Project Idealism

Software and diminishing returns

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 05:18:24 +0000

It’s tempting to believe that everything matters equally. That every detail is as important as the other. It’s tempting because when everything matters equally, the difficult labor of making trade-offs doesn’t need to happen.

But as with many things that are difficult, the rewards for getting good at making trade-offs, and making the right ones, can be huge.

Making trade-offs is particularly difficult though because the return you get for expending time/energy/resources on something is almost always greater than zero. Very rarely will the answer to the question: “If I spend ___ hours/dollars working on _____, can I make it better?” be a ‘no’ answer.

But that is the wrong question to ask.

The right question to ask is: “Given the current state of my product and the number of customers I have, is this the best place to spend my time/money?”

Not all returns are equal.

So the challenge is to make the right tradeoffs so that you maximize the return on the energy/time/money you spend on something. And the right trade-off will be different depending on the state of your own product.

What I’ve realized is that most decisions and disagreements aren’t ones of details, timing, design, features, functionality or anything else.

They’re all about trade-offs.

Fighting over guns

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 18:41:38 +0000

I have come to believe that the debate around gun control brings out pretty much the worst of everyone in this country.

There are of course crazy people on both sides of the argument, though let’s face it, people in support of gun rights sure seem to be a lot crazier. The NRA thinks we need more guns in schools, and for some reason, some people have figured out how to make the gun debate a religious issue.

And on the flip side, we liberals who are usually talking about the importance of science and data when it comes to things like climate change, poverty, education and a host of other issues apparently think data suddenly doesn’t matter when it comes to the issue of gun control.

No one has said it better than the authors of Freakonomics.

When hazard is high and outrage is low, people under react. And when hazard is low and outrage is high, they overreact.

Every death is sad and tragic, but especially when it’s at the hands of a violent criminal and especially when the victims are children.

But the tone regarding the debate about guns in our country has to change on both sides if we’re actually going to accomplish anything. If you ask a gun rights person why anyone needs to shoot 50 rounds in a second they scream at you for hating the constitution. But I’ve also dared to ask my liberal friends about certain realities about the data of gun violence (like the fact that there are more victims from drunk driving than there are from gun violence yet we have about the same number of cars and guns per capita) and am spoken back to as if I’m a crazy far right winger because maybe I might disagree about one policy.

This is a shame because the data allows us to see that the violence we experience with guns in this country are a symptom of larger issues.

Maybe if we’d take a moment to stop and look at the data, we’d see that we could probably save more lives by legalizing drugs than we could by taking away guns.

In fact, any attempt to have a discussion about gun control in this country without discussing the war on drugs is completely pointless.

Diane Feinstein is set to introduce legislation that will supposedly be a victory for gun control advocates. Oh and also, she says:

We believe we have (perfected it). We exempt over 900 specific weapons that will not fall under the bill..

Because we’ll all feel safer if a lunatic is only able to choose from 900 weapons?

And so here’s really the only thing we know we can count on to come out of the debate over gun control.

First, nothing meaningful will actually happen in Washington. After all, these are the same politicians who can’t figure out how to get our basic revenue and expense needs in order.

And second, politicians and pundits on both sides of the debate will eventually forget about the children of Newtown and keep fighting as if they’re little children arguing over toys, trying to score their political points.

Except we aren’t children fighting over toys.

We’re adults fighting over guns.

Public? Private? Whatever the government says it is

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 00:35:32 +0000

You may have heard that Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, is in hot water with the SEC over a public facebook post he made back in July about the number of hours that had been viewed on the video streaming service.

The rule he supposedly violated is in place to ensure that individual investors have access to the same information that larger investment houses have. Basically, the SEC thinks Facebook isn’t public enough.

Face meet palm.

Here’s what’s maddening though:

Back in September courts ruled that Twitter could not block an FBI subpoena requesting tweets sent by an Occupy Wall Street protester.

Why?

You guessed it – because according the FBI tweets are public and therefore cannot be protected. When different government agencies can harass and punish it’s citizens for their behavior on social media, based on conflicting theories of privacy, it’s time to worry.

Can we start thinking about an electronic bill of rights now?

Lessons from being in business for 6 years

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 03:14:53 +0000

On December 6th, 2006 I filled out the paperwork to officially make Ideal Project Group a business in the State of Illinois. Ideal is different from what it was when I started, has had a few ups and downs, and while I feel I still know a fraction of what I’d like to know, I’m much smarter and more knowledgeable than I was a few years back. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

Your spouse is your most important business partner

I often write about my wife Maile and my family on this blog. I worry sometimes that I come off a bit too sappy, but I strongly believe that our partners in life become our partners in business and that too many people forget this simple rule. When Ideal started, it was Maile and her job that provided the health insurance. When I hit lows and started questioning things, it was Maile who was there to encourage me. During the upswings it was Maile who let me know we weren’t just lucky. When I wanted to take some bigger risks, it was Maile who believed in me most. There’s a huge difference between swimming against the current and swimming with the current. I’m fortunate beyond words for all the ways Maile has supported this business.

Build a product

We’ve built some products that are respectable but only generate a small amount of revenue. We built a product that will support our entire team as long as we continue to execute well. And we’ve built other products that we ended up shuttering completely. In every case though, something especially positive came out of it. Making things for yourself that express who you are, and show what you can do, when your team is making every decision is so important that it deserves it’s own post.

Good clients are worth far more than the money they pay you

Good clients trust you to do the work you’re good at. They refer you to other people who need your services. They pay you on time. They are fun to be around. They challenge you to be better but not in a way that questions your abilities. They don’t dictate, but they collaborate. We’re fortunate that every one of our clients for some time now has been what I would consider a good client. And a good client is worth so much more than just the dollars they pay you with.

