The Rise and Fall of Third Party APIs

I have been around the block a few times so I have seen the pattern I am about to describe again and again. A young, perky company tries to get noticed, bending over backwards to make developing on its platform easy and enticing to outside developers. Until one day the company grows up to the point that it can justify making changes ostensibly for the greater good. Said changes often include discontinuing parts of the company’s API, changing the terms of service, and new-found zeal for micromanaging the applications built on the company’s platform. As a developer you suddenly go from feeling like a partner contributing to a community to a flunky of the platform provider.

How My Love Affair With Evernote Came to an End

All 3 of the products Cloudmanic built on a third party platform were based on Evernote. Because good software applications take a lot of time to build, when we started developing the first product, Evermanic, we discussed our intentions with the Evernote team. We were assured that Evernote would help market the finished app and that we were building within the company’s terms of service. In other words, we were partners. And after months of work and tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, we were ready to take our partnership to the next level, to be part of the company’s app marketplace.

We launched Evermanic with great success and collaborated with Evernote to gain popularity. Soon, however, we were told to change the Evermanic name because it violated Evernote’s new terms of service. After months of frustrating back-and-forth Evernote finally agreed to make an exception. End of story? Not quite. We could keep the name, but Evernote would continue to help market our product—keeping us in its community—only if we did a nearly complete rewrite. We received a long list of changes that would have altered the entire concept of Evermanic. It was almost as if Evernote had hired us as contractors. Evernote was excited about the product we pitched, but once we built Evermanic the company wanted to micromanage it into something else.

At the time Evermanic was one of Evernote’s best third party apps in terms of quality. Cloudmanic could have been a showcase for other developers—Evernote was promoting tons of applications that that did not have the same quality standards—but the timing was bad. Evernote had really started to explode, and the need for outside developers was less urgent. Honoring the deal Evernote offered third party developers to embrace its platform was not important anymore. Evernote had no interest in small partners—it just wanted flunkies.

Even so, Evermanic became a popular application. We explained to Evernote that we had little desire to make the changes demanded because our users were happy. Evernote was a much-loved application, and we delighted its users with a specialized tool that made their Evernote experience even better. So why wouldn’t Evernote embrace and market Cloudmanic as a partner? Why did Evernote make changes to its API and terms of service that required further investment of development time just to keep Evermanic functioning?

Be Careful Where You Build

Though I used Evernote to illustrate my point, I have watched this same scenario unfold repeatedly. Twitter flipped most of its third party developers the bird (no pun intended...maybe) a few years back rather publicly. There are a lot of advantages to partnering with a company to build on its platform—most notably access to the company’s user base. As a software developer it is really appealing to be able to focus on building something amazing and have customers waiting once you are ready to launch, but this perk comes at the cost of being beholden to the company you built your app for.

Needless to say Cloudmanic is out of the business of building applications to enhance other companies’ platforms. Building products we control is a far better way to scale up our business.

Why Go Native Now?

Four very big happenings caused me to change course:

• Apple Watch signaled that the next big wave of technology will be hardware, and I want to be in a position to write apps for it and future devices without having to wait for some third party hybrid vendor to catch up with software development kits, documentation, and changing App Store requirements. Furthermore, I anticipate that core SDKs (such as iOS) will move quickly to support the new hardware.
  

Hybrid Is not so Bad (Give Credit Where Credit Is Due)

Hybrid platforms have grown by leaps and bounds since the early days, and lots of people are putting in crazy amounts of effort to make hybrid solutions first class options. I am rooting for the hybrid communities and I hope to return to being a hybrid evangelist some day—clearly HTML5 is a great way to support a cross-platform world. Frankly, it saddens me that Apple and Google have not invested more into supporting HTML5 for mobile software development. But if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em—Apple and Google, you win!

Recently, we at Cloudmanic Labs adopted a new mandate to build all of our applications—web and mobile—as offline first. Our first nonmobile example of an application that works completely offline is Heapless.

Why this new mandate? Very simply, offline is fast—really fast! Regardless of the speed of your Internet connection, storing your data and the files needed to run an application locally makes the user experience almost instantaneous. Modern browsers are able to prefetch all of the resources needed to run the application in the background using web workers. Which means that as a user goes from page to page or state to state everything is loaded instantly—no waiting for the application to communicate with the server. We use a similar approach to communicate data back to the server in the background to ensure that the user never has to wait.

Our primary goal of offline first is not to support users at 30,000 feet—the objective is making our application crazy fast and responsive. And thinking offline first has the added benefit of supporting our Internet-challenged users as well.

We need to shift our thinking about what offline means. As it applies to how we architect applications the term is misleading—because building offline really means building amazing applications. So how about we change “offline” to “crazy fast”?

Podcasting strengthens your connection with your audience over time by establishing your voice—both literally and metaphorically—as a familiar and anticipated beacon amidst all the noise. As you share your enthusiasm and expertise on your podcast topic, you can market your products and services to the very audience that might actually care—and successful podcasters attract advertising that generates income. Additionally, podcasting furthers your skills as a speaker and moderator, and interviewing others is a great way to network and produce content ideas.

