Bryce Maddock

Top 5 Regrets of People on their Deathbed

2011-06-03T08:27:00.000-07:00

I came across this post by Bonnie Ware - original here. It's the most important thing I've read in a long time:

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly,in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip.But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks,love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have sillyness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again,long before you are dying.

Decomodization through Customer Service

2011-02-14T17:42:00.000-08:00

There is too much stuff! The world is totally oversupplied. Too many frozen yogurt stores, too many houses for sale, too many Cash4Gold schemes. Only in a world so over inundated with stuff could a company like Groupon be so wildly successful. If you ask old school deli owners they will tell you the first rule is "never discount your food." Yet businesses are lining up to offer 50 to 90% discounts, because there isn't enough demand to meet supply. Now in the ultimate irony, there are too many deal of the day websites!

In a world that is so wildly oversupplied an entrepreneur wonders, what can I sell that will actually make a profit? What can I do to differentiate my product from the rest. It all comes down to building a defensible brand. You can build a brand through superior advertising - see Dos Equis. You can build a brand through a simpler product - see Apple. Most recently, we have witnessed the rise of brands built on the back of superior customer service. These fascinate me.

There are thousands of websites that sell shoes. The end product - shoes - is no different from one website to the next. So Tony Hsieh's decision to start a shoe website puzzled everyone. After all this was the tech entrepreneur who sold his first company to Microsoft for $265 million. What Hseih realized was that a brand could be built by delivering better customer service than anyone else selling shoes online. Free shipping, free returns, free shipping when returning and quirky, happy customer service reps available 24/7. The result: Hseih sold Zappo's to Amazon for $1.2 billion.

Compute is now as much of a commodity as electricity. But unlike electricity there are thousands of website hosting services. Every host promises 99.999999% up time and best in class speed, so how do you differentiate such a commodity? Customer service. Rackspace is renowned for having the most fanatical customer service team in the industry. They are available by phone or chat at all times. They are all American based, well educated and happy. This is why I choose Rackspace for all my hosting.

The purpose of building a brand is being able to charge a premium for your product or service. Brands have bigger profit margins because of their perceived quality in the mind of consumers. Investing in superior customer service enables Zappos and Rackspace to charge more for what would otherwise be commodities.

Decomodization through customer service has a lot of big companies questioning their customer service practice. Some of which are reconsidering their long held practice of outsourcing customer service. Which begs a, personally relevant question, how can outsourcing company decomoditize itself through customer service?

Bootstrapping is a Bitch

2011-02-07T19:33:00.000-08:00

There are two ways to build a company - with money and without money. Building a company with money looks like this: Entrepreneur has an idea and goes out to raise capital. Generally they'll raise equity, selling off a portion of their vision in exchange for the capital required to manifest it. Sometimes they'll raise debt, meaning they have to pay back the capital, plus interest over time.

Monied entrepreneurs all complain about dilution, interest payments and answering to their board. So why do they raise money? Because money is the difference between a great developer and a decent developer, getting it right the first time instead of the third and delivering the product before you get beat by the competition. Raising money is generally a good trade off.

Building a company without money looks like this: Entrepreneur has an idea and bets his or her lifesavings on it. They invest every dime of their worth, move back in with their parents to cut down on costs, and work 18 hours days playing every role they can to eliminate company overhead. To put it simply: it's nuts.

So why did I build my company without money? Well to begin with I was 21 and had no understanding of how much venture and angel funding was available. The thought of someone giving me a million dollars for my idea was preposterous. But the real reason was I wanted to own 100% of my business, I wanted to control it's fate. This isn't as easy as it sounds. The exchange was much slower growth, much less up front expertise and hundreds of more working hours for yours truly.

Looking back I have regrets. In just two years we have grown into a real business. But only now do I have the money to hire the expertise required to reveal all the mistakes that I made since the beginning. This is a very expensive learning experience - penalties, fees, legal and accounting expenses are the ghosts that haunt a recently "profitable" business. If only I had an extra $100,000 at the start I could have hired the experts, I could have avoided costly mistakes…

Would I have done it different? Would I try to raise money it I had my time over?

Nope.

There is no doubt that the non-monied entrepreneur has it harder. But the non-monied entrepreneur also has the one thing that I prize more than anything - freedom.

The Reality

2011-02-01T20:26:00.000-08:00

Mark Suster wrote an amazing post on TechCrunch yesterday about the reality of being a start up entrepreneur. It was very inspiring to me. The past month has been a non-stop grind. Some days have been great, others have been awful. Apparently, this is a pretty common experience for start up entrepreneurs. Suster's post can be summarized with this awesome picture:

Go read it.

Gratitude

2011-01-25T10:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a while! The past three or four months have been filled with work and stress, both good and bad. But I missed my blog. I'd find myself saying, "I'll get around to blogging when..." But like promises and resolutions, I'd just keep putting it off.

Speaking of resolutions my 2011 resolution is to be more grateful. The past two or three years I've found myself ambitiously striving for more. More success, more exercise, more friends, more women, more time, more... Ironically, I got a lot more of a lot of things, but I found that it just left me more stressed and more depressed. I've realized what I really need is simple - more satisfaction, more happiness, more gratitude.

So I've been focusing on one or two things a day that I am truly blessed to have in my life. The first one that jumps to mind this morning is Dom, my girlfriend of the past 6 months.

We spent this weekend in Dallas and it was a blast. She has such cool friends. I'm so blessed to have found someone that shares such an uninhibited passion for experience, travel and food. In just six short months we've gone to Hawaii, Mammoth and Dallas together. She is grounded, down to earth and absolutely gorgeous. In May or June of last year I told Rich, Jaspar and Tom that I wanted a relationship, and in a few short months Dom had come into my life. She is hands down the best thing that happened to me in 2010. And everyday I appreciate just how lucky I am to have her in my life. Falling in love is one of life's greatest gifts.

The Pursuit of Happiness

2010-11-09T17:11:00.000-08:00

I'm surprised by how little we talk about happiness. People worry about how they look, how much they earn, what they drive, and all of these are seen as potential paths to happiness. But very few people seem to think about happiness itself. For the past decade I have struggled with both anxiety and depression, so happiness has become a sort of obsession for me. In my pursuit of happiness here are things I've found essential:

Exercise - I exercise everyday. Running, swimming or doing yoga. I don't do it to look good or even to stay healthy. I do it because it makes me feel good. There is a biochemical reaction to exercise. The harder I work, the more endorphins are released, the happier I feel.
Experience - I spend way too much money at restaurants and on trips and far too little on cars and clothes. Why? Because things don't make you happy. The brief surge of happiness you get from a purchase is fleeting. Today's hot gadget becomes tomorrow's headache. So I opt for experience always. I've flown over 100,000 miles this year, I've eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world, and most importantly, I have connected with incredibly interesting people.
Relationships - Building relationships with friends and lovers is one of the best ways to drive long term happiness. Whether I am philosophizing with Tom or Rich, running the city with Jaspar or cuddling with Dom, I am happy.
Reflection - Maintaining perspective in this crazy world is tough. Taking sometime to sit quietly and reflect each day can help a lot. I meditate. But you can go for a walk or simply sit. It takes patience. But the long term effects of daily reflection are pretty spectacular.

Censoring Myself

2010-10-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

I have been a very bad blogger lately. I've been traveling and I've been working a ton. But there has been a fair amount that I have wanted to post that I haven't. In short I've censored myself.

I have long argued that the more honest we can be about who we truly are with everyone, the better the world would be. While, I write this blog as much for myself as anyone else, I realize it is a public medium, and I've encountered situations of late where being totally honest would have hurt people's feelings, compromised business relationships and just generally created an atmosphere of uncomfortableness. So I've censored myself a bit.

Here's a brief breakdown of what's happened lately:

I've fallen in love.
I had a snorkeling accident in Maui that put 23 stitches in my back.
I'm in total limbo with the business.
I'm headed to Europe next week with Rich to visit my Grandparents, go to Lisbon and Spain.

I'll try and break out the details of these (as much as a I can) in the coming weeks. For now I just keep reminding myself that life is a pretty incredible experience.

On Greatness

2010-09-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend all of the magazines I read talked about Zuck. I read the New Yorker piece and thought it was fascinating. You've got to hand it to him, he has achieved the status of the greatest entrepreneur of our generation. He came up with a great idea. He iterated like crazy. He navigated the VC landscape flawlessly. He refused enormous acquisition offers. The kid killed it. He's on top of the world of business, which is where I thought I would be by now.

Saturday morning I did Vinnie's class at YogaWorks. Over the past two years I've got pretty good at yoga. Vinnie's class is sort of the like the westside all star yogi team so their are plenty of people who are better than me, but Saturday morning was uniquely humbling as I was mat to mat with the Gravity Cowboy. The things this guy can do are unreal. Check out his site for some of the sequences.

These two things got me thinking. I'm doing well at business. I've built a profitable business. I support myself and I am my own boss. But I haven't done anything earth shattering. I didn't build Facebook. I'm good a yoga. I can hit and sit in just about every pose. But I'm not doing hand stands in and out of every vinyasa. What I'm saying is I'm good at a lot of things, but I'm not great at any one thing.

This is a pretty humbling realization to have at 24. The world that seemed prime for Bryce domination just a few years ago has disappeared. In it's place is a much more stable, calmer existence. It's much nicer than I thought it would be.

But I am a bit worried. Greatness in one area, is very often more beneficial than goodness in many areas. Check out Tim Ferriss' post on the topic. While I am relieved to know that I don't have to be Zuck or the Gravity Cowboy to feel great about myself, I know that to continue to succeed in all aspects of life I will have to focus on greatness at a few things.

Business Process Outsourcing

2010-09-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

I'm really proud of the entire TaskUs team. This week we launched our business process outsourcing service TaskUs Pro. We have been running this aspect of our business for over a year. But this week we finally got around to presenting the service to the world.

The website looks awesome thanks to Jim and Casen's design and development skills. The offering is solid thanks to the hard work of Joan, Charles, Ben and the entire team in Manila. Over the past year we have grown our company rapidly from a small virtual assistant service to a real company focused on helping growth stage start ups, major business organizations and government entities outsource everything from data entry to transcritpion, sentiment scoring to content creation. We've worked for Yelp, Home Depot and the U.S. Department of Justice, just to name a few. The tasks have been fascinating, challenging and at times down right overwhelming.

It's taken 6 trips the the Philippines, 100,000 airline miles and 42 nights spent at Trader's Manila to get the service to where it is today. I'm proud of how far we have come and excited by what lies ahead.

Mind Meld

2010-09-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been engaged in a conversation and knew exactly what they person was going to say next? Have you ever thought of something at the exact same time as a person you are sitting with? This happens to me a lot. I'll be trying to think of someone's name. I'll say to the person I'm sitting with, "you know the girl with brown hair." Then a few moments later we think of the name at the exact same time. People talk about being so familiar with one another, "that we finish each other's sentences."

Well there is a scientific phenomenon behind this and it makes me wonder about perception and intuitiveness. According to a recent study, people's brain waves follow one another when they are having a conversation - the listener's brainwaves mimic the talker's brain waves. Generally the listener's brainwaves are delayed by a second of two. But in some cases the listener's brainwaves preempt the speaker's, as if they are sensing exactly what the speaker is going to think next.

I consider myself very intuitive. I've got a good sense of what feel are feeling and thinking - sometimes too good of a sense. This study is amazing. Next I'd like to know what causes this ability.

Hasbeens vs. Wannabes

2010-09-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

I've been helping Jaspar do a lot of hiring for Smarter Social Media lately. The process has been fascinating. As entrepreneurs we are both predisposed to want to hire people with an entrepreneurial mindset. We are looking for someone who can see the vision. Someone who will take a smaller salary today to be part of something significant. Someone who will work long, hard hours to build a great company.

All of these things come standard with an entrepreneurial personality and they are essential for early employees to posses in any bootstrapped company. The problem is the other qualities of entrepreneurial personalities: strong will (aka stubbornness), the need to lead and a preference for vision over execution, are all qualities of terrible employees. Employees need to be flexible so they can take orders, they need to be team players and they need to take the CEO's vision and execute on it relentlessly. Herein lies the problem with hiring the entrepreneurial type.

Not all entrepreneurial personalities are created equal however. In the course of my contact with entrepreneurial employees I've noticed two distinct categories: wannabes and hasbeens. Let's start with the wannabes - these people think they are entrepreneurs. They plan to one day start their own venture and are working inside a startup to gain experience. At their best they are sponges eager to learn and grow. At their worst they are arrogant and rigid. They posses all the qualities of a spoiled child, wanting their way or no way and being completely unwilling to put in the hard work to accomplish the vision (even if the vision is theirs to begin with). For the most part wannabes make terrible employees. They are the quickest to claim ownership of your firm's successes, and the quickest out the door when times get tough.

Hasbeens are an entirely different breed. They are ex-entrepreneurs. Their previous venture most likely failed, otherwise they wouldn't be working for you (of course, in some rare cases they are back for the fun of it.) Generally they are the humblest and hardest working of all employees. Why? Because they've been on a tour as an entrepreneur. They are intimately familiar with the stress that only someone leading a firm can understand. They've managed employee emotions, cash flow, bottom lines, boards and everything else that comes with the job. They understand the position that you are in. On rare occasion they have a chip of resentment on their shoulder because they didn't make it. But with their resentment comes respect, something most wannabes lack entirely.

So if I have my pick between a 23 year old bright eyed, ambitious, "I hope to be an entrepreneur" and a 35 year old, humble, "I failed as an entrepreneur", I'm taking the 35 year old every time.

The Death of the Phone Number

2010-08-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

I had just finished writing this post. Before I read it to edit I spent 5 minutes flipping through TechCrunch and found this...

Crazy coincidence! Nikhyl Singhal's post is spot on so give it a read, and be sure to check out my thoughts on the subject below:

A phone number is an amazing thing - a short string of digits can connect you to anyone, anywhere in the world. But lately, I've been thinking a lot about how redundant phone numbers have become. It's reasonable to expect that over the next decade something will replace the phone number as the default means of voice-to-voice connections.

Phone numbers are 130 years old. First seen in Lowell, Massachusetts during an outbreak of measles. Prior to the creation of the phone number people with phones would be connected to a switchboard operator who would route their call based on verbal request. The fear was that if Lowell's four switch board operators got ill replacements wouldn't be able to learn the switchboard quick enough to connect calls by name, so names were replaced with numbers.

As telephone networks grew from cities to states to cover the entire country, numbers became the only logical way to keep track of a call's direction. An area code would route the call to a local network and a string of letters and digits would take the call to its final destination. In the early stages of telephony two or three families would share one line. But as phone usage grew from a privilege of the rich to a one-line per family standard, the phone number quickly became the most important piece of contact information. People began calling each other far more than they sent letters, making the telephone far more essential than the address. People actually used to memorize each other's phone numbers. I can still remember the phone number of my best friend's family from elementary school.

Ironically, with the rise of the mobile phone, people no longer needed to memorize numbers. The cellphone's digital phone book took care of that. So these days I don't know anyone's number by heart. Phone numbers are exchanged once. Then people are called by name. When I want to call Jaspar I flip to the J section of my iPhone's phone book and click on his name. Which makes me wonder, what do I need the number for?

Today over 91% of the American population has a cellphone. This is as good as a one cellphone per person standard. Cellphones are incredibly powerful pieces of technology, so why can't we identify people are people instead of numbers? New VoIP technologies such as Skype and Google Voice don't require phone numbers if you are calling within their network. But calling within a single network is restrictive. Not everyone has Google Voice or Skype. Further more not everyone is on Skype or Google Voice at all times. For all intents and purposes everyone has a cellphone and is logged on as long as their cellphone is on.

But the phone number is a vestigial organ of of the cellphone. If cellphones were created today the connections would be powered like social networks. I would add a person like I add a friend on Facebook and from there forward I would be able to call, text and connect with them on the phone.

Speaking of Facebook, with 500 million people worldwide and over 40% penetration in the U.S., the social network is the most likely replacement for the phone number. The Facebook mobile app could easily be modified to power all of our calling. This is a far from a certainty. What is certain is that phone numbers only exist because of their amazing market penetration from the days when they were useful. They have no other utility in a one cellphone per person world. It's crazy to think that my kids will never encounter a phone number.

There is a huge market opportunity here for the person who can figure out how to profit from billions of useless Yellow Page phone books.

Influenced

2010-08-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of reading Influence by Robert Cialdini. The book is a fascinating look at ways to motivate and persuade. Two days ago, I learned just how easy I am influenced when a nice sophomore name Kelsey from NYU called me:

"Hi this is Kelsey calling from NYU alumni relations."

"Hi Kelsey."

"Each year we call alums to make sure their info is correct in our system." She says breaking the nice. When we verify that my information is correct. She moves to create commitment:

"Did you like you time at Gallatin (the school I went to at NYU)?"

"I loved it." I launch into a diatribe about why Gallatin and NYU are great schools and how much she must love being a student there. Now having established how much I love NYU, Kelsey uses my commitment to the greatness of NYU to go for the kill.

