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[Compete:] A Look Into Over-the-Top Content

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 14:59:49 +0000

Image from: Video Streaming / Shutterstock

It should come as no surprise that the landscape for content consumption has changed dramatically in the past years. No longer limited to consuming content solely through a cable subscriber, consumers are looking to over-the-top (OTT) alternatives, in some cases abandoning their cable providers completely.

How do service providers, OTT device manufacturers, and content providers adapt their strategies to align with the evolving “content everywhere” approach consumers are flocking to? To answer that, we first need to understand what the content landscape currently looks like.

Over-the-Top Continues to Grow

What types of OTT content are consumers adopting? Netflix leads the way in terms of active subscriber volume, but looking at the growth of other services shows what content models are attracting consumers today.

Traditional premium content player HBO is seeing impressive “hockey stick” growth with HBO Go/Now (launched in the second quarter of this year). Amazon Instant Video continues to grow, likely as a result of Amazon Prime’s overall success.

With recognizing that mass adoption of OTT consumption has taken place, understanding the relationship between traditional cable service providers and OTT consumption becomes increasingly critical. Some consumers cut the TV cord all together, while others are content “junkies” that have robust TV subscriptions in addition to OTT content. Twenty-two percent of cable service provider subscribers may fall into these categories, as they are also subscribing to paid OTT content.

Looking at different content alternatives by generations shows some interesting preferences. Baby Boomers have adopted Amazon Instant Video at a higher rate than other services, perhaps due to a tie-in with Amazon Prime.

Image from: Streaming Content / Shutterstock

HBO, on the other hand, has snagged the greatest share of Millennials – likely due to original content targeted to a younger audience (with shows like “Girls,” “Game of Thrones,” and “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”).

While Amazon Instant Video sees the largest share of Boomers among other OTT services, cable subscribers see the highest percentage of Boomer subscribers overall. Younger consumers seem to be adopting OTT services at a higher rate than their older counterparts, who are less inclined to adopt non-traditional content sources.

Looking Ahead

It’s important to note that these insights do not declare the death of cable TV. Rather, they highlight the importance of content to a cable provider’s overall strategy, and the importance of targeting that content to different generations.

As consumer preferences for content consumption continues to evolve, Internet Service Providers, Over-the-top Device Manufacturers, and Content Providers need to evolve with them. Understanding the current landscape is the first step in being able to:

1. Quantify the impact of content everywhere on their businesses
2. Align their marketing strategies to complement how consumers make decisions today
3. Identify the role content decisions play in the overall consumer journey

[Compete:] August Data is Now Live – Fantasy Football, Back to School, Adult Swim and More

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 18:49:35 +0000

Image from: Football / Shutterstock

August data is now live and available in Compete PRO! American interest in fantasy football hasn’t waned despite recent NFL controversies. In fact, fantasy football sites look stronger than ever heading into football season. DraftKings.com takes the top spot in August’s Monthly Fast Movers list, growing a whopping 211% month-over-month (MoM) and more than 50% year-over-year (YoY). While their biggest month for traffic ever was December 2014 (coinciding with the end of the regular season for American football), the strong YoY growth for August is a good indicator of traffic to come. Another good sign for DraftKings is that their brand recognition is growing (likely due to their abundant and effective advertising). Taking a look at the top five keywords driving traffic to DraftKings.com over the last 90 days, 4 out of 5 keywords contain branded “draftkings” terms, with “draftkings” being the overall top keyword driving over 30% of search traffic to the website.

We can see a similar pattern with daily fantasy competitor to DraftKings, FanDuel.com. In terms of unique visitors, traffic to FanDuel.com is a bit lower overall, but the growth patterns are a little more interesting. While DraftKings.com wins in terms of MoM growth, FanDuel’s traffic has been more consistent over the summer months and YoY growth is much higher (+700% compared to DraftKings’ +50%). It should be interesting to follow the progression of these two popular fantasy sites over the course of football season.