Bad clients are never worth what they pay you

We’ve been extremely fortunate to have worked with some amazing companies and entrepreneurs, and the vast majority of our clients have been what I would call ‘good clients’. Over the course of six years though, you’re going to run into some lemons. Bad clients suck the life and the creativity out of you. They dictate things they want done without being willing to collaborate. They miss deadlines. They micromanage everything. They pay their bills late. They lead to work that you’re not proud of and don’t want to put on your portfolio. Worst of all, they suck so much life out of you that they impact the work you’re doing for your good clients. Here’s a really important secret: you can always tell ahead of time when a client is going to be a bad client. You just need to be willing to trust your intuition.

Limiting your talent search to a geographic location is silly

Talented people are everywhere, and the internet allows us to collaborate across the world with anyone. If you can’t clearly communicate with someone that lives in another state or another country, you aren’t trying hard enough.

In person interaction is critical and important

As wonderful as remote collaboration and the freedom it provides is, you have to make it a priority to physically get together sometimes. Our team didn’t do this enough this past year and we’ve felt the impact. Balance is important, and sometimes you just need to get in the same room together.

Word of mouth is everything

Clicks are a digital representation of something far more valuable: one human speaking with another human about your product or service. Nothing else even comes close.

You can listen too much

There are so many conferences, and there is so much advice out there now, that you can go crazy trying to listen to it all. At a certain point you need to decide who you are, what you believe in, and stop listening to everyone else for a while. In fact, it’s entirely possible you should stop reading this right now and get back to work.

There is extreme value in cash-flow

Payment terms are just as important as the dollar amount you charge, and you should never feel bad about requiring clients to stick to their payment terms. If you charge someone $100/hour and they paid you $90 you would say something. Same holds true for payment terms. There is real value in cash-flow and payment terms should always impact the price you charge.

People matter most

Of all the wonderful things that running your own business can provide, nothing compares to the relationships you form with other human beings. If you look at business as the context through which we form meaningful relationships, it changes the way we define success. I’m fortunate to have met many of the people I now call friends through my business. Friends are way more valuable than money.

There is no finish line

This was the hardest but most important lesson for me to learn. I used to think there was some finish line that existed – where once it was reached you could stop marketing, selling, or having to try hard. There is no finish line. You have to constantly try hard and put in significant effort to build the business you want and make it succeed.

There are however milestones, and I’m pretty proud to be able to say we’ve been in business for 6 whole years.

To everyone who made it possible, thank you.

Fear always arrives in a disguise

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:39:44 +0000

I’ve written before about fear, and I’ve spent time thinking about it thanks to some wonderful books – in particular Linchpin and The War of Art.

There’s something particularly important I think I’ve learned about fear though – and that is that it seems to me fear never actually shows up as fear. With the exception of genuine terror I suppose, it seems to always show up disguised as something else.

Fear arrives in the form of anger even when we aren’t mad at anyone, but are instead worried about something related to our work – and so we lose our temper.

Fear shows up as insecurity when it comes to our lovers, not because we’re actually jealous of any particular person, but simply because we’re afraid of losing someone we love.

Fear arrives as worry when we know can’t control the outcome of something. Instead of recognizing the thing we’re afraid of and moving on, we remove the joy from the present by worrying about the future we can’t control.

When we get a big break fear shows up as anxiety, because few things are as scary as success.

When we’re afraid to show the world our creations, fear shows up as perfection, because it knows that if we don’t ship it until it’s perfect……we’ll never ship it.

The most important thing I’ve learned about fear, is that fear is a coward. Afraid to show up as itself, it always arrives in a disguise.

It seems to me the only way to fight fear is to unmask it, call it out for what it is, recognize it’s presence, and then observe how little power it actually has.

Fear isn’t all that scary, but it’s disguises are terrifying.

Game Changing

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:53:07 +0000

One year ago Derek Hopper joined Ideal Project Group as our Lead Engineer/Hacker.

Adding Derek to our small team changed our company and our products for the better, and it’s difficult to think about what the company would be like without him.

I always try to let the people that I work with know how important they are, but as with most things we can always do better.

When I heard Derek left the startup he was working with, I think about 12 minutes passed before I asked him if he wanted to work on a small project with us. About a month later he became a full time employee when he accepted my job offer.

The day he accepted, I came home and told my wife Maile how excited I was. ‘You don’t understand’, I explained, ‘Derek joining our team is completely game changing.’

Tula software had just launched, but there was a still a lot of work to do and much of it was pretty complicated. We had also landed some new clients and I needed someone I could trust completely to work with us.

I’m not right about everything, but I pretty much nailed the game changing part.

I suppose I could go on and on, but I’ll just say that I try hard to give our people as much as they give the larger team, and I hope that always shows.

Thanks for such a great year Derek, we wouldn’t be the same without you.

You can meet all the requirements and still fail

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:45:02 +0000

Let’s say I have something valuable that I’d like to keep secure. As a result, I give you two requirements:

Lock the box to keep the contents inside secure
Put the keys to the lock somewhere they won’t get lost.

Of course, there’s an implicit 3rd requirement that went unspoken which is that I’d like to also be able to retrieve the contents at some point.

I find this box so interesting because this kind of thing can happen on software teams too.

It’s easy to get hung up on meeting requirements when making software, but they are always only part of the story.

There is always a bigger picture that needs to be understood by everyone. It’s this understanding, and the ability to anticipate unspoken requirements, that separate good software teams from great software teams.

A microcosm of fear

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:43:00 +0000

The condo building in I live in started installing security cameras today. After six years without a single violent crime, and after years of debate on the matter, those in favor of digitally video recording everyone as they enter into and leave from the building we call our home finally won the battle.

Even though there is no evidence that video cameras do anything to deter crime, and there are studies that show them not to be cost effective, none of these facts matter when people making important decisions do so based on fear.