"Well that's awesome. You know, in order to support our great school we make these phone calls and ask for alumni donations. Would you like to make a donation today?"

Damn it! I knew that was coming. As Cialdini would point out, I'm already committed to loving NYU, so how can I not support the institution I love? That would be inconsistent.

"Okay," I agree. "How much are you asking for?" At this point the number $25 is emblazoned in my mind. I can afford to give $25.

"Well donations start at the $250 level." What?! Now I'm willing to bet that less than one-percent of the alumni they call donate $250 or more. But that's not the point. Kelsey is giving me a chance to reject her, so that she can offer a lesser amount. By offering a lesser amount Kelsey appears to be doing me a favor. This favor begets reciprocation. Which means I donate the lesser amount. The lesser amount turns out to be...

"We also accept donations at the $50 level." I reciprocate, donating twice as much as I had wanted to.

So even in the midst of savvying up to the influences that pervade our sales driven world, I was suckered, I was influenced.

Princesses, Parents and Partners

2010-08-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

I've dated many types of women and it occurred to me recently that their similarities and differences can be better understood using this paradigm. In intimate relationships with men, women are either princesses, parents or partners.

A princess is a women who expects to be the number one priority of whatever man she is intimate with. She expects calls, texts and presents - all reassuring symbols of her man's affection. A princess expects a relationship to manifest on her terms. She's royalty and has very rarely been expected to sacrifice. It's shocking how many women I know openly admit to being princesses.

The modern father is to blame. A princess is almost always the apple of her father's eye. Very often she is the only daughter and thus the single thing that can melt an otherwise uncompromising father figure. This relationship is the basis of her expectations. Expectations which almost inevitably lead to disappointment and depression as one man after another fails to live up to them. Princesses are the most insecure of all relationship types. They are the most affected by the thoughts of their girlfriends (thus the need to constant texts and presents as public demonstrations of affection). Princesses are also the least willing to provide support to their significant others. Princesses are thus generally unhappy in their relationships and their lives. Unfortunately this rarely improves with age.

A parent is the opposite of a princess in many ways. She pays little mind to the opinions of her girlfriends. Parents are so secure they have little need for shows of affection like texts or presents. Like a princes, a parent expects a relationship to manifest of her terms. However, parents get this or the relationship is over, while princesses are much more likely to stay around and suffer.

For this reason princess and parent relationships can often be confused. Both of these sets of women have disproportionate expectations. But they can be told apart by the simple fact that parents form long lasting, happy relationships based on compromise, while princesses generally end up unsatisfied and miserable. What's is the cause of this difference? Parents generally attract weak, hapless men who are only too happy to serve their beck and call. In exchange parents lend these men their confidence and security. This exchange avoids arguments and forms the basis of a successful relationship. Princesses are all expectations and no exchange. They generally attract more physically attractive men, who turnout be be "assholes" for forgetting to call or bring them flowers.

A partner sits at the center of this continuum, but is an altogether different breed. Partners have expectations. Like all women they expect a certain amount of affection and love. But they give as much as they get and their motivations are totally different from princesses. Calls, texts and presents aren't received as validation of their self worth. They aren't to be shown off to friends. Instead they are a warm feeling inside, that is only understood in the context of a real, reciprocal, relationship. A partnership is a relatively equal exchange of care, respect and love that can't be properly explained in words. Unlike a parent a partner depends on her man for security and confidence. Unlike a princess she is okay when her man depends of her for these same things.

Needless to say having had my fare share of princesses and parents, I am in search of a partner.

Thoughts on New York

2010-08-03T09:18:00.001-07:00

When I left two years ago I thought there was nowhere else I would rather live. The city was in my blood. Every night out held another unpredictable adventure. Every corner had another undiscovered gem, an amazing restaurant or charming bar. New York was and is like no other place on earth.

Coming back after two years I feel different. I have fallen back in love with LA. The yoga, the weather and laid back lifestyle have seduced me in ways I never thought possible. New York is incredible, but I'm no longer certain I want to live here.

I left the city because I left investment banking. Starting your own bootstrapped business in New York is damn near impossible. Although the city has a great startup ecosystem these days, the types of companies that make it in New York are funded by VCs, Angels or peoples parents. I wasn't interested (or wasn't able) to rely on any of these sources of funding. When you start a business with $25k New York is not the place to do it (LA is also probably not the best place unless you live at your parents house).

Over the passed two years I've built a profitable business. Profitable enough that I am now considering paying myself a salary so I can move out of my parents house. But the problem of New York pricing still rings true. I can pay myself $40 or $50k a year. Which should be enough to live in the city. But the city is a high class hooker. She demands extra for dinner, clubs and random bottles of coconut water. I fall victim to all of these.

The other issue with New York is exercise. I've become addicted to exercise in LA. I workout 7 to 9 times a week. New Yorkers aren't so into exercise. I have searched the city and the best I can tell there is only one good yoga class (Sherman at YogaWorks)...

Kindle Becomes Wildfire

2010-07-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

I got my Kindle last month when the priced dropped to $189. It's my favorite gadget. I like it more than my iPhone 4. The reason is simple - simplicity. On the Kindle all I can do is read. I love the no distractions approach of the technology. Apparently, I'm not alone. Just last week the Kindle reached a "tipping point", Amazon now sells more books digitally than it does physically! That's wild when you really think about it. The Kindle was launched less than three years ago!

Since purchasing my Kindle I've read two books - The Big Short and Predictably Irrational - both are highly recommended. I'm now in the middle of my third - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Today I read on TechCrunch that more than 1,000,000 copies of Dragon Tattoo have been sold on Kindle. Again, I'm not alone.

For all the fuss that is made about Apple I am blown away by what Amazon has done. They entered a market they had zero experience in - consumer electronics. They disrupted a six century old business. They dominated the marketplace. And now they are making more money from it then their original core business!

Part of the reason for the Kindle's sucess are the attractive terms that Amazon offers to author's. When publishing on Kindle authors and publishers take home 70%. This means that selling the Dragon Tattoo at $10 a pop would have made the publisher $7,000,000 - and their are no printing or distribution costs!

I'm excited to watch the development of the eBook market over the next few years. Considering the growth of the Kindle in less than three years, one thing is clear - we ain't seen nothing yet.

Why Start?

2010-07-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

The last couple of days I've read some very wise blog posts. My Google Reader is filled with tech entrepreneur and VC blogs. These people are very smart, but I wouldn't call them "wise". On Monday Mark Suster did an incredible post on happiness, "Life is 10% How You Make it and 90% How You Take it." The next day Jamie Siminoff followed up with another awesome post, "The Lottery of Statups."

Both of these guys are incredibly successful entrepreneur's from my perspective. They've built and sold companies for millions. But neither of them is a grandslam entrepreneur who has taken a company public or sold it off to become a billionaire. Reading their posts it's clear that that is of no significance at all. Both of them are incredibly happy. They lead fulfilled lives. At the end of the day would you rather be a millionaire with a great family, awesome job, and content existence or a billionaire with an estranged family, stressful job and miserable daily life?

This is an important lesson for young entrepreneurs like myself. Talking with a mentor recently I said, "I was supposed to be running the world by now!" Starting your first business right out of college or after a few years working (as I did) can yield sky high expectations. As a first time founder you have yet to be weathered by reality. This is a good thing in someways because it keeps you going where others would quit. But it can also lead to disappointment, as it did for me. Looking back on the projections for TaskUs I was supposed to be a millionaire by now.

So why am I happier now than I have ever been? I choose freedom over glory. My life is no longer about becoming a multi-billionaire. Instead I want happiness. This isn't an esoteric take on happiness. Happiness for me is freedom. That includes financial freedom, having enough money to never have to think about money. But it also includes psychological freedom, having enough perspective to never obsess over the irrelevant (while realizing its all irrelevant).

Last week I tweeted the trailer for the new film The Social Network (the story of the founding of Facebook). In the tweet I called Zuckerberg the most successful entrepreneur of our generation. I've wrestled with this since. If measured in terms of dollars and cents he is without a doubt the most successful. But if you measure based on happiness and freedom, I think I'd give him a run for his money.

Facebook is now WorldBook

2010-07-20T15:21:00.000-07:00

My 89 year old Grandpa joined Facebook today. This is huge news. Facebook, which started as a college only, social network about six years ago now has over 500 million members. Just about everyone I know and everyone I meet is on Facebook.

"I'll Facebook you," is a more common comment, than the exchange of actual contact information. Facebook is set to become a representation of the entire population of the world. This has huge implications for business, the internet and the globe:

24 on 24

2010-07-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

Today is my 24th birthday. I have no idea what to make of it. Here's the bad and the good:

The Bad

1) I live at home with my parents.
2) I drive a 20 year old car.
3) I still haven't become a millionaire.
4) Money is still a concern.
5) I still haven't found the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
6) Life is lonely at times.
7) I'm not certain what to do next, this impacts my passion and thus my effectiveness.
8) I don't live in New York.
9) I get stressed out.
10) I haven't learned Arabic, Chinese or how to dance salsa.

The Good

11) I am healthy.
12) I am happy.
13) I have a loving and supportive family.
14) I have three amazing best friends.
15) I have built a business with offices in LA and Manila that employs 110 people.
16) I own a growing business (knock on wood).
17) I am in great shape.
18) I am good looking.
19) I speak Spanish, mas o menos.
20) I get to travel often.
21) I work with different cultures.
22) I have time to exercise everyday.
23) I have time to meditate everyday.
24) I have hope. I believe I have a bright future.

Traveling While Sick

2010-07-10T23:54:00.001-07:00

I hate being sick. I've spent the past ten days living under the oppressive regime of a cold. Lethargic and irritable, I boarded my flight to Manila. The natural high I normally get from traveling was absent. It was an important week. I was in Manila to implement a restructuring plan. I had to meet with my management team, decide on a strategy and then execute it all in a few short days.

Fortunately very little else required my attention. I was blown away by the improvement in our operations. It's been a few months since I was last in Manila and Joan, Ben and Charles have built well oiled machine. We've got a big office that employs 110 people, processes payroll, taxes, benefits, manages hiring, training, firing and daily operations. After a day in the office I turned to Joan, "I could never have built this," I said. I really couldn't have. Our office in Los Angeles is a total startup operation - exposed wires, no formal payroll, phone lines run through our computers. What we have in Manila is a real company. It feels like a corporation that has been in business for five years, instead of five months.

I spent the week working and sleeping intermittently. My lungs were filled with phlegm. My energy levels were low. But I focused on the essentials and got everything done that needed to be done. In the process I developed a sensitivity for those among us who are in perpetual pain. Sick or injured, a huge percentage of the world suffers everyday, as I did for the past week. My own Dad is handicapped. As he has aged his conditioned has worsened and these days he seems to be constantly in pain.

I could not live like this. Even if the minor cold I had for the past week were deemed a constant condition I would choose to commit suicide. This may seem dramatic, abrupt, even a bit spoiled and perhaps it is. Look, I love life. But I love living life, no persevering it. Of course there are ups and downs and perseverance can lead to life's greatest rewards. In this context I persevere more than most. But the kind of pain and suffering I am talking about it constant, endless and brings no balancing highs. The sickness of a terminal cancer patient. The chronic back pain of cripple. The endless depression of someone who refuses anti-depressants. In every case there is a choice and for me the choice is clear. A life of endless pain and suffering is not a life worth living.

Why?

2010-06-27T18:29:00.003-07:00

Over the past week I've spoken with all of my closest friends about a single question - Why? Why do I do what I do for a living? Why am I an entrepreneur?

On Thursday night Jaspar and I went to EO Alchemy, an entrepreneurial speaker series. Each of the half dozen, successful entrepreneurs who spoke made the point that the most important question to ask yourself before starting a business is why? If you figure out why you want to build a business everything else falls into place. You can figure out what your business will be and even how you will build it, after you have your personal reasoning clearly defined. Why is essential, because in every business - new or acquired - the shit is going to hit the fan. And when it does if you aren't absolutely certain why you are doing what you are doing, you'll drop the ball and run for the hills. If, on the other hand, you know exactly why you are in business, what it is your are striving to achieve, you will stay the course.

The next day Tom and I sat down to discuss my options in business. We talked about growing the current operation, building something new and acquiring new businesses. "If were left without a dollar to my name, I would go out and buy an existing business," Tom said. "Starting something new takes a lot of inertia." Tom is someone who has his why clearly defined - Too never think about money and be free to do whatever he wants. He's had the same crystal clear why for the past twenty years. When looking at Work-Life-Money balance, Tom is hands down the most successful person I know. So he's someone to pay attention to on this subject.

Over the weekend I spoke with Rich and I told him about my conversations with Tom and Jaspar about Why. "That's crazy," he said, "this week I was asking myself the exact same thing!" Rich, like me, is pondering his next move and his genius nature led him to the most important question.

The why can be anything: Money, women, changing the world, fame, helping people, proving yourself, taking care of your family, legacy, power, etc. Usually it will be a combination of many factors. But its useful to try and boil it down to its essence. I've asked myself why over and over and come up with two reasons...

Glory and Freedom.

Glory

2010-06-27T18:29:00.001-07:00

From my first entrepreneurial endeavor in the nightclub business at the age of 17, I've been motivated by glory. To me throwing nightclubs was the coolest thing one could possibly do. People new my name and would shout it insistently from the long line they had to wait in to get in. Hundreds, if not thousands, of kids in LA wanted to be my friend. But it was more than fame that I sought. I was trying to prove myself to all those who had judged me and criticized me before. More importantly I was trying to prove myself to myself. Trying to escape a sense of unworthiness that I've felt since I was a kid. Success soothed a deep seated insecurity for a moment or two.

When I moved back to LA from New York I was motivated by Glory once again. I wanted to build a huge business that would make the papers. So that everyone I had worked for in New York, everyone I had gone to school with, would be left envious. Again, I was striving for relief of my own insecurity, trying to prove to myself that I was in fact good enough.

But a few things happened in the process of building the business over the past two years, that have made me less attracted to glory. To begin, the glory hasn't come with TaskUs, in the same way that it did with Access (the all age nightclubs I used to throw). The stakes and expectations were way higher with TaskUs than they had been in the nightclub days. Throwing Access was like having a summer job. I wanted to have fun and make a little money. I ended up making a ton of money, but had I made a few hundred dollars every night instead of a few thousand, I would have been just fine. This time I needed to make enough money to support myself. And not just support myself now. I needed to build a business that could make enough money to support myself in 10, 20 and 30 years. Enough money to support myself with a family, put my unborn kids threw college and pay for the hospital bills when I die.

Building this business proved to be way more challenging than throwing nightclubs. I had to learn all about technology, websites, international labor laws, cultural differences and exchange rates. Perhaps more importantly the strategy behind the business was only half thought through. This was entirely my responsibility and I struggled for the first 12 months in business as a result. This challenge led to working 16 hour days for nothing, zip, zero. I was making no money and working harder than I ever had. I was sacrificing my early twenties and earning nothing. Something didn't add up.

The most important thing that happened, however, was meeting Tom. Tom is a wildly successful, self made entrepreneur. And yet he hardly ever works. He does yoga. He meditates. He hangs out with his family and his friends. He occasionally takes trips to see stores and takes the time to think through the major strategic decisions of his business. But he barely ever works. This model clashed so boldly with my traditional view of success - working long hard hours to provide an upper-crust lifestyle for a beautiful (perhaps slightly dysfunctional) family. Tom isn't the richest person I've met since moving back to LA. But he can buy whatever he wants, do whatever he wants. travel to where ever he wants, eat where ever he wants, and he actually had the time to enjoy all of these things.

Meeting Tom made be stop and reconsider my why. Why did I want to be an entrepreneur. What did I really want to achieve. This led me to realize I want Freedom.

Freedom

2010-06-27T18:28:00.001-07:00

Why do I want to be an entrepreneur? I want to be free. And when I say free I mean free in every way you can think of. I want financial freedom. To me financial freedom means never having to think about money when buying something whether it's a latte or a private jet for me and my friends to go to Europe for the week. To me financial freedom means being able to provide for my parents, my wife, my kids and all of my friends, so that when a generous urge strikes I never hesitate to act on it.

But if it were just about being rich I would have stayed at the investment bank. So freedom means something more. I want to be free to enjoy the my life. Free to do whatever I feel like doing in the moment. Sometimes I'll want to work. Sometimes I want to work out. Sometimes I'll want to hangout with friends. I want the freedom of time so that I can enjoy all of these experiences to the fullest.

One could reasonably ask at this point, if it were that easy why wouldn't everyone do it? Good question. To start most people are too damn scared. We see other people working long, hard hours and think we have got to as well. I do this too. Julia is working a job at an investment bank this summer and every time I hear about her 16 hour days I feel guilty for taking 9 am yoga classes on a Tuesday morning. But more importantly I'm not saying that I will achieve this level of freedom. I am simply responding to the question - Why do you want to be an entrepreneur? Freedom.