Besides football-related sites, the majority of our Monthly Fast Movers for August are education-related with PearsonMyLabAndMastering.com, MHEducation.com, Ecollege.com, and BNCollege.com all making the list. Confirming that these sites are reaching their target audiences, we can see that these sites all heavily over-index for the 18-24 demographic (averaging around 40% compared with the Internet Browsing Population being about 15% made up of this age group).

Lastly, American cable network, AdultSwim.com, makes its way onto our Monthly Fast Movers list and this seems to be mostly driven by one television show in particular. Taking a look at keyword data for the site, we can see that keywords related to the popular animated show, Rick and Morty, are driving much of the search traffic to AdultSwim.com. Eight out of the top ten keywords sending traffic to AdultSwim.com over the last 90 days are related to the show, which premiered its second season at the end of July and was quickly renewed for a third in August. It’s interesting to note that demographics for AdultSwim.com heavily skew towards a male audience (60% compared to the Internet Browsing Population’s 51%), which is critical information for potential advertisers.

If you need early access to the latest month’s data and you’re not a Compete PRO user, start your Compete PRO subscription today to get early data and more!

[John Bell:] Xerox Rebrands and Markets with Content

Mon, 07 Sep 2015 13:46:08 +0000

No big mystery that Xerox CMO John Kennedy would embrace content as a way to achieve commercial and brand goals. After all, he was part of IBM’s golden years of Smarter Planet. That initiative famously created a bigger, purpose-driven platform that intersected so well with what IBM sold and injected ‘content’ into advertising.

Now Xerox has a new Web site that reeks of content. The landing experience starts with a clean, tile-based approach of content promotions that lead to articles, pdfs, videos.

Articles on Business Process

Articles on Transportation

Articles on High tech and Communications

Content Demonstrates a Brand Position

Xerox is a brand that has gone through plenty of change over the past few years. Clearly they moved beyond copiers years ago but I couldn’t say what they stood for…until now.

A very clear lead article tells us “Work Can Be Better” and prompts us to “Read Our Point of View.” A very clear “About Us” section leads into a clear section including a pdf document on innovation under the banner of "who we are.' . They tell us that they are all about simplifying work and “provide the most diverse array of business process and IT outsourcing support and the industry’s broadest portfolio of document technology, services and software.”

Content can demonstrate what a brand is all about by delivering value in the form of insight, information, inspiration or instruction. Unlike traditional advertising, it doesn’t brashly ‘claim’ superiority. Content makes an impression and lets us come to our own conclusions. It can build belief that Xerox really is about simplifying work.

The brand positioning seems much stronger than in the past. Using content to bring the ‘simplifying work’ promise to life appears very smart.

“Distribution is Queen”

Now a cliché, the statement ‘content is king’ is often followed up by the adage that ‘distribution is queen.’ Xerox seems to be doing plenty to get their content out there.

First, they have made share functions a big part of every article. Even the pdf documents have a search-friendly abstract page which allows the content to be shared via social networks like this one for Flow Killers.

They have over 560K followers on LinkedIn and are publishing organic posts that drive back into the content. I presume they have an extensive paid and highly targeted sponsored post program to drive the right audiences into the content they have on verticals/horizontals like transportation, healthcare, government, insurance and printing. The content is often delivered in pdf form. Originally, I thought this was a little old-school and not as Google-friendly as possible. But Xerox still maintains its roots as the ‘document company’ and business people (and Xerox sales people) still crave a digital nugget they can save on their desktop and read when the Amtrak Wi-Fi gets sketchy.

There are some interesting content off-shoots like Chief Optimist which is both a digital “magazine” of business insights – all with a positive tone – and a LinkedIn page with almost 5K followers. That offers a narrow platform to use some of the same content available on the core Xerox content site but in a contextually relevant collection. Simple@work was a signature customer event in the UK this past year featuring Xerox Chairman and CEO Ursula Burns. I can imagine them re-using that event banner going forward.