Fear of crime, fear of getting sued (a building our size is expected to have cameras, we could get sued if something happened!) and a fear of looking weak.

The problem with making decisions based on fear of course is that most of the time they’re not rational. We spend time, money, mental energy, and resources on things that create the illusion of security, when instead we could be building communities.

The thing is, as it is with security cameras, so too it is with drones, wars, and patriot acts.

My condo building is just a microcosm of fear.

Not all users are your customer

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:34:54 +0000

Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, for whom I have much respect, wrote an article the other day titled Let’s reconsider our ‘users’. In it, he argues that application developers should stop calling the people that use their products ‘users’, and instead recommends calling everyone a ‘customer’.

The word “customer” is a much more active and bolder word. It’s honest and direct. It immediately suggests a relationship we must deliver on. And our customers think of their customers in the same way.

This article got a TON of coverage in the tech community. Many people properly pointed out, myself included, that with applications such as Twitter and Facebook, the users are not the customer, they’re the product. Writing about this reaction, John Gruber had this to say:

I’m saying they should treat users as customers, too — customers paying not with dollars but with their precious and limited attention.

This is false. A stranger walking down the street could hit me in the face and they would have my precious and limited attention. That would not make me their customer.

It’s true we pay for things with our attention and I’ve written about this before. But only when someone pays you with money are they your customer. You cannot, and will not, keep the lights of your business on with attention. You must have revenue. The place that revenue comes from, that is who your customer is.

Twitter’s problem isn’t that they’re not ‘treating’ their users like the customer. It’s that they’re not making the users their customer. And in fact, the needs of Twitter’s customer are often in direct opposition to the desires of the users. By it’s very nature, Twitter cannot treat their users like the customer without ignoring their real customers – the advertisers.

In Dorsey’s noble effort to humanize the word ‘user’, he muddies up the even more important notion of understanding of who your customer is.

Very rarely is every user of a web application the customer.

Our most popular product is a software for yoga studios and we have multiple kinds of users. Instructors, students, desk people, and studio owners.

Of all these users, the only one that is our customer is the studio owner. No one else.

I’ve discussed with my team many times the importance of understanding this, and it drives every one of our decisions. Tradeoffs rarely come in the form of strict black and white decisions, they’re made in small degrees. And if you don’t have a clear understanding of who your customer is, over time, you forget who you should be focusing on and who you should try to please.

Our main competitor is now so big that rumor is they make more money processing credit cards than they make on their software. Guess what? This is the kind of thing that gives our product an opening.

Because when every major product decision has to be made with the backdrop that a significant portion of your revenue comes from processing credit cards, it has an impact on who your customer really is, and what challenges you’re going to tackle.

I’m all for having a more humanizing word for our users, but it would be a tragedy if we lost sight of who our customers are in the process.

We never long for what we have

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:31:27 +0000

We long for what we’ve never had, and sometimes for what we once had, but never for what we have right now.

The problem with longing is that it’s so powerful it overwrites our ability to clearly see our good fortunes.

We complain about a job until we don’t have one anymore. Instead of appreciating the joy of owning your own business, you long for the days your revenue will be more stable. Instead of being happy with our homes, we long for another bedroom, a back yard, or just a little more space.

Single people long to meet the love of their life while their married friends long for the freedom that comes with not having to answer to anyone. Newlyweds long to make babies while parents long for a date night.

Everyone longs for their youth when what matters isn’t how much time has passed, but how much time we have left.

It’s perfectly fine to want something more, better, or different and to then take action to get it. That’s intention, it isn’t longing. Longing is the endless daydreaming about what might be or what could have been without doing anything about it.

Barring anything resulting from the permanence of death, if we’re not taking action to get what we’re longing for, then what are we doing?

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but one of the ways I’ve learned to appreciate what I have is to imagine losing it – and then longing for it. I don’t know why, maybe it’s because reality can’t usually compete with fantasy, but for some strange reason this seems more powerful than just being thankful.

As it turns out, there’s nothing I long for more than what I already have.

Apple predictions, guesses and hopes

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 02:14:05 +0000

Well, it’s that time of year again where Apple’s getting ready to release their newest products. Which of course means everyone’s predicting/guessing what will be released, what the gadgets will look like, and how much they’ll cost.

The consensus seems to be that the iPhone 5 will be the same size as it’s predecessor but with a bigger screen, and everyone is expecting a 7" iPad that everyone keeps calling the ‘iPad Mini’.

Both of these things bother me, and I hope they’re wrong.

First, I don’t think it makes any sense at all to call a 7" iPad a mini anything. A 7" device would be larger than most of Apple’s products, other than their MacBooks and Desktops, and it also leaves out the fact that more and more the iPod touch belongs in the iPad family and not in the iPod family.

If When Apple ships a 7" iPad, I think it makes sense to rebrand the iPad family of products all together. Just like when iPhone OS became iOS with the launch of the iPad, I think the iPod touch becomes the iPad mini with the launch of a 7" iPad.

Each of my kids has an iPod touch. You know what they call it? Their iPad. You know why? Because it’s an iPad. A mini iPad. There’s nothing about it that even resembles an iPod. Even the iPod app is gone and is called ‘Music’ now.

An iPad, an iPad 7 (or something), and an iPad mini – that makes sense.

Unlike the nomenclature issue of calling the 7" iPad ‘mini’ where no one actually expects Apple to name it that – they’re just calling it that for now – it does seem that there’s a good chance the iPhone 5’s screen will indeed be larger.

I so hope this isn’t the case.

Conventional wisdom is that the bigger the screen the better. And the Daring Fireball link to the story about the iPhone 5 screen size talks about this in a lot of detail.

I for one don’t want a bigger screen though. In a world where I can have a 7" iPad, a 10" iPad, and an 11" or 13" MacBook Air…..do I really need a little bigger screen on my phone? And more importantly, is that really an important benefit to the consumer anymore?

