Pingwyn Blog

Dear Diary! - A first account of what I hope is a new stage for Pingwyn

Vlad Zachary — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 08:17:10 -0700

So I am in week 2 of the entrepreneurship program with BEC (Boston Entrepreneurship Center). It feels like I am doing the right thing for several reasons. First I am 'exposing' Pingwyn and talking about it to many new people, without trying to sell it. I've 'gotten out of the building' and I am getting a lot of encouragement to continue doing it. Then I am also dissecting the business plan - from defining the customer problem, to how the solution solves it, etc. It all happens in the awesome spaces and meeting rooms of the Cambridge Innovation Center.

Small changes can mean big improvements. Just the other day we had as a speaker Javier - a Babson MBA from the Dominican Republic, who is running two companies of his own. He had a very interesting reaction to Pingwyn's problem statement. His first suggestion was to remove the top 3 and just leave - opportunities for people in the same location to connect are lost all the time and businesses lack an automated system to manage employee location. For some reason however, Javier only commented on Pingwyn as a job-search tool. It is a clue that my pitch is still not refined enough to give a better overview of the product.

On Monday we had another very interesting speaker - Fady Saad - founder at ePowerhouse, who made some powerful analogies and offered compelling lessons: How companies are mostly challenged by managing complexities and those who fail - fail because of that. Management is mostly a Tempo-setter and systems are there to help manage these complexities. A no brainer, but I never thought about it this way. Hope I still remember Fady when the complexities come for Pingwyn.

There will be more to come after tomorrow and the top two take-aways so far are - 1. Get out of the building and 2. Make an app that people use. Simple, right?

Can't have 100% security and 100% privacy

Vlad Zachary — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 13:33:39 -0700

With these famous words president Obama justified the NSA Spy-on-Americans program. Technically he is correct and while the government focus is mostly on the 100% security - we are more concerned with the 100% loss of privacy, which seems to be the direction we are headed ...

As a society we are at the point where improvements in computing and communications technologies have torn down a lot of the 'walls' around us. This has resulted in major improvements in effectiveness, and new opportunities like the boom in Mobile or the proliferation of cloud services. The flip side is that with the walls torn down - we find ourselves feeling exposed, vulnerable and more and more lacking privacy. We also find this happening all too quickly and it is hard for many to deal with the ramifications from relatively simple decisions like buying a smart-phone. All of a sudden things that we never thought about before - like our location for instance - are no longer 'ours'. The telcos know it, the government knows it, and a bunch of businesses increasingly want to know it too - so that they can better sell us their stuff. And if we dig around we discover it is all perfectly legal (or at least most of it is).

So what is a one to do? Should we fight it, resist the inevitable, go back in time and refuse the gifts that seem to come from the future? Or should we 'let it slide' and see what happens and may be the next generation will figure it out? What is the silver lining here?

One answer to this last question offers an opportunistic approach to this new reality. If so many know our location than we should be able to access and benefit from this data too. Location based services can offer quite a few advantages. From just-in time traffic information, driving directions, or coupons, which pop-up just when you are near the store - to personalized services like notifications when our loved ones reach certain destinations, or are diverted from a preselected route.

Based on this new philosophy Pingwyn ventures to put people on the map and while at it - enables them to connect with each other, display a public profile, publish and share content. So is there a benefit for us from knowing who is around us? The future will tell. In certain situations one's networking could be greatly enhanced if one had access to the smartphones of the people around them - a direct communication line to the right individuals. Who wouldn't want that? Or businesses might find it quite beneficial to have a BYOD people management system, which tells them where everybody is. Pingwyn offers this solution and opens more opportunities.

