Silicon Moon

Korea's Cyworld Shuts Down US Cyworld

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:01:00 +0000

I received this notice today from Cyworld:

"Thank you to all members with Cyworld.

Due to Cyworld shuts down US service, US Cyworld will no longer be able to service.
We sincerely apologize for shutting down the service with unavoidable reason.
Before US cyworld close the service, you will continue to access to US cyworld contents but not purchase items. Also, you will not use your acorns.
If you have unused acorns, you will be given a full refund for paid acorns only."

Obviously, they already let go of all U.S. staff since it's written in broken English along with poor spacing, but this also could be reflective of the overall problem of Cyworld's efforts in the U.S. market. They didn't localize their product. Cyworld assumed they could bring their team that was successful in Korea, target the same market and execute in the same manner. It didn't work out.

I'm focused on their early efforts, which I believe was a critical factor for their failure. Cyworld attempted to target the similar demographic in Korea, but for the U.S. market I thought their avatar-based social network was more suited for a younger demographic of junior high and high school students.

It seems that SK's other entities have made similar mistakes in trying to enter the U.S. market. A prime example is their MVNO effort with Earthlink, Helio, where they invested over $400 million. They tried to target Korean Americans by assuming ethnic affinity would drive consumer purchasing habits not quality of service, pricing, or phones. Hopefully, SK, which is one of Korea's largest conglomerates, will learn from these spectacular failures.

News & Links List

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:55:00 +0000

"How Far Will Google Wave Go?" Forbes, Dan Woods

"Interview with Offerpal Media CEO Anu Shukla on the offer 'scandal'" VentureBeat

"Cisco, EMC, and VMware make alliance official" CNET

"Lean startups aren’t cheap startups" VentureBeat, Steve Blank

"Buffett Takeover Reduces Successor’s Need for ‘Amazing Insight’" Bloomberg

"How Capitalism Will Save Us" by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames

"Deathbed Wishes: I Wish I Had Spent More Time Working" InsideWork, David Wooldridge

"Big Picture: The CEO as Diplomat: An Interview with Richard Haass" InsideWork

I Am Korean American, A Barrel Project

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:59:00 +0000

The guys at Barrel, a brand and web consulting company, are always doing creative projects whether for clients or on the side. Here's a cool little side project they are doing called "I Am Korean American":

I AM KOREAN AMERICAN is an on-going web project that aims to collect brief profiles of Korean Americans.

Every new profile of a Korean American will be featured on the homepage. A profile will consist of the person’s name, age, location, occupation, and a personal statement that could be a mini bio, a memorable story, a rant, aspirations, or anything else. Our goal is to compile a collection of profiles that showcase the diversity and many interesting personalities of the Korean American population. We hope that our collective efforts will provide a snapshot of the Korean American community at this point in our history.

News & Links List

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:12:00 +0000

"Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell" TechCrunch

"Scamville: Zynga Says 1/3 Of Revenue Comes From Lead Gen And Other Offers" TechCrunch

"How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession" TechCrunch, Dennis Yu

"Zynga Takes Steps To Remove Scams From Games" TechCrunch

"Google Wave Federation: Why it Matters" ReadWriteWeb

"Why iStockphoto embraced Google's Gears" CNET

"Google Redefines GPS Navigation Landscape: Google Maps Navigation For Android 2.0" TechCrunch

"Is the LinkedIn Platform Dead?" Gigaom
Platform? Maybe, but they are making a lot of money.

"The Future of the Social Web" by Brian Solis

"Is Twitter Successful?" bokardo

"Lufthansa auto-tweets passengers' midair location" Springwise

"The Salmon Protocol: Introducing the Salmon Project" Abstractioneer

"For Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, failure is an option" VentureBeat

"Lessons From the World's Best Project Managers" BNET

"The Secrets To A Smooth Succession: Family-business hand-offs are fraught with peril. Here are some solid guidelines." Forbes, Chris Carey

"Roubini Says Carry Trades Fueling ‘Huge’ Asset Bubble" Bloomberg

"Reports: Cyberattacks Traced to NKorea" NYTimes

"Top Obama fundraisers get posts" USAToday

"The pro-Fox Democrats" Politico

Conflict History

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:43:00 +0000

This is pretty cool. A Google map integration of almost every world conflict since 3000 B.C.