I don’t think so. What I do think is beneficial though is something smaller and lighter.

Instead of finding a way to keep the physical form factor the same size while increasing the screen size, I’m hoping Apple found a way to keep the screen size the same while decreasing the size of the physical device. That would be awesome.

Of course, I’m just guessing and hoping on all of this, but the conventional wisdom just feels a little off to me on this next batch of product announcements.

New podcast episode: William Carlton and I discuss the JOBS act

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 04:41:13 +0000

It’s been over a year since I published a podcast episode. That’s a shame and something I’m going to try, again, to keep on with. Interviewing is a great way to learn from smart people who are doing interesting things and I’d like to do more of it.

In this most recent episode I spoke with William Carlton, an attorney based in Seattle who specializes in working with startups. He writes regularly on his blog wac6.com where he was actively following the progress of the JOBS act through congress, continues to follow it’s progress through the SEC rule writing process, and blogs about what it all means for startups, investors, and the economy as a whole.

We spent most of our time discussing the crowd-funding provision, which would lift a number of restrictions currently placed on companies raising money from investors.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or click here to listen in your browser

Big thanks to William for taking the time to sit down with me!

Nothing is free

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:57:14 +0000

I was reading a post by Fred Wilson the other day titled In defense of free. For you non tech folks that read my blog, Fred Wilson is one of the most influential investors in technology.

As I was reading his post though, I realized that many of the things he views as “free” I simply view as something that you pay for with a currency other than dollars.

Services commonly referred to as “free” such as Pandora, Twitter, Facebook and even TV shows, are all great and I use each of them almost every day in one form or another.

But I don’t view them as free. I just pay for them in something other than dollars. And sometimes, the payment is way more valuable to the service provider than money.

When you listen to Pandora, you’re paying for it with your attention by listening to ads. You pay Facebook by giving them the right to collect your personal information and web usage so they can service their advertisers more effectively. And when you use Twitter you’re paying them with your attention so that they can possibly build a revenue model.

In each case, even though you’re not paying with money, you are paying with something. I personally would love it if I could pay Facebook a nominal fee and not see any ads, have complete privacy, and not get tracked all over the web. Alas, that’s not an option.

Just because something doesn’t cost money doesn’t mean it’s free. So any time you sign up for a “free” service, ask yourself, what am I paying them with.

In every case, you are paying something.

Vote for our Startup!

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:40:09 +0000

There’s a great organization called Built in Chicago that celebrates startups and the digital community here, and they’re having their first annual awards ceremony called The Moxie Awards.

I’m asking people to consider nominating Tula Software, our yoga studio software, for a few categories. I’d be super appreciative if you’d consider taking 2 minutes to put Tula Software into the nomination form for the following categories:

Best B2B Startup
Best Bootstrapped Startup
Best Overall Startup

I don’t normally get into awards, and I definitely don’t usually ask people if they’d be willing to do me a favor on my blog, but as they say, there’s an exception to everything.

Thanks a lot for the help.

A redesign that increased conversions by 400%

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 21:06:01 +0000

If you follow my blog regularly, you know that we’ve been hard at work on a yoga studio software that helps independent yoga studios manage their students, class attendances, schedules, and all the other things someone needs to run a yoga studio.

From an engineering standpoint, we’ve done some really awesome things, from allowing instructors to find subs via text messaging, to deeply integrating with Stripe so that our customers can start taking credit cards in minutes.

But as we know, engineering is only half the battle.

And being a small Rails shop one of the things I’ve come to terms with is that while we’ve gotten quite good at designing page layouts, application flows, overall user experience, and making important decisions about what to put in and what to leave out of a product, we’re not as good at bringing in what I’d call ‘the shine’ to a complex web application or it’s marketing pages.

So, I enlisted the help of Rand Media Group, a small marketing and design company in Chicago. Disclaimer: they’re run by my buddy Ryan Evans, and we happen to inhabit the same co-working space as well. Though, that should take nothing away from my praise.

Visually, the results are obvious. Our application was taken to the next level in that it had a much more polished feel, and the landing page did a great job not only of engaging site visitors, but also of telling the story of how we built this product after my wife opened her yoga studio.

But none of that would matter if our signups weren’t improving. Luckily, they’re even better than I had hoped for. We’re converting new visitors into trial users at 4 times the rate we were previously, and they’re far more engaged on the site when they do visit, visiting twice as many pages.

Check out the before and after below, and our site at www.tulasoftware.com. And if you’re a startup in need of some design help, I can’t recommend Rand Media Group enough.

Before

After

The size and scale of porn sites

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 04:25:08 +0000

Just how big are porn sites?

It’s probably not unrealistic to say that porn makes up 30% of the total data transferred across the internet.

I had been wondering why Rick Santorum thought it was a good idea to campaign against porn. This article shows just how flawed a strategy it probably was – at least in terms of gaining votes.

Via hacker news

Web 3.0

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:33:36 +0000

My favorite definition of web 2.0, which I believe I found on the Wikipedia article but doesn’t seem to be there anymore, went something like this: “Web 2.0 applications assume that a user is familiar with, and knows how to use the internet.”

Meaning, these applications make certain assumptions about what users already know how to do. The creators of these applications then were freed from needing to teach users certain things they might have felt obligated to teach them 5 years earlier.

I love this definition because it focuses not on the technology, but instead on the technical literacy of internet users.

What then, is Web 3.0, and what does it look like?

Most of the definitions I’ve read have come by way of the Wikipedia article on web 3.0, seem to focus on the technology. They include predictions about how geo-coordinates come into play, new screen technology, virtual displays, content created by computers as opposed to humans, and other things likely to be seen in the future.

While these may indeed be the future of the internet, I don’t believe they accurately define web 3.0.

Instead, I actually think web 3.0 has already arrived.

