done one-on-one, something that with laptops and conference rooms has always had a lot of overhead and pain.

It turns the iPad from being a consumer-focused intimate web and media device, and makes it an absolutely fabulous sales tool.

Apple's iPad tablet is something special in the history of computing

2010-01-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

Coverage of Apple's iPad tablet computer release today is dominating TechCrunch and the tech social news sites. It's no surprise there is so much buzz about it. This little pad is going to be something special in the history of computing.

Two of the most interesting things in Apple's announcement of the iPad today are that the 3G wireless will be unlocked (on the 3G models), and that the starting price is under $500.

I'd figured they'd release it with high-speed broadband with a price starting under $500, so I was wrong on the wireless and right on the price. The options are wifi and 3G. But at least by having the 3G unlocked they open it up to a wider potential audience and get rid of the AT&T penalty that the iPhone has been saddled with.

Apart from lacking a high-speed wireless broadband option, I think they've nailed the specs. The full Apple specs are here:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/

And from TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/ipad-ibooks-500/):

"Some specs: The device has a 9.7 inch display, weighs 1.5 pounds, and is half-an-inch thick. It is powered by new chip made by Apple itself, a 1 GHz A4 and will come with 16Gb to 64 GB of storage. It supports WiFi, has an accelerometer, compass, and built-in speaker and microphone, just like the iPhone. The screen is a full capacitive multi-touch screen. Battery life is supposed to be 10 hours. In addition to WiFi, it will have a 3G option from AT&T. The Wifi-only version, with 16GB of memory, will cost $499. A 32GB version will be $599, 64 GB will be $699, and with 3G from AT&T it will cost $829 (for the 64GB version). All the 3G iPads, however, will be unlocked, meaning they can be used on other carriers as well."

It's interesting too that they've gone with their own chip. Anyone who thinks Apple is going more open over time for the sake of openness is wrong. They're driven by creating great products and using proprietary advantage to sustain superior profit margins.

It's going to be interesting to play with the SDK (http://www.apple.com/ipad/sdk/). The combination of mobility and the touch interface with a larger screen and more power is going to open up the potential for a whole new class of filthy rich media applications and mobile gaming.

If they really can get 10 hours battery life and the manufacturing is as rugged but elegant as the iPhone, then this is going to be a smash hit.

Why the Apple Tablet is not going to save the electric sheep

2010-01-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure it's a scene in Blade Runner where Rick Deckard picks up a newspaper with motion video images on an otherwise textual page. That's the sort of sci-fi that old school media executives have been raised on for the last nearly thirty years. And as the sales of their newspapers and magazines have fallen into a neo-noir landscape of their own, it's likely their dreams of Jetsons tablets and throwaway electronic papers have become more and more fevered.

Blade Runner is set less than a decade away in 2019. E-ink and tablet technologies are coming along pretty nicely, and ebook readers like the Kindle are finding some real traction.

Now, this month Apple is set to announce its own Tablet scheduled for release in March. It's the big brother to the iPhone rather than little brother to a laptop. It looks like being the first great tablet. According to the WSJ, it's likely to have a 10 to 11 inch screen with full color and be bundled with decent wireless Internet rather than just 3G, and it's likely to be priced between the Macbook at $999 and an iPhone. I'd guess $499 with a 24 month wireless Internet contract.

At the same time, Apple's App Store has just reached three billion downloads, according to TechCrunch, (which sadly failed with its own attempt at a Tablet device, the CrunchPad). Three Billion. That's just for apps for the iPod Touch and iPhone with a tiny screen on a device from a single manufacturer. The market for applications for a larger screen Tablet with a fast wireless connection is likely to be massive in the next 3-4 years assuming Apple gets similar cult product status with its Tablet.

I think it could. The device size looks right to me. Small enough to be portable, but large enough for usable web browsing, video and games. If it's got that gently ruggedized feel of the iphone and you can throw it around a bit, and if it has a day's battery life, it will be compelling.

It's clear that media executives see tablet computers and e-readers as a panacea for people ditching their dead tree products. They've formed their own consortium to provide an "itunes for content" and produce physical e-readers for magazines and newspapers. Clearly they don't want an Apple to dominate magazine and newspaper electronic sales like Apple does Music with itunes, and lose out on the opportunity to control the electronic distribution themselves.

But, as a recent Slate piece pointed out, they're missing the point and assuming there will be a large market for both dedicated e-reader tablets, and for content sales for them, and they'll be able to count the sales like electric sheep.