The best part about podcasting is that you only need a computer and free software such as Audacity to get started. You can upload your podcast to a host of free service providers, and your podcasts are instantly searchable on the internet. You can create a more professional podcast with an external microphone that costs less than $100 and some basic software for embedding images. You can also make your podcast episodes downloadable through iTunes, a market leader for wider distribution. Doing so extends your reach by making your podcast available to mobile applications for listening without an internet connection.

Get your voice heard and start podcasting today.

Evermanic was Cloudmanic Labs’ first “real” mobile app. We invested a great deal of time and effort learning the mobile design and development techniques that we currently employ in our other offerings. Evermanic will forever occupy a special place in our hearts because it helped us become real mobile app developers, but releasing Evermanic from our portfolio will allow us to devote more attention to other applications—which will result in even better versions of our core software products.

Thank you to all our customer who have supported Evermanic over these years!

Facebook—The same, more or less. Facebook will continue to be the place to connect with our friends. It will be the digital coffee shop where we gather, communicate, and share with people we know from the real (nondigital) world.

Twitter—The cocktail party for the masses. Twitter will be the place where people who might not know each other exchange ideas. A place for both celebrities and regular Joes. There will be less “look at what I ate today” and more real-time, meaningful dialog between strangers. Also, Twitter will be the place where news breaks (which will then be chronicled in depth on Google Plus).

Google Plus—The newspaper of tomorrow. I believe that Google Plus will become our primary source for content about what’s going on in the world—and our backyards. Our streams will, of course, be personalized to our interests, but instead of picking up a New York Times or scanning our RSS feed, we will use Google Plus.

Maybe it’s best to illustrate my prediction with an example. If Shakira were to release an album in the year 2020 the following would happen: rumors about the album would first appear on Twitter, then the album would be released on Google Plus and Shakira would promote the album and discuss it with fans on Twitter, and we would chat about how much we liked the album with our friends on Facebook.

The point is that today we tend to lump the 3 major social networks into a single social networking category— and then debate which is best. I think in the future it will be very clear that Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus are 3 distinct platforms with very different purposes.

What is good—or if you insist, intuitive—interface design anyway? Most essentially, good design requires minimal knowledge and experience on the part of the end user. It allows us to bridge the gap between what we do know and what we don’t know without a lot of cognitive effort—that is, without having to think too hard. And that’s a very good thing because more and more digital tasks are being foisted on consumers, for better or worse. Which means that good interface design essential: when you go it alone, shit-hot functionality is useless without a well-designed interface that makes navigation seem obvious and success practically inevitable.

But make no mistake, good design does not come easy. It requires hard-won expertise, resourcefulness, and perseverance and is achieved through an iterative process of planning, developing, testing, and revising. Good interface design is time consuming and expensive, and the easiest-to-use designs are almost always the result of the most effort. Simplicity is blood, sweat, and tears in sheep’s clothing.

You might feel an inflated sense of accomplishment the first time you make it through the grocery store self-checkout without needing help from the dwindling ranks of human employees, but before you get out your giant “I’m number 1” foam finger to pat yourself on the back for “intuiting” your way through yet another digital transaction, consider for a moment that your success was entirely dependent on a little screen that guided you through the experience step by step with clear, simple instructions and bold, colorful graphics. You have no idea how much effort went into making you feel so competent.

At its core Basecamp is just a fancy to-do list tool. But the folks at Basecamp have done a world-class job of building an amazing application. Adding, assigning, and communicating about tasks is fast, easy, and enjoyable. Basecamp messages are never lost and it is very clear if someone is waiting for you to complete a task. Too often other project management software products on the market fail to achieve the same objectives. As a result, they can be more of an annoyance than a tool.

This post is not a review of Basecamp. What I find so interesting is this: Why isn’t Basecamp used by more of my colleagues? My theory is that Basecamp suffers from “blank canvas” syndrome. When you first create your Basecamp account there is no predefined way to organize your projects. You have an empty window waiting for you to create to-do lists. You have to decide with your team how to use Basecamp. Other project management tools tend to guide you into their way of organizing a project. Being guided is good for getting off the ground—but can be bad for long-term satisfaction with a product.

Do you want software that you can craft to meet the needs of your team (hello Basecamp) or do you want software that your team has to adjust to? When you frame it like that Basecamp should always win. But the blank canvas seems to scare people off before they even come to this realization.

In my experience when a team gets to decide how they engage their project management software the team stays more organized and gets things done faster. When choosing software don't forget that a "blank canvas" might be more powerful than it appears to be.

