Check out our website, as well as the following press coverage of our events:

January 2012 - TechCrunch and Stanford Daily.

March 2012 – Pensinsula Press & SFGate

Stay tuned for some more exciting news & upcoming events by “liking” our Facebook page at FounderSoup.com.

I realize, however, that a common reaction is “sure, there are lots of jobs RIGHT NOW, but what about in X years, after I’ve gone through the process of learning all this stuff…won’t the world have changed by then?”

My answer to this is “Yes, the world will change, and the demand for these technical skills will only INCREASE.”

However…it’s one thing for ME to believe this, and another thing for everyone else to believe this…so I’m always on the lookout for evidence.

Well…I found some.  This came from a presentation by McKinsey today at Stanford GSB (sorry for the lousy picture quality from my camera phone).  They were talking about the rise of “Big Data”.  Lots of cool stuff, like grocery stores better knowing where to place things by using the kind of multivariate analysis that web folks have been doing for years.

But anyway, check out what McKinsey says will be the potential Talent Gap in 2018, JUST in the field of “Big Data”.  They think that in 7 years, there will be 300,000 more jobs available than people capable of filling those jobs, just in the area of software engineers who can do things with “Big Data”…not counting statistically-adept business managers (~1.5 M more jobs than people).

So if you don’t believe me, then believe McKinsey & start by learning how to do MySQL queries  :)

My Inbox is clear!!

Managing the inbound flow of emails has become a daily chore for every connected professional.

It’s like exercise.  This is nothing you haven’t already heard.  Getting our inbox to zero is something we all know we should be doing, in an ideal world, along with eating fruits and vegetables and remembering to back up our hard drive.  But like those other guilt-inducers, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

The breaking point.  For me, inbox craziness reached a crescendo during my MBA program, when I received 100-150 emails per day, 30 of which were actionable, and 15 of which were time-sensitive.  Because I was running a business while doing two degrees, the penalty of getting even one day behind on my inbox often meant the difference between getting into or missing out on an opportunity.  The frustrating thing about this is that those truly important emails get lost in wave after wave of updates, reply alls, spammy notifications, etc.  And it never seems to let up…

The challenge.  Why is it so difficult to actually empty out that inbox?   There are the obvious reasons:  we are busy, we get too many emails, some aren’t urgent, etc…

But the key challenge for me has always been this:  the emails that hang around in my inbox, clogging everything else up, are always the ones that I can’t answer immediately…I’m either waiting for a response from a colleague, or I need to think about what to do, or I won’t know until I get home and ask family about timing, etc.  So what do we do about those emails?  For me, they used to just linger…

The existing tools.  I tried all of the usual tricks…add a “star” to the email, add a “label” to the label, mark as “unread”, etc.  But each of those solutions had a shortcoming…I’d end up with a pileup of unsorted emails with stars, all of which are still pending, but which I have to scan, in its entirety, and decide, on the fly, which ones are most important to do.

Why bother?  What’s wrong with just giving up and never zeroing out our inbox?  The main issue is that the inbox is a terrible organizer of actions to take.  It isn’t sorted based on priority, but rather, based on chronology and who is the most vocal sender.  So it’s an extremely noisy tool to use as a task manager.  Emails come in when they come…but what are the key action items to take…today?  They almost never mirror what’s at the top of my inbox.  I needed a way to process my inbound emails, clear out my inbox, and then go on with my day…working on those things that are most important for me to accomplish.

The Solution:  Email Triage…quickly whittle down the mess of messages, identifying the most critical items as quickly as possible…

(1) If I can delete it.  I delete it.  This usually eliminates 1/2 of my emails right off the bat.

(2) If I can “spam” it or “unsubscribe”, I do it.  That way, the offending email won’t bite me again.

(3) If I can solve it in less than 2 minutes, I solve it.  Knock out the quickie response, add the event to my calendar, etc.  Done.

Okay, yeah, obviously.  Then what?   This usually gets me down to the final handful of actionable emails for which there is no quickie response.  However, these are not yet sorted by priority!   So where does this final, and most important step in the triage process take place?  In my task manager…

(1) RememberTheMilk.com – this is the tool that allows me, for the first time ever, to follow the golden rules above, always be able to zero out my inbox, never lose track of what I need to do, and most importantly, know what is my biggest priority at any point in time.  (A special thanks to Emrecan Dogan for clueing me into this tool and how to use it.)

Task manager, RememberTheMilk

How does this work?  It’s really simple actually.  It’s a straightforward task manager, that lets you add a task, assign a priority to it, assign a deadline to it, and place it into a category.

What’s so special about it?

