Web Innovator group demo companies

The Web Innovators Group started by David Beisel been one of my favorite Boston startup events for several years. I last went to one in 2008, and one event in which PunchBowl presented. Now having moved back to Boston, I found myself at the Web Inno 32 meeting.

The event maintains the same format: there are 3 main dishes: startups that present on the main stage, and several side dishes that have demo tables available to them. Selections are made by David, I assume.

The event has grown massively in size since 2008, reflecting the enthusiasm for startups in the Boston area. The caliber of the entrepreneurs presenting also seems to be much higher. Here are my reviews of the main dishes:

1. Best Vendor helps people discover business applications for tasks ranging from marketing to accounting; from note taking to personal productivity. Sign up is simple; you mention your 3 favorite apps, log in via LinkedIn, and you get application recommendations. The more you add applications and fill in your profile, the better your recommendations become.

The platform solves a legitimate problem; for businesses, it is not easy to find the best applications for a given category; for the companies making these applications, the cost of customer acquisition is pretty high. While the revenue model for Best Vendor is a little unclear, presumably they will likely depend on fees from the application providers in return for cheaper customer acquisition.

The one thing that was a bit lacking was the demo itself; I love demos that tell a story and present the application in Clayon Christensen's 'Job to be done' format. The idea is simple, but profound. Every product is hired to do a job. Present what job your product is doing, and then demo how it is doing that. Demo done. Instead, the demo featured on a bunch of features and moved haphazardly through different screens.

2. Kibits Labs was probably the coolest of the bunch; it is a IPhone application that enables rich group messaging. You really need to either see the demo or download and use it to experience it. The demo itself was presented very well; the CEO Matt Cutler discussed some real life use cases;he is a very successful serial entrepreneur and mentor at Techstars, and it is obvious that he has done this before. In particular the Thanksgiving case appealed to me. Let's say you have extended family, all of which cannot get together to celebrate. Instead, you invite everyone to a Kibits group, and its easy to share pictures, videos and keep it separate from all your other texting/email junk. The application shows updates, shifts between items effortlessly. With the coolness factor. Kibits won the Audience Choice award by a narrow margin.

3. My favorite was restaurant reviews site Tasted Menu. It solves a legitimate problem; how often have you asked a friend, or the server at the restaurant 'What is good here?' Well, hello Tasted Menu. It is very easy to find restaurants on the site, and look up top rated menu items. They are coming up with a mobile app soon as well. Currently they are based in Boston, but will expand to other cities shortly.

I find the team to be pretty impressive; a pretty young HBS grad as CEO, a UI designer from TripAdvisor, a Ranking and Reputation engineer from Google and a Food Anthropologist (yes, those exist) managing the food taxonomy. They have been around since 2009, and are likely to do very well.

















So here is to the next batch of Kick Ass Webb Inno companies!

Real Work

I am always questioning myself - how can I do better work in a better manner? A TED talk by Jason Fried of 37 signals and author of Rework, talks about why work doesn't get done at the office. The first premise is that work is like sleep; when you go to sleep, you actually go to sleep in different phases till you actually hit deep sleep. The same is true of work, especially creative work. It is very hard to do high quality work when you are being constantly interrupted by managers and colleagues.

So what's the solution? The first step is to recognize that its these involuntary interruptions that are often more of a problem than voluntary interruptions like Facebook and Twitter. Jason rightly points out that no one would stop you from taking a 15 minute cigarette break. Why should companies stop you from taking a 15 minute Facebook break.

The next step: solve the problem by:

1. Encouraging uninterrupted work periods by using more passive methods of communication like email and IM rather than tapping someone on the shoulder and interrupting them. Doing so requires two aspects: using these methods, and also not being interrupted by these methods all the time. If you are someone like me who is constantly checking email (and trying to get rid of the habit), then an email interruption is as bad as someone tapping me on the shoulder

2. Set expectations: emails will not be answered instantly. As a manager, don't hold a grudge against an employee who did not drop everything and respond to your email. If there is something truly urgent, call the person.

3. Hold less meetings. Invite fewer people to meetings. Think of how much time is wasted in meetings. Schedule meetings at a more appropriate time e.g., early mornings might be a better for people to get their work done, so schedule it later in the day.