4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:35:00 +0000

My op-ed on the real-time web is up at Mashable. HatTip to Adrian Chan, Dave S. and John S. for providing their insights on this piece. Check it out, comment and retweet if you can :)

4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

There is a lot of hype surrounding the real-time web, and much of the feeding frenzy reminds me of the RSS space four years ago — though there is a lot of potential, there is also a lot of noise. How do you navigate through it all and which developments should you be paying attention to? What are the emerging trends for companies and entrepreneurs to watch for? Here are four real-time web trends that I’m tracking.

Real-Time Collaboration is Ripening
Real-time will play a major role in the future of online collaboration. We’ve seen all the hype around the new Google Wave platform, as well as the growth of Twitter and Twitter-like communications (such as Facebook status). On the business side, SAP’s Gravity, a prototype of real-time collaborative business process modeling within Google Wave, is a good example. But I see this as the tip of the iceberg.

Companies that are more efficient have an advantage whether within their walls or with their customers. Imagine being able to make real-time changes with your colleague in another city and graphic designer at your local Kinko’s to finalize a presentation and print it hours before your meeting. Or working with your manufacturer in Nanjing, China on changes to your new BBQ grill design and seeing if it’s possible in real-time. Or game developers in Korea and Dallas story boarding a new video game concept in a new real-time game development application. There is massive potential for real-time collaboration across almost every discipline, and I believe there are an incredible amount of exciting possibilities here... (full post)

News & Links List

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:52:00 +0000

"It’s Not My Company" by Brad Feld
'VCs say a lot of stupid things...'

"Never Say 'VC'" by David Troy

"Who Should you Hire at a Startup?" Both Sides of the Table

"Whitehouse.gov using Drupal" Dries Buytaert

"Sequoia branches too far" Fortune Brainstorm Tech

"5 myths about Wall Street pay days" The Washington Post
HatTip to Dave L.

"Not So Fast: Scientific management started as a way to work. How did it become a way of life?" The New Yorker

"The WellPoint Revelation
Private insurance premiums could triple under ObamaCare." WSJ

"Abortion Kills More Black Americans Than the Seven Leading Causes of Death Combined, Says CDC Data" CNSNews.com

"Attack on Fox News right out of Alinsky playbook" Sense of Events

"Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group" Gallup

"Hoffman is the Obvious Choice" American Thinker, Bruce Walker

"What if George W. Bush had done that?" Politico

"Former Celtics star Antoine Walker is broke and in debt" Yahoo! Sports

Sustainability: The ‘must have’ holy grail

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:37:00 +0000

My guest post went up over at VentureBeat yesterday. I bit swamped with work, so I'm behind with my posts and links :)

Sustainability: The ‘must have’ holy grail

When I was a kid, Atari dominated the gaming scene. Sure, Mattel’s Intellivision and Coleco’s Colecovision had their loyalists, but to the general public, when you mentioned video games, Atari was the name that sprang to mind.

The company maintained that status for years, but as competitors like Nintendo and Sega became part of the industry, Atari quickly fell from its perch as gaming’s “must have” system to a nostalgic memory.

Sustaining a leadership role is a Herculean task. Once your product becomes a “must have,” how do you keep it that way for over a year? Five years? A decade?

Just like the music industry has one hit wonders, the business world is littered with product fads that were, at one time, must haves. Remember the Pet Rock? Cabbage Patch Kids? Or, if you’d like a more recent example, there’s Crocs. The company reported profits over $168 million in 2007 and then a $185 million loss in 2008.

Others? Kozmo.com, which promised free one-hour delivery of anything from DVD rentals to groceries, raised over $280 million in 1999 and landed a $150 million promotional deal with Starbucks. It was a “must have” service in NYC, but made costly expansions into less dense metro areas and liquidated by 2001. Friendster launched in 2003 with a lot of fanfare as it paved the way for the new age of social networking. Within two years, it was the ugly, unwanted pet that seemed to be consistently down or besieged with long server delays.