1. Seamless Syncing – First, it is easy to access on both my mobile devices (iPhone & iPad), as well as my browser.  This is oh-so-crucial.  For me, the absolutely most gratifying time to have this tool as part of my get-stuff-done suite is when I’m stuck somewhere with 5 minutes of dead time…you know, in line at the DMV, waiting for an airplane, waiting for the previews at a movie theater, etc.

Those are the moments in life that used to drive me bonkers, sitting there as valuable moments in life waste away because I’m just waiting for something to happen.  Now, those moments turn to joy, as I whip out RTM on my iDevice, look at my priority-ranked list of critical action items…and bang them out.  Item one done?  One-click to mark it as complete.  Item three done?  Mark that complete, as well.  Back at the office later that day?  My successes earlier in the day are automatically synced and reflected on RTM, whether I’m looking at it on my laptop browser, on my iPhone, etc.  Cross it out on the iPhone, it’s automatically removed everywhere.

2. Ease of Use – Second, it is super fast & easy to add, modify, and delete tasks.  Want to make it “top priority”, just type !1 at the end of the message.  Want it to be due tomorrow, just type “, tomorrow” at the end of the task.  Want to sort by priority, that’s easy.  Want to edit the task?  That’s one click away.  This may seem like a small detail, but for me, it’s a deal-breaker.  I’ve tried other task managers that require maybe two extra clicks to do every little modification…and when you’re relying on this thing to handle all inbound & outbound activities, those little clicks add up.  Having a tool that’s super easy to use makes all the difference.

So here’s the key – with a task manager like this in place, all you have to do is take all of those unread emails that would otherwise linger in your inbox.  You turn those INTO an action in your task manager.  And then get rid of them from your inbox.  They may not be done…but they are out of the way.  They’re not lost, but rather, stored where they belong, and prioritized as they should be.  As a result, your inbox is clear, so that you won’t miss that next, important email.  Now, your task manager, and NOT your inbox, tells you what to do & when…

Clear Inbox => Peaceful Mind

Peace of mind.  I’ve found this combination of tools and this methodology to make all the difference in the world…in keeping me organized, in keeping my inbox clear, and in feeling confident that what I’m working on right now is the most important thing for me to be doing.

There are probably other task managing tools that sync effortlessly across your devices & are quick and easy to use…but if you don’t already have one you love, then I definitely suggest trying one out…once you get into the flow of zeroing out that inbox and relying on a useful, portable task manager, fewer emails will slip through & you’ll feel a lot better about that inbox.

This is one of a handful of tools that I use to handle the daily inbox challenge…hopefully it’s useful to you.  Let me know in the comments if you have any other cool tricks like this….  More to come soon…

Get 'em started early

Last week, I was having the typical modern Silicon Valley conversation about how ridiculously challenging it is to find technical talent.

We covered all the typical bullet points:  the best thing you could do is build those skills yourself, you’ll need to be willing to give up significant equity, you might want to offer free food, massages, and funsies at the office, etc.

One of my favorite entrepreneurs (Jason, who happens to be launching an education startup at FormativeLearning.com), piped up, laughing, and quipped…”well, what I did was start reading HTML for Babies to my 1-year-old daughter.”

“Are you joking?”

“No!  I’m not!”

“Awww…yeah!  That’s so awesome.”

And while I think this is hilarious, and I’m sorta kidding.  I’m also not kidding.  The thing is, HTML is no more complicated than math, or grammer…and we definitely teach THAT to our kids.

Most kids these days end up taking 4-8 years of foreign languages, and year-after-year of math classes, and oodles of literature and european history, etc.

But how many of our kids are given a basis, at an early age, for learning the technical skills that are so desperately coveted?   We are living in the midst of this crazy employment oxymoron…we live in a country where unemployment is extremely high, while at the same time, companies are tripping all over themselves to hire people who know how to program…

Job Postings: Web Design vs Geometry

Don’t believe me?  Check out the graph from Indeed.com, showing the trend in job postings over the past few years.  As a hint, the one that is huge and growing is “web design”, while practically no one gets a job because of their skills in “geometry”.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t learn geometry and I don’t mean to pick on this skill.  In fact, geometry is important to web design, as well as being a well-rounded individual.

But what I AM saying is that our children ought to be AT LEAST as skilled (and fluent) at software development technologies, like HTML, as they are at things like Geometry and Shakespeare.

So parents, if you really love your children, give them the gift of code this Christmas…and start them on a path toward fantastic job security…start them early…with books like HTML for Babies.  (A more serious look at the hot skillsets forthcoming…but HTML is a good place to start).

Yes, your children (along with everyone else) may think you are extremely strange (right now), but they will thank you in 2035 when they’re making plus salary…while coding up apps for your wall-mounted touch screen tablet television.

