MYBLOG by Ouriel

Learning by Doing

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:04:03 PDT

One thing i am totally convinced about: the only way to become good as something in any field is by practicing. Observing, listening, thinking, considering, debating, arguing, correcting, advising, mentoring and even investing is definitely not enough. I would even say it could jeopardize what you believe your skill can be.

I have so many personal examples of that. I learned playing jazz alone. A key starting point for me was the discovery of late pianist Erroll Garner. It stimulated my brain to understand how it is possible to take a dead boring melody and make an amazing piece of art out of it in Real Time. I then started to listen and listen. Read about jazz. go to concerts. Eventually what really helped me was putting myself on the piano and get to understand how those chords and harmonies are built and how you build a new melody on top of a melody (usually called improvisation)

I think the same applies in the web. No matter how much you can read about startups, meet with entrepreneurs, go to conference, even invest in startups. At the end of the day the only real way to understand how to build a great web service is by actually creating one. Although i was already a big fan of Twitter and the iPhone, i learned much more about those ecosystems by doing Topify and AppsFire and bumping into an endless number of challenges and issues than by using related services or reading blogs about them for nearly 2 years.

Because this is what it is about. Problem solving. Until you find yourself in front of a massive wall you need climb you can't understand what the story is all about. I am not only referring to the technical part of the solution but the psychological part of it. Understanding the pressure of emergency and ongoing competition is not something you can explain. You need to experience it.

The other critical part of problem solving is find the right way to make it as simple as possible. And this is REALLY hard. The obvious in appearance is complex in execution (Einstein once said "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"). Finding the simplest path to a problem solution is really hard. And there is no magical formula except doing and iterating. Learning by doing = Learning by failing.

In addition cycles of iteration help you improve each time a little about the way you solve problems. This is why i believe Israeli entrepeneurs, that are originally not so good at building consumer related stuff, are becoming better and better at it. The first generation of web entrepreneurs are starting new stuff again and the quality of execution becomes each time better, because they learned how to solved some specific issues.

My personnal recommendation to anyone who wants to jump into the web space: create something. Even minor. If you have to recruit someone be it an employee, a contractor or a consultant, find someone who actually created something (that you can relate to your space of course). I prefer looking at a mashup you created or a blog you are writing than at a resume.

You can enjoy food as much as you want and be a gourmet expert. There is no way you be good at cooking if you never experimented cooking. But unlike cooking and jazz the great things about the web is that the learning process is pretty unexpensive. The cost of technology is close to zero (before scale). And the feedback process is immediate (unlike music). So you should not hesitate to jump.

I created TechCrunch France with zero investment. We set Topify, Appsfire and soon project TD with zero dollar investment. You need just some time and complementary skills to start. And those are not great examples because i can't say those are massive sucesses. But they give a pretty good sense of what is possible to do with very little.

As a VC i know this is helping me also understand better companies i meet. I am not sure this is a recipe for all investors. But for me this is the recipe that works.

Technorati Tags: execution startup internet israel learning doing tips entrepreneurs

Do i look really like Pierre Omidyar?

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:29:36 PDT

I did not say so. @Pierre did and @Loic who knows us both seems to implicitly confirms via a reTweet.

pierre @OurielOhayon Your avatar is highly distracting because it looks like me. 26 Jun 2009 from Seesmic Desktop in reply to OurielOhayon

OurielOhayon @pierre I think in real life we look alike a lot. Someone told me ;) 26 Jun 2009 from Tweetie in reply to pierre

loic RT @pierre @OurielOhayon Your avatar is highly distracting because it looks like me. LOL 26 Jun 2009 from Seesmic Desktop

-- this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

What i preferred less was Pierre's final word. :( Anyway thanks to Twitter for my first ever micro-conversation with eBay founder

My Top free iphone apps

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:14:40 PDT

Click on any of those free Apps to install them on your iPhone (with AppsFire.com of course :) )- sorry for the size. we're working on it

AppsFire: less than 24h later

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:50:29 PDT

Yesterday pm (europe time) we launched AppsFire. (a service that allow iPhone owners to share their favorite iPhone apps)