The fall from grace can be quick – and ugly. Brian Kellner knows this well... (full post)

Maybe CNN's Last Place Position Is Due To Their Anchors' Intelligence?

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:37:00 +0000

Amusing article at the New York Post, "Anchors sink on 'Jeopardy'":

CNN should consider banning its anchors from appearing on "Celebrity Jeopardy" after the humiliating defeats of Wolf Blitzer and Soledad O'Brien.

Of course this article is posted during this week when it's announced that CNN dropped to last place among cable news networks. Any correlation between their anchors' intelligence and the last place ratings? :)

I actually enjoy most of their programming and I watch it the most out of the news networks, so I'm a bit surprised that they are last even after MSNBC.

News & Links List

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:05:00 +0000

"Schmidt: Enterprise is Google's next opportunity" CNET

"YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net" WIRED

"The VC Gender Gap: Are VCs Sexist?" peHUB

"Real-time pricing alerts for consumers to pounce on" Springwise

"Verizon Launches Direct Attack Against The iPhone With Ads For The Motorola Droid" TechCrunch

"Playing For Real Money: Start-up kaChing wants to rip the covers off the mutual fund business." Forbes

"Atheists Run Ads on NYC Subway, Creating Sarcasm Backlash" BNET

"Lessons from the Massachusetts healthcare experiment" LA Times

"Five Creative Ways to Improve Health Care in the Developing World" Fast Company

"Landrieu blasts public option" The Hill
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) echoed Republican criticisms...

"Taking On the 'Democrat-Media Complex'
The conservative Internet entrepreneur on bringing down Acorn, Hollywood liberals, and embarrassing the mainstream media." WSJ, James Taranto

"Hunger breeds violence
Peacemaking strategies must include denying extremists recruits from a hungry population by providing food to alleviate the suffering." by Samuel Berger

"Wayne State Study Shows Adult Stem Cell Grafts Help Paralyzed" WWJ Newsradio 950

Zynga Presentation @ Web 2.0 Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:32:00 +0000

HatTip to Eric Eldon:

Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus' presentation at this week's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Zynga Presentation

View more presentations from Eric Eldon.

'Gone Global' Campaign, Finally Some Marketing Dollars Spent

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:20:00 +0000

CNET covered Google's new ad campaign as they beef up their efforts into the enterprise market:

Google claims more than 2 million businesses and 20 million people have switched to Google Apps, a movement the company is touting through its expanding "Gone Google" marketing program.

Google's philosophy when it comes to marketing has been that "products sell themselves," so the company spends very little on marketing and advertising. Obviously to really enter the enterprise market they have to spend a fair amount of marketing money. It will be interesting to see how much they actually spend and whether they are willing to battle Microsoft and others with increased marketing expenditures.

Even for their consumer efforts, I believe Google could strengthen their position by allocating more resources to marketing. This is especially true for markets where they are not leading, such as China, Russia, Japan and Korea.

Oakland Local Live!

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:21:00 +0000

Oakland Local went live yesterday (well, about 16 hours ago). It was founded by Susan Mernit, who was an early advisor to my startup and a prominent tech blogger. Susan made her mark in technology and media as an executive during the early years of Netscape and AOL, and her recent position as a Senior Director at Yahoo!.

Oakland Local has a New Voices grant from J-Lab, funded by The Knight Foundation, as seed money. Her new venture is riding a trend of where the future of media is going: local and hyperlocal. The question is how will it be sustained and in what form? Oakland Local is taking the nonprofit route which is an avenue that some people believe is the only way for local news to survive. I'm not certain of this, but it will be great to watch Oakland Local develop and become a model for many to consider. More from their website and Susan:

Oakland Local is an independent, non-profit community news and information hub, connecting community and news. Our site combines original investigative and feature reporting with community news and information about Oakland non-profit organizations, community groups and engaged citizens.

"Oakland Local is launching in partnership with 35 local nonprofit, neighborhood & community organizations—we combine postings of their news and information with blogging and with reported stories from a top quality news team (Susan Mernit, Amy Gahran, Kamika Dunlap, Kwan Booth, Ryan Van Lenning and others). We are media partners & collaborators with Spot.us, Newsdesk.org, The Center for Investigative Reporting, New America Media, Endless Canvas, Youth Rising, Youth Radio and Youth Outlook as well. Our site offers forums, a directory of 320 local nonprofits and a blog directory of 180 active local bloggers as well."