Most people aren't going to buy a purpose-built device to read magazines, newspapers, or even in most cases books. Some very decicated customers and early adopters might and are as the Kindle shows. But most customers won't.

Most consumers will want a general purpose device that can play games, browse the web, read ebooks, play music and video and run Apps. A big iPhone. Something like the Apple Tablet.

The driving use for these tablets is definitely NOT going to be reading books, magazines and newspapers. That's a fantasy. It is one activity of many that people will perform, and I think one of the lesser ones, except maybe with older users.

The biggest uses for an 11in tablet with fast wireless are going to be live gaming, video applications, and web browsing.

And consumers won't use a dedicated "itunes for content". They just want to get content from the web, or maybe download publisher apps along with all the other games, apps and content from a general App Store, and videos and music from iTunes. That's how I use the WSJ iPhone App today. (As an aside, it's a great little App, but I think it's a scam for the WSJ to charge a separate subscription to customers already subscribing to the online Journal. That's the kind of fleecing your best customer behaviour that holds back paid content everywhere.)

Whether Apple can maintain its proprietary dominance over Apps on these devices remains to be seen. Apple has been incredibly sucessful at using proprietary control to establish premium pricing and provide good customer experience, and as a result established entirely new product categories very quickly. But over time with the Android, ChromeOS and other portable and mobile alternatives like the Nexus One covered by TechCrunch today, and developer dissatisfaction at lock-in and unfair policies with the App Store, you'd figure the mainstream market will open up.

In the meantime, I suspect media executives will be left dreaming about androids and electric sheep, while the rest of the world wakes up to Steve Jobs bringing down Tablets from the mountain.

How to set up the ideal Wordpress PHP development environment in Eclipse

2010-01-03T00:15:00.000-08:00

I'm really just posting this in case anyone else is looking for help on how to get set up quickly and easily for doing development of Wordpress blogs and websites using Eclispe on a local development box.

Everyone at some point needs to set up a blog or simple content-managed website, and although Blogger is great for quick hosted blogsites, and at the other end of the scale web frameworks like Python/Rails are great for custom apps, there is a certain type of site for which Wordpress is great.

However, the moment you need to start customizing themes or do any actual dev work, it's handy to be able to use Wordpress with a real development tool like Eclipse. Being able to work in Eclipse brings all the benefits of a sweet IDE, Subversion or other source control, Trac and Mylyn for integrated task management, and first class code editing and debug tools.

I've never worked with PHP, so it took me a little while to figure out the best way to get Eclipse set up with PHP and Wordpress using PHP Development Tools (PDT), as most of the other references out there talk about PHPEclipse, but the process is straightforward. My set up was with Ubuntu Linux but the steps should be very similar for Mac OSX and Windows.

The basic steps are:
- install Eclipse and PHP Development Tools
- install XAMPP (easy standalone LAMP stack)
- download and set up Wordpress and download any themes/plugins
- configure Eclipse projects to point their source to paths linked from XAMPP.

1. Install Eclipse and PDT

I'd recommend the full Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers Eclipse from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and then install PDT as a plugin from http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/

The easy option if you're happy to run it standalone is to install Aptana Studio then add the PHP Development Tools (PDT) using the Install Plugins link built in to the starter page:
http://www.aptana.org/studio/download

2. Install XAMPP

XAMPP is a good, easy to configure lamp stack with Apache, MySQL, PHP and more.

There is a good walk-thru of install XAMPP for Ubuntu here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=223410

Download XAMPP from http://www.apachefriends.org/

You can either use the bundled myPHPadmin or your regular MySQL Workbench or MySQL GUI tools for administration:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/

Create a wordpress_db database and wordpress_user user account with full privileges on it.

The XAMPP stack runs PHP apps from /opt/lampp/htdocs, so put a link to a working directory in your home path from htdocs with:
cd ~
mkdir ~/public_html
cd /opt/lampp/htdocs
sudo ln -s ~/public_html /opt/lampp/htdocs/$USER

Terminate any existing apache/mysql before running. XAMPP runs from its own /opt/lampp directory separate to any regular apache/mysql servers already installed. There is a neat control panel to bring it up and down.

You can start the server with:
sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

3. Download Wordpress and configure

Download the latest Wordpress zip file:
http://wordpress.org/latest.zip

Keep a clean copy somewhere, and for each Wordpress project you want to work on, create a folder ~/public/[projectname] and copy the Wordpress contents into it.

Customise by adding any downloadable themes to wp-content/themes and plugins to wp-content/plugins.

To save time, I create a master Wordpress folder and copy in my favourite themes and regularly used plugins.