Like the definition of web 2.0 that I mentioned above, I prefer to think about web 3.0 in terms of what assumptions we can make about the users of the applications we are making, how that impacts what we make, and where we focus our creative energy. Here’s how I like to define it:

Web 3.0 applications assume that a user already has specific web assets, and they provide users with the ability to build upon and expand these assets.

As design gets better, and interfaces become more and more intuitive, it can be tempting to think that the lesson is to assume users are less computer savvy, and to treat them as such. I think that approach is a mistake though. Users are becoming smarter, not dumber. In fact, users are smarter now than they every have been, and they will continue to become smarter. And of course, we’re also learning more about how humans interact with technology.

There are a number of great examples of web 3.0 applications, but I’d like to focus on two.

Formstack, which I’ve written about before, is a huge inspiration to me. The reason is because while their core offereing is completely unsexy (online forms), they are at the forefront of what the internet is becoming. They assume that their users have other web assets. Whether it’s a website, a blog, or something else, they make it easy for people to put their forms INSIDE their own web assets. And, they assume their users might also have an email provider, a CRM system, and maybe a merchant account too.

If you make a product and assume that your users don’t have a website, and wouldn’t know how to embed things into their web pages even if they did, you end up with a very different product than a company that assumes their users have websites and do know how to use embed code.

Both can be great products by the way, it’s just that one is a web 3.0 application and one is not.

Another great example of a web 3.0 application is ifttt.com – which stands for “if this then that”. Their entire product is based on the assumption that their users have OTHER web products. Their application allows users to easily hook things up without having to write any code. For example: “if someone uploads a file to my dropbox account, then send me a text message.” It’s a very cool app that’s bringing programming logic and thinking to users without the need to write a single line of code.

The opportunity this presents, and of course the challenge too, is to identify the web assets that our users are already likely to have, and to create things that work well with those assets.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because we’re working on some big new features for our yoga studio software and we’ve made a few key decisions based on the fact that I want it to be a web 3.0 application. These assumptions include:

Our users already have websites, and they want these websites to maintain their current aesthetic.
Our uses would prefer to have control over their customer’s credit card data, instead of us having control of this information.
Our users will either know what an API key is or we will be able to teach them what an API key is.
Our users will be able to “hook up” our application to their payment provider by using API keys.

These are not trivial assumptions to make about users. And for some users we’ll be wrong, and that’s okay, because I want to try and skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is.

I firmly believe that web users are becoming more intelligent, not less. Certainly, they will continue to demand a clear, easy to use interface. But the systems they use to run their businesses and their lives will become increasingly complex, and their toolsets will become increasingly fragmented.

Hooking together applications, either via API keys, usernames and passwords, or some other means, will become as commonplace as downloading apps and creating blogs. Identifying and integrating with the assets that your users have, or would find useful if they don’t already have them, is the future of user experience design.

And as web 3.0 applications begin to take over, people will choose products not based on how many things they do, but by how well a product does the one or two things they need to be done really well, and whether it fits in neatly with the other tools they already have or are thinking of using.

The opportunity this provides is amazing because it allows application makers to focus like a laser on a nitch that they can be awesome at, and then hook into other systems (or allow other systems to hook into them) that they might not have as much domain knowledge about.

The long tail is only getting longer. It turns out though that as users, we have multiple tails we need to connect.

Applications that connect, and that can be connected to, enabling users to create their own systems – that is web 3.0 to me.

It’s already here, and it’s all around us.

Flying bird man hoax

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:58:14 +0000

You know when you get to the age where you’re pretty sure you know there’s no Santa Clause. You know the reality, probably, but you’re sort of holding on to hope that there might actually be a Santa?

That’s how I’ve been feeling all day about that Human Birdwings guy that I mentioned yesterday. I was skeptical, but I was so hoping it was real!

Looks like the video is the work of computer-generated imagery, more commonly known as CGI. Gizmodo has the breakdown of the video, and Wired has been updating their story as well.

I can’t believe the internet lied to me.

Man flies like a bird. Maybe?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 04:08:06 +0000

Wired reports that a man flies with birdlike wings.

Using videogame controllers, an Android phone and custom-built wings, a Dutch engineer named Jarno Smeets has achieved birdlike flight.

Both the Hacker News thread where I saw this and the Wired story have comments full of doubters.

There’s a pretty long comment thread going on at Gizmodo as well.

I so want this to be real though.

Dissecting Pando Daily's Hack Job Covering the Chicago Startup Scene

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:36:51 +0000

After writing this post yesterday, where I commented on the article titled The Midwest Mentality, I took some time yesterday to read all the articles that Trevor Gilbert has put out so far covering the Chicago startup scene.

The short version is that his coverage is a hack job, completely undeserving of a place in Sarah Lacy’s new publication. In all seriousness, Sarah, please go back and read through each article, beginning to end. I think that if you’re honest with yourself, you will see that this coverage is totally undeserving of being published in Pando Daily.

And I’m not talking about whether the things about Chicago were good, bad, or indifferent. I’m talking about writing interesting, compelling stories, that people might care about.

Let’s break down the coverage. Trevor spent two weeks in Chicago, and so far he’s written 5 articles.

His first article, My first time in the Second City was published on March 3rd, and it’s essentially an introduction post.

His second post, written on March 8th, was titled Breaking News: Chicago is Windy. After spending 5 days supposedly investigating the Chicago Startup scene, he ended up writing a 958 word post about Chicago’s weather. That’s right, the weather. Although, we also learned that Trevor is under the age of 21. He writes:

While I was living on the streets without a place to stay and slowly recovering from my illness, Sarah decided to allow me to stay a couple of nights in a hotel, which is great. Guess what I found out about Chicago? Approximately 90% of the hotels here require you to be 21 or older to check in.