"Consumer & Market Trends during Recession"

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:09:00 +0000

I'm such a lazy blogger, but these recent slides have been great :) This is a great "Cross Industry Research Report" by TrendsSpotting.com:

"The 'Consumer and Market Trends during Recession' report covers the U.S. market in the following consumer industries: Food and Beverage, Apparel, Media and Electronics, Travel, Health, Automobiles, Education and Pets. It provides a broad perspective on consumers' changing behavior during the current economic downturn."

Consumer & Market Trends during Recession - Cross Industry Research Report by TrendsSpotting.com

View more documents from Taly Weiss.

Youth Digital Media Landscape

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:06:00 +0000

HatTip to Christine Moon :) Presentation by Derek Baird:

"Most brands have built deep bonds with Gen X and Boomers, but they haven’t yet connected with younger users. Here's why you can’t afford to lose them."

Youth Digital Media Landscape

View more presentations from Derek Baird.

Go-To-Market for Geeks

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:17:00 +0000

Good overview by Chris Yeh.

Go-To-Market for Geeks

View more presentations from Chris Yeh.

"What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later"

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:19:00 +0000

Great overview by Marta Kagan.

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

News & Links List

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 06:01:00 +0000

"The Golden Triangle" by Fred Wilson
'The three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are mobile, social, and real-time.'

"Silicon Valley Lives: Barney Frank spares venture capital." WSJ

"Facebook Now Has 30,000 Servers"

"For social networks, it's game on" USAToday

"Free photo books for Facebook and Beebo users" Springwise

"Samsung delivers Blockbuster, Amazon on-demand video" CNET

"The secrets of Google's design team" TechRadar.com

"Analytics Behind LinkedIn" Paul O'Rorke

"Signs of recovery? Here be dragons, and alcohol" CNET's the social

"What happened to global warming?" BBC, Paul Hudson

"A few points about my article" BBC's Paul Hudson

"White House Escalates War of Words With Fox News" FoxNews

"GOP Needs More Conservative Substance, More Moderate Tone" by Michael Medved

"Tea-Party Activists Complicate Republican Comeback Strategy" WSJ

"The National Review: The Baucus Death Spiral" NPR

"The Maybe Awards" RUSE the.magazine

"Pillars of the Next American Century" The American Interest
HatTip to Patrick P.

ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:07:00 +0000

I'm at the ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit in Mountain View, CA today. The event is held at the Computer History Museum, which is always a good facility.

It's the first conference I've attended by the ReadWriteWeb guys and looking forward to it.

Sec. Reich, Letting Old People Die is Not a Good Way to Fund Health Care

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:02:00 +0000

Recently, prominent liberal health care mouthpiece and former Colorado Governor, Richard Lamm openly discussed rationing as a financial solution to help fund universal health care ("Better Health Care Through Rationing," The Huffington Post), or as he puts it, "“Old people have a duty to die and get out of the way.”

(Wesley Smith has a good post on Richard Lamm, "Obamacare: Richard “Old People Have a Duty to Die and Get Out of the Way” Lamm Wants Rationing")

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and economic adviser to President Obama, also holds this viewpoint. Here he is speaking at UC-Berkeley:

"We're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die...

I'm going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid---we already have a lot of bargaining leverage---to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents. Thank you."

This is a foundational policy for liberals to keep their proposed health care system afloat. This is plain stupid to me because how can you determine when it's the end of life for someone? How do you define "old age" when life expectancy continues to climb higher and the differences between each ethnic profile, socio-economic background, and lifestyle habits create such a moving target for each individual? Let's say there is a second generation Okinawan American (Japan) who maintained the same dietary habits as her parents and will live to 100 years or greater. Will she be treated the same at 80 years as a fourth generation Irish American who is 80 but with a life expectancy of 78 years?

Another example is from a recent situation from the UK (HatTip to WSJ's James Taranto):

A grandfather who beat cancer was wrongly told the disease had returned and left to die at a hospice which pioneered a controversial "death pathway."