Can You Introduce Me?

When I decided to study Computer Science at Stanford, I anticipated many wonderful outcomes.  I knew I would be able to better support the companies I built (ie ContractorMarketingPros.com), understand new technology trends (ie opportunities in mobile), and build new prototypes (ie BeTheDuke.com).  The experience has exceeded my expectations…

But there’s one aspect of studying CS at Stanford that I never anticipated: the extent to which the tech community covets top engineering talent.

Go to nearly any event in Silicon Valley and you’ll hear one key theme repeated over and over again by entrepreneurs and investors:

“I’m looking for software developers…”

Cisco and Oracle are hiring engineers.  Google and Microsoft are hiring engineers.  Facebook and Zynga are hiring engineers.  Dropbox and Square are hiring engineers.  Pinterest and AirBnB are hiring engineers.  Your uncle is hiring engineers.  My uncle is hiring engineers.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, is hiring engineers.

The Request

Jockey seeks horse, promises plentiful oats & minimal whippings.

As one of the few MBAs who then went on to become a computer scientist, I get a LOT of requests that sound like this (these are all actual emails I’ve received):

• “a friend of mine is creating software that IS very cool…But… he needs programmers. I told him that you might be a great resource”
• “I’m going to revolutionize the ___ industry…do you know any good programmers who might be interested”
• “do you know of any rockstar android developers who might be interested in part-time work? (longer term, we’re also looking for algorithm and AI engineers)… if yes, can you please fwd this to anyone you know who might be interested? thanks much!”
• “I am working on a cool idea in the mobile ____ space. Do you have any iPhone programmers you would recommend?”
• “Anyway, we are definitely still looking for developers…Let me know if you come across any rockstars interested in changing the world of _____.”
• “Do you know any awesome Rails engineers that might consider joining an exciting _____ startup? Ideally 3-5 yrs experience for a Sr. Eng/VP, Eng role.”
• “I am determined to launch this project on my own, but I have no development savvy at all. Do you have any advice for how I can find a programmer that would partner up on a project like this?”

How Not To Find Engineers

It gets much worse…(see Whartonite Seeks Code Monkey).

You…and everyone else…

The entrepreneur in me understands EXACTLY where these emails are coming from.  However, the frustrating thing about these emails is that I’d love to help out, but I can’t.  It’s not that these are unqualified people asking for help. On the contrary…these are requests coming in from some of the most fantastic people I know. These are entrepreneurs and investors who are successful, high character people. It’s a beating-and-a-half to say “um, sorry, I can’t really help you with that” every single time this happens.

But the truth of the matter is…if I forwarded even a small % of these emails onto my CS friends, then we wouldn’t be friends for very long. You see, talented Stanford engineers are so thoroughly bombarded with inbound requests like these, they almost become numb to the flirtations.

Everyone’s a gatekeeper…

In coordinating the FounderSoup events, I’ve spoken with a handful of Stanford CS professors to invite them to our events.  Their response, “I actually don’t know that many developers”.  To which I reply, “No, I’m asking if YOU want to come to the event…I’m encouraging my non-technical friends to learn CS and we’d love to have YOU there…it could be a good way to recruit new students.”   They typically perk up at this point, but nevertheless, their guard is up.  And that’s just the professors.

Want to really see what I’m talking about?  Try going to the CS career services folks.  Maybe say something like “hey, I’ve got this really cool program & I wanted to see if I could reach out to some of the CS students directly…”  Hah.  They’ll say something like “yeah, you and everyone else” and then repeat the phrase…”the best we can do for you is offer that you sponsor a booth at the career fair.”   Ohhh…the career fair.  That deserves another post of it’s own.  But in short, if you want to see a who’s who of the technology world, the CS career fair is where it’s at.

Heavily Fortified

So why does everyone in the system either have a fortress built up or deny even knowing any engineers (despite teaching hundreds of them every quarter)?  It’s not that they have bad intentions or anything like that…they, more than anyone, realize how overwhelming it is for these students to be recruited by seemingly every company in the valley.  Their students, who they “don’t know that many of” are so sought after that the professors, advisors, and everyone else within earshot of the ecosystem are bombarded with inbound requests, as well…and all serve as a form of gatekeeper, lest they burn their own bridges.

If I, the MS-MBA, am fatigued by requests to meet software engineers, imagine how tiresome it must be for their professors…or worse yet, the engineers themselves.

As a result, one of the unwritten rules within the CS community is that you don’t bother your friends with intros to “yet another startup looking for a developer”…you just don’t.

Do You Have Some Time To Grab A Coffee?

