Pek Pongpaet

What Do People Do On Pinstagram?

2012-05-07T22:40:54Z

One of the coolest things about having a popular site like Pinstagram is the ability to get meaningful data about user behavior. We integrated MixPanel to track every type of user activity including any clicks, and scrolls. Without getting into actual numbers, but rather percentages, we can see some really cool user behavior.

43% of all activities are scrolls
16% of activities are zooms
15% of activities are tab clicks
12% of activities are likes
1.3% of activities are comments
1.7% of activities are searches

Another great data point is that our users average about 10 scrolls each. By scroll I mean, they reached the end of the page, and we present them with another set of photos. That’s equivalent to 10 pages views. I doubt that if instead of an infinite scroll UI, we had next page buttons, that we would have had 10 page views per user. What this means is that the infinite scroll paradigm is really low friction. People don’t mind scrolling down, but pressing buttons is somehow more work.

Likes make up 12% of all activities. But comments make up a measly 1 percent. The ratio makes sense to me since Liking requires a click and requires some effort compared to just scrolling. Commenting requires even more effort and thus is an order of magnitude less than Liking.

Go With What You’ve Got

2012-05-05T23:07:38Z

There seems to be a very hacker culture here in the Valley that favors the builders and developers and engineers are basically impossible to find. They are put on a pedestal of sorts and rightly so to the extent that they can build things – they can make your idea a reality.

However I would encourage people who have website / app ideas who do not have the ability to program or code not to let that stop them. There’s so much more to having a product or service apart from the ability to code it up.

I’m a designer. Everything starts with the design for me. If I have an idea, I start designing it. I code some – mostly just the front end – the stuff people see. I don’t necessarily have the ability to code it all from end to end. I don’t let that stop me. I’ve launched a ton of sites despite my lack of backend coding skills. How have I done that? Usually I’ve managed to convince people to help me – either by paying them or partnering with them.

Brandon agreed to help me with Pinstagram only AFTER he saw what I had designed and built and that it was good. If all I did was just talk about it, I sincerely doubt he would have taken me seriously and that he would have been so enthusiastic to help. Once he saw that my vision of the product had potential and I had put skin in the game, then he was on board.

In my journey as an entrepreneur, I’ve seen many ideas and businesses take form, and they weren’t necessarily started by tech people who “built” stuff. Groupon started from The Point, but the initial version of Groupon itself was supposedly a WordPress plugin. Dabble was founded by a couple on non-techies and I love it. I love that they started out with just a WordPress site – and the sign up form was a WordPress contact form plugin. By the time I talked to them they were having classes everyday with people paying $20 a class. They had no tech.

I love the folks at DealDecor. They have what can be best described as a Woot/Groupon for furniture. They were moving tons of furniture by the time I talked to them and they still didn’t have a tech team. Amazing!

It can be really depressing to see all these young tech folks from MIT, and Stanford, or exGooglers and exFacebookers come up with an idea, get lots of funding if you are not a tech person and want to pursue the same dream. However I’ve also seen nontechnical people prove the business before they even had tech. I’ve seen business analytists able to raise money from their business plans; I’ve seen writers leverage their internet fame to fund their ideas.

Leverage the skillset you have. If you can code, great – code. If you can design, then design. Use the skills that you have as a starting point, a foundation to what you need to build. Use that to show others the idea has merit and rally people to your cause. If you think you have a good idea, just start doing what you know to make it a reality.

Pinterest + Instagram = Pinstagram

2012-05-02T14:11:12Z

So what do you get when you combine a billion dollar company (Instagram) with a $500 million company (Pinterest)?

I love using Instagram. The problem with Instagram however is their web experience is non-existent. I’ve been frustrated that the only way to consume Instagram is through my iPhone. Lately, Pinterest and Instagram have been getting a lot of press because of Instagram’s 1 billion dollar purchase by Facebook and Pinterest’s hypergrowth.

My cofounder Brandon and I were having a discussion on startup pitches, especially the ones that go “we’re an X for Y” and thought a hilarious VC pitch would be “we’re a Pinterest for Instagram”. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I liked Instagram, and this was a real need for me. There was nothing like it out there that I would use. So last weekend I decided I would make it a weekend project.

I spent a few hours putting something together using my design and front end skills. I was able to show the popular Instagram feed using their API in a Pinterest-like UI. I showed this to Brandon which quickly convinced him this was a good idea and together we started clobbering together the project. By the end of the weekend we had something that basically worked. You could log in with your Instagram id and view your feeds, your photos, what’s popular and search.

