Today, we've lost a visionary, which has been surprisingly hard for me to say. If there was one thing that I could really thank Steve Jobs for is his steadfast dedication to making products for people and his ability to create products based on the human experience. His understanding for human interaction and simple product design is an inspiration to me.
As a tech guru, it's no surprise that Steve was always in the spotlight, bringing Apple to the forefront of the technology age (on more than one occasion). But Steve was never jaded, only accepting interviews for Apple product releases and never drawing attention to himself. I'm sure it was largely attributed to his humble beginnings, being raised by a foster home that only wanted the best for him. This humbleness from a CEO of the second most valuable company only rivaling Exxon Mobil is a sight to be marveled by all.
In the months leading up to his death, it seemed like Steve was still in control. Perhaps finally believing that he'd helped built a company and culture that would live on in his absence - and he sure has. I truly believe that the impact he's made on technology and on the world will continue to pervade in our everyday lives. Some have even compared Steve Jobs to the likes of Edison and Einstein. Though I can't make the same parallels, I can certainly say he was a visionary and will be remembered for decades to come.
I live by and will continue to live by some of his famous words:
Live on your own terms, don't let others bring you down.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Trust your gut and follow your heart.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Do what you love and don't settle for less.
You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
In the words of the great: "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish."
Just seeing the latest update on Facebook this morning, giving users the ability to customize share/privacy settings inline in status updates.
Logging in you'll see three things:
1. A more obvious dialogue box bringing attention to adding friends. The description indicates that "tagging" friends allows them and their friends to see your posts.
2. Select location, which is something we've been hearing more about lately. Facebook is finally integrating location more in depth with their product offering. Tying location to everyday Facebook actions is important and that's why locking your location for status updates is front and center.
3. Probably the most drastic change would be the ability to "Control privacy when you post - or after," and what I'm calling Facebook Circles? Because really, where have we seen this if not Google+ Circles? Select the "Group" of people you've already curated on Facebook so that only THEY can see it.
Here's what Facebook has to say on that:
"Use this to manage who can see and comment on posts you share, including ones with location, if you add it. When you change this setting, it will stay how you set it for future posts until you change it again. Posts (including check-ins) from old mobile Facebook apps will use your new default privacy setting.
Also, we've changed the label for "Everyone" to "Public," but your posts will still reach the same people."
What do you think? Will this catch on with the mainstream Facebook user and validate the Google+ circles use case?
I'd say, use it sparingly and use it wisely. When content really doesn't require another click for the sake of the dropdown, don't do it.
When you do it, be conscious of the placement of your selection choices. In Google Docs, selecting both text color and highlight color gives you options that are no longer sitting under the parent option. Now, when users go to select an option in the far right, the obvious move is in a direct line, which collapses the dropdown. Instead, the dropdown forces users to navigate the mouse down and to the right in an "L" shape.
Sharing the latest addition to my tech gadget wishlist: Jambox by Jawbone.
How, you might ask, did you find this? Well, I was invited to UXWeek 2011 by the guys over at Adaptive Path, an experience design consultancy. As a UI/UX designer, I'm thrilled to check out this 4-day conference dedicated to one of the things I'm most passionate about - making products more awesome by designing them to the way people work.
Anyway! Taking a look at the speaker list, you'll quickly get down to Adam Lisagor, also known as "sandwich man." He makes a TON of startup videos and is probably most famous for his monotone-style narration in such hits as Square Everywhere, This is My Flipboard, and Get Flow (not to mention all the others Adam has helped direct/produce. You can find them all here. So in the process of watching all his films, I run into the Jambox by Jawbone and think about how amazingly simple it is.
Bluetooth connection to your iOS device, which makes listening to music, taking conference calls, etc. all so easy. My only question is, when you take the conference call, do you have to use the iPhone as the mic? Oh whatever, this product rocks. Having a kickass video doesn't hurt either.
Facebook pages are an interesting beast. Unlike Twitter, it's not likely that there will be any organic growth from "random" followers without external prompts - this is especially true if you don't have a physical presence to help you advertise. As a topic in itself, Facebook is a much more private medium for conversation between people and brands. Whenever a person comments on a Facebook page using their account, other users following the same company will be able to see the information you make public. Case and point, in order to have people interact with your Facebook page, they need to be genuinely interested in having their person associated with your brand.
Kickstart Your Page, Give It A Fighting Chance
Fill out your page with as much content as you can (this means an address, phone #, websites, mission statement, products, email addresses). If you want people to trust your brand, give them something to work with.
Kickstart your # of likes and get a vanity URL for your page by doing the friends and family push. It's important to get that vanity URL so you can start promoting your brand easier in passing.
Create valuable and rich content for your users, which could be anything from HD photos to videos, or basic polls for engagement.