NO!  Every top notch CS student or engineer has an overwhelming array of opportunities…so much so that many top engineers avoid any spotlight that threatens to bring unwanted attention upon them: public LinkedIn profiles, attending entrepreneurial mixer events, or subscribing to the “blast” email lists.  One of my favorite engineers, a PhD in the CS program here, simply tells everyone he’s studying “marine biology” in order to avoid all the flirtation…

They certainly don’t want to “meet up for coffee” every with every “idea guy looking for a programmer”. In the much the same way that celebrities avoid the public, engineers are hiding from the bombardment of prospective startup opportunities.

After all, they’ve got 6 hours of coding still to do…tonight.  This weekend?  They’ll be cranking on code then, too.

So… 

What was my response to this? First of all, I started FounderSoup.com.  The goal of the organization is to invite all of my entrepreneurial friends (and their friends), both technical and non-technical to one event.  It’s efficient for everyone. We aim to make it a high-trust environment and have seen some awesome successes from the event.  So if you’re interested, join the signup list.

Second, I continued studying Computer Science.

Third, I’ve started encouraging every able-minded person to either (a) come to FounderSoup, or (b) study Computer Science.

Earn That Technical Co-Founder

Probably the best piece of advice I’ve heard along these lines came from Jason at HumbledMBA

“You don’t find a technical cofounder, you earn one.”

How do you do that?  Jason suggests several steps to achieving this…most important of which, IMO, is:  1. Learn to Code.  2. Build the front-end.   The key here is doing everything in your power to build trust, gain traction, show your talent & commitment to the project.

In a recent survey we conducted at FounderSoup, we found that even top engineers are mostly looking for other engineers, not MBAs.  But of those engineers who aren’t looking for MBAs…you know what they wanted?  Entrepreneurial decathletes.  In other words…if you aren’t an engineer and you want to earn a technical co-founder…then you’d better be darn good at everything else!

And you’ve got to win them over!

Often, it’s “how” you say it…

So how can you, the entrepreneur, find that special programmer?

Well, first of all, talking THAT WAY, you’ll never find what you want.

You’ve got to show that you respect their skills and know enough about their world to be a great partner.  You are not looking for a “programmer”. You are looking for an “engineer”, a “software developer”.

Instead of saying we are looking  ”for an expert in PHP, Ruby-On-Rails, CSS AND Machine Learning”, or “a rockstar programmer to build our frontend and backend using xyz-string-of-non-complementary-languages.” I suggest you say something like “we are looking for can-do co-founders who have a strong foundation in software engineering and enjoy taking on new challenges”.

First Date

It’s Like Dating

When looking for someone to date, you certainly wouldn’t post on Facebook saying, “I’m looking for someone who cooks, fixes cars, loves children, likes to fornicate daily, and is going to make a ton of money.” That would be crazy and even the most socially foolish person wouldn’t do so.  Why? It’s obvious…that just doesn’t work!

So don’t be THAT entrepreneur! Don’t ask the world in your first meeting.  Don’t look for a programmer to build your app.  Recognize that these 21-year-olds are getting offers from the top businesses in whatever industry they are interested in.  Realize that you’re going to need to cough up real equity to attract them.  Know that your competition is offering them free food and foot massages.

So if you’re going to find that team-mate, you’d better not promise minimal whippings…get to know them, show them you are interested in them, let them see how awesome and trustworthy you are…and maybe that special relationship will develop.  But, for starters, know what to call them…they’re software engineers, not rockstar programmers.

Seems like a strange detail to emphasize, eh?  One thing we have learned in building this program is that these subtle touches are surprisingly fundamental to how prospective engineers feel about the way they may be treated in an organization.

This is the first part of a multi-part series on the subject…I’ll later cover things like how to build your engineering skills…but step 1 (for the newcomers to this world) is to recognize that there is a fortress you’re trying to enter and that it takes time and awareness to build the trust necessary to earn that technical co-founder.

As a non-financial guy & someone not well-informed by US perspectives on this stuff…but as someone who spent so much of my university schooling in foreign unis looking at international economics…I am longterm extremely bearish on the US economy.  In all my studies, seemingly every possible longterm economic health indicator made things look really bad for my country (balance of trade, rate of education, sustainable national competitive advantage, and most importantly, debt).  Sure, we have greatest universities, plentiful natural resources, many of the world’s most sophisticated institutions, and are still the world’s largest economy…but everyone already knows this stuff…The stuff that we don’t think about as often…the comparative trends…don’t look good.

US Trade Deficit, as % of DGP

(source for trade deficit chart: NYTimes & Bureau of Economic Analysis).