Xerox has been experimenting with content for a few years. An earlier health-centered content site, Health Biz Decoded featured articles about the intersection of tech and healthcare. It remains live while any new content would be a part of the new Xerox site mentioned above.

This history of experimentation with content is key to where they are today. I look forward to seeing what they do and where they go next.

[Compete:] Webinar Replay: Millennial Search Behavior

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 15:11:17 +0000

Image from: Search Marketing / Shutterstock

In a recent webinar, we reviewed the importance of search marketing (both paid and organic) and its role in capturing sales and market share from competitors.

During the presentation, we highlighted how the Compete PRO Search Share feature can reveal best practices for leveraging competitive data to help you achieve maximum search ROI – in doing so, we used the example of back-to-school consumer electronics and how you can best appeal to Millennials.

To learn more about how Compete PRO and how the Compete PRO Search Share feature can help you improve your search marketing ROI, contact sales@compete.com or call 866-633-8390 today.

View the webinar recording below:

[The Futures Company:] Centennials make their mark on media

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 14:00:55 +0000

teens work on group project

Rob Callender writes: The media landscape continues to evolve rapidly, but even as Millennials soak up most of the attention Centennial teens are quietly driving many of the changes.

We’ve been telling clients for years now that Facebook’s role in youth culture is shifting. To some extent, recent arguments over whether the site is doomed or just fine, thank you very much miss the point. Declining Centennial enthusiasm for Facebook isn’t an existential threat so much as a shift in priorities: teens regard Facebook as more operational than aspirational. Facebook is where the younger generation goes to communicate with teachers, family and those friends who don’t rate constant, uninterrupted contact.

Facebook’s day-to-day entrenchment remains valuable, to be sure. But it’s a marked shift from the heady days when a more exclusive Facebook was the alpha and omega of the youth universe.

A New Face

WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell acknowledged this shift as he announced the creation of Truffle Pig, a new content-marketing venture from WPP, Snapchat and the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail.

“If you look at the data that [The Futures Company] has produced on the media habits of Centennials, their attitude to Snapchat is markedly different from Facebook,” Sir Martin told Business Insider. “So that seems to indicate generational changes.”

“Facebook is the largest country on the planet [in terms of users], but maybe Centennials don’t want that… They want to keep stuff away from the prying eyes of others,” Sir Martin continued. “It indicates there’s volatility, and it pays to be involved.”

Centennials Front and Center

Sir Martin isn’t the only one with Centennials on his mind. In the few short months since The Futures Company coined the Centennials name, we’ve seen tremendous pickup from industry and cultural heavyweights around the world.

Here’s some extracts from that coverage of Centennials.

Business Insider India‘s version:

What’s a centennial? A younger, better version of a millennial. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Forbes noted: “to assume the boomers, millennials or centennials (those up to age 18, according to The Futures Company) each represents one segment or “cohort” is a mistake.”

AdAge reported that “smart marketers are looking ahead and making small, fast bets to avoid losing touch with the next crop of teens.”

Losing touch? “Having grown up in the thick of the digital age, the youngest generation of consumers may not be doing their shopping in the mall at all,”, said ThinkVine.

On Medium, Alana Hope Levinson used the story as a peg for an engaging visual essay.

And there’s more: everywhere, in fact from BuilderOnline, to Business Insider, to Inphantry, to Marketplace, OnSparks, Popsop, Publicis, The Verge (in passing in a story about David Letterman), Wells Fargo and Yahoo.

If you want a Centennials snapshot, head over to Agencia Clepsidra in Argentina, which republished our handy infographic.

Rob Callender is Director of Youth Insights at The Futures Company. Image by iStock.

The post Centennials make their mark on media appeared first on futures blog.