Less than 24h later here is a quick summary of what already happened

640 downloads of Appsfire (we re closing at 1k) for about the double in traffic (good ratio)
272 iphones regitered (Many could not for bug and because limited to osX 10.5+)
5000+ different apps listed (wow)
2300+: # times widgets (virtual iphones) have been seen (via email, widget or link)
1500+ clicks generated to iTunes AppStore (compelling!)
800 youtube views for our how to (compelling!)
100 followers on Twitter (not bad!)
300 mentions in Twitter (half are explicit, half are viral links from widget)
60% of usage is USA rest is mainly France/UK/DE/JP
1 post in TechCrunch. Retweeted 75 times
1 crash test of a few hours... (due to DNS issue!)
4.5k results in Google
30 times bookmarked in Delicious
Most importantly + feedback from users who love the idea and were expecting something like that

There is so much more coming (iPhone app, PC version, killer features,...). But we had to start somewhere, even with bugs and limitations

In any case Looks like AppsFire is kind of ...hot :)

Technorati Tags: iphone apps itunes apple

No more teasing. Introducing AppsFire, a new way to share your favorite iPhone apps with anyone

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:36:59 PDT

How do you find interesting iPhone apps to install, among 40k and growing?

Once you bought an iPhone and got familiar with the amazing iPhone software, it is highly likely that one of the first questions you ll ask yourself will be around which apps you want/should download from Apple AppStore. A natural way to solve this issue is by checking out the AppStore itseft and browse the most downloaded sections.

But since Apple's iTunes merchandising is a black box, in addition to be a painful browsing environnement this is not enough.

A second natural way to solve that issue is by asking your friends. This happens every single day. I have never met 2 guys that have an iPhone and that do not start discussing their apps. The web is also full of post and articles about most recommended apps, best apps,..Twitter is also a good way to figure out people need a better way to discover Apps.

Apple has not solved the problem of Apps Discovery and distribution. And we believe the key is in adding a social layer to iTunes AppStore

Enter AppsFire.com

[btw this is the project i was teasing about under codename AF]

this is why we created AppsFire.com a new service that will allow you to share easily your apps with your Friends and streamline what you already do in real life. We believe the way to solve discovery is by adding a social layer to your iPhone. There are about 40k iPhone apps. And the number is going to rise soon. No one has the time to browse them all.

Appsfire is a shortcut to this problem. There might be other solutions. but we believe this one makes sense.

A few months ago, i came out with this idea out of personnal frustration and because i was kept being asked about recommended apps. When i met Yann Lechelle, who is a first class iPhone application creator in France, i suggested we create the service.

Today we are opening AppsFire in private beta for a few hundreds user. And if we bet right we should see an interesting viral phenomenon take place in the next days.

AppsFire is a very simple application [only for mac now, PC coming soon, as well as native iPhone app] that is for now only available for mac and that will list your applications in a private web page. You then can decide which app you want to share, and then you decide how you want to share them (email, social network of widget). You contact then receive a list of Apps to be downloaded directly from the Appstore.

For example here are my favorite web apps.

What you see today is only a little part of what the service is aimed to become. But we had to start somewhere.

If you want to track our activity here is our Twitter account. For further releases you can register here.

If you have any suggestions, comments, please leave them on our Appsfire suggestion page. Or simply comment here

Check also our coverage on TechCrunch

CrunchBase Information

AppsFire

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Technorati Tags: iphone apps appsfire itunes apple

Free idea of the day: a service for Friendly Terms and Privacy

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:09:44 PDT

Terms of services and Privacy Policies as legal documents are a pain for everyone.

When you create a web service you must offer those declarations (like in the screenshot below) and have your users agree with you before going any further. This protects you as a company and them against any misuse or abuse of your service and is an opportunity to lay transparently your practices in terms of data collection, data privacy, conflict resolution etc...

The only problem? no one really cares to read them. And even worse, it is a real pain for the startup executives to write them. Usually those are outsourced to a law firm, that will charge you too mych for it, and if no budget is allocated, to the in-house marketing/copyrighter that has to gather the relevant points and translate them into 2 documents that will be posted online.

The pain grows over time since any change on the site that has to do with data collection (meaning nearly anything) has to be reflected and therefore updated. And still no one cares to read. Not that this is not important. But it is just a painful and boring thing to do. Not mentioning it is hardly visible.

Many times, young services just try to solve the issue by spotting related or competing services and copy/paste the Terms and Privacy Policy on their site (which can be funny since sometimes they even leave the original name of the company)

To summarize: those docs suck, no one wants to write them, update them and worse read them. However those are very important specially in the case of conflict, just like a contract.