Take for example, our (Im)Balance of trade, which has been going south for many decades.  It is now massive (we are at -$500 Billion on a ‘good’ year).   The way I understand this is…if this were a company, it would mean “Amount of $ Sales to other Companies” minus “Amount of $ Purchases from Other Companies”, divided by “How Big Domestic Economy Is”.  So with a deficit around 5% of GDP, that’s like a company earning $95 but spending $100 to do it, while all the employees do a lot of trading goods and services among themselves.  But overall, the company is losing $ every year, for many decades.

So…our country chronically buys more than it sells…we buy lots of goods (think oil and plastic toys) and we sell lots of services (think consulting firms), but we buy a lot more oil and hondas than we sell services and fords.

US Annual Balance Of Trade

(Source for Balance of Trade Chart:  US Census Bureau Dept of Trade Stats)

In a way, this extraordinary “imbalance of trade” since the 60s/70s has no choice but to directly result in mounting debt.  Because our imports so vastly exceed our exports – where does that money come from?   Well, the way I simplify things is that this is where debt comes from.  If we receive WAY more stuff from other countries than we send to them, then someone is lending us that $ (think China & Saudi Arabia), and that means over time, our ability to repay them becomes riskier and riskier, and so our currency becomes less valuable.  Thus, we have to spend more of our currency to buy more of the foreign goods we need, and the cycle reinforces itself.

The crazy thing is that this is commonly available knowledge.  We all know we buy tons of oil and stuff from China.  We all know we have a big national debt.  But somehow, professors in our finest institutions still think that our government is absolutely “good for it”.  Despite us losing $ every single year, our governments bonds are still called the “risk free rate.”  How insane is that?

As an entrepreneur, I’m hard-coded to manically focus on increasing the # of things I can sell and limiting what I have to buy…but our country’s overall position is exactly the opposite.

Plus, maybe I’m old-school, but I’ve always been the type of person that was severely bothered by owing anything to anyone ($4 latte to mortgages)…and I generally consider debt to be a dangerous thing to play with, etc.  So coming from that perspective the US debt situation seems all the more egregious (#s so big that when I look at them, they make me freak out and I don’t want to think about it anymore).

A couple of times in Finance class, I would ask the professor something like “why do we call this the risk-free rate – does that mean there is 0 chance that our country defaults on its debt?”.  Everyone would look at me like I’m from Mars…but if my company had the debt, income, and competitive profile of the US economy, I would be absolutely mortified (like, in the full etymological meaning of the word).  And if our country’s balance sheet was anonymized and we all analyzed it in b.school, we would all say “yeah, this company is totally SOL”.

Impending Financial Disaster?

Seriously, what would an honest rating agency rate our bonds at (if you took away a bunch of zeros and measured it against what we consider to be healthy financial organizations…)?  Would our country receive the same type of ratings that Apple would get right now on its debt?  Hah, no way!  So I sort-of expect a long term, protracted, and painful downward trajectory for our economy.  I don’t like to think like this, but I would have to deceive myself to look at these types of numbers and believe otherwise.

I’m jaded enough about the longterm outlook, that when stuff like the housing crisis and this pop up, I’m not like “OMG the sky is falling”, I’m more like “well yeah, okay so THIS is how this prolonged downward cycle is playing out right now…that all of these elephant hiccups are just a sign of an inevitable obvious X0 year decline.”

But then again, I’m not a finance expert, I don’t watch the news, and I’m not well-informed about what’s going on this week, or even this month.  What I’m wondering is about the big picture, the three-decade picture, and it is twofold:

(1) when (ya know, I assume this is not an IF) the moment of reckoning comes, how bad of a situation are we in?  Like Argentina 2001 where banks close, lower third falls into seriously awful shape, avg person’s savings catastrophically melted away…?  I guess that maybe splits into two different answers?  The upper quartile of the society will probably have their $ squirreled away in asian banks or whatever and be able to eat, enjoy, and have a safe life…?  Meanwhile, the lower quartile will grow into the lower 3 quartiles and life will be miserable?

In other countries where the bottom falls out, the middle class disappears, things get less safe, people’s savings implode, and things get really really ugly (crime, shortages, etc).  What if this happens to the biggest economy on the planet?  I keep asking myself, are we caught up, freaking out about this particular short-term problem, when the bigger issue is the longterm situation which is much worse than we are all anticipating it will be?  The US has been so wealthy (relatively) for so long that most Americans (including myself), can’t imagine what a really bad outcome looks like.

So does that play out where our insurance programs explode?  A run on the banks?  Or seniors have all of their pensions go poof?  And then discretionary expenditures drop further, and then corps shrink, and investment dries up, and social services shrink, and on and on?   Please tell me I’m not glass-half-emptying this to death?  Is there a bright spot?  Something I don’t understand that makes this all okay?