[John Bell:] How to Evaluate Native Content Programs

Mon, 10 Aug 2015 11:01:00 +0000

I love Native Advertising. When it’s done well, it is user-centered and delivering value to the reader/user. Valuable content allows a brand to demonstrate rather than claim its strengths. It’s one thing to say you are an expert in supply chain risks and disruptions, it’s another to offer practical and detailed content to help manage that risk. The latter shows your expertise and lets the user come to their own conclusion as to whether you have smarts in that space or not. It’s more believable than a claim. Native advertising is a great leap forward.

The measurement of native content and advertising remains behind the times, though. Too many publishers venturing into this space have not cracked the code on measuring effectiveness. Too many rely on the metrics of display advertising (e.g. clickthroughs) or on “engagement” metrics with no context.

Two Types of Native

Think about two different expressions of native advertising. Working with an experienced publisher – Bloomberg, Forbes, NYTimes, etc... - brands can create co-produced content that appears on the publisher’s site. Advertising across the site drives publisher traffic into the content. Links within or adjacent to the content drive clickthroughs to the brand’s web site. For simplicity’s sake, I will call this approach ‘native content.’

A variant comes from the native ad networks like Taboola, Sharethrough or Outbrain that distribute content headlines into contextually relevant places within established content sites across the Web. My brand story on supply chain risks for small business might sit at the bottom of a Businessweek article on supply chain and drives interested readers directly to my site. Let’s call this a native network.

Need a Step Change Improvement on Native Metrics

Both are examples of native advertising. Both need a step-change improvement in measuring effectiveness.

With native content, brands want to drive engagement metrics (i.e. time spent, pages consumed, shares) with the content itself. They also want to improve brand metrics through some combination of delivering authentically valuable content and doing so alongside a trusted media brand. Are clickthroughs important? If I have an article on Businessweek on supply chain risks and one on my own brand Web site, my goal is similar. I want to connect with prospects/customers before the buying cycle. I want them to get value out of the content and associate that value with my brand. That happens when they consume the content or share it. They don’t need to clickthrough. Still, clickthroughs from native content to my Web site help connect readers with similar content and establish my brand as the source of the expertise. Clickthroughs are important, they just aren’t the only KPI nor the way to justify the expense of a native content program.

The WSJ blog covered the problem as reflected in a recent ANA survey:

“The lack of consensus on those questions (how to measure native) was highlighted by a recent Association of National Advertisers survey, in which marketers reported using a wide range of metrics to judge their native ad campaigns. When asked which measurement is “most important,” respondents said everything from brand lift and awareness to click-throughs, social media sharing rates, time spent, purchase intent, lead generation and more.”

Engagement Metrics, Attribution and Brand Lift

The get it right, to know what these native content programs do for our marketing mix and how to price and therefore pay for them, we need to focus on engagement numbers, crack the code on attribution – both short term and longer term – and value ‘brand lift.’

Time spent on a site or with an article is valuable. Number of pages read within a site of related content also matters. How many times a piece of content is shared is also a really good thing. These KPIs are at the heart of the value of a native program. But too often we lack any type of benchmarking or context. The publishers are just now accruing experience with brand programs. We don’t have a bank of benchmarks to compare performance of brand content specifically. Publishers routinely don’t want to share editorial performance metrics as a benchmark believing the advertiser-sparked content is a different species all together.

@BrianHonigman wrote an interesting piece on the Skyword blog about focusing on engagement or “attention.”

“Take the social sharing your sponsored content receives and measure it against the attention minutes each piece of content drove while considering clicks, conversions, and referral traffic as a part of the equation. This will help you determine how much of an impact your content made on readers or viewers. By analyzing the social shares your sponsored content generates, you’ll likely be able to see the brand lift achieved by leveraging a publisher’s brand equity. In other words, you’ll get a better idea of the trust you’re developing with customers by sponsoring content on a trusted publisher’s website.”

How does engagement sell? That’s always the next logical question. We need to adopt a view of the buyer journey that puts value on engaging someone over a longer buying cycle. That requires some POV on how content engagement plays an ‘assist’ role in a sale. Part of that might be reflected in brand lift metrics. These are usually done by the publisher and ask survey questions about preference or demand. Of course, brand metrics require business leaders to believe that ‘brand sells,’ but that is a whole different argument and blog post. For the sake of this one, I believe strongly that brand sells.