4. Configure your project in Eclipse.

Open Eclipse and switch to the PHP Perspective.

Create a new 'PHP Project' using the File/New wizard. On the first screen, give the project a name, and select "Create project from existing source" and select the path to the Wordpress project folder you created above, and complete the new project wizard.

You can now add this project to source control using a [projectname] right-click "Team/Share Project", and integrate with tasks etc.

If you make any manual changes to files in the public_html path, remember to right-click the project and Refresh to update them.

Now, to get the Wordpress project running, follow the easy Wordpress admin installation as per:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install

Once you've created the database and edited the wp-config.php file, you'll run the install through a web browser using:
http://localhost/[username]/[projectname]/wp-admin/install.php

Use the wordpress_user and wordpress_db you created earlier.

The Wordpress site will run live from the XAMPP Apache path below without needing any further configuration:
http://localhost/[username]/[projectname]

And there you have it. All the power of Eclipse with the simplicity of setting up a Wordpress site in PHP.

There are some other useful references here:

PHP Development using Eclipse

Using Eclipse for PHP Development

Secrets of the TechStars Method for winning the pitch and getting the girl

2009-08-09T19:14:00.001-07:00

"I'm not trying to change the world. I'm not looking for a new England. I'm just looking for another girl. - Billy Bragg"

If I had to find a song to sum up TechStars investor day, this is it.

The companies graduating from TechStars aren't trying to be the next Google. They're focused on smaller targets. They're solving practical problems and have achievable goals. Like Nate and Natty from everlater in David Cohen's techstars.tv prank, they're hoping to get the girl. And, perhaps, the investor.

I went along to TechStars' demo day last week. I'm in a competitive accellerator / incubator from TheFunded called The Founder Institute, and know people in both TechStars and YCombinator. So I thought it would be useful to call out some observations about the TechStars companies and their approach to pitching, and what I would call "The TechStars Method" for accelerating startups... and getting the girl.

Yeah this needs a disclaimer

TechStars is a seed-stage startup incubator/accelerator program based in Boulder CO in its third year, and now also running in Boston. It invests up to $18k in 10 teams and mentors them over 3 months. The Boulder teams presented yesterday. It was a fascinating experience to watch them (thanks to TechStars for having community invites).

I have a natural competitive bias because our startup (code name scribetribe) is in the first year of TheFunded's Founder Institute, an incubator based in Silicon Valley started by Adeo Ressi - terror of VCs and champion of founder rights (I'm only half joking). It has around 75 founders and companies, about 2/3 from the Valley, and is taking a radically different approach to incubating and accelerating startups and founders. But we're going through a similar process of learning to pitch better and explain what we do clearly, and getting "a new one ripped in us" weekly as we go.

At the same time, I know founders in the TechStars program and in both the current and last intake of Paul Graham's YCombinator, which was clearly an inspiration for it. So I've had a good opportunity to "swap notes" with other founders about how the programs work, and what's good and bad about them.

We also made the short list of finalists for TechStars this year, and I know some of the team there. So although I carry some natural competitive bias, I was genuinely interested to see the end results, and cheer on the teams.

Why "The TechStars Method"?

One of the recurrent themes in mentor presentations at TheFunded has been the similarity between pitching startups and "getting the girl". There have been plenty of references to the "Mystery Method", which is a systematic method used by pickup artists to seduce their targets.

Trip Adler from Scribd (a YCombinator launchee that is going gangbusters) presented "The Trip Method" for ideation and concept creation. James Hong from HotOrNot taught us Peacocking and brand differentiation. Peter Pham from Photobucket and Billshrink coached us on the psychology of influence.

James Hong put it best: "In a world full of 6 billion people, how does a female know that you're the one. 'No other dude is wearing this hat' = this dude is getting laid. That's how branding works. You need to differentiate in a way that triggers emotion."

Seeing all ten TechStars pitches, it's clear to me there is a systematic method they followed to "differentiate in a way that triggers emotion". No one in TechStars has told me that this is their method. I don't know whether they articulate a method or not. But it was a clear pattern. I'm outlining it here in the hope it will be useful for other startups, particularly those pitching and anyone evaluating seed programs and incubators.

[NB see David's comment below which he posted on an earlier draft (which must have snuck out onto the interwebs before I was quite done). David makes the point that there is no formula - just feedback from the mentors. In which case there is clearly a very strong pattern in that feedback.]

The "TechStars Method" broken down

The method has six basic principles, and the pitches use a well-defined structure and approach based on those principles:

1. Investor-focused: There is a clear focus on getting investor interest and making the companies as investor-friendly as possible.