Today I saw an ad in The Economist (the greatest magazine in the world) for a job opening in the New York office. I love the Economist, I love New York and, at this point in my entrepreneurial journey, I love the idea of a secure $75K income. But my why is freedom. Any "job" that requires office hours immediately compromises my objective. In fact, the only way to obtain the kind of freedom I've described is to be an entrepreneur or an heir.

Fortunately for me I don't have the latter option. I say fortunately, because Freedom is not the only why. As I said before, there is an amalgam of motivators. Freedom just happens to be the main one. I am still motivated by glory. These days I'm not as interested in being the President of the United States, or winning an Academy Away. Instead I want the feeling that I built something, that I created my own success. Clearly this is rooted in that old insecurity, but the longing for Freedom out weighs it.

Additionally, for me, the entrepreneurial process of studying an industry, looking for opportunity, building solutions to problems and empowering workers with jobs and customers with better products and services provides pleasure in its own right. So part of the answer to - why do you want to be an entrepreneur is just that...

I want to be an entrepreneur.

Reputation as Currency

2010-06-21T22:54:00.000-07:00

Today Virgin America announced that it will give away free flights to people with high Klout scores. Klout is a brilliant start up that uses a complex algorithm to analyze your influence on Twitter. This promotion is even more brilliant, for both companies. For Virgin America it brings more publicity, the promotion has already been covered by Forbes, Mashable and the LA Times. More importantly it incentivizes social influencers to fly with Virgin. While the company says that nothing is required, these people are the best Tweeters in the world. The idea of them getting on a plane without sending out a tweet or two is ludicrous. In order to register for the promotion you have to opt-in and get your Klout score. Klout also gets to attach itself to a reputable brand like Virgin. So the upside for the start up is clear as well.

Klout is the first significant player in a space that fascinates me - Reputation Valuation. Until now we have all been judged as equals from the other side of the cash register. However, we are not equals. Some are more influential than others. Some are more desirable customers in specific situations. To date the only industry to really recognize and act on this is the night club industry. When you meet the velvet rope money matters, but not as much as good looks, guy to girl ratio and reputation. When I worked in the industry I watched people ready to spend five grand turned away. I also watched people not planning to spend a penny ushered in when the venue was well past capacity. The reason was simple - influence. A night club is hot when it has the right people, the beautiful and the hip. This creates hype and attracts the big spenders. Influence doesn't matter as much to most other industries. But it does matter. In fact, I think the ability for every industry to rank influence and reward customers based on their reputation value, is a multi-billion dollar opportunity.

A few weeks back I wrote about Facebook's ability leverage reputation value on the Smarter Social Media blog. The trouble with the current attempts to rank influence is that they are taking place in virtual spaces. Your influence on Twitter is not the best indicator of your influence in the real world. According to Klout Richard Florida is more influential than Eminem. Facebook has a big edge on Twitter when it comes to ranking influence in the real world. Which maybe the reason Klout released a new Facebook app. On Facebook people give a fairly accurate representation of their social selves. Calculations like number of friends, number of tagged photos, number of wall posts, number of likes, number of comments per post, could be algorithimized into a fairly accurate representation of influence. This information could be packaged and sold to brands far and wide. Restaurants, spas and hotels all want to attract "the influencers". An entire industry could be created by discounting daily deals based on influence.

Undoubtedly this will offend some. Those turned away at the velvet rope never go home happy. But it's a beautiful case study in the power of free markets. This time they are putting a value on you!

Strategy > Execution

2010-06-20T21:30:00.001-07:00

Tonight my dad and I replaced the toilet seat in one of the bathrooms at our house. It was a perfect show or manly teamwork to end a great Father's Day. Putting the new toilet seat on was no problem. But getting the old seat off proved to be damn near impossible. I tried a wrench and pliers and old fashioned brute force and got nowhere. The nut just wouldn't come off the screw.

By the time my dad joined the effort I had worked so hard, I had broken the skin on my knuckles and bright red blood was smearing all of the porcelain white surface of the toilet. Taking one look at the situation my dad pointed out my futility, "You need to pop the caps on the top and the seat and use a screw driver...the screw is turning because you aren't holding it in place from above."

Sure enough, within five minutes I had the old seat off.

This is a great example of why strategy matters more than execution. I'm about the clumsiest person I know when it comes to handiwork. But my execution wasn't what was holding me back in this situation. I had the wrong strategy. Had I continued to hammer away at the nut and the screw, I would have worked for another half an hour, lost a pint of blood and gotten nowhere. With a simple shift of strategy the job was done (by the same clumsy executor) in five minutes.

Strategy matters more than execution in all situations. Especially business. Starting a business with the wrong strategy is like setting sail across the ocean, one degree off course. You can be the best sailor in the world but you still won't end up at your destination.

Cocky

2010-06-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

Friday night I went out to James Beach and the Viceroy. It was my first time out in LA in months. Travel, work and an addiction to early morning yoga have kept me away from the scene. In truth I don't like going out that much these days. Each night out leaves me thirsty for a genuine connection. I'd rather have a real conversation with someone, male or female, then be surrounded by LA's plentiful masses of gorgeous women and bottles of alcohol. It wasn't always this way.

In college I lived in New York and London and was a regular at the bars and clubs of the Meatpacking District, Chelsea and Soho (both chelseas and sohos). The best of nights were filled with drinking, dancing and debauchery. I was forward, loud and, at times, obnoxious enough to get kicked out of quite a few of these places. Looking back I have no regrets, it was great period of life, but I'm also not nostalgic.

These days when I do go out, I'm more likely to be found amongst the wallpaper, then dancing, Grey Goose in hand, on top of a plush leather couch. I feel much shier than I once was. Which brings me back to Friday night.

On my way home I sat in the back of a taxi talking to Brad and his new girlfriend. I've know the girlfriend for less than a month. Which is enough time to start pursuing one of her friends. As usual, I'm open about my attractions with everybody. In explaining her friend's feelings the girlfriend used one word to describe me, "cocky."

This left me surprised. It's not that I've never heard this before. Over the years I've been called pretty much everyone of the thesaurus' alternatives for arrogant. But recently I've felt anything but. In social situations I perceive myself to be quiet, reserved and shy.

I've been thinking about this a lot since and here's what I've come up with. I am straight forward. I do my best to provide a genuine answer to all questions, barring answers that will unnecessarily hurt people's feelings. This means if someone asks me, "How are you?" I'll take the time to tell them how I am doing, what I am feeling, what's challenging and inspiring me at that moment. I also thirst for other people to be genuine, which requires me to lay myself open and vulnerable. People rarely tell you their secrets until you have told them yours. This can be disarming, even intimidating. Also, my increasing shyness has done nothing to deter my confidence. I am, for the most part, totally secure in who I am. Both of these things are often confused with arrogance and may in fact be arrogance at times.

Pondering this this weekend has been a great exercise. That one word - cocky - has revealed a lot about who I am. I don't regret my disposition, even if it is perceived as arrogance. In fact, master VC Fred Wilson states this as one of his requirements for being a great entrepreneur: "A confidence bordering on arrogance."

I now think that Rich may have been right. In college we had long debates about confidence vs. arrogance. I opposed him fiercely then. But these days I think he had a point when he said:

"It's not arrogance if it's true."

Mind of an Entrepreneur 007

2010-06-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

It has happened a dozen times over the past two months. I go to pay for a meal, a yoga class or a bottle of water and...

"I'm sorry sir your card doesn't seem to be working."

Embarrassing, especially when the person rejecting you is a hot yoga teacher who's class you are about to go into. But more than embarrassing it's irritating. I've spent hours on the phone with credit card companies this past month. Why is this happening? Two reasons:

1) These are relatively new accounts on which we are spending a lot of money. Nothing we can do about that.

2) I'm traveling - LA, New York, Manila, Hong Kong - I've been rejected everywhere. This one is solvable.

Credit card companies will sometimes put a hold on your card when you start spending money in a new city. The thought process is that someone has cloned your credit card and is going on a shopping spree. You are supposed to call your credit card company and let them know you will be traveling. But come on! In our fast pace world I don't have another half an hour to spend on the line with customer service.

What I do have is data on my whereabouts. Lots of it. I tweet and post to facebook just about everywhere I go outside of LA. So here's the idea: the credit card companies should offer to follow me. The companies can use an NLP algorithim (Natural Language Processing) to parse my posts for mentions of cities, states, countries and continents. This information is then used to seamlessly update my profile in their system.

So when I tweet, "Just landed in NYC", my credit card doesn't decline at the MTA station. Instead the card knows I'm in New York. Happy holidays.

Juxtaposition

2010-05-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks contain more in them than could be written about in one blog post, or in the sum of every blog post I will ever write for that matter. Some of it is indescribable, words just wouldn't do it justice. Other parts are still in motion and will play out on this blog over the next few months. But the one thing that is certain is that nothing will ever be the same.

For seven days and seven nights I lived in silence. Meditating, hiking, doing yoga and co-habitating with Tom without saying a single word. Adyashanti provided the space and spiritual guidance. The retreat was held in the mountains above Santa Cruz on the gorgeous property of Baba Hari Das.

Adyashanti is a Zen Master. What pops to mind when I type those words is an old Japanese wise man with a long flowing bread. Adyashanti is not this. He is a 50 year old white dude who speaks the truth. He's intelligible, aggressive and hilarious. Spending a week in his presence was ecstasy.

Now this isn't to make it seem like all fun and games. It wasn't staying silent for seven days can be a bit of an endurance sport. Day three and four had me counting the hours like I count the laps on a treadmill. But each day held a new insight into myself and the nature of things. Spending time with Tom was incredible. We depended our relationship without saying a word or even looking at one another.

When the retreat ended I grabbed my bags and hoped on a flight to New York City. Jaspar and I attended and demoed at TechCrunch Disrupt. It was the best conference I have ever been to. The entire time we were surrounded by other young, smart and ambitious minds trying to do something to make a difference. We met financial companies like Plantly and Betterment, media companies like MovieClips and mobile apps like PhoneTell and Talk2.Us. This is just a sampling of the hundreds of people that we met at the conference. I'd recommend attending for anyone who is serious about their startup.

Being back in the city was invigorating. I went on some great runs around the central park reservoir, connected and reconnected with friends old and new - Julia, Yasmine and Bastien, and discovered that New York yoga is so incredibly awful it's almost comical.

Will I move back? Maybe.

This past weekend I spent with Rich and his ever growing family in Connecticut. Lucas and JJ (aka Wally) are the newest additions to the Reyes clan. Seeing my contemporaries have kids gives me a whole new perspective on babies. Holding and playing with these boys who are just a few months old was the most fun part of the past two weeks. However, I left terrified. The thought of having to care for a baby 24/7/365 is so unbelievably overwhelming, I am shocked that so many people do it.

Rich and I delved deep into conversation. No matter how much time passes I seem to seamlessly reconnect with the closest of my old friends.

I'm landing now and the Virgin America wifi will be turned off shortly. Back to LA, my bed and my exercise routine. But a lot has changed. I'm both excited and terrified to see how it will play out over the next few months. Stay tuned.

Silence

2010-05-15T21:03:00.000-07:00

For the next week I will be silent.

No email, no texting, no calling.
No Facebooking, tweeting.
No talking.

Tom and I are going on a week long retreat with Adyashanti.

I come back Sunday night and it's off to Disrupt.

From silent meditation to networking in NYC in 24 hours. It will be quite a transition.

But for now, I'll be meditating. Enjoy the week.

Profit

2010-05-15T08:57:00.001-07:00

Why do I write this blog?

In the middle of writing People, Process and Persistence I began to
think about another P - Profit. As an entrepreneur most of what I do
is driven by the search for profits. But this blog isn't profitable
directly or indirectly.

I started writing the blog to track my adventures. It started with
detailed accounts of my personal life - friends, women, etc. But the
more my business grew, the less comfortable I was with sharing these
details. I would meet a great prospect and realize the first thing
they were going to do was Google me and read about the most recent
girl I slept with.

So the blog has become about business. I use it to ponder, to analyze
trends. It is my attempt to participate in the collective dialouge
amongst my peers. And yet the blog has never been as popular as it was
when I was writing about my personal life.

Sex sells I suppose.

But persistence keeps me writing. Holding out hope that the blog means
something to more people than just me.

Persistence

2010-05-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

Exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed, I looked at Jaspar and nodded my head. "You'll be fine," he said. I couldn't even speak. The next day I was to give a presentation to a business networking group that we were apart of. It was an informal thing, a group of lifestyle entrepreneurs having breakfast once a week to share leads. With the million and one things I had going on at the time, I hadn't found the time to plan for the presentation. So there I was, ten p.m. the night before, totally unprepared.

When I got home I threw myself on to my bed and heaved, heavy sobbing cries. I yelled into the mattress and let the frustration, disappointment and sadness that had built over the previous months spill out. The presentation would come and go. I'm fortunate enough to thrive on speaking to large groups of people, and do well off the cuff. But this was about something more. I had poured my heart into the business for the past year, and here I was stuck in a morning networking group, presenting in hopes of a few hours of outsourcable work. I was supposed to be making tens of thousands of dollars a month by this point. I was supposed to be traveling the world, while my business ran itself. Instead I was doing almost all of the work myself. I was managing a small team in Manila, marketing online, selling in person and staying up at night to make sure the work was done right, all while living at my parents house and making zero dollars.

That was a year ago. If the first year in business taught me anything it is that things always take longer. Humans are optimists, we constantly underestimate the time it will take to accomplish things. Some would say learning patience is the answer. To me patience isn't enough. Patience implies waiting. Success in business isn't about waiting. It's about working ceaselessly, for as long as it takes, until it is done. It's about riding the emotional roller coaster, keeping the long view in mind, maintain perspective. In short building a business requires persistence.

Things that will very likely happen while building your business include:

You will be told it's a dumb idea.
Employees will quit because they no longer believe in the idea.
People will sue you.
Clients will write you angry emails that may or may not make you feel like a failure.
You will find out someone is stealing from you.
You will have to sue people.
Your friends will make more money than you.
You will work longer hours than your friends.
You will wonder why the hell you did this in the first place.

Everyone of these things has happened to me more than once over the past two years.

Persistence has kept me going.

Process

2010-05-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

Process is by far the most under valued aspect of building a business. Young, ambitious, entrepreneurs - like yours truly - are used to freedom, creativity and a bit of magic. The idea that a repeatable process must be imposed on our business and lives is a bit repulsive.

But after being in business for two years I can tell you that process is essential. Without process your business will not scale. Without scale you don't have a business.

Jeremy sent me a Steve Blank talk last week that really puts this into perspective. Most of my contemporaries act like Billy Durant. We are driven by ambition, creativity and fearlessness, bordering on arrogance (or stupidity), to make our ideas a reality. But turning your ideas into reality is not the same as turning your vision into reality.

My idea was a simple outsourcing solution that would be used by businesses to cheaply and securely scale their organizations. When we launched TaskUs my idea was a reality.

My vision is to be the go to resource for every growth stage startup in need of a team of 10 people or more to automate a human intelligence process (aka cyborg process) be it chat support, transcription, moderation, tagging or sentiment scoring. My vision is for the company to have 5,000 employees spread across offices in the Philippines, India and South America, supporting 100+ growth stage operations at any one time. I'm still working on the vision.

The bridge between the realization of my idea and my vision is process. When we opened our first office in the Philippines I had a team of 8 people. Tasks were assigned and checked, in some semblance of a process, but the process was fluid. This kept us agile, but it also prevented us from the rapid scale we would need to be able to take on 50 to 100 person contracts. When we got our first such contract we spent a month running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Who was doing what? When was it getting done? How long did it take? How good was the final result? It was terrifying chaos.

What enabled us to pull it together and maintain the contract to this day was process. In any process there are multiple sets of players. In a classic example there are Producers, Checkers and Managers. We were doing massive amounts of transcription work. So our producers were the transcriptionists on the floor. Our checkers were our in house QAs, who routinely checked and graded the work of the transcriptionists. Our managers were our team leaders who oversaw each shift of transcriptionists, keeping them on task and ensuring they met production expectations.

This process was built by asking a simple question: What matters? At the end of the day what data do I need to see as the owner of the operation? At the end of the day what data does the client care about? In this case it was the overall volume of audio transcribed and the quality of the transcription. That's it. Checkers (QAs) and Managers (TLs) are the two levels of management in the process that provide daily insight into these metrics.

But process doesn't stop there! Simply having access to the important metrics is meaningless unless you do something about it. A feedback loop must be built so that the Producers have access to their own stats. Each transcriptionist needed to know how much audio they transcribed each day and what the quality of their transcriptions were. Furthermore, we needed to support those transcriptionists struggling with either metric to improve. This involved one-on-one training sessions with the QAs or speed typing practice.

Knowing what we know about People, we must also factor self-interest into this equation. It's great that the Producer knows the areas in which he must improve, but when he is sick, tired or simply having a bad day what is his motivation? Incentives are essential in every process. Incentives take the form of carrots and sticks. For us the stick is the fear of loosing your job. We built a six month, glide path in which the producers metrics must improve each month. If the metrics do not improve to the specified guidelines the Producer is warned, once, twice and then terminated.