So wait, let me get this right. Pando Daily wanted to cover the Chicago Startup Scene, get the ins and outs of the community, see what’s up and coming, and she sent someone who can’t even go grab a beer with a few founders? Are you kidding me?

I’m not knocking age here. I’m knocking an editorial decision to send a reporter who can’t legally participate in what is obviously the most natural place for someone to hang out and learn about the startup community: Bars.

In his third article, titled Trunk Club is Locking it Up, Throwing Away the Key trevor writes about a Chicago Startup that is trying to change the way men shop. It’s a fine article, but there’s nothing all that interesting or remarkable about it. He writes at one point when talking about the founding team:

Spaly was asked to join the Trunk Club team as the founding CEO. After noticing some accounting irregularities, Spaly made some changes and was left as the head honcho at the startup.

Oh really? That sounds interesting. What kind of accounting irregularities? What happened? Did someone steal money from investors? Did something else happen? We don’t know because that’s all the information the reader is given. And that basically sums up all of the author’s reporting on Chicago. Very surface level stuff. No depth. No inquisitiveness. No asking questions to get to the bottom of something.

In his fourth article Enterprise: The Chicago Kiss of Life and Death we again see the author’s lack of creativity. When opening the article, he says:

When I first joined PandoDaily way back in the day, one of the things Sarah mentioned to me was that she wanted to report on the stories that other reporters were ignoring out of lack of pizzazz (my word, not hers), and inability to reach the top of TechMeme. The attitude was a little more inclined to cover companies that are rocking it, and less inclined to cover companies because they are the latest mobile photo sharing app.

This means enterprise.

Actually Trevor, no, it doesn’t. In Chicago, this means trying to find the next 37signals, or the next Threadless. It means trying to find the bootstrappers who have turned down $400k from Lightbank because they think their product will be better without investors. Covering startups in Chicago is going to be hard because there’s no steady ticker of who invested how much money into what startup. You need to actually investigate.

But let’s go ahead with your premise though. Let’s talk about all these Chicago Startups that are making products for the enterprise. Some excerpts:

People in Chicago, as they are starting companies here, all want to have a revenue stream immediately — rather than take investment and figure out a revenue model down the road — and the best way to guarantee a revenue stream is to sell directly to businesses. Therefore, startups that don’t want to be ostracized go the enterprise route, even though they could be changing the world in a bigger way by taking bigger risks.

The second issue with being so focused on enterprise is that potential talent isn’t convinced of the importance of the ecosystem. Ask an engineer to choose between staying in the Valley and working for a hot new, untested, consumer product like Twitter and an enterprise company that already has a steady revenue stream that provides marketing simplification for insurance companies, and they will choose the hot new startup.

All of that being said, enterprise is largely the only option open to Chicago at this point. However, being the only option currently available doesn’t an excuse make. Sure, founders can sit back and say “well there are so many companies here to sell to, it makes sense to do enterprise!” That’s not a very good reason though, however pragmatic and however Midwestern. It makes sense from a business standpoint, but from an ecosystem standpoint it doesn’t.

After all this reporting on Chicago Startups, in this 1,125 word article, how many Chicago companies that are following this strategy did he mention and link to in his article? Zero.

How many founders did he quote about why they took this strategy, and how it’s worked out? Zero.

How many of their customers did he interview? Zero. How many of these startups, selling to the enterprise, are working on their own products on the side? We don’t know because he probably never asked that question.

In fact, we don’t know whether this was even reporting at all, because there are literally zero sources. Hack Journalism at it’s finest.

And then there is latest article The Midwest Mentality which I wrote about yesterday.

The only thing I’ll add to what I’ve already written is that it’s clear the author has absolutely no understanding about how challenging it is to build one’s own self sustaining business. If it was easy, wouldn’t we all have our own small self-sustaining businesses?
This part magnifies his ignorance:

Work a 9 to 5 job and see steady, predictable growth over time. You get a salary, and you are possibly acquired. You spend time with your family and get to send your kids off to college.

As the founder of a small web development company, and as the husband to a woman who owns a yoga studio, let me tell you, this is such bullshit I can hardly stand it.

I don’t work 9 to 5. I don’t have a “steady salary”. Sometimes I have to deal with clients paying me 60 days late. My wife and I have taken what would be our retirement and invested it in our own businesses and our own products. We’ve taken risks and the “pragmatic” thing for us to do would have been to work for Accenture. Being able to send our kids to college with these investments in ourselves is anything but certain right now.

I wouldn’t have it any other way, but to call what we’re doing as “pragmatic” is complete ignorance.

The author’s lack of understanding about what it’s like to build a sustainable business is something that Sarah Lacy and Pando Daily should be utterly ashamed of. Sarah has written entire books about Entrepreneurs. She should sit down with her reporters and tell them what it’s like sometime.

Because the thing is, you know how sometimes you read an article in the paper about a subject you know something about, and they get it all wrong? And then you ask yourself, if they got this wrong, what else are they getting wrong?

That’s how I feel about Pando Daily right now.

And I hope Pando decides to keep covering Chicago. Because I still think they’re kind of awesome. But Sarah, do us a favor, if you’re going to cover Chicago, do it right or don’t do it at all.

And if you are going to cover our startup scene, please send someone we can drink a beer with.

Pando Daily and the Chicago Startup Scene

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:01:22 +0000

Pando Daily, a fantastic new site about technology, startups, and other tech-related news published a post today titled The Midwest Mentality. In it, the author Trevor Gilbert outlines some accurate, and some not so accurate, observations about the Chicago tech scene. (note, he wrote a post that he’d be in Chicago, willing to meet with anyone that wanted to chat with him. I missed that post so shame on me a little.)

He writes about why a Twitter or Facebook would likely never be born here. Citing, among other things, an unproven business model and being dependent on multiple rounds of financing.