2. Pitchable products: It's focused on pitchable businesses with a good demo and demonstrable customer traction. Not too big and not too small. They tend to be well developed before the program starts, and suitable for acceleration, often with an existing product. I don't think TechStars likes to risk there being no demo on demo day. (Disclosure: our feedback included that we were too early because we were pre-product compared to other teams. Also please see David's comment below that many of the companies were not well advanced before starting).

3. Put on a great show: The investor day was held in Boulder Theater. As well as the potential investors attending, there was a packed crowd for atmosphere and to cheer on the teams. It featured humor and presentations on a big stage with a big-screen backdrop. It leveraged Brad Feld's profile, included a speech from Jared Polis, founder and Congressman, and featured the most entertaining of the recent Ignite Boulder presentations. The lead up was effectively promoted through the "startup reality tv" series on techstars.tv. You could have sold tickets. They sort of did (donations for charity raised over $1000).

4. Engage the community: Andrew Hyde is TechStars' secret weapon on this front. He's their community manager. He's got a rock star profile in Boulder. But the reality is that he works his heart out helping other people in the tech community, with a great supporting network of people from local companies, many of them not anything to do with TechStars. He also started Startup Weekend and VCWear. But community engagement is part of TechStars ethos generally. They support the tech community and the community supports them. TechStars got 500 social media mentions for the pitch day as a result.

5. Investor mentoring: David Cohen told the audience of investors that TechStars is all about the mentoring - "one-on-one experiences working with the mentors." The most prominent mentoring is from investors themselves. In the videos, high-profile mentoring features investors like Brad Feld from Foundry, Rob Hayes from First Round Capital, Howard Lindzon, Jeff Clavier from SoftTech VC and Dave McClure from Founder's Fund/fbFund (awesome blog btw!).

6. Work as part of a buzzed up meta-team: Teams appear to have a 2/3 technical skew. Everyone attends the mentoring and group sessions, but most teams had a biz person who focused on the presentation/pitch and mentor relationships, allowing the technical founders to focus on code code code. The TechStars bunker office has a buzz and energy much bigger than any individual team can generate on its own. Mentors drill phrases like "do more faster" that are written on the walls.

The presentation structure

The investor day featured two sets of 5 companies each, broken up by an interlude with a humorous presentation (Googleplex from Ignite Boulder by David Walton) and a more serious talk by Congressman and founder/investor Jared Polis. This broke up the presentations and gave the audience a break. The most interesting companies were in the first five, with a strong final pitch to close. Each pitch was 8 minutes.

Elements of TechStars pitches:

1. Personal stories: Use personal stories to provide background on why you're solving the problem and why you're qualified to do it. Use a personal story about the frustrations of a specific example customer to illustrate the problem and solution, and to guide the product demonstration.

2. Visual and engaging: Strong visuals with few bullet points: Very visual slides with lots of transitions within a clear overall structure. Heavy use of images and incremental transitions between slides. Use humor and show a vulnerable side to the audience. A few presentations, like everlater and The Next Big Sound were packed with energy and charisma and stood out as a result.

3. Strong product demo / illustration focus: At least half of each presentation was spent showing the product and using the demo to talk through the key points of the solution. The biggest focus was on the demo and using the demo to illustrate the solution and its benefits.

4. Clear and well-articulated common structure and approach. I've outlined this separately below.

The presentation structure applies the principles above to the almost universal deck structure used for the pitches:

1. Crisp opening:
* A succinct one line description of what you do, what problem you solve and who you do it for.
* Short introduction to who you are personally.
* The slide is clean with just the company logo and a tagline.

Examples: Retel "empowers restaurants and retailers using security cameras". Everlater makes it "easy and fun to share travel experiences". TimZon is "the easiest way to share visual feedback". TakeComics "brings comics into the digital age". The Next Big Sound "measures the popularity of bands across the web". Vanilla is "open source forum software used to power discussions". Good, crisp, concise and you know what they do immediately.

2. Personalized problem - Identify and personalize the problem:
* Use the personal story of a specific customer or your own personal story to describe the frustrations in the market and identify the problem.

Examples: TakeComics opened with "I'm Kevin and I'm a huge comic book fan" and used his personal story of trying to get unattainable comics in small town England. Retel told us "Meet a customer. He's a sad man. The problem - he runs a Dunkin Donuts... workers put food up their nose. He generates 56700 hours of video a month monitoring it."