We found that Pinstagram was really useful. I actually consume Instagram a lot more through this. It was an easier experience and I can see a lot more photos faster. Brandon told someone the idea and they wondered why anyone would want to use such a service but as soon as they tried it, they immediately realized that it was very useful.

So without further ado, it is my pleasure to present you:

pinstagram.com

The site does integrate with Instagram and will require that you have a valid Instagram account.

For those of you interested in how it was made. It’s a very simple Ruby and Sinatra app. It doesn’t even have a database. The front end was built on Twitter Bootstrap. Haters can hate me for not building the html from scratch but I prefer to build my house using off-the-shelf tools instead of having to go and chop wood in the forest. The Pinterest style layout was built using Masonry, a very useful jQuery plugin. All this of course was also made possible using the Instagram API which was very well documented and easy to use.

Some details of the controls and what happens when you hover over a photo

Top 10 Quotes from Mark Cuban

2012-03-05T17:31:42Z

I recently read Mark Cuban’s book “How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It”. It was a short read but full of valuable nuggets of insight on his approach to business. I was also pleasantly surprised to hear that he’s been on the show Shark Tank which I also enjoy.

Here are some great quotes I highlighted from the book:

Lesson #1: Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your products or service.

Always run your business like you are going to be competing with biggest technology companies in your

The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort.

Everyone has got the will to win; it’s only those with the will to prepare.

Win the battles you are in before you take on new battles.

Treat your customers like they own you. Because they do.

Moral of the story: Make your product easier to buy than your competition…

The best salespeople are the ones who put themselves in their customer’s shoes and provide a solution

Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies.

It’s not in the dreaming, it’s in the doing.

MVT: Minimum Viable Team

2012-03-04T22:17:15Z

There’s a pretty big movement in the tech startup world now around the idea of a lean startup. Terms like customer development, continuous deployment, and mvp (minimum viable product) are thrown around. MVP refers to the most bare bones version of a product you can build and release and still call it a product. The idea is to not spend two years locked in a closet building the “perfect” version of the site, do a massive launch, only to find out nobody wants it and it doesn’t solve anyone’s problems. Build the most basic version, put it out there in front of customers and see if the thing has legs and iterate.

I think the MVP is a great idea and eliminates waste. What a lot of people don’t talk about is team makeup. What’s the minimum required amount of people and what roles do you need in order to build a successful web product.

Like everything in life, it depends. There are also a lot of counter examples that I think it’s hard to make a generalized statement. In Apple’s case, the minimum was an engineer and a business guy: Woz and Jobs. I would argue though that the particular business guy also had an eye for product and that’s not something you always see. Which brings me to my point.

More and more, I see the really successful ones require you to have strengths in these 3 roles: technology, design, and sales/marketing. These are in no particular order. Without technology, you can’t make the product work. Without design, it’s not intuitive, easy to use, and aesthetically pleasing. Without sales or marketing, nobody knows about your product or you can’t get people to buy it. I’m not saying you can make a successful company if you don’t have those 3 components, but it will sure make it a lot easier and increase your odds.

You might say, Larry and Sergei were two engineers and Google isn’t exactly known for design but we’re talking about edge cases here. Not everyone can be like them. A lot of developer types would like to think that they are the MVT. Being able to build the product is just one leg of the successful stool. Sure you can sit on that stool, but it’s wobbly. Design is another leg of the stool and I’m glad to see that nowadays, user experience and design has become a key component in many companies. That’s still only two legs and is not stable. I think the biggest and most crucial piece of the ingredient is sales. Sales is what makes everything run.

Being on the design and tech side, I’ve always thought that if I could just build it, people would use it and somehow it would build on itself. I’ve come to realize that organic viral growth is the exception and not the norm. The antidote is of course great marketing and or sales. I don’t think enough people realize how important sales is in the tech industry. People giving you money to make their problem go away is absolute validation to what you are doing.

And there you have it – the three legs of the stool that is the basis of a successful startup.

How To Get a Technical Guy To Work For You

2012-03-01T17:32:54Z

I recently went to a networking meetup and met someone who had an app idea and was looking for a technical guy to be a partner or a cofounder. Invariably people chime in and say that you should go to the Rails meetups or some other technical ones. You’ll definitely find technical guys there but I think that’s just scratching the surface of the problem.