But really, if this wasn’t the largest economy of all time, the global icon of freedom and national wellbeing, and on and on, wouldn’t we just all say “yeah they’re on the brink of bankruptcy”?  And if so, when a country does go completely bankrupt – this might not even be close to being the kind of relatively lovely place to live that it has been for a century, will it?

Where We Headed

And (2) how soon is this happening?  I have been looking at these events…the housing thing, this debt thing, other “woah, what happened??” moments…as “well, yeah, this is one of the kerfuffles that will eventually fit together with all the others over the next 10 years?  30 years? 50 years? that is one of those “well we should have known this would eventually happen”.   One of the handfuls of steps in this inevitable march towards serious catastrophe (ie not a two-year blip, but a way-of-life altering mess).

So I’m curious if you, someone who is actually well informed about what’s going on, agrees with this overall picture?

And really, what I am curious to know more of what you think – how big of a mess do you think the US debt situation is, mid & longterm…Should I trade my $s for yen and move to Canada?

Finally, as all of this is obviously depressing – what would we have to accomplish to change our path?  Do we have what it takes, as a society to course-correct?  We gotta try…

Radio Music Method

About a year ago, I wrote about what I called “The Great Music Discovery Trifecta” because I was loving how the evolution of consumer internet had made it so easy for me to find and portably own oodles of music that I love.  At the time, I was driving to work, capturing songs I liked with Shazam, putting through subsequent interviews in Grooveshark, and then purchasing the ones I wanted to continue listening to through iTunes.  It was glorious (and still is).

But since then, things just keep evolving.  Pandora’s gone public.  Last.fm has grown into a Wikipedia-like (in terms of depth and quality of information) resource about top rated music.  Spotify has come to the US.  Rexly.com has been birthed (Go Joel!).  And Turntable.fm has…well, not only become my daytime music radio source, but it has also captured my data nerd imagination.

You see…I stopped listening to the public radio (except when I have no other choice) for the same reason that most technically savvy folks have done the same…to me, radio music is noisy, inconsistent, and jammed with commercials.  The quality-to-nuisance ratio is just so low that it’s practically unbearable.  So when Pandora & ubiquitous iTunes hit the scene (and then my beloved trifecta), I completely ditched the “DJ curating my music” experience altogether.

…until Turntable.

As an internet innovation enthusiast and someone who likes to listen to music while I work…I’ve been absolutely fascinated with Turntable – not just because it’s a cool “gaze into the future” product (and it is)…but because of its DATA Set and what this means for me…and you.  As Turntable grows (in user #s) & its data becomes more widely available (through an API or the inevitable scraping & aggregation of room data)….it will be fabulous.  (kinda like Twitter circa 2008)

DJs Feeling Crowd Reaction

Here’s my thinking (maybe my hardcore industry friends can inform me here)…seemingly for the first time ever, music pros will be able to get real-time data, in a huge way, about what genres, songs, and styles people love (like Pandora + iTunes on steroids + years of watching your Friday night crowd’s heads bob to what you’re spinning…)

Now, Turntable captures all of this through the simple, yet powerful “awesome/lame” button interaction that is a core part of the turntable experience.  We normally don’t think about it while using these buttons, but us users are providing real-time feedback and never-before-possible data…which will allow these DJs (in that room) as well as industry pros (with aggregated voting data) to learn quantitatively how the crowd responds to obvious questions, like “what are the most popular songs and styles”, but even more granular findings, such as how cread reaction is impacted by: (a) time of day (b) the previous few songs played (c) DJs reputation (d) user geography (e) user FB likes (remember, you join via Connect), etc.

Turntable has…what?  Tens of thousands (and growing) users voting on hundreds of thousands of songs every day??  Assuming it continues to scale, we are quickly encroaching on uncharted user feedback data that’s hithertofore unimaginable.

The crazy thing is that DJs are already learning more than they’ve ever learned before about the type of music people want to hear and when…and this will make thousands of amateur DJs a lot better, help quickly surface new DJs, and ultimately…I believe, drive another boom in music innovation.

I realize that there’s another argument entirely about the dramatic dropoff in CD sales and a shift towards concerts and big troubles for the record companies…and I’m not anywhere close to being an expert on those things.  Perhaps certain segments of the music industry will suffer, some forms of creation may be inhibited by this shift of power, etc.