The whole article is well worth a read. Unfortunately though, the main point he makes around “the problem” with the Chicago startup scene, and the thing he bases his entire article on, is wrong. Or rather, it’s incomplete. He says:

Understanding the Midwest Mentality is key to understanding the entire Chicago ecosystem. It affects how startups are created, who gets funded and who gets accepted into the ecosystem. It is the glue of the shoe, the plugs in the boat and the sandy foundation all wrapped up into one.

He goes on, to state his main point:

Although I’m coming from a different perspective, it appears to me that after having looked at the ecosystem from an outsiders’ perspective, the entire concept can be boiled down to one term: pragmatic.

This single statement shows me that the author misunderstands the motivations of most Chicago tech entrepreneurs. It’s true, many of us are pragmatic. But why we’re pragmatic seems to be irrelevant to him. Without using the exact words, he touches on the whole “Lifestyle Business” dig that people often make:

Sure, being pragmatic has its benefits. Work a 9 to 5 job and see steady, predictable growth over time. You get a salary, and you are possibly acquired. You spend time with your family and get to send your kids off to college. That’s fine, but its not revolutionary, which is something that the technology industry – regardless of geography – is based upon.

If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, you know this kind of tone makes my blood boil. See Every business is a lifestyle business for more on that.

Here’s the thing he’s missing. Chicago Entrepreneurs are independent. Surely, sometimes to a fault, but understanding that it’s this independent streak that causes the pragmatism is fundamental to understanding Chicago entrepreneurs.

Having to answer to investors seems not all that much better than having to answer to an employer. Building a business without a revenue stream means we don’t have the ability to sustain ourselves, and are therefore not independent. Not being able to live the life you want to live because you’re busy trying to make something “go boom” seems absurd.

The other thing is that a lot of tech entrepreneurs here don’t think of themselves as “startups”. We think our ourselves as small businesses. Technology is the vehicle, not the destination.

I guess my fundamental criticism of the article is that it seems they didn’t ask “why?” nearly enough. They think they found the “why” – we’re pragmatic! – and what our goals should be – GROWTH! – and are viewing everything from that perspective.

The biggest problem with the Chicago Startup scene is the same problem we have with everything else, whether it be sports, business, or architecture. We have an inferiority complex. Unfortunately this article is going to do nothing to help with that. But the biggest mistake the Chicago tech community could make is to try and be like the valley.

It’s true that the next Twitter or Facebook might not be born in Chicago. You know what else wouldn’t be born in Chicago though? Color. I’m just saying.

Mr. Gilbert mentioned that he’d never been in Chicago before this trip. And I appreciate that Sarah Lacy and PandoDaily genuinely seem curious about what’s going on in Chicago. But if they’re sincerely interested in Chicago’s startup scene, they need to keep coming back, they need to keep digging, and they need to ask ‘Why?’ a whole lot more.

If anyone could do it well they could, and the Chicago tech community would be better for it.

One can hope.

The man who broke Atlantic City

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:01:26 +0000

Fascinating Article in The Atlantic about Don Johnson, who took three casino’s for $15 million.

When casinos started getting desperate, Johnson was perfectly poised to take advantage of them. He had the money to wager big, he had the skill to win, and he did not have enough of a reputation for the casinos to be wary of him. He was also, as the Trop’s Tony Rodio puts it, “a cheap date.” He wasn’t interested in the high-end perks; he was interested in maximizing his odds of winning. For Johnson, the game began before he ever set foot in the casino.

So Awesome.

(via Hacker News)

Why is everyone talking with so much authority?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:46:17 +0000

Something’s been bothering me lately.

It seems as though everywhere you look, there’s someone telling you exactly how you should build a product, how you should start a company, what kinds of tests you should run, when you should raise money, when you should keep bootstrapping, when you should sell, when you should push through the dip, how you should get PR, how you should promote yourself, etc, etc. etc.

The thing that’s wrong isn’t that the advice is necessarily bad. A lot of times it’s very good and often inspiring. My issue isn’t with people sharing their knowledge and lessons about what has worked and what hasn’t.

It’s that in almost every situation, it’s far too premature for people to be claiming that they know what they’re talking about with so much authority.

People working for unprofitable funded startups, who have never started their own business, are writing posts with huge amounts of authority about how to run companies. How to get PR. How to hire. How to increase conversions.

And by the way, there are bootstrappers too talking with authority about how VC money is bad, and it’ll ruin your idea. I’ve said this before, but really, it’s just my opinion at a moment in time, subject to change whenever something else makes more sense.

Maybe you’ve reached a point where in order for your product to thrive you need to focus on it 100% of the time and raising money is exactly what you should be doing. Or maybe raising money would kill your baby!

Maybe, Maybe, Maybe. That’s the real answer to most things, isn’t it? Not everything, but a lot of things.

Stella Feyman of Fee Fighters, who seems to be a genuinely nice, smart, intelligent woman engaged in the tech community and a co-founder of Entrepreneurs Unplugged wrote a post titled 3 businesses models to avoid in 2012, one of which was virtual currency.

Fred Wilson on the other hand, one of the most influential Venture Capitalists in the tech industry had this to say about virtual currencies.

But Bitcoin or something else, I’m confident we’ll see the emergence of currencies that are not controlled by nation states in my lifetime. Whether that is a good thing or not remains to be seen. I think it is, but there are significant ramifications that will result from the decoupling of currencies from governments. And one of them is an interesting investment opportunity that we hope to participate in.

One of them sees virtual currencies as a business to avoid. The other sees it as something that could be so disruptive that we can’t even begin to fathom the ramifications of that business model’s success. Who’s right?

I. Don’t. Know.

Mark Zuckerberg famously turned down $15 billion dollars from Microsoft in 2007. Had he taken that money, surely he would be speaking about building and selling a startup.