As an employer who expects excellence of his employees, I think it is only reasonable that my employees expect excellence of me. So I returned the favor in the form of monthly, monetary bonuses for all Producers (and Checkers and Managers) who go above and beyond.

Obviously a massive transcription production is a relatively simple, quantifiable process. But the frame work of Producers, Checkers, Managers, Carrots and Sticks can and should be applied to every business process...unless you want to stay searching for a business model that is.

People

2010-05-10T21:21:00.000-07:00

This week marks two years as an entrepreneur, two years since I packed up my apartment in New York and moved back to LA to pursue the dream. I've learned way more over the past two years than I could ever cover on this blog. But I'm going to try to boil down what I have learned about starting a business into three simple principles - People, Process and Persistence.

Today we will cover people.

"If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don't have to manage them." Jack Welch

When I started this journey I believed that the harder I worked the better I would do. I've found that there is no greater illusion for an entrepreneur. Building a business takes hard work, sure, but hard work alone is no guaranty of success. In fact, I've seen many an entrepreneur, myself included, waste hours, weeks, even years on "hard work" when they should be delegating, taking a vacation and getting perspective.

People who are hard workers make great employees. They don't make great entrepreneurs. I was a hard worker two years ago. Coming off an investment banking job it was what I had been trained to do. But I've changed. I've learned that as an entrepreneur it is much more important to be a hard motivator and have a keen eye for talent.

People are everything in business. If there is one lesson you need to learn before becoming an entrepreneur its this - you are only one person. No matter how good you are at financial modeling, database design or writing creative briefs you will only ever be able to do the work of one person. So rather than stubbornly doubling your working hours to scale your business, step back, hire and train. I assure you that you will run a leaner, more effective and profitable business if you hire two people to do whatever function you need done for 40 hours a week a piece, than you will if you stubbornly insist on putting the 80 hours of work yourself each week.

I give you this assurance on one condition - you pick the right people. Over the past two years I have built a business of over 100 people. The cause of my greatest successes and my greatest failures have always been people. My people have built this business. They have established more efficient processes and procedures, design innovative and creative approaches for our clients, and have even volunteered to cut their own benefits to enhance the firm's bottom line. But people have also burned this business. Altogether people have cost the business well over $50,000 and those are just costs that can be tracked to egregious acts of negligence.

So here are my rules about people:

1) Always Go With Your Gut: If you get a strange vibe there is probably a reason for it. Never hire someone who triggers the warning signals of your intuition. First impressions aren't always correct. Sometimes the person you are interviewing is having a bad day, or maybe you are having a bad day. But you are operating in an information vacuum and have a time line by which you need to hire someone, so cross the one's you don't like off the list and move on.

2) Get a Second Opinion: This applies to hiring and firing decisions and things as simple as day to day business interactions. Always, always, always have someone else chime in before you make a decision. We are all vulnerable to the perspective of our own egos. Often someone will rub you the wrong way because they challenge a decision or object to something you did. In these cases that person may actually be doing what is best for the business. So check your ego at the door and ask a partner or manager to assess your feelings.

3) Carry a Big Stick: If you tolerate mediocrity you will build a mediocre business. Demand the best of your people and clearly outline the consequences if they don't deliver. Try your best to quantify this - sales numbers, project deadlines, etc. You should be able to quickly identify underperforms and let them go. A tougher situation arises when you have a star who stops delivering. In these cases take the time to talk to the employee. Small changes can go a long way. But generally if they have lost motivation, bored of the job, they ought to be removed quickly. Negative energy is infectious, and wasting money on people who aren't producing isn't a luxury most businesses have.

4) Inspire: All the latest neuroscience has proven that feedback doesn't work so don't waste your time (for more on this read: Management Rewired). What does work is inspiration. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves, they want to be part of an important narrative. Great CEO's are often great storytellers who conceive of a world in which their company is wildly successfully and accomplish it by convincing their employees that it's a reality. It's a game of make believe...until it comes true. Write your companies narrative and tell stories sticking to it weekly.

5) Incentivize: While, everyone wants to feel like they are part of something bigger, everyone also looks out for their own self interest. If you give them the ability to earn extra money, praise or benefits in exchange for delivering, their overall productivity will increase dramatically. People will tell you that they will work hard for you no matter what, but when they are sick, demotivated, and angry at you what will keep them going to the thought of a bigger paycheck to bring home to their family.

Finally, remember that building a company is the closest experience you will ever have to building a family. You will go through great times and wretched times with your people. Be transparent. Be kind. Be loyal.

From my iPhone

2010-05-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

I was thinking of abandoning Blogger altogether. I'd really like to
move over to a hipper platform like Tumblr or at least a better
looking one like WordPress. Blogger is like the grandma of blogging
platforms. Old, ugly and comfortable. But alas, it seems to be a
pretty tough process to move.

So instead I'm going to make lemonade out of these ancient blogging
lemons. The first of my new improvements, mobile blogging. I'm writing
this on my iPhone. Blogger has an easy email to post feature.

Next up trying to integrate Disqus comments so we can actually get a
conversation going on this site!

The Case Against "Hard Work"

2010-05-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

Let me start by saying that you are never going to be able to start and succeed in business without a fair amount of hard work. I'm just tired of hearing, "if you're smart and you work really hard you'll succeed." I would argue it's just the opposite, if you are smart you'll succeed and won't have to work really hard. Maybe I'm just another example of a Gen-Yer thinking that they should have everything silver spoon fed to them. But this weekend I lived a good example of how being "lazy" can sometimes be a good thing.

Friday night I pulled the trigger and signed us up for TechCrunch Disrupt. Jaspar and I are going to be in New York that week anyway and the line up of speakers is outrageous! That said the $2,000 ticket price is a little hefty. Fortunately, we qualify for StartUp Alley, being a start up that is less than two years old and has received less than $2 million in funding - bootstraps baby!

There's only one problem, we have to have a business to present. TaskUs isn't sexy enough. Smarter Social is a dime a dozen to these folks. We needed to do something that was...disruptive! So I started throwing around ideas for a social media market research algorithm. I was planning to work all weekend on developing it. Instead I went to yoga, went hiking, went for a walk on the beach, went to yoga, went to brunch with Neel - all punctuated by meditation and attempts to recover my Spanish by watching Abre Los Ojos and Che.

How, you ask, did this yield a better result than working all weekend?

By giving myself space I figured it out. The new TaskUs is what we will present. Over the past four months we have added 100 employees. Why? Because we have iterated into a one stop, human intelligence outsourcing solution, for growth stage start ups that are running cyborg businesses. It's a niche, which is what we have been searching for all along, and Disrupt will be filled with potential customers.

We won't be the coolest kids at the conference. We certainly won't be the smartest. But in terms of strategy, we won't be matched.

adTech

2010-04-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

I just got back from adTech San Franciso. As part of the team's new philosophy to spend less time behind the desk and more time face to face with our clients and press partners, I've booked myself on a crazy conference schedule for the rest of 2010. I figured adTech, the digital marketing conference, would be the sensical place to get this kicked off. Let's start with the positive.

The conference was huge. Literally thousands of very smart marketers coming together to network knowledge and dollars. I got to meet awesome folks from Nielsen, Hyatt, Genie Knows, Izea and Wyndstorm. I made connections with a whole slew of potential service providers for our clients. I'm confident that there will be huge benefit from that. But let's be honest, the point of going to a conference, of braving security lines, traveling thousands of miles and sleeping in a hotel bed (or in my case, on my buddies Luther's couch - hat tip) is to sell. One campaign, one client or one sale from a conference makes the entire experience worth it. Walking away without an almost certain prospect is disappointing. adTech, like all industry conferences, puzzles me a bit. The people I'm trying to sell to are normal businesses - airlines, retail brands, new web start ups. These people don't go to a digital marketing conference to shop for a social media company. The people who do go to digital media conferences fall into the following categories:

63% "performance" ad networks, aka affiliate networks, cpa peddlers and the lowest common denominator in the industry
19% search related experts - mostly SEO with a sprinkling of social media optimization
9% major tech and research firms - the Google's, Facebook's and comScore's of the world
5% innovative young start ups
4% social media marketing companies

The people who interested me fall into the final three categories which is to say out of 100+ vendors at the conference I only wanted to talk to 18 and was really fascinated with my conversations with maybe half a dozen. With that said I made some great connections, got to hang with Adam and Luther in San Francisco and made a trip to Mountain View to see one of our current clients. So was it worth it? Only the sales cycle will tell.

King Cash

2010-04-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager my Dad explained his financial situation to me:

"Bryce, I don't make any money I just watch it pass by."

Today I'm realizing how this feels. Business is a booming! (knocking on wood), and as the business grows managing cash flow has become a head ache and a half. Wire transfers taking weeks to be delivered and credit card payments taking days to process have kept me up at night over the past two weeks.

If you are an employee you probably have a hard time understanding cash flow issues. With a paycheck on auto-debit your impression would naturally be as long as cash comes in everything will be fine. Why wouldn't the same apply to business? If a business is making money, it would seem, money would not be a problem. But in the simplest of all businesses, the practice of invoicing and waiting, can be crippling.

At Smarter Social Media we do a lot of media buying. We are purchasing online ads with search engines, social networks and blog networks. As an agency we often pay for these ads on behalf of our clients and add the amount into their monthly service invoice. So while a client may pay $10,000 a month for online marketing service - a seemingly profitable proposition - we find ourselves routinely out $50,000 in fronted advertising expenses, until the client pays the advertising and service invoice.

This could be easily addressed with business credit, but in case you haven't noticed the flow of credit has been pretty restricted of late. On top of this we have been dealing with interbank rivalries. We bank with Bank of America but have our credit cards with Citibank (for the AAdvantage Miles). This month we tried to pay off our new Citibank card. The money came out of our BofA account and showed up on our Citibank statement, but Citibank refused to release a hold on our credit card until we got a BofA representative on the line to confirm that the money was in transit. Citibank had recieved a check that BofA cut itself and still would not release the hold on our card until the money arrived in their account, or BofA assured them it would. Allow me to ask the logical question - if BofA cut the check, isn't that assurance that the funds are in the account?

On the TaskUs side of the business, the process is made all the more fun by international money transfer regulations. Moving money from the U.S. to the Philippines would seem like an easy proposition. The two countries are allies and there isn't a lot of terrorist funding or money laundering flowing through Manila. But sending money from a U.S. bank account to a Philippine account can sometimes take a whole week!!! Services like Xoom allow you to transfer money in seconds, but these third party payment services are crippled by Federal Reserve approval regulations and a banking community - Bank of America in our case - that is hostile to innovative third party providers who take away their lucrative $45.00 per transfer stream of income. If I need to move more than a few thousand dollars from the US to the Philippines in less than 72 hours, I can't. Period.

In practice this has meant that client advertising campaigns have been paused, bills have gone unpaid, the resulting penalties incurred, and, worst of all, employee salaries have been delayed. Clearly, this is no excuse for this kind of chaos. Other entrepreneurs deal with the cash flow headache, avoiding these problems, and I have learned valuable lessons over the past month that will help me avoid these consequences (but not the headache) in the future.

All the same, I am shocked at the sclerotic state of our financial system. The result of overbearing bureaucratic regulation and a financial system made up of dinosaur corporations that continuously fail to innovate.

As always, I'm routing for a new batch of entrepreneurs to challenge the establishment and make managing my business's cash flow easier.

Productivity & Process

2010-03-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

Does your day ever look like this?

Mine does. I find that I often hit the ground running Monday. Filling up the entire day with getting things done. But by the time Tuesday rolls around I'm bogged down by a double whammy of less enthusiasm and less to do. Things take time to process - designer need to design things, writers need to write things, and so forth. I'm left twiddling my thumbs or Facebook stalking.

I now realize that this is because I am spending way too much time behind the desk. My extensive traveling so far this year has opened my eyes to the effectiveness we gain by meeting people face to face. So I am making a New Quarter Resolution. For the second quarter the TaskUs and Smarter Social Media team will be spending less time behind the desk and more time outside. More events, more drinks and more time to wander around. I've met some of my best clients and connections doing things totally unrelated to business. So that'll be an essential part of this philosophy.

We are still a fledgling business so if this strategy fails we are toast. But I think we risk more by staying stagnant.

Hyatt & TaskUs

2010-03-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we announced a major sweepstakes in partnership with Hyatt Place. In recognition of the millions of overworked, road warriors, struggling to balance work life and personal life, TaskUs teamed up with Hyatt Place to give back.

For those of you who don't know Hyatt Place is the hotel for entrepreneurs and business people. They offer free wifi through out the entire hotel, 42 inch plasmas in every room and a 24/7 coffee bar stocked with snacks and goodies to eat on the run. If you read this blog you know that TaskUs is the premium virtual assistant service.

Together Hyatt and TaskUs are offering 20 winners a two night stay at the Hyatt Place of their choosing and 30 hours of free personal assistant service. All you have to do to enter is head on over to Hyatt Place Helps and fill out the form.

Happy tasking!

Cyborg Inc.

2010-03-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

During the process of rapidly growing TaskUs to over 100 employees, Jed jokingly said "I'm starting to feel like a cyborg!" I passed it off as a funny, over dramatic joke. But lately, I have been hearing that word a lot in articles covering the Service-on-Demand market. Technology has advanced to such an extent that many things previously preformed by people in high paid professions are now being preformed by computers. But some of the most advanced processes still lack 100% accuracy when done by machine so a human must intervene at various stages in the process. The current Service-on-Demand is neither a labor market, nor a technology market. It exists at the intersection of the two. Simply put its a Cyborg market.

The three biggest Cyborg services are translation, transcription and sentiment scoring. Each of these services can be completed by sophisticated algorithms, algorithims that are improving daily, but are far from 100% accurate. On one side of the spectrum rest Pure Technology Solutions. Think Google Translate, Google Voice or TweetFeel. Each of these solutions is 100% automated and therefore (a lot) less than 100% correct. Have you ever read a webpage translated by Google, or seen a voicemail transcribed by their automated solution. Check out these examples:

One would think that 140 character tweets would be easy for a computer to score as positive or negative, but a close look shows that context is essential. If I say, "Inglorious Basterds was sick!" I mean it was a fantastic film (POSITIVE). If my mum says the same thing she means it was gratuitously violent and difficult to watch (NEGATIVE).

At the other end of the market are Pure Service Solutions. These consist of online translation services that charge $0.10 to $0.25 per word, depending on the amount of checking and editing required. Firms like Trusted Translations and Applied Lanaguages are good examples. In the transcriptions industry firms like VerbaLink and GMR offer 100% human transcripts for $1.50 to $4.00 per audio minute depending on the number of speakers and clarity of the audio. Finally, high-end sentiment solutions are availible from Neilsen BuzzMetrics, Visible Technologies and Wird Sentiment all of which charge $5,000 to $10,000 per month for comprehensive sentiment scoring for a particular brand.

In between is the avant-garde of Service-on-Demand - Cyborg Solutions. At their best these are symbiotic solutions in which technology improves the efficiency of labor, and labor improves the accuracy of technology. My friend Jamie's company Phonetag is a great example. Their voice-to-text algorithm is more accurate than Google's! Yet, unlike Google, they charge their customers for voicemail transcription so they have to have humans go in and clean up the results assuring (almost) perfect accuracy. Humans have also been used to improve the results of automated webpage translation. There are paid services like Smartling. But more interestingly their are armies of translator volunteers helping to translate huge sites like the Economist and Facebook. Again these people piggy back off of algorithmic translation to improve efficiencies. Finally most reputable auto-sentiment solutions like TweetFeel Pro and Radian6 offer the ability for humans to rescore results. A few of these companies are also thinking of offering a hybrid model in which automated sentiment scores are cleaned up by an army of humans.

For now those of you wanting to launch your own cyborg's can turn to the solutions like Amazon's Mechanical Turk - crowdsourcing in which freelancers around the world offer to rescore tweets, provide translation, even clean up your Google Voice messages all for as low as one penny per activity. Mechanical Turk is an amazing idea. Who wouldn't want to crowdsource their tedious data entry for rates that amount to $2.50 per hour? But Mechanical Turk has yet to really take off because of two major flaws - reliability and security.

The former issue has been addressed by startups like CrowdFlower and CloudCrowd. These programs tap into Mechanical Turk's labor pool and use another algorithm to predict the accuracy of individual workers. Customers can then submit tasks and request levels of accuracy - the more accurate the more expensive. Rates range from $3.00 to $12.00 per hour.

I've been very impressed by all of these innovations in the Cyborg Market but I don't think anyone has got it yet. Service-on-Demand is a new industry that has caught the eye of individuals because it sounds sexy - Everyone can have their own army of assistants! But the real consumers of Service-on-Demand are not individuals, they are business. Dollar for dollar businesses will outspend individuals by 100:1 in this industry over the next decade. And if there is anything businesses demand as much as service its reliability and security. Brand matters in this area and you can't build a brand off the reputation of 100,000 freelancers who disappear frequently, work while they are watching TV (if in the US) or fighting off a Typhoon to hold on to internet and power connection (if in the Philippines).