For this reason I would be happy if my tombstone says He Did What He Wanted, When He Wanted, How He Wanted. Not because I am a selfish dick—I live my life this way to avoid falling into the trap of mediocrity. If anything—be it a job, a task, a friend, a surrounding—is unpleasant for very long I make a change. I have trained myself not to fear change because change is often the solution to (rather than the cause of) life’s problems. For example:

• I stopped doing yardwork. I hated the endless cycle of cutting the grass only to have it grow back—yet I enjoy having a nice yard. So I decided to have my cake and eat it too by hiring someone else to do the yardwork. The operative word being “hire” meant that I had to free up funds by reviewing the family budget and making some cuts. It turns out I do not need collision insurance on my 1994 Jeep, and I discovered that we were overpaying $50 a month for cell phone usage. Bam! Problem solved.
• I put an end to disruptive phone calls. Apparently Phil Libin was reading my mind when he said, “I don’t like it when people call me without a prearrangement via text or email. It’s extremely unlikely that I’ll be able to talk at exactly the time someone arbitrarily decides to call me, so it’s more efficient and more polite to send a text or email first." Hear, hear. About a year ago I changed my voicemail greeting, instructing would-be callers to email me. People have learned to respect this request and communicate on my terms.
• I put the kibosh on fixed-bid work. A fixed-bid contract always screws someone. Typically contractors overbid and screw the client. But that always seemed wrong to me so I routinely underbid—and I was the one who got screwed. So I decided that even if it cost me some business I was not going to work for a fixed bid anymore. My stress level decreased and my happiness level increased because I was able to focus on software development, which is what I really enjoyed.
• I gave W2 the heave ho. I used to have a traditional job. It paid well and I liked the people I worked with—but I hated the work and the way the company was run. I tried hard to improve the company culture but failed. Though my family was counting on my salary, I knew I had to quit. So I lined up a bunch of clients and gave notice. That work led to new opportunities, and I have never looked back.

I could bore you with 100 more examples, but I won’t. The point of this post is to give you a nudge to free yourself from mediocrity. There is always a solution—you just have to be willing to find it and make it happen. I will leave you with this quotation from Steve Jobs, with which I could not agree more:

“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it.… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”

When I was growing up my dad was a main street entrepreneur. He ran his own insurance company in addition to some side businesses. He was his own boss. He attended every one of my soccer games, never missed a parent-teacher conference, and was always there to say goodbye to me as I trucked off to school. And he took our family on several weeks’ worth of vacations every year. He was present, happy, and in control of his own life.

I am not at all suggesting that a main street entrepreneur does not work hard. My dad sure did—but he was in charge of when, how, and what he worked on. It’s not news that we all have days when we do not want to be at work. You might be tired from the night before or distracted by something else, but if you are not your own boss you probably have to just sit there and chug through the day. The main street entrepreneur does not. He can focus on that something else and take care of work when the time is right. He is not lazy—he simply has more options.

Which is to say that all entrepreneurs are not created equal. I have come to realize that the kind of entrepreneur I aspire to be is a main street entrepreneur. Life is short. Spending half of my waking hours (or more) being managed by a boss or toiling for investors does not sound like fun to me. Which epitaph would you want on your tombstone: “He Made His Bosses Rich” or "He Did What He Wanted When He Wanted"?

Paper Bills

Mail in forms are a time drain. For me every paper bill represents 10 to 20 minutes of time. I need to get it from the mailbox, open it, review it, scan it, pay it, record the payment, and then dispose of it. For a business owner like me paper bills can add up to days of lost productivity each month.

Like most people I opt for paperless billing and automatic payments whenever possible. And that’s the catch: many companies do not yet offer those options. If digital billing and payment options are not available I often try to pay a year in advance to minimize bill paying to a yearly event.

Paper Checks

You might laugh, but receiving a paper check in the mail causes me a great deal of anguish. As a business owner I receive paper checks several times a week. Presuming that each check takes about 30 minutes to process and deposit, which involves a trip to the bank, I lose a great deal of time and money per check.

I avoid receiving paper checks at all costs. I push for payment via direct deposit, which is more secure and faster for everyone involved. Even payment by credit card, which takes a 3% bite, is preferable to paper checks that can cost even more to cash. Going forward I am considering charging a fee for processing paper checks. I am also considering requiring payment in Bitcoin.

Phone Calls

Anyone who knows or follows me is aware that I hate phone calls, which I consider a major time drain. To combat this scourge I try to only work with loan brokers, realtors, insurance agents, and others who embrace digital media and solutions that enable me to deal with administrative matters in my own time. I don’t want to stop playing with my son to take a phone call from my insurance agent.

In fact, I have fired many insurance agents for not corresponding via email. When vetting a new agent I always ask, “Will you communicate with me by email?” The response is almost always yes—and the reality is too often no. If you live in Oregon and are looking for a great insurance agent willing to communicate with you digitally, I suggest you check out the office of Robert Witherell with Allstate. Robert and his business partner Cheryl are amazing! I went through about 10 agents before finding them.

Paper Receipts

Managing the paper receipts my business generates daily has been a thorn in my side for more than 15 years. I now process receipts in real time (get ready for the shameless plug . . .) thanks to Skyclerk. And with the new Snap!Clerk feature (future link to blog post here) I can simply snap a photo of a receipt and have it automatically uploaded and organized for me.

These small things that I do (or don’t do) every day help me make sure that my work and my life are in balance. The next time you find yourself performing the same tiresome tasks yet again, ask yourself if they are taking time away from something that is truly important to you.