One way to value how content contributes to sales is to understand the hand-off between native content or native networks and brand web sites where the latter have strong calls-to-action as readers move further into the journey (e.g. when business leaders wrestling with supply chain problems are ready to consider and evaluate commercial insurance to protect them from supply chain exposures.)

Peter Chen @ZPCeee, a marketing consultant, is thinking of ways brands can get at this value. The Content Promotion Lifecycle is one way to better understand if the yield of native advertising networks (e.g. Taboola, ShareThrough, Outbrain) is valuable or too unqualified

“We can quantify the effectiveness of native advertising in two dimensions. One dimension is the advertising metrics measuring the efficacy of the ad itself – did the audience actually engage with this ad?

The other dimension is the engagement metrics assessing how people engaged with the “product” after viewing the ad. In theory, those who clicked on the ad were qualified, but how can we find the ads that generated the most amount of qualified traffic?”

DIY Content Metrics for Brands

Even as publishers refine their native content opportunities for brands, they will continue to lag in terms of the most relevant metrics. Their sales force sells against cpms, clickthourghs and the like. That ocean liner will take a while to navigate to a new course.

Brands will have to establish their own values for engagement with their content and begin to amass benchmarks from working with several publishers.

[Auren Hoffman:] 2014 Book Recommendations

Auren Hoffman — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 23:22:39 +0000

Every year I re-edit my list of favorite books of all time. This year's edition has a few subtractions from years past and a two additions I read in 2014 (one by Peter Thiel and one by Ben Horowitz). Enjoy:

Ultimate Auren Hoffman Reading List:

Against the Gods
The Remarkable Story of Risk
by Peter L. Bernstein

The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000
by Niall Ferguson

Coming Apart
by Charles Murray

Churchill: A life
by Martin Gilbert

Difficult Conversations
by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen

Economics Facts and Fallacies
by Thomas Sowell

The Effective Executive
by Peter F. Drucker

Exodus
by Leon Uris
(fiction)

Fooled by Randomness
by Nassim Taleb

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069
by William Strauss & Neil Howe

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Jack Weatherford

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
by Ben Horowitz

How the Mind Works
by Steven Pinker

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
by Robert B. Cialdini

John J. McCloy: Chairman of the Establishment
by Kai Bird

Just and Unjust Wars
by Michael Walzer

Justice
by Mike Sandel

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat : And Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks

The Moral Animal : Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
by Robert Wright

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
by George Friedman

Night
by Elie Wiesel

The Nurture Assumption
by Judith Rich Harris

Outliers
by Malcolm Gladwell

Path to Power: Early Life of Lyndon Johnson
by Robert A. Caro

A Piece of the Action
How the Middle Class Became the Money
by Joseph Nocera

The Prize
The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
by Daniel Yergin

Revolution 1989
Victor Sebestyen

The Signal and the Noise
by Nate Silver

Social Animal
by David Brooks

Stumbling on Happiness
by Daniel Gilbert

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
by Richard P. Feynman

Thinking Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman

Too Big to Fail
Andrew Ross Sorkin

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
by Philip Gourevitch

We the Living
Ayn Rand
(fiction)

Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping
by Paco Underhill

A World Lit Only by Fire : The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age
by William Manchester

Zero to One: How to Build the Future
Peter Thiel

[Auren Hoffman:]

Auren Hoffman — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:49:13 +0000

How to be Absolutely Awesome. How to optimize for growth. How to manage your career path. And how to to have a long term career plan.