Security is even more important for many corporate clients. Can you imagine any Fortune 500 company ever asking 100,000 people to score the sentiment around their brand?! Imagine all the negative reinforcement that they would lay themselves open to. Or how about a lawyer or doctor (the two largest consumers of transcription services) asking people chosen at random to transcribe their notes and depositions? Sure enough someone would end up transcribing the results of their neighbors mammogram.

So I think that there is room - a wide open gap, in fact - for a reputable, secure Cyborg Corporation, set up to utilize the ever changing advances in technology to deliver reliable results, while securing the entire process from the human variable.

This is the company that I want to build.

Money, Money, Money...MUN AY!

2010-03-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

I've started three business - Access, TaskUs and Smarter Social Media. What went into these business in no particular order was: free Starbucks Wifi, Overnight Flyers, over generous developers, very tight fists, fourteen security guards and the relentless (emotional) support of family and friends. What didn't go into any of them was a significant amount of capital. Access, the series of all age nightclubs Jaspar and I used to run every summer was started with $6,000. The first summer we grossed well over $100,000. TaskUs was started with $25,000. And Smarter Social Media grew organically out of TaskUs.

So there you have it, my ventures to date have been funded with a grand total of $31,000, not counting the tireless, unpaid hours Jaspar and I have committed to each.

I'm not opposed to capital. I just never had an attractive way to raise it. My parents aren't rich and I never felt that I deserved venture or angel funding. I also never wanted to dilute the ownership I had over my ideas. But I am beginning to reconsider.

Over the past three months I have grown our TaskUs operations center in Manila from 12 to over 100 people. The company is stronger than ever. The final meeting with my management team their yesterday was amazing. Everyone has a role and is executing it relentlessly. So much so that I am beginning to feel unneeded.

None of this would have been possible without money...lots of it. Late last year I secured a partnership with a large US public company that has funded all of this growth. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have poured into our operations and the effect has left me feeling like I am running an actual business.

At Smarter Social Media we have a much smaller staff of 8. All in our Santa Monica offices. I have written before about how being in LA allows us to keep labor costs down. But it still ain't cheap (especially when compared with Manila!) That said the business is profitable. So I'm starting to wonder what a capital infusion could do for that business. In fact I'm starting to wonder if I will ever start a business with $6,000 or even $25,000 ever again. Having a large capital base now appears almost essential. To hire the right talent, build a sustainable organization and secure and number one or (at worst) number spot in the market.

Broadband Essential

2010-03-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

Fred Wilson did a post yesterday on The National Broadband Plan. As an American I'm embarrassed by the broadband situation in our country. Both TaskUs and Smarter Social Media have offices in a building that is owned by the City of Santa Monica, a city that is supposed to be known for its "progressive" attitude. For the first year in our offices we had one option for internet - Verizon that ran a whooping 3 mbps download speeds on its best days. Fortunately this changed when Verizon rolled FiOS out in our area. We are now on a more comfortable 50 mbps plan. But still, for the better part of 2009 I was running on speeds barely faster than those found on a good 3G connection. Pretty pathetic for the second largest city in the worlds leading economy.

Simply put boardband access is no longer a nice to have. It has become has become a daily essential for work and life. It has become a utility like water, power and electricity. Those running on 56K modems (or even Verizon 3 mbps connections) are lighting their homes with candles, in what should be a fully electrified grid. But its not. Millions don't have access to truly high speed internet, and those that do find access is often unreliable.

Today I was sitting in our office in Manila and the internet went down. This is something you would expect to happen in a developing country. And it does happen. But no more frequently then our FiOS stops working in Santa Monica.

LA, LA Land

2010-03-18T02:12:00.000-07:00

Mark Suster had a great post yesterday on Starting a Technology Company in LA. Mark was the spokesperson for our city in Fast Company's series of profiles of startup hubs outside Silicon Valley. All of these are definitely worth a look. Check them out here: LA, NYC, Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Boston.

I've started two companies in LA: TaskUs and Smarter Social Media. Neither one is really a tech company. But we have had to hire tech company people - developers, content creators etc. - so I've begun mixing in the tech start up scene here. From my experience I've found one major advantage and one major disadvantage of being a tech startup in LA and they both relate to talent.

Let's start with the negative: Developers are VERY hard to come by. Finding a competent, affordable developers is very difficult. Finding one with a good attitude, who is prepared to work hard is damn near impossible. Competent developers will run you $80K - $150K, easily. Then they'll work 6 to 8 hours a day and keep their work totally obscure. I've written before about my $12,000 mistake in this area. Maybe, great developers are hard to find everywhere. But something makes me think they'd be easier to find in Menlo Park.

Now on to the positive: Non-development talent is cheap! If you are looking for content creators, American Administrators (in the case of TaskUs), or Social Associates (in the case of Smarter Social Media) there is no better city in America than LA. All of these positions can be hired for $10 an hour and the hires themselves aren't dopes. We're talking Harvard, Standford and UCLA graduates. Why you ask would someone of that pedigree work for $10 an hour? They are living the dream baby! They are aspiring actors, writers and directors. As long as you offer them flexible working hours they'll work hard at $10 an hour. This phenomenon was pointed out to me by my fried Tyler Crowley. It helped him and Jason build Mahalo into the most popular Question and Answer site online today.

One final note on why I love the LA startup scene. All of the people in tech here are amazingly approachable. In stark contrast to the hierarchical, ego maniacs in our city's entertainment industry, everyone in the startup scene here is relaxed and friendly. Over the past few month's I've had great conversations with some of most successful people in the industry like Matt Coffin and Mark DiPaolo.

Dork State of Mind

2010-03-17T03:28:00.000-07:00

Those who know me know that I am a huge Jay-Z fan. I also happen to be a geeked out entrepreneur. So when I saw this I went wild!

AutoMarket

2010-03-17T03:14:00.000-07:00

In high school my SAT tutor nicked named me AutoMaddock. It didn't stick but the name is useful for this post.

My friend Brendan Cooper ran a great article yesterday in which he discussed his frustrations attempting to navigate the web presence of major brands. In the post he briefly mentions two types of companies - those that have Advertising Influence with those that have Advocate Influence. I think this is a really good way to look at corporate marketing programs, so I'll write about it today.

Companies with Advertising Influence push a message out to their customer relentlessly. They inundate the masses with billboards, radio ads, TV spots and online banners, all vying to hijack your attention, and ultimately influence you in their favor. Today I was at SM, the largest chain of malls in the Philippines. There are plenty of brands in SM with major Advertising Influence. But I came across one that really hit home - Whatchamacallit - a candy bar with peanuts and carmel. There was a small Whatchamacallit billboard advertisement in my elementary school. In first grade I walked past it everyday and slowly but surely I found myself really wanting to try a Whatchamacallit. This was my first conscious experience with Advertising Influence.

To find companies with Advertising Influence all you need to do is think of companies that you see everyday - Coca Cola, Verizon Wireless, Honda, Geico, McDonalds - the list goes on. The one thing all of these brands have in common is that they are fighting for your attention. They want to remind you that they exist. More important, they want to tell you over and over again who they are. Coca Cola will refresh you. Verizon has the best 3G coverage. Geico is insurance with a sense of humor. To accomplish their goal this they spend tens of millions of dollars every year and employ tens of thousands of people, to tirelessly hijack your attention.

In stark contrast, Advocate Influence is effortless. Company's with Advocate Influence find their customers do all the work for them. They tell their friends, they write blogs, tweet and post updates on Facebook. This is the essence of word of mouth. Companies with Advocate Influence include In-&-Out Burger, iPhone (from Apple), and Emergen-C. All of these companies also pay for Advertising Influence. But the one thing that defines the companies with greatest Advocate Influence is that they do not need to spend money on advertising. In-&-Out could never run another radio ad again and they would stay enormously profitable. The iPhone could drop all of its commercials and still continue to sell millions of units. Emergen-C need not advertise in parenting magazines to retain its core group of users who also double as its best marketing force. And that's the point really - Companies with Advocate Influence need not employ a marketing staff because their customers do all of work for them. What's more, their customers market the product better than a marketer ever could, because they do it authentically.

Baby Girl

2010-03-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

Driving through a forrest of palm trees in the center of Hispanola, Rich and I started arguing about the rise of China. Rich's points were strong and supported, as usual. China is a economic powerhouse. This year they will have the 2nd largest GDP in the world and by 2050 they will have the largest. Their authoritarian system is a benefit as it allows them to move quickly and decisively as a country. I, on the other hand, have never been sold on the rising Dragon. I think China is headed for troubled waters and in arguing with Rich I made one point that really stuck:

50 million unmarried men!

Both Rich and I are avid fans of The Economist, and the day we returned from the Caribbean we discovered our knowledge source running a cover story that described the situation far worse than I had argued:

What happened to 100 million baby girls?

Here's a section from the article:

"XINRAN XUE, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. “We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen”, she writes , “when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder—and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man’s gruff voice said accusingly: ‘Useless thing!’

“Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me,” Miss Xinran remembers. “To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail. The midwife must have dropped that tiny baby alive into the slops pail! I nearly threw myself at it, but the two policemen [who had accompanied me] held my shoulders in a firm grip. ‘Don’t move, you can’t save it, it’s too late.’

‘But that’s...murder...and you’re the police!’ The little foot was still now. The policemen held on to me for a few more minutes. ‘Doing a baby girl is not a big thing around here,’ [an] older woman said comfortingly. ‘That’s a living child,’ I said in a shaking voice, pointing at the slops pail. ‘It’s not a child,’ she corrected me. ‘It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it. Around these parts, you can’t get by without a son. Girl babies don’t count.’”

The situation is not always like this. In many cases the baby is not born at all. The Chinese and Indian preference to have a son has combined with ultrasound technology to make sex-selective abortions very common. But whether it be the slaughter of a baby girl after birth or the abortion of a girl in the first trimester it is repulsive. 100 million baby girls have been murdered for the past twenty years.

Beyond my repulsion there is a far larger concern for Chinese society. Over the next two decades 50 million men will get married and have families in the US. In China and India two times as many will not be able to get married, have sex and have a family at all! The unmarried, unfamilied, unsexed man is a dangerous, dangerous thing. Put 100 million of them together in a developing nation, living under an authoritarian regime and you have written a prescription for chaos.

Passion

2010-03-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

When I landed in Manila in January I felt like I was on drugs. That is the only way to describe it. For days I was running on a natural high. I was so excited to watch the project that I had slaved away at for over a year finally be watered with the financing needed to flower. We went from a dozen employees to well over 100 today - that's just over two months for anyone who is counting. We built out the office, strengthened our management team and addressed all of the fun legal stuff that comes with growing in a legitimate operation.

Today I'm back in the office. It is my third trip to the Philippines this year and the passion is lacking! Not for the team. They have held strong in their passion, treating each day as if it were their first on the job. But I have found myself in a bit of a funk. This is a product of a couple things:

1) I was sick all weekend. The tireless travel schedule seems to have finally caught up with me. I felt a little sick the first few days in the Dominican Republic. It went away and came thundering down one week later after I arrived in Manila. I spent the past two days beneath the sheets in my hotel room.

2) The ship is built. I look around at the office and everyone is working efficiently, everyone has a role, and though there are performance metrics that still need to be met, everything is running pretty smoothly. To put it simply I am no longer needed. It's nice to have me here to craft strategy, inspire the team and oversee things. But this is a fully functional operation.

3) I lost my developing country virginity. Coming to the Philippines was my first, first hand experience with dealing with a developing country. I have navigated the streets and the legal system, and though this has left a few bumps and bruises, the experience has become routine and the sex appeal has worn off.

Now, before you go thinking that I have gone off into a bout of depression, know that I realize that passion ebbs and flows. No doubt I will feel excited and passionate over the next few days. However, it's a natural experience to have the occasional passionless day.

Dominican Republic - Part 2

2010-03-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

After my ass-tendering experience in Vega, we headed to Santo Domingo - the capital of the Dominican Republic. For two nights we stayed by the beach. I swam, ran and slept...a lot. The beach was filled with native Dominican's which made for a fun experience. Fisherman caught octopus and oysters and served them on the sand, raw and fresh. Children flew kites, taking advantage of the breeze coming off of the ocean and occasionally challenging one another to a fight, in which they would tangle the stings of their kites together, crashing the flying colors to the ground and running to see who could retrieve the kites first.

As exotic as I found all this, the Dominican's were equally entertained by my pale complexion. I swam deep out into the bay beyond all of the other swimmers and traversed my way down the beach. When I came ashore a group of dark Dominican's were playing Futbol in the water. They looked at me laughingly as one of the beautiful Domincan women demanded, "Blanco, lleva me!" Embarrassed, I hurried ashore tripping over some rocks and landing hands first into a group of sea anemones.

After I had extracted the anemone's thorns from my fingers Luis took Rich and I to the most beautiful restaurant I have been to...ever. The restaurant was a pier that stretched out into the turquoise waters of Boca Chica. With white coaches and flowing white sheets, the restaurant was something you would only find the Caribbean. All of us agreed, had we any women with us we would have sealed the deal. Instead, Luis and Rich's uncles tipped back the bottle of Johnny Walker while Rich and I tried to entertain ourselves with intellectual banter.

The next day we drove across the center of the country, fields of palm trees and small villages, led us to Samana - where I found heaven. Cayo Levantado is a small island off the coast of Samana. It has two white sand beaches and a single hotel. With us on the island were no more than 100 other travelers. During the days I swam in the clear waters, laid in a hammock on the beach, drank out of coconuts and pineapples and finally circumnavigated the island in a kayak. I have been dreaming of doing all of this for over the past year and in three days I made it all come true.

When it was time to leave, I felt sad. But not the kind of sad I expect most people feel at the end of a vacation. On the other side of my sadness lay an excitement, anticipation and eagerness for the adventures to come. Which is what has brought me right the way around the globe to Manila, where I am today.

Dominican Republic - Part 1

2010-03-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

I landed in Santiago - the Dominican Republic's second largest city - on Friday afternoon. The airport tells you everything you need to know about the country. The lush palm trees that line the runway remind you that you have arrived in paradise. While the backwards bureaucratic policy that requires every foreigner to pay $10 just to enter, remind you that you are in a developing nation.

I met Rich (by best friend from college) and Luis (Rich's father) in the parking lot and as soon as we had pulled out on to the Dominican highway, I had an ice cold Presidente in my hand. We spent our first night at Rich's families house in Santiago. The following day we were up early to trek into the mountains that surround the city. A large portion of the Dominican population are from el campo - the countryside. These mountain people live without electricity or running water.

Fortunately we had a large Toyota SUV, for the one hour drive up into the mountains required us to scale dirt and mud roads that had all but washed away in the recent rains. When we arrived at Rich's uncles cabin I was overcome by the tranquility of the outdoors. Not since my trips to Ireland as a child had I been to such a peaceful place. I hiked down to the stream that runs behind the cabin and meditated from half an hour while Rich and Luis snacked on fresh Chicharon - fried pork skin.

That afternoon we were back in the city. I was exhausted from all the travel, but it

was Dominican independence day so there was no time for rest. We went to Vega - the home of the last true Dominican independence festivals. The event is a demonic one. A street festival that is reminiscent of Mardis Gras with one major addition. Soon after the start of the festivities crews representing the different neighborhoods from around the entire country flood the streets, dressed in identical demon/dragon costumes and armed with cowhide balloons. Their object - to wallop everyone who is not dressed for the occasion. Naturally they target young men. Unfortunately for me, young, gringo men seemed to be their favorite targets.

I wanted to get hit. It was part of the cultural experience. So when the

first sting of cowskin cracked against by backside I jumped in the air, howling in pain and delight. He got me good I thought and turned around to shake the hand of my attacker. Having had the experience we headed for the car, which is when they got me again. The second smack was unlike anything I have ever felt. It was certainly the the hardest I have ever been hit on the ass. I didn't see him coming and afterwards I didn't seem him go. It was as if a ghost had snuck up on me and disappeared. Whoever he was he sent me jumping six feet in the air, butt bruised and thrill gone.

When I'm Not Writing...

2010-03-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

I'm living.

I spent the past week in the Dominican Republic and didn't touch the blog once. I admire the discipline of daily bloggers who refuse to give up their craft even when traveling. But I am not one of these writers. For me the blog is a reflection of my life. Whether it be work, travel or love, I live it, then write it if it's worth recording.

This past week deserves recording. A year ago I sat down to determine what I wanted for myself in the next six months - a dreamline, a vision. One of my dreams was to travel to a Spanish speaking country, lay on a beach and drink out of a coconut. It took a year but I did it this week - a beach, hammock, a coconut and so much more. Over the next week I'll cover the whole trip over a series of posts.

Estrella said to me, "you are 23. You think you have conquered the world because you graduated high school. Graduated college. Started your own business. It's only when you get older that you see that the dreams you have today don't come true."

Nearly, every dream I put on paper over the past year has manifest. So I humbly disagree...

Trip Philosophy

2010-02-26T07:59:00.000-08:00

I'm at San Juan International Airport (SJU) in Puerto Rico, waiting for my flight to Santiago (STI) in the Dominican Republic. I'm going to spend the week with Rich, my best friend from college, and the entire Reyes family. This weekend is DR independence day which will be awesome to experience and next week we will be chilling out on the beaches of Santo Domingo.