For more, see the video below...

Sports

Now I admit it, I am not the biggest sports fan. Monday night football - what football? Baseball? Check once a month - I am all set. But my mind went back to one instant my life where sports - specifically, the game I love most, Cricket - taught me several things.

I was in the 11th grade. Or maybe 12th. I was part of the cricket team of my section vs. other sections. We played in a cricket field between the junior and senior school buildings. The ground was relatively small, so batsmen enjoyed hitting bowlers - especially fast bowlers - for lots of runs. Lots and lots of runs.

I was probably the shortest of the medium pace to fast bowlers. I didn't have the swing or the pace to trouble batsmen on that pitch, and my peers were being hit left, right and center for lots of runs. That is when I decided to take a different strategy.

Rather than run in and bull with full pace, I ran in slowly, bowled at a slow pace and kept a good line and length. The ball would typically stay low, and batsmen found it harder to hit than the other fast bowlers.

My team did pretty well, and my performance as a bowler was pretty steady throughout the season. Our captain trusted me, and the umpire - who also happened to be our class teacher - came and complemented me on my work. Until the crunch time.

In the last match of the season, we were playing against the odd-on favorites. They were close to a victory and needed a few runs off the last over of the day. Our captain trusted - ME! I was delighted at this opportunity and ran into bowl, confident that I could contain and even bowl out the other team. The first ball I bowled was - well, it was wide. That's when I began to lose my cool. The second ball was - again, wide! The next two were rather easy to strike and the opposition team hit a couple of boundaries to win the match.

It was a rather embarrassing moment for me - after a season of doing well, I had failed when it mattered most. But now that I look back at that episode, I realize several things:

1. It is hard to decide whether a particular event is good or bad. On the surface, this was a terrible outcome - my team lost, and I was to blame. But if we hadn't lost, I don't think I would remember this instant some 13 years later, and I certainly wouldn't have learned much. They say failure is a great teacher. I agree

2. Second, I remember the incident as great not because of the outcome, but because of the process. In that season, I gave it my all. In general, I came up with a pretty good performance, but also failed. What matters to me at the end of the day is the process I went through - deciding a different strategy than other bowlers, being consistent and persistent - rather than the outcome. And so I am happy - and follow the philosophy of investing in the process, not the outcome to this day

Procrastination

Somehow the subject of procrastination has interested me a lot these days. I just have happened to come across books that address the issue in one way or another:

1. The Now Habit, which gives a system a reduce procrastination

2. Linchpin - by Seth Godin, which also talks about the procrastination involved in creative work, and the discipline of 'shipping' as the key differentiating factor between average and outstanding producers.


There are two aspects of procrastination that fascinate me:

1. The more creative and risky the work you do, the more the likelihood that you will procrastinate. We don't procrastinate because we are lazy; we largely do so to protect us from the risk involved in the work i.e., the risk of failing, the risk of being judged by others for work that did not meet their expectation, and sometimes, even the risk of getting more difficult work when you complete the current work

2. Sometimes we procrastinate unpleasant tasks which turn out to be not so unpleasant after all. As an example, I have to cancel a credit card for a while for which I have no use (and of course there is an annual fee involved). I postponed the task 5 times, thought about it a few times and I am sure wasted some mental energy thinking about it. Why? Well, there is a the unpleasant task of talking to the credit card "retention" rep to explain why I am not using the card, listen to their sales tactics and still say no. This morning, I had 5 minutes break so I just called. Guess what? It took 3 minutes. That's it. Just 3 minutes. Some of the credit goes to Chase for not employing high pressure tactics (trust me, that makes me much more likely to bank with the firm in the future). So what was I procrastinating for?

Happiness equation

Happiness = wanting what you have(gratitude)/having what you want (gratification)

Think about it

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Yes, as you might have guessed, this post is about Steve Jobs. I was deeply saddened at the passing way of this legend. And at a young age of 56.