Here is an idea i suggest

A simple service (codename TERMS4ALL) that offers tailored templates of terms of services and privacy policy. This is how it works

Your company answers a series of list of questions on your activity and company details.
Your can also relate to an existing business to find Terms already published that are close to you
Then you get a pre-templated document you can edit
The output is composed of 2 parts: a true legal document and a hyper friendly summary that is readable, short and understandable to the users
The service offers a tracker for company exects to monitor their competition but also for users to know what's new (someone has done it but only for BIG cos and more for legal purpose)

The model is highly simple: companies have to pay to get that. Something like 500 USD for each doc per year. Why per year? Because you need to update your docs as your service grows and adds new features and expands to new geo areas

SOMEONE PLEASE BUILD THIS COMPANY. i am your first customer

Technorati Tags: legal documents terms conditions

iPhone - codename AF launching soon

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:35:01 PDT

I am about to launch codename AF, a new iPhone service that should change a little the game if all things go well.

i won't say much here, but those who have seen it, understood immediately the relevance and necessity of the service.

If you want to be notified on the launch you can register the alpha list here http://bit.ly/codenameAF

sorry for the suspense, but we prefer to keep it for the last minute :)

Technorati Tags: iphone

Michael jackson is over capacity

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:39:55 PDT

No comment

The browser as we know it is done. Welcome the browsers

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:30:02 PDT

Yesterday Gemini had an interesting round table on the trends of the web. One of the elements that stimulated a strong conversation was the question of the future of the browser. I took time to say a few words, but i am not i could really make my point. So there you go...

Except the fact that no one really knows what a browser really is, any internet user know that to access the web you need this piece of software. The rise of the mobile web and specially web applications makes us more aware the requirement of a browser to access the web might soon disappear. Surfing the web will become less browser dependent.

One thing is clear in my mind. Web services will have to provide multiple access of to their users to satisfy different consumption mode. Screen Size, ergonomy and internet speed (both depending on hardware capability and bandwith access) are key in making you decide what interface makes more sense. For example on my Mac i can access gmail both through my browser or in IMAP via a mail client. I chose the browser because of speed. On the iPhone i can access it via safari or the mail client. I use the mail client because it is faster and the experience is better.

If you take news, it is even more complex. You can decide to read a content site via your browser on your computer, but also via RSS (if made possible) or even via Twitter when there is a feed, or simply via a news agregator like Google news or Wikio, or simply via shared news on your social network. But you can also decide to download an iPhone specific app to access your content (eg the NY times has one) or even an Adobe AIR application for your computer to access it out of the browser.

At the end of the day. It is not to the service to decide what makes sense to the user. The best way is to anticipate the potential consumption channels and give them as an option to your users. They will decide what makes sense.

At the end of the day all those access points replace the role of a browser to give you access to the internet. The context makes you decide what is best for you. A clear trend is that internet services are not only consumed on their own property. The dissemination is key to success but consumption patterns evolve on depending on the platform and the situation.

YouTube recently created YouTubeXL so you can view youTube conveniently on a TV screen. i have no doubt Gmail will offer a native iPhone app and that most web services will create gateways with Boxee for tomorrow's TV and with main video games console which are also become browsers in their own right.

Someone asked yesterday the question of whether on mobile Apps are the new browsers? They definitely solve the conveniency issue. Over time MAYBE web apps via browser will be as good as native apps. But i don't think so. Why? just look at your computer. You still need offline access, conveniency of usage, compartimentation of your life. And they are data you don t want online.

My Friend Tariq Krim has created Jolicloud which solves party the problem by creating an OS which is a browser for web apps. You open your laptop and you are on. Every single app in itself is a little browser.

The uniqueness of the browser as an internet access point is done. The browsers are taking up.

Technorati Tags: browser

You needed 1 good reason to use twitter? here is 1

myblog@ohayon.name (Ouriel Ohayon) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:53:22 PDT

Thursday it is 3 years French-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has been kidnapped by Hamas. Our unskillful government beyond talks has never been able to give the beginning of a hope.

So the objective is to raise awareness on Twitter, used by millions. If you don t have an account, just create 1 here. Once done just copy paste and publish

"We re trying to get #Gilad to #1 trending topic on Thursday - 3 yrs since he was kidnapped! Please RT " [please RT = please republish]

You can also click here which will just do that.