3. Illustrated solution - Graphically illustrate the solution in personalized terms:
* Use a demo / walk-through to illustrate the solution you have solving the problem you identified.
* Use the personal story of the customer you identified as the script for the demo.
* Step through the key features and point out how each one contributes to solving the problem for that individual.
* Articulate the benefits and value provided to that customer.

Examples: TimZon walked the a day in the life of Barbara using a customer case study with a support team trying to clarify a product feature by email and the miscommunication that resulted. TakeComics walked through a customer buying a particular comic at the "itunes for comics". everlater very cleverly used high-profile VC Fred Wilson's mishmash of recorded travel blogs and photos to show how he could record his travels with their service. He was in the audience and then blogged about it.

4. Opportunity - Prove the market and economic opportunity
* What is the potential market / addressable market
* Show how you plan to monetize and the revenue model for the business
* Explain how the business can scale

Examples: everlater used this to point out that they weren't relying on travel advertising, as big as that is on the web, but an affiliate model with partnerships such as Tour Operators. TakeComics talked up what looked like a small market by saying comics were a $6b market globally, but that the kicker was that Wolverine makes six times more money for Marvel outside of comics through merchandising, and comics were the hook to get to that.

5. Competitive advantage
* Focus on your advantages over competitors.
* Use competitors as proof of the market opportunity.
* Articulate your differentiators clearly.

Examples: The Next Big Sound used the phrase "people in the music industry haven't seen this visual data before". As a new service they used the logos of people in the industry used to paying for analytics and that enterprise customers paid $48k/year. Retel pointed out their competitors were surveillance and mystery shopping and articulated their point of difference as "constant monitoring", and that they aimed to partner with competitors. Spry used an effective categorized matrix comparing monitoring services / tools.

6. Demonstrate why you've got the right team
* Keep the slides visual - personalize the team.
* Highlight direct experience in the space and why you're uniquely placed to solve the problem.
* Outline why you work well together.
* Talk about why you'd be a worthwhile investment.

Examples: The Next Big Sound used a very smart single slide that looked like a band cover photo - black and white walking down a back alley with the four of them looking cool, which got a big laugh from the audience. The accompanying talk included a background on each, highlighted direct experience in the music industry, and said we "listen, work efficiently and are 'cheap to keep alive'". Most of the team slides were visuals with no text, and the presenter reinforced the team's experience working together well in a relevant industry.

7. Show your progress / traction
* Milestones and achievements
* Slide with numbers of signups, traffic through the system, number of beta users etc
* Logos of customers using the product

Examples: TimZon's slide was "Where we are today: Live, 800 registered users, company pilots". Vanilla "300k installations, 450+ plugins, 200+ downloads a day". Next Big Sound was "6 services, tracking 500k artists" and had the logos of the companies that had already signed up on a second screen transition. SendGrid was "100 paying customers, 100m emails sent, 3m emails sent a day".

8. Say what you're asking for
* Ask for a specific amount of money.
* Say what you're using it for and what the goals for its use are.

Examples: Spry's slide "We need your help: $350k, 12 month runway, solid sales and marketing, reach $40k/mo revenue". Next Big Sound was "$300k funding, reach 5m artists, provide metrics on specific goals for companies". everlater was "self funding but looking for partners that bring value". TimZon was "seed funding $450k, 12 months, goal of $45k revenue/mo through subscriptions and white labels".

9. Summary slide
* Sum up why you're excited
* Include clear contact information
* Very visual slide reinforcing logo and key message

Examples: Retel concluded with "Why we're excited: great economics, strong team, a pain killer - the customer can finally smile" that tied the conclusion back to the opening. Next Big Sound used a smart concluding slide which had a small number of their key stats updating in real time on the big screen.

Conclusion

The presentations and charisma and energy of the teams was impressive. It's not a criticism to say this, but TechStars has a skill for picking companies that can benefit from acceleration. And it focuses on making them investor friendly, with investor-focused advice. That makes it different, I think, to The Funded's Founder Institute and Y Combinator, which themselves are also very different.

There are new seed-stage programs springing up in Canada (bootuplabs), Providence, Austin and all round the US that are inspired by YCombinator but seem to me to be copying the TechStars model and driven by the desire to accellerate investable companies as their primary focus. It's for this reason that I think the differences developing between TechStars, YCombinator and TheFunded's Founder Institute are so interesting, and I plan to look at that in more detail in my next post.

Extras

You can check out descriptions and short reviews of the full set of teams in TechCrunch's wrapup.

Doped up on security theater

2009-06-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Every time I pass through the checkpoints at airports in the US, I can't help but think how apt the term "security theater" is.