Bloomberg Businessweek has a special issue dedicated completely to Steve Jobs; his life from childhood to his passing. Did you know that

• Steve smoked pot and hash as a high schooler, and reminded employees and reporters over the years, dropped LSD.
• He stuck around Reed college for one and a half years after he dropped out, sleeping on friends' floors, depositing bottles and living off the money from that.
• He was fascinated with Buddhism and traveled to India with his friend from Reed College

The more I read, the more I realized - the Apple commercial below is all about Steve - the crazy one.






Oh. One more thing. I also saw the TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert - the author of "Eat, Pray, Love." Her message is that none of us is a genius. We should instead think that we "have" a genius within us. But Why?

Being creative carries an inherent problem - there is a high risk of failure. A high chance that no one would care for your work. And even if you succeed, what happens after that? Is your biggest success behind you? Are you never going to be as successful as you were before?

This is a great burden to carry for anyone. That is why she advocates believing in a that you have something within you that 'creates' the creativity; something you can not completely control. And it is not your burden to be creative, but joint responsibility with the genius within you.




I am not sure if Steve believed in this philosophy. But I believe that he probably did. This is why he had all the success that he did, one after another. And this is why when he passed away, it was not because of anything to do with his creativity. So cheers to the genius within all of us.

P.S. Some of this blog post might be cryptic unless you see both videos

Why we procrastinate

I started reading a book on procrastination. Unfortunately I kept putting reading more off :)

Now that I finally read more, we procrastinate -

• Not because we are lazy
• Because we might fear failure
• Because completing the task might lead to more work
• Because we feel that we are being forced to do the work - we talk to ourselves as if its not our choice
• Focus on the end of the project - which is especially overwhelming if the project is large
• We are perfectionists and are not willing to accept anything less than perfect - which raises the bar and makes us procrastinate

I wanted to write more, but I am feeling lazy,...

The future of this blog

Over the past 2 years, I have written a lot of blog posts about Kellogg. Now that my Kellogg journey is over and I am about to join McKinsey, my blog post writing would become rather limited. I can only write certain things about my experience because of client confidentiality reasons. Most of the posts would be limited to my reflections on life, and technology and entrepreneurship - unrelated to my work at McKinsey. So look to hear from me, but on a more infrequent basis. Till then...

Words of caution: Lean startup methodology

I am a big fan of the Lean Startup methodology, and related concepts such as customer development and minimum viable product. The Lean Statup Machine weekend was super helpful for me in learning and practicing the methodology more, and learning from an awesome set of mentors. As I learn this methodology more and more, there are some words of caution for newbies:

1. There is a big learning curve as far as practicing the methodology is concerned. Several pieces of it are science, and can be learned quickly, while others are more art than science. Take for example customer interviews. One has to learn how to structure customer interviews for maximum learning, from being flexible to focusing more on customer problems and not your solution. As you do more and more interviews, you do get better at them.

2. It is imperative that you select your interviewees carefully. What exactly is your target market? Often, one can build a solution for the general population, but identifying a particular target which might have the largest need for the solution is imperative. And one can stumble across this target by interviewing several potential targets. How do you determine best prospects? In words of Paul Graham, that is a function of "How much of a problem they have, and how quickly they come to a decision"

3. Asking if a prospect has a problem is also a tricky process. Let's face it, we hate problems. We do whatever we can to deal with them - come up with a solution, or rationalize them/fail to recognize that they exist. Let's take the example of buying an airline ticket. If you asked someone if they have a problem doing this twenty years ago, the answer would be no! I call up my travel agent or visit him/her, and in no time, I have my ticket. But then again, how easy is it to buy tickets online? If we cannot see a solution, we will likely rationalize problems. They key is not to have the whole population admit that there is a problem. They key is to find a few people who think that it is a big problem, and are willing to be your first customers, and to find a lot of other people who are willing to admit to it being somewhat of a problem, who will jump to the solution if it is really good.

4. Experts are often wrong. As the mentors at LSM NYC said, their opinion is also just one data point. They can probably give you the best advice on how to practice the methodology, but their advice is less useful on a particular concept.

5. It is great if you can have someone review your iterations - hopefully someone who knows about this methodology, but even someone who is just willing to be logical is good enough.


More to be added as I think of them....

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