[Peter Hirschberg:]

peter hirshberg — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 17:18:19 +0000

New The Hirshberg site at tumblr http://hirshberg.tumblr.com

[Peter Hirschberg:] From Prototype to Policy: Thoughts on Urban Prototyping and its Future in San Francisco

peter hirshberg — Fri, 23 May 2014 18:12:16 +0000

On October 20, 2012, designers, hackers, futurists and urbanists converged upon San Francisco to celebrate urban prototyping (UP) at the second annual UP Festival. The aim of the festival—a packed day of project expos, performances and panel discussions—was to explore ‘placemaking through prototyping’: how citizen experiments and temporary installations can transform public space. We focus our attention on the third panel discussion of the day titled “Formalizing Experimentation: From Prototype to Infrastructure,” which brought together planners, designers and thought leaders to discuss how to go from prototypes to lasting infrastructure. Or, how citizen-driven experiments can influence city policy—much in the same way Park(ing) Day inspired Pavement to Parks, the formal permitting of parklets throughout San Francisco. What emerged was a fascinating conversation about contemporary urbanism in SF and the urban prototyping movement at large. The panelists discussed what the movement has to offer cities and society, its role vis-à-vis institutions, and its possible limitations in this era of fiscal woes. Here we present some of the highlights. (You can watch the panel here and read the full transcript here). But first, the players: Liz Ogbu (moderator) is a designer, urban strategist, social innovator, and academic. She’s currently a Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Art & Public Life at California College of the Arts. Chris Guillard is an accomplished landscape architect and founding partner of Conger Moss Guillard. Matt Passmore is an artist, urban explorer and public space advocate as well as founder and principle at Rebar. David Alumbaugh is a senior urban designer with the City of San Francisco Planning Department. Ben Grant is a city planner, urban designer, curator and lecturer. He currently heads the interagency Master Plan for Ocean Beach at SPUR. Now, the highlights: NYC is to SF as top-down is to bottom-up? Liz led off the discussion with a rough timeline of events leading up to the Festival, focusing primarily on parks and public space in San Francisco. Almost immediately, New York City emerged as a telling counterpoint. The panelists cited Janette Sadik-Khan, NYC’s famously headstrong Transportation Commissioner, a “guerilla bureaucrat,” according to Matt. Her rapid transformation of NYC streets, converting spaces originally for cars into bike lanes and pedestrian plazas, stands in stark contrast to the culture of public space transformation in San Francisco, explains Ben—not in outcomes necessarily, but in style. NYC, he says, operates largely from the top down. It has a “city government that would enable someone to do that kind of innovative, even radical reconfiguration of the streets and really get [her] back and stand up for that vision even when [she] hits bureaucratic

[Peter Hirschberg:] Balding Middle Aged White Guy Dispatched to Ukraine

peter hirshberg — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 21:37:08 +0000

The White House today announced that a middle aged balding diplomat would travel to Kiev immediately, “A man with gray hair, glasses, and the ability to speak with grim determination, a man who is no fun to be with and will say practically nothing, though take hours doing so.” The White House added that as a measure of its contempt for Putin, the diplomat “won’t even be an American. Not one-percent American!” Russia denounced the move calling it needless escalation. Official Sergi Igkgksi mocked America, “For years you held aging Soviets in contempt. Now you send us an older guy with a frown and you expect us to care? Our éminence grise can drink your éminence grise under the table!"Speaking off the record because he was not authorized to speak, a senior official who was incapable of being identified said, “The United States is alarmed and we pledge action. All options are on the table, including sending one of our crazy old white guys."The looming grise crisis, in which both nations will pit their elderly against one another in a war of words, of fists, and, in a domesday scenario, of flying dentures and spit was seen as cause for alarm in many circles. Elmo Phailly of Human Rights Watch expressed his organization's concern saying, “I've watched guys like this on television, and frankly its inhuman. I won’t be letting my wife or kids watch the Sunday talk shows this week.”

[Auren Hoffman:] How to choose between multiple job offers

Auren Hoffman — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 21:52:49 +0000

How to optimize for growth

In this economy, most people are lucky to find one job. But a select few have multiple offers of interesting opportunities. If you are one of those people, picking the right opportunity can be difficult and stressful. Here are some easy heuristics to help you make the best decision.