Whether you are performing the job or having someone perform it for you does not matter. The important thing is understanding the big picture of what it takes to get the job done. Make sure you have a contract that clearly defines the scope of work, the infrastructure necessary for success, and the procedures for resolving problems. Not understanding the business model and its processes will put you in a no?win situation. Does the upgrade require new hardware or software? What does the maintenance phase look like? Who has control over the data? Will the budget be enough to see the project from start to finish? You don’t want to go in half?assed because cutting corners simply won’t get the job done. No, you are going to need to be fully assed to sit in that seat over the long haul.

What’s more, the technical side of the equation is just one part of the process. Remember that contract? Make sure it also addresses roles and responsibilities. Relationships are the key to success—or failure. Who are the people involved in the project from beginning to end? What kinds of access and control will they have? What are they supposed to do and how will they be held accountable? Does everyone truly contribute or are there any gatekeepers with the potential to slow things down with pointless procedures that are more displays of authority than productive practices? Ultimately you want qualified, empowered, and responsive people who are committed to moving the project forward. But don’t think for a minute that everything will be simple—there’s a reason they call it a job. At the end of the day you need to know what and who it’s going to take to get the job done. It definitely pays to know where you sit.

In the last 15 years I have hired many agencies. I have also worked for many agencies. Heck, I even ran an agency. Let’s say I’ve seen the agency issue from all sides. So I wrote this post to share a few things to keep in mind when going the agency route. Most also apply to hiring a freelance designer or developer, but the focus is agencies—the types of companies that have fancy offices, charge boatloads per hour, and invite 25 people to every meeting (account managers, project managers, salespeople, developers, designers, freelancers, random dude not doing anything that day).

You Can’t Have It All

When hiring an agency you can’t expect to get a high-quality product at a good price delivered on a fixed schedule. An agency salesperson will always try to convince you that they can deliver on your schedule. If they are working on an hourly basis they will assure you that they “already added tons of padding to the budget.” And besides, their designers and developers are the best in the world! Simply accepting that you can’t have an outcome where quality, budget, and schedule are achieved you should maximize for one or two. Don’t be fooled into thinking you can have it all.

Most Agencies Don’t Care About Your Little Project

The best agencies spend their days working with the big boys, the Fortune 500. These clients have massive budgets and are a good agency’s bread and butter. Simply put, your little startup project is not going to get the best resources or the most attention. An agency will always choose a Fortune 500 client over you. Sorry.

Agencies Hire Lots of Freelancers

Agencies rely on freelancers to save money. They pay some eager freelancer $50 an hour (no benefits, no taxes) and bill them out for $150 an hour. The problem with these subcontractors is that they come and go—in some cases halfway through a project. Transferring knowledge from one person to another is costly, jeopardizes the schedule, and can negatively impact quality. Agency turnover can make you wonder if you should have just hired a freelancer yourself.

Your best bet is to make sure your agency is not going to subcontract out your project. If it’s unavoidable, be sure that your contract details what happens if things go wrong with the subcontractor. Also, confirm that an agency employee will manage the project. I have seen it happen over and over again: the agency hires a subcontractor for your project, puts you in contact with said subcontractor, and then takes a backseat. Dumping project management on the client is pure negligence on the part of the agency. (I doubt that it happens with their Fortune 500 clients.)

Employees of Agencies Are Tired and Distracted

Lots of great talents start their careers at agencies. Or at least start their W2 careers at agencies (lots of freelancers eventually become employees). But working at an agency is stressful, so agencies tend to be a revolving door of talent. Clients are needy—particularly the Fortune 500—and agency employees often end up working nights and weekends just to make their big boy clients happy. Often, they are working on multiple projects at a time as well. Overwork, distractions, and deadlines simply do not add up to someone’s best work.

And So—When Should You Hire an Agency?

I just broke the silence on some tough facts about agencies. So when should you hire an agency if you are a small upstart? In short: when you can’t build your own team. You might not have a network of freelancers to pull from. You might not know how to communicate with designers and developers to get great results. In some cases the safer risk is to first hire an agency to get you off the ground and later hire your own team of employees.

I think the biggest benefit of an agency is stability. Though employees and contractors might come and go, good agencies stick around for years. You will always be able to walk in and get what you need done. But if you are planning on building a lasting startup, look around—I can’t think of many (any?) great companies that started via an agency. Maybe a few have, but quickly moving on to an in-house talent pool of designers and developers is key. Agencies are not a viable long-term labor force.  

The Upshot

When considering an agency make sure the services offered match your needs. Keep in mind my points about quality, budget, schedule, staffing, contingencies, and project management and contract around them. Try to make sure everything is in writing. Also make sure that what is said in meetings is documented. (Agencies love meetings.) You don’t want your agency going down a path you did not agree to and then getting stuck with the bill to correct it.

Most important, don’t let things get out of control. Too often something critical comes up when the project is 80% complete. A major feature is missing, the budget has completely run out, the quality is wanting—and you’re stuck accepting something you did not plan for (lack of features, bigger budget, lower quality, etc.). You could fire the agency, but then what? You are cornered. Being very actively engaged with the agency and your project will help you avoid this situation. As with employees you should “hire slow, fire fast” (if firing is the correct solution for your agency relationship).