The real problem is convincing them to work for/with you. There seems to be a real shortage of developers and designers, especially in the bay area. There are so many exciting startups that have traction to work for not to mention the giants like the Facebooks and Googles. Those companies are offering great salaries with great benefits. On top of that, any able developer can apply to the numerous startup incubators and try to get their own idea off the ground. With so many appealing choices open to them, the idea of working for an idea guy for a few measly points is not going to be attractive unless you can show why they are more likely to succeed working or partnering with you.

How do we do that?
Prove the business. I love entrepreneurs who validate the business before investing a penny on tech. One great example is Dabble. People can take any class offered on Dabble for $20. Anybody who has a skill can offer to teach classes. When the site first started out this was a simple WordPress site with a sign up form widget. People sign up to teach classes and people sign up to take classes but there was no magician behind the curtains. When my friend Jessica Lybeck and her business partner started this site, they didn’t immediately hire a programmer to build the system. They just used WordPress and a WordPress plugin. A different entrepreneur would have build a pitch deck before starting this. Another entrepreneur would have probably spent a lot of money building the site so that people can sign up to teach and learn and built out this whole system.

Presell. I also love it when entrepreneurs have clients lined up to use the product. This maybe because they were presold based on a presentation or marketing material or they signed a letter of intent to use the product. Even better, sell – meaning get their money first before you even have the product – that’s the ultimate validation. They want it so bad they’ll pay you to make it happen. Sites like Kickstarter are great for something like this – it gets people to commit their dollars if they really like your idea.

Be open about your idea. This is probably the number one turn off for developers – when people come up and say I’ll give you a piece of the action only if you sign an NDA. News flash – your ideas are not new or original. I can’t tell you how many times people tell me an idea as if it was the next best thing since sliced bread and I tell them – oh have you heard of [X] app or [X] website? Do your homework people. Know your space inside and out. Who are the players, who are the competitors, what’s the market etc. Don’t worry about people stealing your idea. They are too busy doing their own idea.

The Difference Between Just Showing Up and Moving the Needle

2012-01-25T18:59:47Z

According to Woody Allen, “80 percent of success is just showing up.” If that’s true, I would say the other 20 percent is sheer perseverance to make progress, or move the needle. Showing up is just the baseline, but it’s not enough.

Back when I practiced martial arts very seriously and it was a huge part of my life, I would train everyday or nearly every day. Sometimes I’d hit a plateau for months where I wasn’t making any progress. I thought that just by showing up every day consistently, that was making a difference, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t pushing myself so I wasn’t making any gains. I was in my comfort zone doing what I could do and not training trying to do what I couldn’t do.

If you want to move a stone to build the pyramid, it’s not enough to just show up and push. If there was not enough force to move the rock even an inch, simply showing up everyday to push it will not get you a pyramid. However if you put in enough force and effort to move it even an inch, eventually you will have something.

I think it’s like that with any craft. If you don’t the same thing you’ve always done, you’ll likely get the same results. If you do marketing and are not seeing new customers, doing the same thing over and over isn’t likely going to change it.

Why Products Suck

2012-01-24T19:31:18Z

TL;DR: Compromise

In our life, we come across a lot of products that suck. As a designer of digital products, I see a lot of products so that I can make better products. I play with a lot of mobile apps and web sites so that I can see what works and what doesn’t. The products I make, some are okay but many suck.

One of the major reasons that products suck is that the makers of the product compromise. We don’t set out to make suckey products, but we make little compromises, here and there. And they add up. Eventually the sum those compromises affect the overall impression of the product. There are many forces at play. Over on the business side you have people who want to launch by a certain deadline, so they compromise on time. There may not be enough money so we compromise on quality. A designer might come up with a feature that is a little too hard for an engineer to implement so that gets compromised. Heck even the designs might be compromised because one way is easier to do than the other.

When we lose focus on why we built the product in the first place – which is to make it easier for the user or customer to solve their problem and turn it around and make it easier for us to make, design, engineer, launch or whatever, we inevitably make a subpar product.

When I think of products that have few compromises, I think of the thin Motorola Razr, the Macbook Air, and the old Palm Pilot for those of you who still remember. I’m sure the engineers bitched and moaned when they saw what they had to work with. I’m sure some even said it was impossible. But if the decision makers had budged and placated the engineers, I’m sure we would have had a much thicker Razr with more moving parts.

When I look underneath other laptops, I see a bunch of panels and screws and all sorts of stickers. When I look at the bottom of the Macbook Air it’s one smooth piece with no extraneous panels. The whole laptop was engineered to be one unit as opposed to a Frankenstein of OEM parts clobbered together.