But would that have been a “success”? We certainly would have thought so at the time, but knowing what we know now, would it have been good if he sold? Maybe. Maybe not.

The reality is, there are so many nuances, so many factors that apply to just you, or just me, or to a particular moment in time, that the more likely scenario is that we do a very good job of identifying correlation, and are far worse at identifying causality.

It seems that all advice could also be spoken as “here’s what worked for me, at this particular time in my life, at this particular time in history, and it may or may not work for you considering where you’re at.”

I’m still going to share my opinions. I’ll keep sharing what works, and what doesn’t work, for me and my business. But I’m also going to try and share more facts. More information about how things can be done, and what tools exist that we can leverage to do things differently.

And when I am sharing my opinions, I’ll be just as opinionated, but I’m going to try doing it with a little less authority.

Creating your own path

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:55:42 +0000

One of the greatest joys of my life has been watching my wife Maile build her awesome yoga studio. Writing about her fears on creating a teacher training for herself:

I am in the unique position where I don’t have to interview/audition for a job when I’m done with training, therefore I can more easily seek my own path in learning how to teach yoga.

This is liberating and at the same time, a bit scary. Why am I so scared to do something different? Because in America, it is ingrained in us from an early age that we should attend ‘prestigious’ schools, learn from master teachers, hold certifications, obtain the right credentials, build beautiful resumes and look good on paper.

I don’t think the fear ever goes away. We just learn to recognize it, and plow forward on the paths we create anyway. Kudos to Maile for having the strength to follow what she thinks will be right for her and her studio.

$2.50 plus what?

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 03:43:00 +0000

Remember when people who claimed the notion that we were fighting wars over oil was ‘conspiracy theory’.

This logo, which newt Gingrich proudly stands behind at his podium, can be seen as nothing other than a campaign promise to go to war in an attempt to lower gas prices.

The problem of course is, $2.50 plus what?

Who should die so we can fill up our cars for $2.50/gallon? We don’t want it to be anyone we know of course. Just make sure the people that die aren’t anyone we know, okay?

These are the campaign promises that American presidential candidates have resorted to.

The problem with lineage

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:45:35 +0000

For the past few months, I’ve sort of had yoga on the brain. If you follow me on twitter you probably know that my wife Maile opened up a yoga studio in Logan Square, the Chicago neighborhood in which we live.

This ended up in my company building a yoga studio software product that Maile uses to run her studio.

During the course of all this I’ve started to learn a bit about the yoga world, although I’d certainly still consider myself a newbie to it all.

One of the things I’ve found fascinating is the extent to which people in the yoga community focus on an instructor’s lineage. Who taught them, where they were taught, who taught their teacher’s teacher, etc.

It seems to me that this focus goes far beyond understanding what has influenced a person, what’s inspired them, and what things led them to who they are today.

Instead, the focus on lineage seems to define, permanently, what someone is today based on who taught them in the past. I don’t understand this, and I don’t think it’s all that healthy.

The problem with this focus on lineage is that it puts a greater emphasis on the past that it does the present. It presumes that who taught you is more important than the kind of teacher you are today. It seems to give the benefit of the doubt to a bad teacher with good lineage over an awesome teacher who was taught by their yoga instructor friend that no one knows about.

And unlike influence and inspiration, which encourage one to tweak, transform, experiment, remix, and reinvent – lineage seems to be steeped in a tradition that says there is a “right way” to do something. And to deviate from that is not only wrong, but potentially disrespectful to one’s heritage.

Inevitably, this leads to good people feeling the need to redefine themselves when they find out the makers of their pedigree aren’t everything they were cracked up to be.

Not because they’re suddenly worse teachers. Not because their classes are suddenly bad. But because they think their lineage is damaged.

Understanding where people come from, what their styles are, what influences and what inspires them – these all seem to be things we should try to understand.

But so much emphasis on one’s lineage, I don’t think that’s healthy.

After all, if lineage were what we cared about as a society, we’d all still be ruled by kings.

What a polarizing product looks like

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:30:19 +0000

A few weeks ago we launched Brytter, the platform on which I’m writing this post. We built it because I wanted a fast, easy to use blogging platform that did away with most of the things other blogging platforms offer.

The idea behind it is that while there are a lot of great blogging platforms already out in the world, most of them require the user to spend some time designing before they start writing. And, most of them have revenue models that are either based on selling advertising or selling themes.

Instead, I wanted to create a platform where people would not only be encouraged to just get started writing, but where they wouldn’t feel bad about not spending time designing.

Design is important of course. But what would happen when part of the design of the platform is that it takes care of the design for the writer? That’s what I wanted with Brytter.

The feedback was really positive. And really negative. In my opinion, the sign of a great product. We’re not trying to please everyone with this product. In fact, we’re not even trying to please thousands of people. But, I do think there is a small group of people who miss simply being able to write. And these people seem to be thrilled so far with what we’ve made.

Here are some reviews, both good and bad, that we’ve come across after the launch of Brytter.

My 100% honest opinion… there isn’t enough value at present to warrant a paid plan

You got to be kidding.

It’s only been a few paragraphs, but so far Brytter feels a bit like running in an open field: you are exposed, every step you take propels the next. So far, so fun.

I don’t think the world needs another super-simple blog tool.

I’ve been waiting for a super simple blogging platform and along comes Brytter. Have my dreams come true?

The point is, whenever you make something, some people are going to hate it, laugh at it, make fun of it, or whatever. But for every person that thinks the thing you made is ridiculous, there will be someone else who thinks it’s awesome.

I for one am having a blast writing on Brytter. But then again, I’m pretty biased.

Prior to February 5, 2012

andrew@idealprojectgroup.com (Ideal Project Group, LLC) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:09:47 +0000

Before moving my blog over to Brytter I was writing on Blogger.

Check out my previous posts at project idealism.blogspot.com for anything written prior to February 5, 2012.