It's clear that the practical security benefit of removing shoes, placing liquids in 100ml vials in small bags, and unpacking cables and laptops, is low to say the least.

And it's equally clear that there would be thousands of ways for someone with ill intent to circumvent the intent of all that security - from printing your own "departure management card" sheet, to buying the Snack Packs with tuna and their razor sharp tin lid edges on board any United Airlines flight.

I think most people standing in brain-dead queues, turning up two hours early for glorified bus rides, and emptying pockets and taking off their belts in resigned obsequiousness all know deep down that the measures in place are not there to genuinely protect, but merely the trappings and suits of protection.

When I first felt this, I felt guilty. After all, we all want to travel safely. But after reading Jeff Goldgerg's "The Things He Carried" in the Atlantic Monthly, and Peggy Noonan's "Where is America?" I realized this wasn't loony fringe dangerous thinking.

In fact, I think it's dangerous to not question it.

We pass through these lines delusionally. And delusion is always worse than confronting brutal realities. By placing a charade and theater around security, we fool only ourselves. We lower awareness of the real dangers, wrapped in our comfortable cotton wool layers of pretend protection.

I believe that the security theater makes the risk of disaster higher, not lower. It is there as a morphine dose to calm the public pain over acts of terror, rather than to fix the problem or prevent real acts.

And we pay dearly for the pain killer. The friction on travel is a real and tangible cost. Hours of human productive effort wasted in time in lines, trips that could be done and back in a day that need overnight stays.

Combine the overhead needed to make even the most simple single-legged domestic air trip in America with the insanity of the hub and spoke system, and you end up with a system where it takes a day to get anywhere, and a day to get back.

Take that and add a lack of power outlets, reasonable wifi access, and working spaces at airports, and you end up with a national productivity sink.

It's friction on business. Friction on life. And it's bad for everyone.

scribetribe accepted to hot new incubator - the Founder Institute

2009-05-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

We found out last night that scribetribe has been accepted into the hot new startup incubator from The Funded founder Adeo Ressi, called the Founder Institute. It's based in Silicon Valley and is being supported by "rock star" mentors like Michael Arrington from TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis from Mahalo.

This program is going to shake things up. It is designed to be founder-friendly, and change the ground rules for how early-stage startup and incubator programs work, and features some real innovations. It's had coverage in the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch and many other places and will get a lot more.

This is the inaugural year, and it's a huge honor to be part of the first intake.

I've heard a lot of influential folks say that this program is going to have a big impact in Silicon Valley, and that its approach is going to change the ground rules.

Not only did we get accepted out of hundreds of applications, but we've been told we're part of the top tier of applicants, the "best of the best". All three founders on the scribetribe team (myself, @mediamum and @dazwal) completed the final application tests and interviews, and have been invited to complete the formal program that's run as part of the incubator.

I could try to sound all reserved about this. But stuff it - I'm so excited about this I could just burst. I met Adeo for the first time earlier this year at MIT in Boston, and his passion, energy and belief in the importance of startups and sticking up for the rights of founders is inspirational.

Plus he's just one of the nicest darned guys I've ever had the pleasure to drink too many beers with.

We were really happy to make the finalist shortlist for TechStars last month, and I know some great guys who were/are in Y Combinator last year and this year, and we also put together applications for some of the others that are still open.

I'm a big fan of what these early stage accelerators and incubators are doing, and what guys like David Cohen and Paul Graham have achieved. And I'm also a fan of what they're doing outside of the incubators themselves to support entrepreneurial activity and build community.

Paul Graham has done Startup School, Hacker News and AngelConf, and is one of my favorite essayists.

David and the other TechStars founders, including the hyperpresent Brad Feld, have helped to create and foster a thriving entrepreneurial community away from the Valley in Boulder, CO. That community is all colors of awesome, and a lot of it has been driven by Andrew Hyde, the welcoming, encouraging and uber-connected community director from TechStars, and creator of Startup Weekend.

But I think Adeo -- with his passion, his founder-friendly focus, connectedness in the Valley, championship of transparency and startup-advocacy, and the genuine innovations in incubatorship that he's creating -- has the potential to kick this sector up a gear to a new level. And I'm buzzed like a squirrel on a case of Red Bull to be involved in the Institute's first year.

Why isn't there more investment in new media startups?

2009-05-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

There is clearly a mini boom taking place in early-stage high-tech startups at the moment.

That's what I'm building, so it's a topic close to my heart. I've got some thoughts on that boom that will keep for another post.

But I've always been interested in new media businesses too, and it surprises me there isn't more investment interest and activity around new media-driven startups at the moment.