But for me…a lover of technically enhanced music and someone who is willing to purchase the good stuff on iTunes in order to have it on my iPad…well, I’m just super excited about what the future holds in the form of music innovation, discovery, and optimizing toward user preferences in this statistically transparent & unprecedented way.  One example of this that I LOVE, and am not afraid to admit…are Mashups.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about with mashups, and you’re curious…do yourself a favor and find some music by any of the following mashup folks:  DJ Earworm, Kap Slap, Girl Talk, or anything having to do with Miike Snow.  These guys are creating a genre of music which is a truly fantastical blend of other music that brings hardcore beats to pop songs that everyone loves (think Enya + Tupac).

Boom In Music & Mashups

On one hand, this new platform hurts the old guard of music labels and other intermediaries who the artist previously needed in order to capture economic value…but, it will simultaneously drive a further democratization of music and an explosion of a class of amateur DJs.  This…tenfold? boom in the # of DJs will inevitably speed the evolution of music, prompting the emergence of new genres of music, help DJs to learn precisely how their users respond to the music, and to help content creators be able to iterate & improve at a faster rate than ever before.  So, we’ll probably spawn fewer U2s and Mozarts in this new world…but I believe this new distribution channel & real-time feedback mechanism is going to lead to a boom in the speed of music creation and the quality of music curation, speeding the emergence of upstarts into superstars, and ultimately meaning more quality and less noise in my passive music listening.  This was going to happen regardless…but I’m glad Turntable…and these other innovators…are giving us another big shove in that direction.

Do you agree that Turntable will help drive more innovation in music?  Are there other music pioneers I should know about?

Google Search, lots of Ads

Background: I fell in love with Google a long time ago, because of what it represented to me – a sort of “democratization of business”.

So, I was just checking out the latest “winners and losers” from Google’s latest algorithm changes, ie here and here…

The headline around the decision was that it would target “content farms”. And there were plenty of the usual suspects – content farms (ehow & ezinearticles) and URLs like voucherstar & aceshowbiz.com. Cool.  Sounds reasonable.

But then…there are a few that…surprised me: Shopping.com, Shopzilla, BizRate, and Nextag.

Hrm…why would Google murder the comparison shopping sites? Aren’t they useful? Don’t they help consumers find the best price?

I wonder…what do they all have in common. Hmm. Let’s see….

Ah…I’ve got it. They all do what Google now overwhelmingly does with any product-related search – comparison shopping. Try it. Go search for “digital camera” or “hammock”. What % of the total results does Google now make $ off of?

The Google Search Results Page Becomes An AdSense Farm

Now, fully 90-95% of the links on the Google homepage are all directly monetized by Google.

This is nothing terribly new…it’s just one of those slow evolutions that you almost don’t even notice, like the proverbial frog in water. Remember when Google was a website that helped you find other websites? Then, the ads slowly started creeping in on the right side…but it was still okay…if you built a really useful site, you could still be found on Google. Then came the ads across the top, but hey, there were some organic results still. Then came the product listings on the top right…and it just keeps going. Now, unless you are the #1 result, then fewer than 10% of searchers will ever even see your organic listing.

And it’s not just ecommerce. Google is, and has been doing this for many years, across all of the high monetization verticals: travel, online classifieds, finance, etc.

Well, Google is always looking out for the searcher…right?   What does Google say about some of the sites that were dethroned?

Google says: “Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?”  That’s reasonable.  After all, who wants to come to a website that is just jam packed with ads.  But…isn’t that EXACTLY what the Google search results page has become?  For monetizable searches, the above-the-fold window is now something like 90-95% ads!

So here’s my question. How would Google’s search results page rank within it’s own algorithm? (1) it would certainly get knocked for duplicate content (2) it’s absolutely dominated by ads (3) it features no original content of its own…and on and on.

Clearly it is within Google’s rights to do this, but it sure does make it tough for the entrepreneur.

By the way, with the Panda algorithm update…who were the SEO winners? News organizations, bloggers, and video producers.

Why? Well, Google will say it’s those sites that produce original, unique content…and that’s definitely got merit.

The skeptic in me would say that those are the types of sites that aren’t going to pay for clicks anyway. Meanwhile, if you lower hammock sellers in the organic listings…what are they to do? They have no real alternative other than to go buy clicks (and pay google for them).

An even greater skeptic would say that it’s pretty clever for Google to show up a bunch of their own PPC ads and then a bunch of news articles. If you search for “hammocks”, are you going to click on the current #2 organic result, “hammockmusic.com”, or are you going to click on those big beautiful hammock photos that Google has?

Of course, Google will say that by placing products on a product search results page…that they are getting the end user closer to what they want…and there’s merit to that argument…but the thing is, when you click on one of those Google product listings, they take you a price comparison page…just like Nextag and the rest would do.