Doctors said there was nothing more they could do for 76-year-old Jack Jones, and his family claim he was denied food, water and medication except painkillers.

He died within two weeks. But tests after his death found that his cancer had not come back and he was in fact suffering from pneumonia brought on by a chest infection.

To his family's horror, they were told he could have recovered if he'd been given the correct treatment.

Nice to see the effectiveness of similar policies in action. Seriously, this is just a stupid idea.

Is your product a “must have” or “nice to have”?

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:44:00 +0000

My tech op-ed is up at VentureBeat. Check it out:

IS YOUR PRODUCT A "MUST HAVE" OR "NICE TO HAVE"?

I also posted the version that was unedited by VentureBeat's editors at NowPublic. This original piece is chopped into two articles at VentureBeat with the second being published next week. This one is longer and I don't think they appreciated my reference to "Something About Mary" :)

IS YOUR STARTUP A "NICE TO HAVE" OR "MUST HAVE"?
With the downturn in the economy, numerous people are talking about starting a new business or company. Whether it’s a technology startup or new restaurant idea, I’ve heard of more and more people meeting to brainstorm and working to bring their ideas to fruition.

Whether you’re in the idea generation stage or have already started to build your new thing, you should take a breath and reassess whether the concept still holds your initial level of enthusiasm. Can still envision 30 million visits during the first month? Are you still as enthusiastic as you were when you came up with it? Do you believe your product or service is a “must have” and not just a “nice to have”? If not, step back – being a successful entrepreneur requires high – some say insane – levels of dedication to your idea.

There’s a great scene in the movie “Something About Mary” where Ben Stiller’s character, Ted, picks up a hitchhiker who is a psychotic killer and budding entrepreneur:

Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs? 
Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the exercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.
Ted: Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going.
Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted: I would go for the 7.  Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.

Comedy aside, how familiar does this pitch sound to all you entrepreneurs or intrepreneurs out there? The reality is that the hitchhiker’s idea was a “nice to have” and wouldn’t have threatened the well-marketed 8-minute Abs video even with his insane level of dedication. Of course, he’s not similar to your pitch about your product, but does it remind you of your friends’ new thing? They all hope to have the next awesome product that will change the world, or at least get crazy traffic on Facebook. The driver of sales or user adoption? It should be as obvious as a 7 minute workout being more attractive than an 8 minute workout, right?

Most entrepreneurs are too close to their topic to realize where they really are on the user adoption curve. As an entrepreneur, you’re hoping that the jump from what Geoffrey Moore describes as “innovators” and “early adopters” to the “early majority” is short, but unfortunately, in reality, sales and user adoption rates are about as easy to predict as blockbuster movies.

Must Have, Meh, or What Does It Do Again?
For entrepreneurs, one method to frame the product development process is whether your product is a “nice to have” or a “must have.” Here, “must have” is loosely defined and can be identified by answering questions like:

• Is it easy for people to recognize that your product will save them a significant amount of time?
• Or a significant amount of money?
• Do people quickly see how much better it plays their music?
• How much better it allows them to access data?

For example, back in 2005, when I was working on my startup GoingOn Networks, we identified a trend of blogging and social networking entering the corporate world. We built a private-label social media platform, thinking that companies would soon recognize this trend and purchase our software-as-service platform.

In hindsight, the first two years were painful. A long education process, working on quelling fears of “opening up” to customers, and another long sales cycle. We were hoping our market chasm would be the neighborhood creek, but we found out it was more like the Grand Canyon. Plus, by 2007, about thirty competitors were also targeting this market. I realized that our social media platform wasn’t a “must have” and maybe not even a “nice to have” during our early years because our target market first needed to be greatly educated on the benefits of social media. It felt as if more often than not, sales meetings went like this:

Me: “Open, two-way communication with your customers is more effective…”
Potential customer: “Like a walkie-talkie?”
Me: [Sigh]

For consumer plays where users don’t pay for the product, the “must have” bar might be set a bit lower than for paid products, but it’s still a significant hurdle for the early majority to spend their time (even if it doesn’t cost money) on something new of which the benefits aren’t obvious, easy, or quick to grasp.