Anyhow, last night as I boarded the red eye from LAX to SJU, I found the perfect blog post for pre-trip inspiration. Let me pause to say that this was only possible do because of my favorite new iPhone app - Byline - which lets me access my Google Reader from my iPhone. The post, Five Travel Lessons You Can Use At Home, by Rolf Potts appeared on Tim Ferriss's blog. It's worth a read, but what I took away from it was beautifully simple: life is about experience not possessions. I would take a trip over a flat screen TV, a great meal over a finely tailored suit and an afternoon with Estrella or Rich or Jaspar or Tom over another meaningless piece of technology any day.

So far this year I have traveled over 50,000 miles and spent time with some of the world's most interesting people. I haven't bought a single new item of clothing, technology...really any material item for that matter. This isn't to say I reject material things, my MacBook and iPhone (along with it's nifty apps, as previously mentioned) enable me to work from anywhere. My yoga mat, yogi toes and meditation bench keep me grounded. Throw in a pair of running shoes and I am good to go.

Before leaving yesterday Jaspar said to me, "Try to not work over there."

"Why?" I asked. "I am having a blast. I love the work we are doing. I mean, it's great to get away from the office and I certainly don't plan to spend all day in front of my laptop. But traveling and building this business are two of my favorite things in life. Getting do them at the same time is a dream come true."

With that I plan to continue living the travel, work life indefinitely.

ADD

2010-02-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

Just as I was jumping between tabs - Email, Reader, Highrise, Calendar, HypeM - I came across this awesome post by Bijan on Focus. I am totally dyslexic, totally ADD and "learning disabled". So this post about focus in startups is especially poignant for me. Over the past 18 months I have started two businesses TaskUs and Smarter Social Media and I'm currently running them in parallel. There is some overlap, but by and large this is an exercise in giving 100% of my efforts in two places. It's a lot like dating two women, without benefits.

I am a firm believer that as focus increases, so to does effectiveness. So I have no intention of continuing this path for longer than I have to. That said, in a masochistic way, it's a lot of fun.

Reflections on the Philippines - Part 2

2010-02-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

I was on the ground in Manila on Monday night ready to spring into action. Instead, for two long days I waited. Patience is one of my Three Entrepreneurial Essentials, and it's the one I struggle with the most. At one point Joan had to take me to The Spa to get rid of me -

a kind of adult day care with massage, facials and a steam room. I was bouncing of the walls. The only place I wanted to be was at the office with the TaskUs team.

The reasons I waited are sealed, confidential, forever. But when I made my move I didn't stop moving for three days straight. What the team has accomplished over the past four weeks is astounding. We have gone from 10 to 75 employees. We have gone from a single five day a week shift, to a 24/7 operation. What's more is that our growth hasn't stopped yet. We will be at 200 employees by June, maybe sooner (pausing to knock on wood).

Naturally there was a ton to get caught up on. From Wednesday through Saturday morning I worked. I met with agents learning what is working and what isn't. I met with team leaders, QAs, trainers and managers structuring plans for the next four months. Every nine hours I went back to Trader's for two hours of sleep, a work out and a meal and then I'd return for another stretch of work.

It was the hardest stretch I have worked since leaving investment banking. But it was easier than any work I ever did on Wall Street for a simple reason: my people. From the second I walked into the office the dedication, focus and determination of the team amazed me. Everyone recognizes the start up nature of the organization, and as a result are willing to work long, hard hours for little pay.

In particular I was wowed by the work of Jandric, Rommel, Charles, Naomi, Ehmy and Kim. Over the three days I spent at the office these people repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to go the extra mile for the operation. To challenge my ideas. To suggest innovative solutions. And most importantly, they demonstrated ownership - a feeling that they had a large stake in the operations success. Previously, I thought this attitude of ownership was reserved for the American start ups of Silicon Valley, but this trip proved to me that the Filipino people are as ambitious and dedicated as any of the young entrepreneurs found in the U.S.

I can't wait to expand my operations in the country.

Truism

2010-02-15T14:20:00.001-08:00

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.

Jamie posted it. Tom has been telling me this for months. Only now am I realizing how true this is.

An Apology

2010-02-15T00:53:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote a post entitled Reflections on the Philippines. In the post I share my insights on my recent trip to the country. Having spoken with the members of my team in Manila I realize that the post went to far. Not only were elements of the post exaggerated and embellished, much of it was down right insulting. Working with the people of the Philippines over the past year has been an incredible experience. I have written frequently about the passion and dedication of the people I have worked with there. As a result I plan to aggressively expand my operations and investment in the country in the coming months. But before I do I need to offer this apology for anyone who my post insulted.

Bryce

One Whale vs Lots of Fish

2010-02-11T16:30:00.001-08:00

Is it better to have one, million dollar customer or one million, one dollar customers?

I've wrestled with this question a lot over the past year. TaskUs is a business that has a lot of customers who spend relatively small amounts of money with us. Smarter Social Media is a business that has a hand full of customers who spend a lot of money with us.

Jamie argues that a large customer retail base gives you control over your destiny. And while I think which is better depends on the nuances of the individual case, I've got to agree with Jamie that a school of fish is better than a single whale. With hundreds or thousands of customers your bets are hedged. You may have more customer service stress or a harder time growing the business quickly, but the security more than makes up for this.

At Smarter Social Media we had plans to launch a huge campaign late last year. The kind of campaign that we had to hire and train new staff for. The kind of campaign that required the investment of time and dollars. At the last minute the customer put on the brakes. Fortunately for us this was a minor delay and the campaign is well under way currently, but if this client had pulled out together our business would have been hurt bad.

At TaskUs we sign up new customers effortlessly on our website. There is little investment as the infrastructure is already in place and grows organically to match our client base. While we are never happy to loose a customer, there is no single TaskUs customer that could undo that business.

Solid Citizens

2010-02-10T17:07:00.000-08:00

Today we met with Jeff and Tom - the newest editions to the Smarter Social Media team. Our growth has been really exciting of late. We have now added five new team members over the past three weeks. Jeff and Tom are really exciting editions because they bring decades of experience in brand research and traditional media that really serve to strengthen our value proposition.

In our conversation Jeff started talking about "solid citizens." For Jeff these are good brands, with no sex appeal. Generally the kinds of consumer products you buy every time you make a trip to the super market but they don't jump out at you or excite your passions. It's easy to forget how important these brands are to our everyday lives - What would I do without my Colgate toothpaste?

This got me thinking about the members of our team who are "solid citizens" - they show up to work on time everyday, they deliver on schedule and will go the extra mile. All the while they aren't out on the street singing their own praises. Now let me make it clear from the outset that I do not consider myself a "solid citizen". I am good at what I do, but I am equally good at talking about being good at what I do. But as a result I have an even deeper respect and admiration for the "solid citizens" on our team.

Jed recently took over as head of TaskUs operations. When Jed came to us he was quiet and reserved. But over the past few months he has worked hard and learned fast. Most importantly he has learned to always ask questions. In the few weeks that he has been leading the TaskUs organization he has done an amazing job. Tasks are at an all time high and I'm having to handle less and less of the daily work. Jed genuinely cares about each and every client. He is proud of his position and as a result has no problem working the long, hard hours it requires to deliver every time.

Over the course of my career I have dealt with a lot of developers. Some are awesome and reliable, like the guys at Brilliant2 but the majority that I have worked with over promise and under deliver. Admittedly, this is in part due to my shoestring budget. But given these constraints I am all the more thrilled when I find great developers. We hired Casen last year and my prejudices about developers have since disappeared. Two weeks ago I tasked Casen with developing a site that would allow us to test transcription applicants outside of our offices. I wanted the site to check the transcriptions automatically and assign an accuracy score, removing the need for a human checker and streamlining the entire application process. Casen said he would deliver on Friday and on Friday of last week Transcription.PH went live.

Taking time to thank the solid citizens in our lives goes a long way to keeping the people we rely on everyday close to us.

Checking References

2010-02-03T21:52:00.000-08:00

We are hiring! Over the next 6 weeks I need to bring on three new people - Junior and Senior social media positions and a crack PHP developer. If you know one of these folks please send them my way.

When interviewing I rely on one thing - my gut. I never look at resumes. I don't check references. And I definitely don't give candidates consultant type brain teasers. All I want to do is get a feel for the person, to see if they will fit in, in our young, scrappy, results driven environment. To see if they are driven. To see if they will work hard. To see if they will endure. I am usually pretty good at getting a sense for this. But I have made some mistakes. Which is why I am making a late New Year's resolution - I will be checking three references (at minimum) for each and every candidate from now on. I learned this lesson the hard way.

Last year I interviewed an awesome guy. He seemed perfect for the position we needed to fill. So I hired him and he fit right into the organization. The first few weeks he worked hard and delivered. But as the projects got more complex and the demands of work increased he flaked.

Today Jaspar decided to check the references for a new applicant. Turns out the new applicant had worked at the same place as our ex-employee previously. In his conversation with the HR Director of this company Jaspar brought up our ex-employee and the HR Director said, "You know those people who interview really well, but when you hire them they are like a totally different person...that's (your ex-employee). You should have called me about him I bet I could have saved you a lot of money..."

Yup $12,500 to be exact. The most expensive mistake I've made to date.

Digital Lockdown

2010-01-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I wrote about Malcolm Gladwell's The Sure Thing his most recent New Yorker piece. While, writing about it, I was surprised to find that I could not access the article on the New Yorker website without first registering for an account, using my hard copy subscription number. What this means is that the New Yorker content is locked away behind a pay wall, unaccessible to all but those who pay for a subscription.

While I have written previously, supporting Rupert Murdoch's attempts and plans to better monetize online content, I found the New Yorker pay wall amazingly inconvenient. In light of last week's announcement that the NY Times will charge non-subscribers for visiting the site frequently, I started to wrestle with this content question again.

What I have concluded is that putting content completely behind a pay wall is counter productive. It will stop bloggers, social influencers and everyday internet users from linking to you and generating traffic. However, I am totally sensitive to the need to better monetize content. Which is why I think the NY Times plan (which follows the model of the Financial Times) is actually quite a good one. People can link to the article and those browsing the web will (usually) be able to view the content. But frequent viewers of your content will have to pay. As I have said in previous posts from the NY Times to TechCrunch to the Wall Street Journal, I am happy to pay a subscription price for quality journalism because I consume so much of it.

Fred Wilson has got a more detailed analysis of this problem here that is definitely worth a read.

Not a Sure Thing

2010-01-24T20:50:00.000-08:00

Upon my return to the U.S. I had tons of reading to catch up with. There were two copies of The Economist, BusinessWeek and a new subscription to Foreign Policy. But, at my Dad's recommendation, the first article I read was The Sure Thing, by one of my favorite author's Malcolm Gladwell. You can read the whole article here (if you have a New Yorker subscription - more on this later).

For those of you without New Yorker subscriptions, the article goes through a list of wildly successful entrepreneurs - from Ted Turner to Sam Walton to John Paulson - and argues that none of them are risk takers. Instead Gladwell points out that like most successful entrepreneurs this list of billionaires got wealthy precisely because they are risk averse. Gladwell's profiles the successful entrepreneur as constantly "hedging his bets and minimizing the risk of failure." These "predators," as Gladwell calls them, use proprietary information and their unique position in the market as leverage to close transactions that turn into billions in profits.

Gladwell's analysis, as usual, is compelling, insightful and a bit lacking. He completely ignores the "rags to riches" entrepreneur of American folklore, pointing out that all of the men he profiles either started with large family inheritances (Turner), married into money (Walton) or had enough money left over from their previous career success (Paulson). The article implies that it is impossible for those without capital to succeed as entrepreneurs.

For an entrepreneur without capital (like me) this is incredibly disheartening:

"New-business success is clearly correlated with the size of initial capitalization. But failed entrepreneurs tend to be wildly undercapitalized...Writing a business plan is a must; failed entrepreneurs rarely take that step. Taking over an existing business is always the best bet; failed entrepreneurs prefer to start from scratch."

Reading this my stomach churned. We started TaskUs with $20,000 that Jaspar and I had saved from throwing all age nightclubs in college. Having written an extensive business plan for a previous business that never got off the ground, we decided there was simply no point in putting pen to paper to write down ideas that were sure to change as we iterated through the various phases of the business's existence. We started the business from scratch - an idea that came to me while working at the investment bank, a name that came to me while lying on my floor and a dream that drove us to work tirelessly toward success.

Returning from the Philippines I felt closer to success than ever. But reading Gladwell has never left me feeling so depressed.

> *

2010-01-21T08:22:00.000-08:00

In the Philippines I stayed at two hotels - Traders Makati and Shangri La Cebu. These hotels are part of the same company, Traders being the cost-conscious little brother of the luxurious Shangri La brand. As such, Traders is a four start hotel and Shangri La is very much a five star experience. On this trip I was fortunate enough to have a client pay for my stay. Free from the worries of the price of a bottle of water or the breakfast buffet bill one would assume the Shangri La would provide the best experience. But on this trip I was shocked to realize that I prefer four start hotels to five star hotels.

The reason, I realize now, is simple - the atmosphere. The bottom line is at five star hotels everyone is uptight. The greetings seem forced and scripted. The guests all appear to be impressing and one uping one another. And no one smiles! At Traders everyone knows my name. I've made friends with the staff, from Karla and Arjie and the front desk to my new favorite massage therapist Anne. The atmosphere is casual and relaxed, and people aren't aghast when I go to dinner in my pajamas. It feels like home.

I think that this philosophy can be applied to a lot of things in life. From consumer products to women, it is often wiser and more rewarding to go for good than "great".

The Biggest PR Stunt of All Time?

2010-01-15T23:54:00.000-08:00

Being in Asia during the start of the Google/China war has been an interesting experience.

I have been reading local publications to keep up with the story, and am shocked by the difference in coverage I see on the western blogosphere. For one thing the idea that China itself was behind a large scale hack of dissident Gmail accounts has been played down here, where it has become widely accepted as a practical certainity in the West.

But what really fascinates me in the coverage of this conflict is the exploration of Google's motivations. Western bloggers from Robert Scoble to Fred Wilson have hailed Google's move as an impressive example of the company's moral philosophy. In response TechCrunch bloggers Paul Carr and Sarah Lacy have argued that Google's decision to leave China was motivated by pragmatism and self interest, not the companies "Don't be evil" motto.

Carr and Lacy are right. Google isn't doing this because of its companies (or founders) moral philosophies. In fact Google's threat to pull out of China may just be the greatest PR stunt of all time.

Here are the facts - Google's search market share in China is small. The market is dominated by Baidu which gets over 77% of the search volume in mainland China. In China Google is more like Yahoo or Bing than Google. While, Google's market share was increasing, the Chinese market made up a sliver of the companies worldwide profitability. In fact, the company earns less than one percent of it's profits from its Chinese operations. In recognition of all this, Google's leader in China - Kai-Fu Lee - left the company last September, telling Tech Crunch's Sarah Lacy that "one reason he left Google was that it was clear the company was never going to substantially increase its market share or beat Baidu." So the prospects for Google in China were bleak.

Then in December the Chinese government hacked Gmail. They straight up broke into the Gmail boxes of scores of Chinese dissidents. At this point the Google guys made a rational calculus between two clear options:

Option 1: Stay in China - a relatively tiny part of the global search giants success, a place where its prospects for long term success were bleak - and face the wrath of the globe when the story broke that the Chinese government could hack into anyone's Gmail and that there was nothing Google could do about it.

Option 2: Ditch china in a triumphant stand against censorship and oppression!

No less than a month ago the same bloggers who are praising Google today were questioning the power of its monopoly. By leaving China and spinning it as a huge sacrifice of future power and profit, Google is winning back the support of the masses who had begun to doubt its benevolence. Perhaps Google really believes in a world without evil.

In reality Google has made a shrewd calculation that leaving China provides a net benefit for the reputation (and thus long term power and influence) of the company in all other (far more profitable) parts of the world.

Wrestling with Fortune

2010-01-15T00:56:00.000-08:00

"Some day we will be powerful enough to come and stay at a resort like this," I said to Tom as we lay out on the beach in Cebu.

"We're here right now," Tom laughed.

Over the past two weeks I have been spoiled by the impeccable service that is unique to Asia. Staying at Traders Hotel in Makati and now the Shangri La in Macatan Cebu are luxuries reserved for the wealthy and powerful of the world, a group that I have long desired to be a part of. And yet now, sitting on the gorgeous white sand beach of Cebu, eating the finest food at every meal and having in room massage service just a phone call away, it all feels a bit surreal. I haven't accepted that this is what the hard work of the past two years has earned me, that in building a BPO operation in Manila and social media marketing company in Santa Monica, I may have snuck into the top three percent that control the globe. Whether this is the case or not, I can't help the guilt I feel being where I am right now.