I have engaged with at least 30 agencies in my life. If you are looking for a great design, mobile, or web agency feel free to pop me an email at spicer@cloudmanic.com. I would be happy to help you find one that meet your needs—or connect you with some top-notch freelancers if that is a better solution.

(And in these wild and wooly times you don’t want an enemy. Best case: low-level passive aggressive retribution. Worst case: a digital smear campaign against you—that inexplicably goes viral. But I digress…) Negative feedback is not more palatable when it is preceded by a warm fuzzy: “You did a great job, really. But you don’t seem to understand the concept of a budget.” Even worse is verbally teeing up with a qualifier calculated to (a) distance yourself from the turd (“I hate to tell you, but…”), which often sounds disingenuous or (b) manage the response (“Don’t freak out, but…”), which usually has the opposite effect. Rather than feel gently enlightened, the recipient of your mixed message will either be confused or think you’re an asshole.

So “constructive criticism” may be an oxymoron, but feedback really can help people work better. The secret is knowing when to focus on the positive and when to eyeball the negative. If the recipient is a novice, go for praise. Beginners feel less confident and need encouragement. Emphasize strengths and successes, but also be clear about what your protégé should to do improve. Offer suggestions that build on the positive with “and” or “what if” statements—and avoid the dreaded “but” bombs. If the recipient of your feedback is past the novice stage, you can zero in on weaknesses and mistakes. Advanced practitioners generally want to know what they can do to improve. Don’t overdo it, though; even eager beavers can be deflated by criticism.

(The worst kind of boor, I think we can agree, is the self-proclaimed “expert” who is delusional about their skills and resistant to change. Feedback of any kind is wasted on this lot, and they should be avoided at all costs. But I digress again…) Learning how to give appropriate and timely feedback is vital. Feedback gives the recipient an opportunity to ask questions and investigate obstacles—before it’s too late. Understanding how to accept feedback is equally important. Knowing what you need do to progress is empowering. Stop being an idiot. It’s that simple.

Minimum Purchase Maximum

Thanks to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which went into effect in 2010, merchants that accept credit cards can legally impose a $10 minimum on credit card charges. However, they must impose it on all cards (not just American Express, for example). For more information check out the article Merchants May Require Up to $10 Minimum Credit Card Purchase. And the next time you encounter a minimum of more than $10 raise a stink with the merchant. I do.

Checkout Fee Limits

In 2013 the credit card networks set a limit to the checkout fee a merchant can charge. Has a merchant ever charged you 50 cents for using your credit card to buy a soda? Unless you were buying a $12 soda, that charge was against the rules. The limit to how much a merchant can charge is typically around 4% (0% in at least 10 states). For more information read this great article: Checkout Fee: Charging Credit Card Fees to Customers. Don’t let merchants overcharge you for using your credit card.

Why Do I Care?

So why am I taking the time to write about this issue? I always feel a little cheated when I am charged a fee for using a convenient form of payment, and I want to encourage merchants to find more creative ways to offset the cost of accepting credit cards. For example, a coffee shop I used to frequent allowed me to run a monthly tab. The merchant saved money by having only one credit card transaction for me each month rather than many. And I enjoyed the convenience of not having to pull out my wallet for every cup of joe. It was kind of like walking into my mom’s kitchen.

I hope this post helps persuade merchants to change their policies to comply with the current laws and rules. And I hope that customers stop giving in to excessive credit card minimums and exorbitant checkout fees.

Because as any naysayer knows, if you say yes all the time you will get too much out of life. Saying yes is like asking to be spammed. You will end up doing things you don’t want to do. If not actual disaster, you at least run the risk of disappointment, boredom, and annoyance. It’s ok to say no. Life will go on. Sure, there’s a lot of pressure—both external and internal—to say yes. People like it when you like the things they like and do the things they do. And there’s your own fear of missing out, fueled by the constant view of the other side of the fence afforded by carefully edited Facebook and Instagram posts. But it’s ok to say no if you’re not truly motivated by the opportunity. It’s ok to say no if saying yes would cause you great inconvenience. It’s ok to say no without a detailed excuse.

What’s important to understand is that we choose much of what happens to us by either accepting or blocking the possibilities that come our way. And over time we develop patterns, predictably saying yes to certain things and no to others. These countless minor decisions add up to major choices and ultimately, our lives. If you’re happy with the way things are going, you are probably doing a pretty good job of balancing yes and no. If not, you should reassess. Most likely you need to practice saying yes, but breaking from both your yielding and resisting patterns will expand your comfort zone and clarify who you really are. What’s the worst that could happen? You can always learn from failure. And that’s true wisdom.

A scan of the entrepreneurial landscape suggests two fundamental types: risk takers and small bettors. Apple (under Steve Jobs), for example, took large risks—betting the company many times over. In contrast, Twitter has few big bets in its history (heck, it started as a side project), growing instead through iteration—one small bet at a time. Because both forms of entrepreneurship can lead to success, the question of which is better is settled by your tolerance for risk. I prefer to make a small bet, analyze the results, and build on that effort because it is the more risk-averse approach to growing a company.