First, let’s think about what you want to get out of a job. Very few people are trying to maximize their short-term compensation. If you are trying to do that, no need to read further. Just take that job at a top hedge fund (or, better yet, get drafted by the NBA). But read on if you are trying to maximize growth, learning, and long-term success.

Long-term success requires massive growth. Most smart people out of college grow an average of 10% per year. Which means they are roughly twice as effective 7 years after graduating college. That makes sense as most 29 year olds make double what they did their first job out of college. But growing at 10% per year is way too slow if you want to accomplish great things. You should be aiming to grow at a rate of at least 25% per year for your first few years out of school (like all things, your rate of growth (the second derivative) will slow over time).

To grow quickly, you need a job with the following criteria:

You’re surrounded by people who are smarter than you
You have an opportunity to fail
The company has a history of giving massive responsibility to people that look like you

Find a company where at least 30% of the people are smarter than you

You will grow the most through the people who surround you, so make sure those people are really impressive. Because people tend to hire those they know, many of these people will likely be your colleagues for the next 30 years. So pick your colleagues wisely. One simple heuristic to determine how smart the people are at the company are is how selective they are in hiring. You want to pick a company that has a really hard (and often long) recruiting process where you need to meet a lot of people, complete a project, and have some grueling interviews. While not perfect, at least you know that everyone else the company hired went through the same process.

Opportunity to fail

You grow the most when you have a 33-66% chance of failure. To improve, you want to be in a position where success is not guaranteed. When success is difficult to attain, people push themselves much harder. Too often, people (especially recent grads) are put into jobs that they will definitely succeed at. I will not improve my tennis game playing against by 22-month old daughter. If you are playing chess, you’ll learn the most playing people within 100 points of your score (in the chess Elo ranking, a 100 point difference means a 2-to-1 advantage). And while definite success initially feels good, it doesn’t help you grow. You should find an organization that will give you projects where there is a high chance of failure.

Opportunities for massive responsibility

Assuming you are an ambitious person that wants to have continued growth, you want the opportunity to be promoted and to be given continuously greater responsibility. The companies that are most likely to promote you quickly have a history of doing so and are experiencing high growth. Find people that joined the company with a similar profile that you have and see if some of these people were given outsized responsibility in the company. If your abilities warrant it, you can also be given the chance. But if you have a hard time finding people, there will be little chance the company will look to promote you quickly.

These three criteria are heavily weighted towards the selection of start-ups (fast growth companies with under 200 people). And it is not an accident that the very best grads over the last few years are choosing start-ups over traditional choices like Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and McKinsey. In fact, so many great people are joining start-ups that traditional employers have been forced to massively increase salaries to attract students with the promise of short-term compensation.

But not all start-ups are created equal. Look for the ones that have a really hard interview process, where they give you an opportunity to fail, and have examples of people just a few years older than you that have been given outsized responsibility.

[Andrew Keen:] Keen On... Chris Painter: Does the Internet Need More Global Regulation?

andrewkeen — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 23:03:19 +0000

Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.

[Andrew Keen:] Keen On... Robert McDowel

andrewkeen — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 23:02:18 +0000

Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.

[Andrew Keen:] Keen On... Kyle Dixon: Cord-Cutting Is An Illusion

andrewkeen — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 23:01:21 +0000

Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.

[Rob Norman:] It may be obvious by now…

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:48:45 +0000

That On Demand has been neglected by its only contributor. @robnorman, as the author is sometimes known, would like to apologize to those that care and invite them to follow his tweets which could most easily described as ‘on demand, … Continue reading →

[Rob Norman:] Social creativity

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:19:30 +0000

Messaging in the stream. Not a new Kenny Rogers / Dolly Parton collaboration, rather the aspiration of marketers wishing to bathe in the warmth of earned media. The idea goes like this. The brand creates a social home that people can … Continue reading →