The conventional wisdom is that media startups and content businesses aren't attractive, so VCs and angels aren't interested. I can see how businesses that are built around just putting new content online aren't going to be appealing.

However, as Clay Shirky's great recent post outlines, we are going through the greatest period of creative destruction in the history of media.

Existing media businesses are getting smashed. At the same time, there is a lag between that smashing up of what exists today, and the creation of the new businesses that will replace them.

This has been accelerated by the downturn, but it is actually bigger than any single swing of the economic cycle.

Shirky points out that when you look at the introduction of the printing press, the media industry landscapes before and after bear little resemblence. There was no smooth transition or evolution from the old to the new.

The same thing is happening here. The great media businesses of the next century - the News Corps and Disneys - have yet to be created. They will make use of new media technologies that haven't even been dreamed about yet but many will be driven by ideas around content and audiences. That is, there will be successful companies that are media businesses first, rather than only those that are technology businesses first.

Let me use Facebook as an example. Facebook is a social media business. But I would argue that it was a technology-driven startup not a media-driven startup. Its core competence is providing technology the helps people connect with each other and share stuff that matters to them. That is a business that sits at the intersection of technology and media. But it's approach, I would argue, is technology first. So it is the sort of sexy company that attracts investment.

I think there will also be great businesses created that are media first.

It's unlikely today that they would be able to get funding from the venture sector, and are likely to be created in spite of the venture capital model rather than because of it. It may take a few years before we even become aware of what they will look like.

They are out there, however. In the protozoic ooze of a million blogs and micro media businesses, I think there is the early DNA that will turn into the big media beasts of the next century.

My feeling is that they would struggle to attract investment in the way that an interesting technology-driven startup in the media space might, and there will be opportunities missed because of that.

Video editing is fun but a time sponge

2009-05-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

We finally finished an "introduction to the team" video for scribetribe this morning.

I've never done a lot of video editing, but whenever I do I'm always staggered how much chronological effort goes into very short clips.

I'd thought doing this one would be a doddle. But video is a procrastinator's playground. In between all the other work to be done between us, and the need to get all the bits and pieces assembled for three people, it dragged on.

It's the first time I've used iMovie too - the other times I used Sony Vegas video. iMovie is just a dream to work with. Simple. Fast. And pretty amazing results in the hands of rank video amateurs like us.

So I'm really pretty chuffed to be posting this. Check it out and love to know what you think.

A long time between Macs

2009-04-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

I used to be a Mac zealot.

At school, I saved for nearly three years working nights, weekends and holidays to buy my first second-hand Mac. I wrote my first articles for Mac newsletters and magazines. I had Apple's location pinned on a map of Silicon Valley on my bedroom wall.

Then I lost my religion.

Apple strayed from the faith. They shafted Steve Jobs and with every release drifted further and further away from what had made the Mac special.

Until one day the Mac just didn't seem so special any more. When I started editing a PC magazine, my Mac found itself shunted off into a cupboard, no longer a computer for someone technical, but the sort of computer you get for newbies and arty people who don't know really know any better.

But then something odd happened. It was nearly four years ago, about the time I bought my last trusty Toshiba notebook. I started noticing developers at technical conferences doing their sessions and presentations on MacBooks running OS X. I found myself quietly wondering if I should get a Mac. But I didn't. I dismissed the idea quickly and bought my 17in Toshiba for a ridiculously low cost. Macs have always been more expensive for equivalent hardware. PCs had gotten cheaper and cheaper. Macs stayed expensive.

At first I didn't think much of it - a couple of Rails and web developers here and there surely didn't mean too much. And corporate developers were still either running Windows and doing .net or running Linux and doing Java.

But lots of smart developers are drawn to languages like Python and Ruby, and the fact they were suddenly using Macs made me question my bias. By then it was a bias. Macs sucked. As a developer, they were a pain to support. Life would be better if everyone just ran Windows XP and IE. That bias stopped me from seeing that something had changed.

It wasn't just that the impact of Steve Jobs' return had percolated through Apple's culture and it was making sexy consumer products. The iMac, iBook and iPod had been beautiful pieces of industrial design and engineering for sure, and game-changing consumer products. But there was more to it.

As Paul Graham noted in Return of the Mac four years ago, the fact that OS X is built on both Unix and on the user experience foundations from NeXTSTEP is a big deal. Here was brains and beauty. Sexy and geeky. Sleek and powerful. All smoothly working together and humming in harmony.