When forming a business partnership make sure your entrepreneurial styles align. Compatibility with respect to risk can help you avoid painful and costly conflict down the road. Maybe take a trip to Vegas together: if your partner is sitting at the blackjack table the entire time while you sip fancy drinks by the pool, maybe you're not a good match.

That’s right. Getting the attention of possible users in a cost-effective way is the real nut to crack. I hate to break it to you, but if you build it they still might not come. All good startups set out to solve a problem. But when deciding whether to chase an idea it’s important to determine if the core challenge is technology or marketing. For example, in the case of Google the biggest hurdle was technology: building a badass search engine. In the case of DogBook, the difference between success and failure is marketing: customers need to be aware that DogBook exists and is awesome.

Make sure you have both the passion and capacity to overcome your core problem. Trust me, there is nothing worse than building an amazing product but not having the wherewithal to follow through with marketing it. If your core problem is marketing, my advice is to begin developing and implementing your marketing plan on Day 1. Start building that buzz before a single line of code is written. Today more than ever technology needs to be married with marketing because the internet is just too big for a product or service to thrive on its merits alone. Having your house in order on both counts is critical to avoiding failure, doggone it.

It’s easy: using your mobile phone simply snap photos of your receipts on the go—and Snap!Clerk does the rest. Your receipts will be instantly uploaded to the Skyclerk servers, analyzed, and accurately entered into your ledger. Pay. Snap!Clerk. Done. How painless is that?

If you are the control freak type (many of us are) don’t worry—you can choose a certain label or two, add a note, or select a particular contact, and Snap!Clerk will fill in the rest. Snap!Clerk is accessible via mobile and web interfaces, and you can even upload receipts by email.

All my professional life I have offered, as a matter of course, some kind of restitution when I screw up. As a consultant, if there is an issue with a deliverable I often lower my price or don’t bill at all. As a service provider, if I am not timely answering a support request I often credit the customer’s account with a few months of free service. It simply never occurred to me not to compensate a customer negatively impacted by a mistake I made. Only recently did it truly soak in that other professionals do not necessarily live by the same code. Over the past few months the employees of some companies I have been doing business with let me down by screwing up repeatedly. Oftentimes, when confronted, they owned up but offered nothing in return to make up for my losses. Not compensating for a significant mistake borders on dishonest.

The next time you screw up at work think about the impact your mistake has on the affected parties. Own up to it and try to restore the lost value somehow. Your customers will appreciate and trust you a lot more. A little loyalty goes a long way!

A common first step when building a data-driven software application is to prototype data models in Microsoft Excel, a powerful tool for building and manipulating lists and managing raw data. The next step—product design—is the one that ultimately determines whether the software will live or die. And it’s here that Excel is causing great damage by modeling terrible design.

Many developers build data-driven applications that look and feel a lot like Excel. Although mimicking the table-based structure of Excel often seems like the most logical way to display data onscreen, this assumption is flawed because it discounts a very important factor in great software design: the emotional connection between users and the software.

Great software, regardless of how mundane the content is, should evoke an emotional response. Users should have an unexplainable, powerful attachment to the application. Take a look, for example, at the screenshots below. Which one do you feel more compelled to engage with?

Option #1

Option #2

I assert that the design of Option 2 is far more engaging. Each item is part of a conversation between people. The effect is personal and meaningful. In contrast, the underachieving design of Option 1 delivers a list and little more. The information slackly dissolves into mere bits on a screen, requiring the viewer to concentrate to make sense of it—sort of like one does with those Magic Eye stereogram images.

Contextualizing the data displayed onscreen is the key to invoking an emotional connection between users and the software application. Simply printing data to the screen and replicating the flat, table-based approach that Excel uses is decidedly not. Don’t be misled by Excel’s design shortcomings. Chase that personal connection with your users. Make conscious design decisions that get them excited to see their data onscreen. Your users will be more engaged and you will too.

Frankly, I have given up waiting. I need a banking system that is in real time. I need a way send and receive money instantly and globally. Bitcoin has been hyped as a speculative investment opportunity and a means of online money laundering, but the bigger story is the possible shift away from centralized, government-backed currencies to a global digital currency that allows for cheaper, faster, and easier movement of money around the world. To oversimplify, a bitcoin is nothing more than a unique serial number that is protected by the power of cryptography. When I make a purchase using bitcoin, I am transferring this unique serial number to the seller in exchange for a good or service—just like when I hand a dollar bill to someone, who accepts it as value. Bitcoin is essentially the dollar going paperless, but offering the same relative anonymity and freedom as cash.

Two characteristics are especially intriguing: the supply of bitcoins is limited and the system for producing and trading them is decentralized. The programmers who created bitcoin did so in a way that will allow only 21 million bitcoins to be produced, or “mined” in bitcoin-speak. And in this way bitcoin is very much like gold: the supply is finite. Additionally, bitcoin operates through an open, peer-to-peer network of computers around the world—meaning no single government or institution is in charge. There are no borders, and no one has too much power. Anyone can set up a computer to get and use bitcoins. Sorry, big banks. Sorry, Federal Reserve.