As for the 100% loss of privacy - there is always the "Hide" button that will take you off the map ... at least in this app.

better

Mobile Shopping in numbers

Vlad Zachary — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 10:51:58 -0700

Mobile Computing remains driven by entertainment and Facebook

Vlad Zachary — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:36:28 -0700

A week after the introduction of Facebook Home we learned two things: Facebook is really serious about mobile (as they should be) and the growth in mobile is still driven to a large extent by entertainment. Don't get me wrong - we have seen serious growth in business applications and increasingly start-ups are disrupting and redefining how we do everything - from banking, to cooking, to shopping, to travel ...

Just last night at the Mobile Monday event 5 Boston startups described 5 different visions for a better future of healthcare. From a location-smart calorie-counter(http://www.bon-app.com/), to a data-driven, science-heavy, wearable devices for stress, productivity and happiness "management" (http://www.neumitra.com). You can learn more about this and other events at http://www.eventbrite.com/org/23350316?s=13087822

Still the majority of the uses of mobile devices are clearly in the entertainment section and with Facebook home, the social site has given it's faithfuls a new and more involving way of accessing and interacting with the site. Is this a good thing? It depends on who you speak with. Obviously Facebook believe it was needed and Forbes' Elise Ackerman writes that they have "done everyone a favor".

“Facebook has woven traditionally disparate content and services together into a single, unified experience,” writes Austin Carr of Fast Company.

On the other hand there are voices like Jim Edwards, a deputy editor at Business Insider who is also a Facebook investor:

“And who wants to have to click through Facebook’s interface before getting to other apps you use, such as Twitter or the web browser?”

Apparently millions of excited users want to be even closer to their Facebook. If and how this will drive value for Facebook and whether their new Home will end as one of "the world’s most underestimated pieces of software" remains to be seen. What is clear however is that there is no rival or a dominating business use for our mobile devices, to counter the entertainment and social media onslaught. With the possible exception of ... email.

Mobile Hotel Booking While in Freefall

Vlad Zachary — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 09:35:10 -0700

More than half of US viewers will use a mobile device to watch the Olympics

Vlad Zachary — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 05:43:59 -0700

A formula for success in Mobile

Vlad Zachary — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:26:21 -0700

The fact is - more than 200 million farmers in India receive government subsidies via mobile devices ... Talk about global opportunities ... Here is a formula for success:

1. Identify a bottleneck.

2. Solve with mobile.

3 (Optional) Get rich and famous.

Deploy your network (Read time 0:23 sec)

Vlad Zachary — Thu, 03 May 2012 07:50:24 -0700

Most people believe good judgment is a requirement for success, but the truth is - withholding your judgment can make you more successful. What do you do instead? Deploy the network around you. All these friends and acquaintances on LinkedIn, Facebook, Quora, etc. - ask their opinion, solicit their experience and judgment. They are free from your burdens and often can see it more clearly. Get their answers then prioritize. Prioritize time, information, people and make your decisions together - not alone. Use your network systematically to give you the signal from the noise. Heroic entrepreneurship makes for a good story, but lone-wolf victors are really rare. So rare in fact that they just come to prove the point - you could get lucky trying on your own, or you can increase your chances by working with your network.

KNOWING - repost from J Michael Dolan's blog

Vlad Zachary — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 06:40:52 -0700

I have to share this in its entirety - from the blog of J Michael Dolan:

"I was 29 when I started Music Connection magazine. 0-money, 0-experience. I couldn’t PROVE to anybody that MC was going to work. But I could KNOW it. I was holding it in my hands and reading it in my mind before I ever committed to actually doing it. Just like a songwriter hears the music in her head before she ever writes it down. Just like the Wright brothers couldn’t PROVE that their cockamamie idea of flying machines would work. But they could KNOW it. You may not be able to PROVE to investors, producers, agents, managers, staff or even friends and family that your crazy, genius idea will work. But you can KNOW it. And the manner in which you articulate that KNOWING may be the only convincing “pitch” that sells it."

Original post at: http://www.jmichaeldolan.com/blogs.php

Obvious to You - Amazing to Others

Vlad Zachary — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 06:28:00 -0700