So how do you figure out whether your insanely great idea is likely to find customers and become a “must have”? When you’re trying to identify “must haves” in the market, consider these techniques:

Trend Surfing. Extrapolate a current technology, trend, or “must have.” What is the next product in the evolution of an industry? Consider the evolution from the Walkman to MP3 players to the iPod. Or look at what emerging technologies will create new market opportunities. For example, Qualcomm and its CDMA technology. Or exercise trends that created a whole new market of Pilates videos and trainers. My personal favorite is the rise in popularity of specialty bacon, where I can also plug my “Ode to Bacon.”

There are numerous examples, but the reality is that it’s difficult to predict and ride such trends. I learned this from GoingOn, and my prior startup, HeyAnita, when voice recognition technology was hot. With competitors such as Tellme and BeVocal, our space raised over $300 million in 2000, but quickly faded a few years later when users didn’t widely adopt a voice-controlled interface.

Twitter seems to have hit the right wave on the trend from blogging to micro-blogging. Initially, it was just an echo chamber of Silicon Valley people tweeting to each other, but now even major media outlets such as CNN, ABC, and ESPN see communicating in 140 characters as a “must have.” Like Twitter, if you do catch a trend wave, it swells, and you execute well, then you could be golden, with a profitable tech company or the best-selling line of Pilates videos on your hands.

Identifying a Market Gap. Where in the market is there an underserved need? Is there a place in the market that a taste is not being met? Chipotle filled a desire for fast casual Mexican food. Netflix let people easily rent obscure movies and keep them as long as they wanted without late fees. Meebo met the demand for a single, unified IM platform. What element is missing in a market – one that you know and are passionate about – that you believe you can fill as an entrepreneur?

For instance, back in the old days before the majority of malware came from websites and links to them, there was an opportunity for different kinds of anti-malware products. Brian Kellner, now Newsgator’s VP of Products, gave me some interesting insights into his days at anti-spyware company Webroot in the 1990s: “Webroot was one of the first two companies to release an enterprise anti-spyware product at a time when Internet Explorer had a lot of vulnerabilities and anti-virus companies didn’t catch spyware. The product was tremendously successful because it really hit the pain avoidance and laziness needs.”

But as much as Webroot tried to make deployment and management of the solution easy, when both anti-virus offerings and browser security got better, the cost of owning and running a dedicated anti-spyware solution became unattractive. “The pain level dropped significantly as anti-virus companies added adequate anti-spyware protection and it was much easier to just run the anti-virus software alone,” says Kellner.

So, for a while, Webroot was a “must have.” But when other, possibly bigger, companies start tapping into the Market Gap you found and have been filling, you need to find other ways to remain a “must have.” For example, by trying to extrapolate to the next logical “must have” in your market (Trend Surfing), or by making sure your product keeps something attractively unique about it, or is just clearly the best of its kind.

Building a Better Mousetrap. What product category is doing well, but could be done even better? Do you have an idea for something that will clearly be the best of its kind? IKEA did it for the budget-conscious furniture retail market. Zappos.com turned shoe shopping into a very convenient, easy, low-pressure experience. What features are missing that could be implemented and allow a new player to change the market? Friendster to MySpace and Facebook. MySpace and Facebook provided more value that simply connecting with friends through music and then third-party applications.

In speaking with Brian Rakowski, former lead product manager for Google’s Gmail product and current Product Management Director for its Chrome browser, he explained how he led the launches for these two products and how to make them better than any of the competitive products already out there: “Both Google Chrome and Gmail were new entrants in existing spaces so we spent a lot of time getting to know the market-leading products in their categories and identifying the biggest user pain points. For webmail, it was small storage quotas and clunky, inefficient interfaces. For browsers, it was general instability and unresponsiveness, especially on advanced webpages.” Google succeeded nicely with both of these, with Gmail surpassing Youtube earlier this year as the second-most-visited Google property and Chrome gaining just under 3% marketshare after one year. Rakowski concludes, “In the end, the best way to test whether you have a “must have” product is to threaten to take the prototype away from your early users. If they don’t riot, start again.”