That said, digital currency is on the brink of mainstream acceptance—and, perhaps inevitably, regulation. The U.S. government has, for example, recently signaled willingness to accept bitcoin as a payment alternative. Ideologues decry the involvement of the very political authorities bitcoin was developed to circumvent and undermine, but others welcome the stability and legitimacy that come with government imprimatur. Whether or not the result will be a revolution of the global financial system that unleashes repressed economies or a frenzied crypto-currency boom and bust, as some predict, remains to be seen.

I don’t remember being aware of “thinking outside the box” until the saying was suddenly everywhere. (Its use seems to have peaked, but clichés are notoriously tenacious.) Curious, I did a little research into its origins and discovered that “thinking outside the box” is worse than a mere example of the absence of the very creativity the phrase is ostensibly deployed to spark—or, incongruously, announce. The real crime is that it’s misleading: there is no box. We’re focused on thinking outside a box that doesn't even exist.

What the french fry? The phrase originated from a puzzle that challenges the solver to connect 9 dots arranged in a square pattern by drawing no more than 4 straight lines without lifting the pen (or pencil, whatever). The thing is, people tend to perceive the outer dots as a boundary—the infamous “box” that makes the task seem so much more difficult than it really is. The infiltration of the expression into our collective consciousness is attributed to the popularity of this age-old brainteaser among management consultants in the 1980s. They used the puzzle to encourage lateral problem solving, but the catchphrase “thinking outside the box” took on a life of its own, eventually hitting the groan-inducing low as an advertising slogan for a certain purveyor of fast food tacos that encouraged hungry stoners to “think outside the bun.”

And so here we are, spurring ourselves on to innovation by focusing on the limitations we impose on ourselves. You might feel boxed in, but you are not. You might feel stuck, but you are not. Yes, real barriers exist in life and in business. But they are often much more permeable than the metaphor of a box suggests. Go ahead and use strategies that help you see things from a different perspective, tactics that boost your output of ideas. But beware of platitudes that, like magic tricks, draw your attention to the wrong place.

In addition to reorganizing our company to make sure support requests always receive top priority, we intend to greatly enhance the self-service support we offer. That is, giving our customers the information you need to know in the first place so you will not have to ask. We do love to chat with our customers so if you want to connect, send us an email. However, when you are in need of support we really want you to get the pertinent information as fast as possible. So today I am announcing our new support center, a place where customers can instantly obtain answers to (most of) their burning questions.  

The new Cloudmanic Labs support center is located at http://cloudmanic.com/support. (Horn toot!)

We resolve to steadily contribute to the support center to develop a trove of articles, videos, and screenshots that will empower our customers to quickly and easily find the answers to your questions when you need them, 24-7. Of course, if you do not find what you are looking for you can always email us and we commit to responding to inquiries as quickly as possible.

We believe that 2014 is going to be a great year for Cloudmanic Labs, and we plan to realize that goal by making sure our customers are always informed and happy.

Happy new year from the Cloudmanic Labs team!

I used to read books on my iPad. Oftentimes while I was reading, an impulse would pop into my mind. Maybe the author sparked a thought and I wanted to look something up. Or instant message a friend about what I was reading. Or take a quick break to check my email. I always convinced myself it would take just a second, but of course it never did. It was just too easy to close the book and get caught up in something else because I could—instantly.

Though I would eventually return to the book and continue reading, it was often only a few moments before a message notification appeared onscreen and lured me away again. Ultimately, I was unable to truly focus on the book, which is a shame because I believe that the deepest forms of knowledge are often found in books. But you must focus to truly absorb knowledge.

Recently I purchased a Kindle, the cheapest one. All it does is display text on a screen—nothing else. I now read my books on the Kindle instead of my iPad. I go somewhere far away from my devices and dive deep into my Kindle book. The only thing instant is the next page. I feel like I am getting so much more out of my reading adventures now. I feel liberated in a way. If you are anything like me and have developed a Pavlovian response to the persistent instant, I suggest that you too find a way to turn instant off.

The reasons for this misuse of software are numerous, but the most common are a lack of resources and limited skills. In both small businesses and large institutions (particularly those whose IT budgets have been slashed in the current recession), individuals often find it necessary to go it alone and come up with ad hoc methods for entering and retrieving data in programs they are familiar with—usually Excel. Overreliance on spreadsheets occurs when other options seem prohibitively difficult or expensive to implement. It can also be the result of a bunker mentality that sets in or when IT enforces the use of specialized, tightly controlled databases, driving some users to go rogue.

The spreadsheet solution seems great at first. You are empowering yourself and getting over on The Man. But over time a spreadsheet tends to turn into a mess of workbooks and worksheets that starts looking more like game of Battleship as your data sinks in a grid of B9:Z88 cells. Ultimately each one evolves into a hopelessly idiosyncratic contrivance that only one user understands. And then you go on vacation and someone renames a worksheet and all your VLOOKUPS and calculations fail. Or worse, you work late one evening and distractedly sort your columns—and scramble your data. Sometimes the spreadsheet solution is flexible to a fault.