[Rob Norman:] Habit. The prize for first movers

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:08:06 +0000

The I Pad will save the publishing industry. Steve Jobs says so and he has found an ever growing band of publishers to follow him to the promised land of media that people will pay for, that advertisers will embrace … Continue reading →

[Dan & Mike Dubno:] Jeff Pulver - 140 Words about 140 Characters

Mike Dubno — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:54:16 +0000

Instant messaging and tweeting limits people to 140 characters or less. Like a haiku, limitations require cleverness and have a beauty of their own. Jeff Pulver wrote 140 words about the 140 character limitation which he performed at Gadgetoff 2009 -

SMS

ODEO

Jack, Ev, Biz.

Start Obvious

Prototype twitter

What are you doing?

Friend

Follower

tweet

Scaling

APIs

Buzz

Fail Whale

Social Media

Business Model?

Respect

Reputation

Don’t Spam.

Be Responsible.

Have Conversations.

Capture and share life’s moments.

Interact.

Discover people.

Make friends.

Attend tweetups.

Serendipity.

SXSW 2007

Share links.

Discovery: Sites, People and News

Real-time Search emerges.

Fred Wilson invested.

me too.

Advertising Brands. Policies?

Business Model?

Politics. The Presidency.

The Media. Connect to TV Anchors. Newspaper Writers. Authors.

Celebrities now tweet.

Music industry too.

News breaks.

Mumbai

Susan Boyle

Plane in Hudson

NOW Media

Oprah

Ashton Kutcher. Larry King.

Race to a Million.

Real-Time Internet Emerges

Systemic Change with worldwide adoption

Iran Elections.

Public Diplomacy? Yes!

Public Safety? Police tweet.

Michael Jackson dies. We mourn.

NFL

Sarah Brown

Business Model? now evolving.

Valuation? Now a Billion?

What’s next?

Champagne!

[Dan & Mike Dubno:] A Flash of Lightning

Mike Dubno — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:47:49 +0000

There are some wonderful things you could do if you had millions or electron volts lying around and Bert Hickman at Stoneridge Engineering has done some.

I just bought this beautiful piece of scientific art from "Teslamania", his website. It is called a "Lichtenberg Figure" and was made by charging up a piece of lucite with a high-power electron beam and discharging it suddenly by whacking a grounding nail into the side. The effect is dendritic, fractal and simply beautiful.

I also have a quarter that they shrunk to the size of a dime in a violent explosion done with an energized coil. The coil explodes at the same time the coin shrinks.

Bert's work is truly a flash of lightning.

[Dan & Mike Dubno:] Pop Goes the Glove

Mike Dubno — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:21:05 +0000

I bought a neat strobe trigger from a company called Quaketronics while I was at the wonderful Maker Faire in San Mateo, California a few weeks ago. Zach and I finally got a chance to emulate our hero, Doc Edgerton, by stabbing at inflated rubber glove. Not bad for our first attempt.

[Courtney Sikes:] Just when I thought it was safe to travel... Snuggie invasion

clsikes — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:48:07 +0000

I swear I'm not seeking this stuff.

It just seems to find me.

I was in Dublin, far away from my normal London circles, innocently browsing the ads at the Guinness factory, when what did I see? That's right - a Snuggie.

A guy. in a Snuggie. In Dublin. Running through the Guinness Storehouse - blanketed arms a-flailin.

Apparently he's trying to recreate the success of "Where the hell is Matt" - but in a Snuggie.

I'm not keeping an eye out for it... but I'm sure it'll find me.

[Courtney Sikes:] of course there's a Snuggie application

clsikes — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:03:40 +0000

sad that I actually searched for this "snuggie appliction" in Facebook, in the hopes of gifting one to the evil temptress who started me on this obsessive path.

(and yes, I realize that I've taken this a bit too far. seeking help in the morning).

[Courtney Sikes:] Cult of the Snuggie continues

clsikes — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:09:38 +0000

Jimmy Fallon audience member subjected to verbal stoning for non-snuggie-compliance.