When the Palm Pilot was designed, Jeff Hawkins would walk around with a block of wood the size of the Palm Pilot. If someone had a feature that required hardware that would make it bulkier, they found a way around it. They weren’t going to compromise on the portability of the device because otherwise people wouldn’t carry it around in their pocket much less use it.

Customers may not notice a compromise here and there, but combined together, they create a slightly worse experience that they do notice. Be mindful of what you compromise.

Why Software Development Projects Fail

2012-01-13T21:34:43Z

I’m sure you’ve all seen it. Well meaning software projects where everyone seems competent, but at the end, the project is a failure. After seeing over a decade and a half worth of software development, I see a few recurring patterns.

Client doesn’t know what they want. This is a pretty common problem with inexperienced clients or ones that haven’t dealt with a lot of software development shops or consulting firms. This is exacerbated by firms that don’t know how to manage clients and projects properly. The combination is disastrous because clients have a vague idea of what they want and consultants don’t know how to get it out of them.

Client doesn’t know how to articulate what they want. This is very similar to the first problem but not nearly as bad. They know what they want, but don’t have the vocabulary to describe it or the breadth of experience to point you to what they want. It’s up to the consulting firm to be able to guess and point to existing examples in the real world that might be close to the client’s vision.

Clients want the wrong thing. I’ve had potential clients come to me who know exactly what they want and that’s great. However, sometimes the thing they want, you know it’s just a bad idea. By that I mean, they want stuff you know to be bad weather it’s a flash site with tons of music or a social network that bombards you with ads because they think that’s what people want to do: click on ads. I try to convince them that it’s a bad idea but this rarely works because you are basically attacking their ego. That’s their idea and you are saying it’s dumb. I usually just turn these clients down.

Lack of communication. Software development is a collaborative process. Consultants rarely know everything about the business of the client and relies heavily on the client to bring their domain expertise. It’s not like going to a car dealership and just picking out the car you like and agreeing on the price. The software firm will need a lot of information from you. A lot of times, getting content, feedback from clients is like pulling teeth. This usually holds up the project and adds needless delays.

Client doesn’t know what customers want. This is a common problem among startup clients. The fledgling company may have a clear vision of what they want, however, that doesn’t mean that it will work. It’s merely a hypothesis. Even if everything is executed as the vision, there’s no guarantee that users will flock to it. Color comes to mind. Clients may think they know what users want, but that is not always the case.

Trying to finish a project by throwing more people at it. You can’t just throw more people at it. Nine women can’t give birth in 1 month. Software development is problem solving. It’s not a simple application of force like adding more people to move a boulder. Thus just throwing more people at it without understanding how to apply them doesn’t necessarily lead to project completion or success. I highly recommend this book “The Mythical Man Month” regarding this topic.

Software as a checklist. This occurs more at big organizations. Software is treated as little more than a feature list to be checked off. Little thought is given on usability, whether or not it actually solves any problem, or if people end up actually using it. When software doesn’t solve the problem or is so hard and unintuitive to use, even if it was delivered on budget and on time, it’s not a success.

Great Quotes from Steve Jobs Book

2011-11-27T23:12:04Z

I recently read the beast that is Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs, creatively titled “Steve Jobs”. For those of you who have never followed or read about Steve, this book may be a shocker. He was not a nice man, but he did get things done and was very successful. CEOs view him as a visionary business leader. I found some really great quotes that I like to highlight and share.

On motivation:

(Y)ou should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.

On impressions:

People DO judge a book by its cover. We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.

A great Jonny Ive quote:

Steve and I care about things like that, which ruin the purity and detract from the essence of something like a utensil, and we think alike about how products should be made to look pure and seamless.

On Apple stores:

Jobs decided that Apple stores should have only one entrance, which would make it easier to control the experience.

On problems:

If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later,” he said. “That’s what other companies do.

On how ruthlessly focused he was:

“What are the ten things we should be doing next?” People would fight to get their suggestions on the list. Jobs would write them down, and then cross off the ones he decreed dumb. After much jockeying, the group would come up with a list of ten. Then Jobs would slash the bottom seven and announce, “We can only do three.”

On the simplicity of the iPod:

In order to make the iPod really easy to use—and this took a lot of arguing on my part—we needed to limit what the device itself would do. Instead we put that functionality in iTunes on the computer.

On creativity:

There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,” he said. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.

On Apple’s approach to building great products:

We believe that it’s technology married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.

On focus:

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he said. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.

These quotes are courtesy of Isaacson, Walter (2011). Steve Jobs (Kindle Location 1601). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.