When the situation approaches crisis proportions a data analyst is called in to fix the problem. Shouldn't be too difficult—after all, it’s just data, right? Well, one person's data can be another person's nightmare of trying to interpret the myriad of calculated cells across multiple spreadsheets. More often than not, it turns out that columns are riddled with various text headings, pictures, and random cells or nulls that make it impossible to easily integrate the data into another platform like SQL Server or Microsoft Access.

So if you really care about your data, use a program that is designed to protect data through validation using form controls and is robust enough to allow for relational tables. Excel is a highly flexible spreadsheet program that is exceptional for analyzing data but should not be relied upon as a data storage system. For that, there are plenty of off-the-shelf software solutions or developers who can design a custom database to meet your data system needs. The spreadsheets with the most reliable data are usually those that are outputted from a database system.

Most people hate receiving long emails. In fact, some people think emails should be no more than 3 lines long (or 2, or 4, or 5). This is not my personal style. I like to give recipients everything they need in one email. I believe that doing so optimizes my time and theirs. One of two things happen when I send a long, detailed email to someone: either they never read it and drop off or they appreciate having all of the pertinent information in a single reference document. Either way, it amounts to one focused episode in my life versus scattered smaller ones.

Let’s look at the first case in which the recipient never reads my email. Maybe this person is a contractor, vendor, employee, friend looking for advice, or my mom :). If the person is not detail oriented enough to read and process my long email (my nice way of saying they are lazy), then they simply are not a good fit for me in terms of communication style (sorry, mom). And, most likely, working together is not in our best interest. In the case of friends or relatives seeking my advice, many simply move on and get the advice elsewhere if a long reply is too much of a hurdle for them. Simply put, long emails can serve to weed out lazy and needy people—a real time saver in the long run.

In the second case, in which the recipient of a lengthy email is appreciative, the flow of information is optimized to reduce the likelihood of lots of back and forth dialogue. This is a good thing because the fragmented nature of lengthy email exchanges makes them hard to follow and too often results in offhandedness. Providing a single, thoroughly informative document to which the recipient can refer as needed is much more efficient.

Magic 8 Ball had been a trusted guide of mine since childhood. My older sister had one that I borrowed when she was not around. I became enthralled and decided that she did not appreciate its true value, so I neglected to return it. In its physical form the Magic 8 Ball invited contemplation. It had the heft of a scaled-down bowling ball and the gravitas of its dark horse namesake and was filled with a mysterious liquid that concealed the answer on the icosahedral die until it floated into view in the circular window.

That Magic 8 Ball was eventually dropped one too many times, developing a crack and losing an alarming quantity of its inky lifeblood—which led to its confiscation by my mother. I didn’t buy or pilfer a replacement, but its power as a decision-making tool stayed with me. And then, years later, some magical thinking programmers developed the Fortune Ball. The app lacks the comforting solidity of the original, but it is surprisingly satisfying as so many physical things that we once believed could not be replaced digitally are. (Not that long ago I couldn’t imagine buying shoes online. I now buy shoes online almost exclusively. Sorry, shoe stores.)

But is the Magic 8 Ball a valid tool for making decisions affecting your small business? The answer to that question is, “As I see it yes”—though you might not want to tell investors. Magic 8 Ball works because it is more than the sum of its parts. Often, just formulating the question reveals the answer. Which is why—to keep things interesting—Magic 8 Ball sometimes uses reverse psychology, giving an answer that is obviously wrong. When in doubt, you can use the time-honored 2-out-of-3 tactic to be sure. The trick is asking the question from different angles—posing the exact same question 3 times in a row is rude and does not yield nuanced answers. And at other times, Magic 8 Ball perceives that you are not ready to ask the question or know the answer and demurs to give you time to get your shit together.

Most people building software these days have heard of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) strategy: construct only what is necessary to get a few users onboard and worry about the rest of the planned features later. The problem is, most of us suck at figuring out just how much is enough for a product to be minimally viable. As a result, we often times err on the side of too much. Cloudmanic Labs has launched a variety of products, and I like to think we are pretty good at gauging an MVP feature list. So recently I sat down and looked at the numbers to see how accurate we were at building an MVP release of Photomanic, our photo application for Evernote launched about a month ago.

We measure the usage of all features, which helps us determine whether we should invest more in a feature or not. One feature I insisted on was the ability to rotate images. I was convinced that without this feature users would not consider Photomanic viable. As it turns out, only 0.84% of the images uploaded to date have been rotated. Yet this feature is the one our development team spent the most time building—and one for which we generated a laundry list of upgrade ideas. Even I rarely rotate images, and I was the biggest proponent of the feature. Clearly, our perceptions of what is important are not always accurate.

Fortunately, we at Cloudmanic Labs believe in power of metrics. Had we not observed this result early on we might have unwisely invested more time in improving this feature. The data clearly suggest that we should dedicate our future resources elsewhere.