On the other side of the world, in Haiti 100,000 people have died this week and over a million more will go to sleep tonight without shelter, food or water. The food I routinely leave heaped up on my plate, the free water bottles I demand and consume without a thought could literally save the lives of an entire Haitian family that will die tonight from dehydration. Texting a five or ten dollar donation seems trivial to me, an attempt by those in the developed world to feel like they have done their part...

Mind of an Entrepreneur 006

2010-01-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

In the future there will no longer be Point of Sales systems at supermarkets or convenience stores. Self identifying technology (most likely in your cellphone) will allow you to walk into a market fill up you basket and then walk out. As you leave you will pass through sensors that will identify each of the items in your basket by the RFID chips embedded in the packaging and charge the credit card stored in your cellphone for the items.

Besides solving the problem shoplifting and ending long lines at the supermarket this trend could potentially turn the retailing on its head. Currently retailers by from wholesalers, marking the prices of goods up 10 to 250 percent. The markup is the gross margin. Retailers also make money by charging brands fees for prime space - generally about eye level - on their shelves. In the case of gas stations and convenience stores many brands will go as far as to come in an stock there own products, ensuring that they are always stocked in the right place and done so neatly. In this model the gas station or convenience store really only provides the brand with two things - physical real estate that reaches customers and a staff and POS that rings up transactions.

So what happens when all that matters is the proximity to customers? Undoubtedly most stores will be located in the same locations. But the model becomes much more like that of a vending machine than a super market. In this model it is possible that brands will simply pay the owner of the location to rent shelf space. The owner will earn this rent and nothing more. Gone are the retail profit margins. All of this money will be earned directly by the brand or distributor themselves. This will likely lead to more unified pricing for products across all vendors. Although the cost differential to rent shelves based on the expense of the underlying real estate will have of occasionally be accounted for.

Where's the business opportunity in this? I'm not sure. The only thing that is (almost) certain in this whole shift is that some one is going to make millions by providing the hardware and software to power POS-less, cash-less, card-less transactions.

Great Customer Service

2010-01-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

This post was written a week and a half ago on my way back from New York.

Today I had two amazing experiences with

customer service. First as I was hurrying to pack my bags I got a call from American Airlines to let me know that my flight was an hour and a half delayed. I've been flying American pretty religiously since I was seven years old and this was the first time that this has ever happened. The difference in time afforded me an hour to meditate and a calm commute, both of which I am truly thankful for. I hope they do this again in the future.

Next I read online that to get to Newark by train I had two options - Amtrak and New Jersey transit. The post I read online mistakenly said that Amtrak would take 20 minutes, where NJT took 90 minutes. I didn't have 90 minutes to spare so I bought an absurdly expensive ticket on Amtrak. Before I boarded the train I asked an Amtrak ticket agent if the price was correct and he openly asked, "you sure you want to travel with us. New Jersey transit is less than half the price."

"Yeah but it takes ninety minutes," I said.

"Actually it takes about thirty."

"So why would anyone ever travel with you?"

"For this trip, I don't know," he honestly replied.

The best businesses admit when someone else is superior and refer there customers elsewhere. In so doing they earn their customers trust for life. As an overzealous startup TaskUs tried doing all sorts of things. We even took on tasks that required a considerable amount of remedial work to be done in our U.S. offices. In almost every case we ended up loosing money of the work and in every case we pissed our customers off. I learned a valuable lesson from this - learn what you are good at fast, then get great at it while referring everything else to the competition.

Four Best Things About New York City

2010-01-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

1) Meeting people - Despite its reputation, I've found New York to be one of the most open and friendly environments in the world. Be it on the subway, on the street or in an elevator you are bound to strike up conversation with strangers.

2) The Restaurants - Nowhere else that I have ever visited has such an eclectic mix of excellent food that is always available. From dim sum in Queens to dinners in the East Village to 3 Star French fare by Ducaisse, Troundle and Boulud (my personal favorite) New York is foodie paradise.

3) Central Park - Words can't really do justice to this one. Central Park is an urban gem. Jogging the perimeter or walking around the reservoir are amongst the favorite experiences of my life.

4) Public Transit - While technically lacking, the New York subway is amazingly pragmatic, reliable and efficient. It can take you anywhere you want to go in Manhattan in 30 minutes or less 24/7, with almost no exceptions.

9 Seconds in Manilla

2010-01-04T14:54:00.000-08:00

New York, New Years

2010-01-03T03:01:00.001-08:00

As I write this I am flying back from spending New Years in New York. I'll be on the ground in LA for less than 11 hours then it's off to Manilla by way of Tokyo.

I love to travel and it looks like I am going to get to do more of it this year than ever before. There is something magical about flying. Part of this is the shock of hoping between cities and cultures in hours of time. This morning I woke up in New York, I'll go to sleep in LA and this time tomorrow night I'll be in Tokyo. Blows my mind!

The other part is possibility. I have not yet been blessed with satisfaction in the status quo. I'm constantly striving for better in both my personal and professional life (...this is not always constructive). Traveling brakes the routine, suddenly anything possible and I find myself more hopeful than usual.

No sooner had I boarded my flight from LAX to DFW than I met an amazing girl. We chatted the entire way to Dallas and exchanged info, texting back and forth through the New Year. The next morning (post DFW to LGA) I got up and went to the first of a series of yoga workshops with Vinnie, my guru from LA. After class I ran into another awesome girl who I had only just gotten to know when she left Santa Monica to get her MBA in New York eight months ago.

I spent New Years at a loft in Brooklyn. It was a fun party, in which I haplessly attempted to negotiate some semblance of a New Years kiss. Instead the highlight of the night came when I wandered into a Puerto Rican party a few floors down and used my broken Spanish to endear myself to the host family. Within five minutes I was drinking Hennasy and Cranberry juice and dancing salsa with the Grandmother of the family.

The next morning I woke up and took the train out to Connecticut to visit Rich. On the train ride out, in classic New York style, I struck up a conversation with a young hedge fund manager heading back to his parent's place in Westchester to recover from the previous night's debauchery. I arrived in Danbury and was promptly taken to Tony Pham's restaurant for a four course Vietnamese meal, which was followed by a visit to Patty (Rich's cousins) house for the New Year's day (hangover) stew. We ate and talked - two of my favorite activities.

One-on-one conversations with Rich are simply amazing. There are so many similarities in the way we approach and deconstruct the world around us and yet we come from very different backgrounds and are in entirely different businesses. Rich comes from a traditional Dominican family. I come from a confused, alternative, rebellious WASPy family. Rich runs the toughest brick and mortar business - quick food service. I run two online businesses and haven't a clue about the brick and mortar world. Rich inherited a thriving businesses from his father's brilliant business mind and has improved it considerably. I've started a business that neither of my parents understand. What's tragic for me is that Rich is probably the best living partner I'll ever have, and now that he's moved back to Danbury I doubt if will ever get an opportunity to live together again.

That night I headed back into the city. This morning I woke up and did another amazing Vinnie class. Took the yoga girl to lunch. Packed. Meditated for an hour and then took the New Jersey transit out to Newark airport and here I am - up in the air.

2009

2010-01-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

This time last year I had just finished throwing what would be my final of seven consecutive New Years Eve parties. Once again, I made a lot of money but had destroyed bits and pieces of my social life in the process. Preston hated me for forcing him to promote the event to his friends. Courtney hated me for being too busy to stop and give her a New Years kiss. And everyone else was indifferent having forgotten the festive ridiculousness in a grey haze of alcohol and drugs.

This time last year I had just launched TaskUs to the public. Having completed the full web interface, and hired one (just one) full time assistants from a call center in Manilla. Her name was Marie and she was amazing. We worked together tirelessly completing the tasks that slowing began to trickle in. We had a business, if only just.

This time last year I thought I would have moved out of my parents house by this time this year. I'm not sure where I thought I would go, but I definitely didn't think the process of building financial, career and domestic freedom would take this long.

This time last year I had written this blog for 8 months. In which time I posted more than I would in all of 2009. Let's hope this trend doesn't continue. But I can't help but wonder...

Where will I be this time next year?

San Francisco/Seattle

2009-12-30T15:12:00.000-08:00

This is a "catch up" post. I've been super behind on blogging lately as we have been crazy busy (more on that later).

Two weeks ago, the day after returning from New York with Tom, Jaspar and I headed up to Seattle. We were hired by the Best Western to do social media training for a number of their hotels. On our way up to the wet North West we stopped over in San Francisco for the evening to attend a start up mixer that Jamie was hosting.

LAX to SFO marked my first Virgin America flight. I wasn't too impressed. It was like Jet Blue with mood lighting. Richard Branson has long been an entrepreneurial hero of mine so I should have more allegiance to his airline, but my AAdvantage miles have kept me addicted to American.

Jamie's mixer was great. I invited Luther and Dan, and met a bunch of angels and entrepreneurs doing all sorts of amazing things in tech. We drank wine, got a tour of Yelp's offices, and ended up driving around downtown San Francisco for an hour and a half looking for Jaspar's friends house. As the mixer wound down, Dan said farewell and told me he was headed back to the office. It was nine thirty and we were a very glasses of wine deep, "Really?" I said.

Dan is the CEO of Huddler, a Stanford educated, nationally ranked gymnast with discipline that could outlast 99.99% of the population. Discipline is a quality I have long prided myself on, but I left 100 hour work weeks back at the investment bank. Given what I learned in New York about Tom's working style, I have begun to question the value of long, hard hours. I am unsure of what to aspire to.

In early morning Jaspar and I hopped on a flight to Seattle and over the next three days worked with the amazing staff of three different Seattle area hotels. We detailed Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, CitySearch and Google Analytics. I'm proud to say that in the week since we have left they've already started to generate business from their social media efforts. We hung out with Jonas at his incredible lake house, ate great seafood at Flying Fish, and went Christmas shopping. Good week.

Best Book of the Year, Decade and (maybe) My Life

2009-12-29T16:47:00.000-08:00

Last night, as I finished reading Shantaram, my eyes welled up with tears, as they had many times across the nearly 1000 pages I had just read. I was crying because I had lost one of the wisest companions I have ever come to know. This book is incredible.

Shantaram is based on the life of its author - Gregory David Roberts - who convicted to a 19 year prison sentence in Australia, escaped over the front wall of the prison and went on to become an international fugitive.

The book touches on this only lightly. The real focus is the decade that Roberts spent in Bombay - falling in love, opening a clinic in the slums, working for an arm of the Bombay mafia and fighting with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The story is exciting and never once slows. But the true brilliance of the book is in the long philosophical discussions. The author has with himself and the other characters of the novel, particularly Abdul Kader Khan, the don of the arm of the Bombay mafia he joins.

I'll go no further. Read it.

Social Media Interview

2009-12-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

New York

2009-12-21T19:41:00.000-08:00

A week ago today I was in the city that has my heart - New York, New York! Tom invited me to go find a new location for his furniture store. We stayed at The W Union Square, ate at Del Posto, meditated, did yoga, shopped, and spent a few hours looking at locations. Even with all this "work" we were able to find the perfect location for his new store.

The way Tom does business is fascinating. We woke up at noon, ordered room service, meditated for an hour, did yoga for two hours, and then and only then, as the sun set on the city we emerged to look at locations. If I was with anyone else I would call this lazy, with Tom I call it genius. On the plane to New York Tom said something that I have been wrestling with since:

"It is better to do nothing, then to do the wrong thing."

This reminded me of my recent post on decisions. I'm a doer. I make decisions quickly. Sometimes I'm right. Sometimes I'm wrong. But I feel that the momentum in action keeps me going. Tom does the exact opposite, eliminating the momentum and finding stillness. When he decides he is almost always right. His track record as (perhaps) the only profitable retail furniture store in the recent economic crisis speaks to this.

So now I'm thinking. I'm wondering what is a more effective method of doing business. And I'm not certain what to do...or not do for that matter.

Action

2009-12-10T10:28:00.000-08:00

I am relentless when it comes to making decisions and trying new things. But over the past year I have often doubted the wisdom of this approach. It's tough to have to explain to friends that, "I opened an office of virtual assistants in the Philippines," one month and then switch to talking about doing, "social media marketing plans" to pay the bills for that office the next.

This morning I read one of my favorite posts in a long time on Fred's blog, about the virtues of action oriented leadership. It even starts with a Churchill AMAZING:

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

Inspiration

2009-12-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

After seeing Up in the Air this weekend, I've discovered a strange irony in the sadness and destruction of people being laid off. Sometimes being fired is the greatest thing that can happen, if being fired sets you free:

hallelujah

2009-12-07T10:54:00.000-08:00

hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!!!

Mentors

2009-12-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

Mentors are essential. I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by some incredible mentors in my everyday life. But most of them are not familiar with online businesses and social media. So I have another set of mentors who I follow in my Google Reader. These tech entrepreneurs and VCs dispense sage advice daily, the kind of advice that keeps a young entrepreneur like me going:

Albert Wenger
Bijans Sabet
Fred Wilson
Jamie Siminoff
Jason Calacanis (TWiST)

a rolling stone

2009-11-30T18:10:00.000-08:00

Vinnie played this song in yoga yesterday - the 40th anniversary of Let it Bleed. It's one of my favorites.

Sage

2009-11-29T14:08:00.000-08:00

I saw this on Fred's blog yesterday:

Things take longer in the short run but they happen faster in the long run

I've been talking with a lot of folks recently about how long things really take to accomplish. Human's are evolutionarily ingrained with an optimism bias. As a result we normally under estimate how long it will take to accomplish something (even when we are trying to over estimate).

As I come up on my first full year in business I am both impressed with how much has happened and a bit frustrated with how little has been accomplished. A year ago Jaspar and I sat down to dream out the next 5 years of our business. We started with where we wanted to be in 5 years and drew up detailed visions for our personal and professional lives. Then we worked back wards, where would we need to be in 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months... Looking back at this now I am bit embarrassed by my naivety:

With this we reach 100,000 page views monthly and with a 10% conversion rate we are signing up 10,000 new customers per month.

But as factors changed - my vision had us opening a call center in Buenos Aires, not Manila - I am impressed by how we have been able to adjust and persist. We found an incredible managing partner for our center in Manila, we have identified our target customer in detail and found time to consult on enough social media work to get by financially.

Although hardly the romantic vision I had dreamed up, I am proud of what I have accomplished over the past year. I am eager to continue with a new sense of humility and sustained ambition in 2010.

Best App Ever

2009-11-25T10:46:00.000-08:00

I was hanging with Tyler last night and discussing real time, mobile and geo-targeting. These three elements have been dominating my thoughts of late for a few reasons. To start there is no doubt that they will combine to create some of the greatest marketing opportunities of the next decade. Imagine being able to market to someone's cellphone based on where they are and what they are interested in at that moment! This will do for brick and mortar stores what search advertising did for e-commerce.

The other reason I can't get this trifecta off of my mind is Tim - a developer we recently hired who is amazing at just about everything - has a specialty in mobile gaming. I've been picking his brain routinely and there are some major opportunities in this space.

I mentioned a few ideas to Tyler and he told me that a whole bunch of them had already been combined into the greatest iPhone app of all time - ShopSavvy. Using this app you can scan ANY barcode and get back a price comparison from online retailers and bricks and mortar retailers in your geographic area. Tyler asked the man sitting next to us at Coffee Bean if he could borrow the book he was reading and scan the barcode. What we got back was a list of prices from sites like Amazon and eCampus and stores like the Barnes and Noble down the street!

If you don't have the app - get it!

Social Media for Small Business

2009-11-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I did a post on the 7 Myths of Small Business Social Media. Small business is such a catch all phrase that I think it warrants some explanation. My post is advice for solopreneurs and brick and mortar business people with a few employees. These people are stretched thin and the Great Recession has only exacerbated this situation. Many of them are looking to social media as THE answer. Those who are jumping in are often finding the process time consuming and overwhelming. Twitter handles are routinely abandoned or turned into shameless direct marketing platforms and Facebook pages are left fan-less and neglected. My post aims to debunk 7 myths that small business owners commonly buy into prior to starting their own social media marketing efforts. I hope you enjoy.

Joe

2009-11-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

Just day's after mourning the eighth anniversary of Deanna's murder I read this. An eerily familiar story of an unsupervised high school party that started with a few drinks and ended with a tragic death. Joe Loudon was a stand out student (3.8 GPA), a varsity athlete and a dedicated volunteer. He was an all around good kid, like Deanna. He wasn't murdered, but the mystery surrounding his death has torn the town of Orinda in Northern California apart.

A Twitter account and blog were launched to "solve the crime." The parties host, high school junior Patrick "P.J." Gabrielli, was arrested on charges that he had gotten and distributed alcohol to minors. Joe died of asphyxia, which means he drank beer, threw up and choked on his own vomit.

I won't pretend to understand the details surrounding the case. But having gone through Deanna's murder at age 16 I can say that playing the blame game is futile. In Deanna's case her murderer was at fault, but this did not stop people blaming the party's host for opening his house without supervision, the people in attendance for not stopping the fight, and the parents of the girl who stabbed Deanna through the heart for neglect.

The morning after Deanna was murdered the police showed up at the house of her murder and took her into custody. As the police knocked on her door the girl, just 18 years old, took a lethal dose of Valium and died in custody. In that moment the tragedy doubled. Her parents reacted by suing the LAPD for neglect, continuing the chain of blame.