So..what Google is really doing here is replacing the intermediaries with itself…another intermediary. It’s useful to take note of the fact that Google is no longer a “Search Engine” that helps you find websites that are useful…at least not in the monetizable categories. For ecommerce searches, it’s a comparison shopping site. For travel searches, it’s a travel aggregator. For local searches, it’s an online classifieds service, and on and on.

Google Search is now an amalgamation of a bunch of vertical shopping sites that are completely overloaded with Google ads…precisely the type of landing page that Google encourages website publishers to avoid. And as a website publisher, that vexes me.

So…who’s going to be the big winner with the latest Google algorithm change? Well, that’s obvious! Google!

Now I’m going to go post this story on my new favorite website…Google+.

FB, thanks for the good times

You had a nice run at #1 – the longest ever, actually. Sure, I’ll still use you for certain things, like talking about how awesome Dirk is, but you’re no longer my go-to resource. Maybe you’ll do something to pull back ahead, but it sure won’t be by foisting your sub-optimal chat upon me.

With asymmetric following & greater control over access, G+ is just more interesting…already. What’s amazing to me is that this opportunity was sitting there for Google some 5 years ago. You’ve always had my email lists, my chat logs, my calendar scheduling. You knew who I work with, what my business strategies were, what websites I run, what websites I visit, and what I look for every day.

And for 5 years you’ve been sitting on this opportunity. So long, it seemed, that it had completely passed you by. But with one quick surge, you’ve shown me that opportunities in this crazy web world last longer than I’d thought.

And now, you are my #1 most interesting social network. Just like that. Wow.

Take, for example, the 2nd round triumph over the mighty Lakers, those yellow-colored monsters, who were HEAVILY favored in the series:

Should we be surprised?  Dirk and Kidd are sure-fire hall-of-famers.  The only tarnish on their otherwise brilliant legacies is a ring.  They want this bad. They don’t want to be like Malone & Stockton. They deserve to be like Pierce & Garnett, Hakeem & Clyde. And this is their chance.

True, Lebron & Dwayne are 2 of the leagues greatest stars.  Wade is an absolutely devastating clutch basketball player.  See 2006 finals.

But the Mavs have Dirk and Dirk is transcendent. But wait…didn’t Dirk used to be soft? No. Only four players have ever averaged, more than 25 points & 10 rebounds in their playoff careers, and Dirk is one of them. But he’s never had a supporting cast like this one.

With Chandler backing him up and Kidd setting him up and the Matrix & D Steve & the Haymaker pounding down low…watch what the Ghost-faced Drillah has done in this year’s playoffs, alone:

Watch him in Game 1 against the Thunder:

The Heat are unquestionably the great slam dunk champions of all time, and extremely athletic, outrageously talented.  Watch Wade.  Regardless of what kind of team he has, he can do other-worldly things under pressure. But their bench is not yet there, they are not anywhere close the cohesive team that the Mavs are.  Give them one more off-season to round out the team, good place for a veteran to get a ring.

But for now, to Dirk and to Kidd, who don’t have much more time in this league, this is absolutely their moment, their legacy. These Mavs are cohesive, like a finely tuned watch, with every part elegantly moving together.  Watch their ball movement on offense.  Watch Dirk pass out of the doubleteams, the ball, on a string, zipping toward a moment of space.  Watch their unselfishness.  Watch their eyes.  They’re crazy. Watch these comebacks…

Watch their relentlessness in this comeback in Game 5 against the Thunder.

Watch in the 4th when Marion and Stevenson and Kidd give every ounce they’ve got, trying to suffocate Lebron & Wade.  Watch Chandler sorta guard three people all at the same time.  Watch his tomahawk dunks and war cry.  Watch the bench, supporting their replacements.  Watch Lebron being an athletic freak, but not being quite sure what everyone thinks of him.

Ghost-faced Drillah: You think you’ve had enough of Dirk; maybe he’s worn out? Yeah. The guy’s got a torn tendon in his finger and a 101+ fever…but he wants this…more than anything.

The Underdogs: The unattached and gambling masses place their wagers that the Mavs lose this series, but it only matters what’s in Dirk & Kidd & Marion & Jet & Chandler’s minds…this is their chance.  They are doing it for Dirk, they are doing it for Kidd, this is their battle. Sports enthusiasts and fans of greatness…you owe it to yourselves to check in for these gritty wars.

2011 Playoffs run: Not only have the Mavs improbably swept Kobe & Gasol’s Lakers, and toppled Durantula’s Thunder, but they knocked off the Blazers, a stout team that was picked to to upset the Mavs! Check out this road to the playoffs:

If the Mavs have proven one thing in these playoffs, it’s that they’re going to win or die trying.

As a true, chest-painting fan, this is all I could ever ask for.