Brian has a great insight here. Would users of Microsoft’s Vista have rioted if it had been taken away? No, there probably would have been celebrations throughout office buildings all over the world. What about Segway after all its hype? Maybe only mall cops would have grumbled.

Like the story of Webroot and anti-spyware becoming part of anti-virus solutions, the Building A Better Mousetrap category also brings up the importance of sustainability. How do you maintain being a “must have” in your market? During the 1990s, my favorite search engine was Alta Vista, but it didn’t maintain its “must have” status and gave way to Inktomi, which eventually gave way to Google. Google has been maintaining its “must have” status by not only staying on top of the search algorithm game, but also by offering superior or extremely competitive complementary products and services to its users: Adsense and Adwords for advertising, and nicely integrated apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs that make it easy to make Google your default online place to get things done. (Yet even Google has had its share of failures or incompletes such as Google Lively, Froogle, Checkout, and Spreadsheets.)

Finally, with all three of these techniques for identifying a potential “must have” opportunity – Trend Surfing, Identifying a Market Gap, and Building a Better Mousetrap – keep regularly asking yourself “is mine a “must have” product?” questions like the ones listed earlier. And of course make sure you’re still insanely excited about your own idea most days of the week – because if you’re not excited, it’ll be hard to make others think of your product as a can’t-live-without-it “must have.” But hopefully, these techniques and examples are giving you some extra inspiration on how to get to the next step in your new great idea.

News & Links List

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:13:00 +0000

"Paul Kedrosky: Why I Love Venture Capitalists" TechCrunch

"Sergey Brin Defends Google's 'Library to Last Forever'" BNET

"News’ Forbidden City" Buzz Machine

"Why Does the AP Chase Phantom Enemies?" BNET

"How Google's Ecosystem Changes Everything" BNET

"The Founder Institute’s Adeo Ressi on his plans to leave no entrepreneur behind" VentureBeat

"Hard Work's Overrated, Maybe Detrimental." Fast Company

"Early and heated: The California governor's race" The Economist

"Sometimes God Sneaks Up On You: The First Part" InsideWork, Bradley Moore

"What Should I Eat?: The Bacon Flowchart"

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:15:00 +0000

Common flowchart in my life :)

The Bacon Flowchart

News & Links List

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:32:00 +0000

"Exclusive! Yahoo provided Iran with names of 200,000 users" ZDNet Government
Not sure why Yahoo! would do this since Iran isn't a major market.

"The Google Android party has begun" CNET

"Ad Dollars Flood to Social Nets" eMarketer

"Garmin's Nuvifone" (corporate website)

"FTC regulates our speech" BuzzMachine

"BlogHer, the FTC, ethics and conflicts of interest" by JD Lasica

"Secrets Of The Self-Made 2009" Forbes

"A global view of the housing bubble" McKinsey Quarterly

"The capitalist who loves North Korea" Fortune

"Obama's Afghan Dilemma: Go Big Or Go Home?" National Journal
High-level and screened comments on this post.

"The Conservative Case for Reform" The Washington Post, Bobby Jindal

"Obamacare: Richard “Old People Have a Duty to Die and Get Out of the Way” Lamm Wants Rationing" by Wesley Smith
Ah, Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm. Don't let him ever run your hospital or an assisted living place where any of your relatives are.

"Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends" The Nation, Katha Pollitt

Wanna Fund Public Enemy's Next Album? Check Out Sellaband

noreply@blogger.com (Bernard Moon) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:32:00 +0000

Springwise has a post on Sellaband, which is a cool service that has already raised over $2.5 million for over 2,800 artists. The big boost and news is that Public Enemy is using the service to fund their next album. Check it out here.

I don't think the music labels are threatened but definitely a movement to watch. More from Springwise:

"Amsterdam-based Sellaband is expanding its 'fan funded' model to include musicians who have already made a name for themselves. Artists can set their own budgets, asking for more than the former limit of USD 50,000. The first group to take advantage of the new opportunities is Public Enemy, which aims to amass USD 250,000 to record its 13th album. Fans of the iconic rap group can buy into the project—shares are USD 25 each—in return for a signed copy of the release and a share of its proceeds.

Public Enemy hopes to complete fundraising by the end of 2009."