Tragedy elicits blame and a desire for retribution. We want someone else to suffer. To share our pain. To pay. This is the greatest tragedy of all, for what is most unique about being human is our capacity to forgive. I have forgiven Deanna's murderer. I have forgiven her parents. But most importantly I have forgiven myself.

Deanna

2009-11-17T09:55:00.001-08:00

I will never forget her smile, her laugh. It has 8 years since we lost her. I love you forever Deanna.

Power Shift

2009-11-17T07:10:00.000-08:00

My love affair with Rupert Murdoch has just grown much hotter. Murdoch announced last week that he would deindex all of NewsCorp's websites from Google. This means that Google will no longer be able to produce results from Wall Street Journal, Fox, Dow Jones, MySpace and more.

Initially I thought this was another examples of the dying newspaper industry acting against its own self interest, driven by an underlying hatred of Google and it's web 2.0 compatriots. Then I read this piece by Arrington and watched this video with Jason Calcanis.

Imagine if all of the major content producers formed an alliance to sell the right to search their content to the highest bidding search engine. That really would shift the balance of power in the industry. Now the question is are the owners of other old media firms like the NY Times, AP, Reuters, CNN, etc gangster enough to banned together. As I see it, they have only one other choice - a slow, painful ride toward extinction.

Great Video

2009-11-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

Jaspar and I were throwing around ideas for an intro video on the (yet to be redesigned) Smarter Social Media site. We thought a montage of the history of communication would be perfect. Eventually we decided to go with something a bit different, and I'm glad we did. Because the video we wanted to produce was already made by the guys at Vokle. Check this out.

Welcome to Vokle from Erick Oh on Vimeo.

Beauty.

Our Team

2009-11-13T07:04:00.000-08:00

Our team in the Philippines threw a Halloween party a couple weeks back. They just sent me the photos and I'm totally amazed by the creative costumes and artistic photography. I'm very lucky to work with such a great group of people. With this level of effort, I hope I can make it to Manila for the Thanksgiving party!

The Problem with Real Time

2009-11-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting at Urth Cafe, sharing coffee and conversation with a beautiful girl. We're laughing and getting to know one another - going deeper. It's a great moment until she pulls out her cellphone and starts texting. From here forward every few minutes she's checking her cellphone, texting, Tweeting and logging into Facebook. It becomes part of the rhythm of the conversation, which by now has devolved into superficial banter about friends we have in common.

Working in social media I am the first to praise the power of communication technology. While traveling in Seattle this past week I used TwitPic to share photos of my trip with family and friends, Yelp to get updates about the best restaurants in the city and TaxiMagic to order cabs in a click from my iPhone. These tools make life easier, more enjoyable and bring me closer to people, even those thousands of miles away. But it seems that in the past two or three years technology has become so powerful and consuming, that it demands our attention now, even when we are trying to enjoy a real moment.

The problem with real time is that it takes us away from what's real. When something makes us angry or sad, when something makes us laugh or cry, we whip out our smart phones to text, Tweet, or TwitPic the experience to share with an undefined audience. Real time demands that this be done in the moment, and this simple action removes us from the reality of the moment we are in.

Commitments to real time social media are based on a dissatisfaction with reality. We are bored, anxious or uncomfortable in the now and real time offers an escape. We can imagine that undefined audience reacting in a way that pleases us. How many times have you stood nervously waiting for a date to arrive, attempting to look busy by shuffling through the apps on your iPhone, perhaps texting or Tweeting a mindless comment?

Being present is powerful, whether the present moment is pleasurable or painful. So I resolve to stay present, to never let a face-to-face exchange be interrupted social media. I'm not abandoning the real time tools I've come to love. I am just no longer going to sacrifice real moments for real time.

Attention

2009-11-11T00:53:00.000-08:00

Last week I wrote about brands listening to what is being said about them online, rather than rudely expecting their customers to answer intrusive surveys. Today I present twenty solutions to do just that. Check out this list of 20 social media monitoring platforms me and Jed put together for Smarter Social Media.

Magic

2009-11-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

"What's your favorite app?" I asked. "I don't really use apps." Jaspar replied. And like that I realized that neither do I. For all my excitement about apps - I've downloaded 40 of them - I really just use my iPhone to make calls, text and email. The one notable exception being Google Maps. The fact that I can leave my house without printing directions from MapQuest is a real advance over my previous phone. But beyond that apps have added little value to my life.

That changed last week in Seattle. A few weeks back I wrote about an idea my mom gave me when I was explaining Twitter to her - TaxiTweets. Why not use real time social media and the geo-location power of smart phones to develop a system to order cabs in a click. The next morning I read about an app that purported to do just that. TaxiMagic claimed to allow one click booking via iPhone and Blackberry application, and a text message based taxi ordering system for other mobile devices.

But how often is an app really as good as it sounds?

Thus my expectations were low when I whipped out the app to order a taxi at the corner of Pine and 1st. After placing the initial order the app gives you a status, "Driver not yet dispatched. Reload for updates." I nervously clicked the reload button a couple of times and the status did not change. Then - magically - a cab appeared and the driver rolled down his window, "Bryce?"

I had found my new favorite app!

In using the app the rest of the week I found that when the status does update the application will tell you the taxi number, the drivers name and give you a map of the cab's location. This map doesn't seem to update so don't despair if your cab seems stuck a few miles away.

In my experience the app was totally trustworthy. A driver appeared within 10 minutes every time I placed an order. The next step will be to load my credit card info on the TaxiMagic website so that I no longer have to rely on cash to pay for cabs. This is a truly amazing app that I recommend for anyone that travels extensively or just orders cabs on a regular basis.

Seattle

2009-11-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

This was my second trip up to Seattle in as many months, and I love the city. The biggest surprises were:

1) The food - Unbelievable! Seattle may be the nation's second greatest culinary city behind New York.

2) The weather - It rained ALL the time. No surprise there. But somehow rain in Seattle was easier to deal with than in New York or LA. Perhaps it's because the whole city is prepared and relaxed about it.

3) The people - All of the people I dealt with were cheerful and kind, even in the face of the constantly depressing weather.

I've prepared some of my favorite finds in the city:

Restaurants:

1) Dahlia Lounge - We ate here the last night in the city and I would easily rank this among my top 10 meals of all time. Try the seafood platter to start, crab cakes and house baked donuts are a must.

2) Pink Door - The atmosphere was perhaps a little too romantic for two straight men dinning together, but the food was very good. Jaspar and I met a group of senior girls from University of Washington here so that took up most of my focus. Inside Info: if you stay until closing time you can sneak up and sit on one of their burlesque swings.

3) Palace Kitchen - Tom Douglas is the celebrity chef of Seattle. He owns Palace Kitchen and Dahlia amongst other establishments. This place is phenomenal as well. Really excellent north-western fair. Great salmon, halibut, trout etc. For desert you MUST have the coconut creme pie.

Bars:

1) Amber - Cool ambiance. Live music. And a bachelorette party make for a good time.

2) Del Rey - When we went it was dead. But everyone we asked referenced this spot as a lively place to go to on the weekends.

3) The U District - After meeting the group of seniors from UW we felt obligated to go out with them on their home turf. Very common college scene, one long road lined with bars, with undergraduates pouring out of them. It was a good time.

Hotels:

1) The Inn at the Market - The perfect hotel for a vacation in Seattle or for those getting on or coming off of cruise ships. The Inn at the Market is only hotel that is REALLY at Pike Place market. Just a few steps away from the historic location, with incredible views of Puget Sound. We got to stay in 6 different rooms whilst we were their, so I can confidently say the entire hotel is beautiful and cozy and the staff is amazingly friendly.

2) Hyatt at Olive 8 - I stayed here on my last trip. The best hotel to stay at for conventions or business. Rooms are brand new. The fitness center is amazing. And Urbane, the hotels restaurant is another example of Seattle's impeccable cuisine.

Social Media for Hotels

2009-11-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Seattle to give a presentation on social media to the Seattle Hotel Association. The presentation was a lot of fun. It's great to speak with people who really understand the value of service. There are some incredible opportunities for hotel owners to leverage social media to this end. Here's the presentation I gave...

Hotels And Social Media

View more presentations from Bryce Maddock.

Listen Up!

2009-11-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

What do GoDaddy, Verizon and AT&T customer service all have in common? They all ask or email you "just a quick survey" after a call. "And sir, on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you evaluate my ability to serve your needs?"

It's irritating and at times nauseating to be put in such a position. I understand the need for company's to understand how their customers are feeling. At TaskUs and Smarter Social Media we constantly try and dialogue with our customers to this end. But we do not use phone or email surveys and we never will.

The irony is that small companies like ours might have reason to use surveys. But for big corporations there is no excuse. With social media all companies have to do is clear the wax from their ear and listen. Their customers are complaining and praising, suggesting and criticizing, and at times even coming together to trouble shoot without the presence of anyone from the company! On Twitter, the blogosphere and discussion forms there is so much data to be mined its a wonder that companies would waste time doing anything else.

Simply check out the daily list from TweetedBrands of the most mentioned brands on Twitter to get a sense of just how much can be gleaned:
So corporations of the world please stop asking me questions. Go ahead and follow me on Twitter and pull my blog's RSS feed. I promise to praise and criticize you publically and provide plenty of valuable information. Thank you.

Great Ideas

2009-10-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

12 hours after posting my Taxi geo-location idea I read this on Jamie's Blog. The TaxiMagic iPhone app has been download. I can't wait to put it to use.

Mind of an Entrepreneur 005

2009-10-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

I spent the day at the #140Conf at the Kodak Theater here in L.A. The conference was focused on new media and featured Bijan Sabet, Robert Scoble, Arianna Huffington and many more of the most innovative folks in new media. As a young entrepreneur it was exciting. I was really impressed by just how many great connections I was able to make in such a short period of time. But more about my thoughts on the conference in a future post.

For now I want to talk about the real time, location aware, mobile media. Let me break it down:

Real Time - You can watch it as it happens. When the photo, video or tweet is posted it is instantly discoverable to you.

Location Aware - When you post anything it is tagged with your location, using the GPS on your mobile device or the IP address of your computer.

Mobile Media - Your cellphone.

The players in this space currently include FourSquare, Loopt, Whrrl, BrightKite and Google Latitude.

This evening, post conference, I was talking to my mom trying to explain these networks, when she proposed what I think is a pretty neat idea - Taxi Tweets (not necessarily a Twitter app, but a catchy name).

The general premise is this: I'm sitting at a friends house getting ready to go out. Instead of picking up the phone, dialing 411 for a cab company and then waiting on hold with the taxi operator for 10 minutes I post a Taxi Tweet, geo-tagging the post with my exact location. In time the cab company responds that a taxi is on the way and gives me an estimate of how long it will take for the taxi to arrive.

Who Benefits:

The customer - because ordering a taxi is easier than it was before.

The taxi company - with some innovation (that would take full advantage of their taxi's GPS systems) these companies could get rid of their operators. The nearest taxi driver would be made aware of the location of his next pick up via an on board computer.

As with all of my Mind of an Entrepreneur posts feel free to steal this idea. I would love to see one of the companies mentioned above putting this into action. I could certainly use it.

Wifey

2009-10-26T22:12:00.001-07:00

Saw this on Jamie's blog who saw it on Daryn's blog. Anyone who has ever built an organization with a partner knows just how true this is:

My relationship with my cofounder went from just being friends to seeing each other all the time, fretting over the finances and cleaning up shit. And the startup was our baby. I summed it up once like this: “It’s like we’re married, but we’re not fucking.”

Persistence

2009-10-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I posted about the importance of persistence and focus in building a successful organization. Last night I was in my dad's office fixing one of many his persistent computer problems when I came across a Japanese proverb he had scrawled on his wall:

Nana korobi, ya oki

Seven falls, eight rises - a zen Buddhist saying. The story written with the proverb said that the Buddha persisted in his pursuit of enlightenment for nine long years, loosing limbs and failing many times. My father is handicapped, completely his left leg is completely paralyzed, and he moves slowly with the help of a cane. The pain and frustration he exudes as a result has infected our relationship. But in an ironic way, though our pursuits are very different, we are both struggling to persist.

Pivotal

2009-10-25T17:58:00.001-07:00

Rich has been in town since Wednesday. Rich was my roommate and best friend from college and my time investment banking in New York. We have both since left the city and returned to our home towns to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors. Whenever we get back together I get a real chance to reflect on my progress. Rich is an excellent advisor and confidant.

The lesson from this weekend is that building a successful enterprise requires focus and persistence. This may seem simple and obvious, but Rich embodies this philosophy so whole heartedly that just being around him I feel infected with dedication.

This past year I have encountered endless challenges. I expected building a business to be easier than this. I've bobbed and weaved my way through two businesses, two offices and countless projects and clients. As I come up on the beginning of my second year in business I am focused on a few core goals.

While, change is necessary, the biggest change maybe an unrelenting commitment to success.

Social Media and the Psychology of Success

2009-10-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

I've written previously about social media's effect on history. There is no doubt that the presence of social media will fundamentally shift our perspective of the famous historical figures of the future. As a young entrepreneur aspiring for success, one group whose minds I would love to peer into are self made successes. An entire industry has been built around understanding and attempting to mimic the psychology of success. In the next decade we will get incredible new insight into the process, growth, ups and downs of those who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and tweet along the way. Naturally, the more honest this group is when using social media, the more valuable and truthful the insight.

The Odyssey

2009-10-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

I started this blog after returning to LA from New York, after leaving a job as an investment banker for the dreams of entrepreneurial success, after a long humbling journey to Argentina and a painful goodbye to the city I had come to love.

My first post mentioned that this blog would chronicle my Odyssey Years a phrase coined by New York Times columnist David Brooks to describe my generation's long transition from college graduation to adulthood.

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.

We wander like Odysseus trying to find our way home, trying to establish our place in the world. This is a period of anxiety and anguish, but also a period of adventure. Through out the ups and downs I'm consistently overcome by the feeling that one day I will look back on all of this with feelings of nostalgia.

When I wrote that first post my Odyssey was just beginning. Over the past 16 months I have wandered. I've started two different businesses. I've opened offices in Santa Monica and in Manila. I've spoken at conferences, met some of the most brilliant minds in the tech and marketing world, and learned a tremendous amount. With all that I completely ignored the fundamentals. Fundamentals like making enough money to move out of my parents house. Fundamentals like making new friends (which can be tough when you move back to the city you grew up in). The kind of things that are fundamental to establishing myself in the world, becoming an adult and finding my way home.

And so in the past 16 months I have been humbled and been woken up to the reality of working hard, but more importantly working smart to be effective. In our first business venture Jaspar and I would each bring home as much money for a single evenings work as our friends did toiling in internships and retail jobs for the entire summer. And while only time will tell, I know that that wasn't a fluke, or a stroke of luck. This past 16 months has been the aberration.

It's time to find my way home.

My Love

2009-10-19T20:52:00.000-07:00

Meena said this quote reminded her of me. It's from Nicole William's Girl on Top:

I've been having a love affair for the past few years. On some days this love of mine seriously drives me to drink but I never seem to tire of it. It's broken my heart and I've felt utter disappointment, but I never want to leave. Its simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating. It continually exposes me to brilliant, outrageous and engaging people.And for good or for bad, it's always waiting. My true love-my career

Bryce Maddock

Top 5 Regrets of People on their Deathbed

Decomodization through Customer Service

Bootstrapping is a Bitch

The Reality

Gratitude

The Pursuit of Happiness

Censoring Myself

On Greatness

Business Process Outsourcing

Mind Meld

Hasbeens vs. Wannabes

The Death of the Phone Number

Influenced

Princesses, Parents and Partners

Thoughts on New York

Kindle Becomes Wildfire

Why Start?

Facebook is now WorldBook

24 on 24

Traveling While Sick

Why?

Glory

Freedom

Reputation as Currency

Strategy > Execution

Cocky

Mind of an Entrepreneur 007

Juxtaposition

Silence

Profit

Persistence

Process

People

From my iPhone

The Case Against "Hard Work"

adTech

King Cash

Productivity & Process

Hyatt & TaskUs

Cyborg Inc.

Money, Money, Money...MUN AY!

Broadband Essential

LA, LA Land

Dork State of Mind

AutoMarket

Baby Girl

Passion

Dominican Republic - Part 2

Dominican Republic - Part 1

When I'm Not Writing...

Trip Philosophy

ADD

Reflections on the Philippines - Part 2

Truism

An Apology

One Whale vs Lots of Fish

Solid Citizens

Checking References

Digital Lockdown

Not a Sure Thing

**** > *****

The Biggest PR Stunt of All Time?

Wrestling with Fortune

Mind of an Entrepreneur 006

Great Customer Service

Four Best Things About New York City

9 Seconds in Manilla

New York, New Years

2009

San Francisco/Seattle

Best Book of the Year, Decade and (maybe) My Life

Social Media Interview

New York

Action

Inspiration

hallelujah

Mentors

a rolling stone

Sage

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