And Paul Graham isn't the only one to note the change. Smashing Magazine ran a story earlier this week on the top five reasons developers are switching to Macs.

For the first time since I was at school, I found myself going into computer stores just to play around on Macs. And what stores! Apple's Stores are shining, glorious retail temples. They are magical. Truly, inspiringly magical. And the Macs they sell have some of that same magic as the original Macintosh 128K. It's not just the startup sound or smiley face icon either. There is magic in the entire experience of using a Mac again.

So when my aging Toshiba laptop died a painful death, I'd already made up my mind that I'd have to somehow convince @mediamum we needed a Mac more than a car or health insurance or groceries, and to help me scrabble together whatever cards and cash we could and -- for the sake of our startup -- find the cheapest deal on a Mac possible. It was a real and genuine struggle to get this thing, and even with an incredibly cheap deal it hurt us at the moment when we're struggling to build a startup, especially when a decent PC would have been much less.

But there is another subtle reason too why having a Mac matters with a startup. The two most important things for any startup are the ability to make stuff, and to pitch it. Pitching on a PC sends a subtle signal of dowdiness and "unsexy". I don't think that should be the case. But I've watched a lot of pitches and reactions, and the Mac thing matters. It's definitely elitist. It's not part of the "computer for the rest of us" ethos. I think if anything Mac users suffer from a "the computer for the best of us" mindset. But little things make a big difference.

When you're throwing heart and soul into making something, you want to use the best tools you can to make it as good as it can be. And when you pitch it as something important and, yes, sexy and hot, you want to make the best impression you can.

So here I am, tapping away on a MacBook keyboard, working with Ruby and Rails and Eclipse, feeling nearly as darned downright excited about the computer I'm using as the first time I lugged home that original second-hand Mac in its big beige carry bag. Between my Ubuntu dev box, and the MacBook I'll be living on, I find myself only running Windows in a virtual session or through a remote desktop.

I'm glad to be back in the cult, and feel strangely at home again, as though I've found a favourite book that was lost, or unpacked a toy from when I was a kid that's been packed away in storage.

If there's anything worse than a reformed zealot, then it's a zealot anew. I'm afraid that a zealot I am once more, and glad to be so.

The New York Times serves itself

2009-04-24T02:53:00.000-07:00

The normal reaction of newspaper executives to Google's dominance of web advertising has generally been to complain or cry foul.

Earlier this evening, however, I saw an ad running on the New York Times website that made me say "good on you guys" out loud.

The newspaper has introduced Self-Service Advertising, designed mainly for small businesses. It's one of the most attractive alternatives to Google AdWords that I've seen from a newspaper so far.

Advertisers can upload their own materials, or choose from a library, customizing ad text, appearance, color-schemes etc. And they can choose campaign dates and whether ads should run nationally or locally. Best of all they can choose their financial commitment, and track their ads' performance.

This is old news for Google AdWords' customers. But I like the fact that you can target advertising for a premium content brand in context. And I think it adds something appealing to the mix.

I'm not saying it's perfect, or a panacea to the newspaper industry's problems, but I do think that this sort of experiment is important. It's a more effective response to Google's market dominance than either continuing to do what doesn't work, or trying to blame Google for the industry's woes.

And the NYT deserves praise and encouragement for trying new things.

About Me

2009-04-20T19:29:00.000-07:00

My name is Jed White. I'm a software developer and startup guy with a passion for the future of media.

I'm working on a new startup called TribeVibe, which tracks and measures the impact of content across the social web.

I previously founded itechne, a digital media consulting, services and solutions business working with media and marketing organizations in Australia, and before that was an editor and publishing director for some of the country's biggest technology magazines and websites.

Coding and media have me hooked. I've been writing code and immersed with computers ever since I was a little kid, and a media junkie for nearly as long. I love technology and media, and I get a huge buzz out of being able to work at the intersection of the two.

I believe that startups and entrepreneurship are critical to the world. Most of the world's great advances are sparked by small committed, passionate teams working against the odds and against the clock. Entrepreneurship is the economic engine room of any advanced society.

If you're interested in these same topics, I've set up some Friendfeed rooms to share interesting stories about them (although I'm on a bit of a hiatus from blogging and social media at the moment while I focus on building TribeVibe:

Future of Media
Fix Content Management
Startupstuff

I'm lucky to be married to @mediamum and living with our two little boys in Boulder. I get a thrill from both the mountains and the sea, and get a buzz out of coding in the foothills of the Rockies.

Follow me on Twitter or Friendfeed, or connect on Facebook or LinkedIn, or email me at jed [at] jedwhite.com