Watch your language! Talk to your audience like you think they'd like to be spoken to. If that means courteous, be courteous, if it's coarse, make it coarse. This is a page for you to interact with your unique audience.
Test keywords. Try to see what kind of action words will get comments and likes.
As a key practice, you might try using specific words (like, take, submit, watch, post, check, comment, click, etc.) to get people to like your posts. You might need to start using other words to get comments (post, comment, tell us, check, like, submit, share, click, take, etc.). At the end of the day it will matter largely on your demographic.
Check the competition, see what's working for them and what's not working. You can see this at face value by just visiting their page.
Don't be inquisitive. Studies have shown that words like "how, why, what" attempt to prompt long responses from users and are too personal. Try words like "when, where, and should" to create questions that are softer but still garner response.
Don't just post random updates happening in your company, if you don't care, no one else will.
Analyze Your Users, Customize Your Presence
Use Facebook Insights, it's invaluable to know your audience. Insights will tell you specifically what times people are interested, what they're liking and commenting on, all of which you can optimize on and make an awesome customized forum for your people.
Analyze the peak hours of engagement through Insights and testing different time variables. This might mean having your marketing person post at times like before work, after work, and late night because research has shown this time to have the largest effect.
Analyze the days of peak engagement, which for some companies and brands might be the end of the week because their constituents are looking for something to procrastinate on.
Offline Engagement Is Necessary
We've all seen brands do this. They make sure they tie their Facebook campaign closely to all of their marketing materials - whether its commercials, printed materials, on their website, at parties, etc.
Don't just put a Facebook logo on your website and especially "unclickable" material and expect people to convert through this. It won't work. Try using conventions like QR codes to help bridge the digital to physical gap.
It goes without saying that engaging an audience online requires offline groundwork, so start talking to people and telling them to like your brand and give them something to remember that.
Third Party Applications
Use Facebook apps like Wildfire and Involver to drive interaction (if it works). These sites help convert viewers to "likers" by throwing up richer pages that prompt users for a "like" before they get access.
Always Remember To
Ask yourself "Why would they care?" because if you can't answer this yourself, then chances are neither can they.
Check statistics in Facebook Insights like impressions, comments, likes, and analyze with trends in mind. There's a reason those metrics are made available to you.
Promote your Facebook page online with things like email signatures, website headers and footers, through Twitter or other social networks, on your business cards (with URL), and any place that gets you impressions.
There is an interesting balance that must be struck when you're trying to build a strong following on Twitter. Obviously, certain people are more predisposed to getting Twitter followers up front (depending on your influence in reality), but there are several things to be done to build a follower based and retain them.
Baby Steps
Start by following the people that you want to influence and that influence you
Strike a unique balance of followers and following, 1follower:1.25following is a good practice, but early on having more followers is alright
Start using hashtags and try to associate your company/brand with said hashtag ("own" the hashtag if possible)
Reach out and converse with new people using hashtags that are relevant to you and them
Retweet popular articles and topics, so long as they appeal to your purpose
Keep your average numbers of tweets consistent so that you develop a schedule with your followers
Tweet at times that your followers would likely see your content
Don't continuously offer products or free giveaways because your followers will likely follow you for the free and not for the brand
Don't spam people with a canned message, it only makes them angry
Maturing
Keep following relevant people and influential people, a lot of people forget that they need to reciprocate on the following
It's alright to start writing open ended questions once you've built up a user base, before it's just noise sent to a select few people
Continue sharing resources and more importantly, your take on those topics, people follow you because you have value in your POV, they don't need you to see RTed content
Connect people and bring people into conversations with other Twitter users, be a facilitator to connect people over like topics - this helps you build relationships
Use it sparingly to have conversations with people
Always
Reply to your followers if it is a relevant topic to you or something that is asking for your direct participation
Offer support (especially if you offer a product)
Be a human
Don't rant if it's counterproductive
Off-Site Twitter Engagement
It goes without saying that building a user base on ANY social network requires real groundwork. That means getting out of your seat and talking to people. Making it possible to follow or get engagement with your brand on Twitter outside of the site. Where?
I've always been a big fan of Google, but let's be honest, they haven't really been knocking it out of the park with their latest products. Many seem half baked, if not just a quick attempt to steal market share wherever the masses are headed (queue Google Offers). Suffice it to say, I thought Wave was a complete disaster that could have been great, Voice is a giant that requires a little more refinement and execution, etc.
So when I heard about Music, yes, I was skeptical. But after playing with it a bit, I think it really has the potential to rock. Why?
Well, take a look at the success you see with Pandora and Grooveshark. Both are streaming music services that allow you to access your music from anywhere. For a while, I've been saving music files to Dropbox, which allows me to stream music from my Dropbox straight from my own library. I mean, it's cool that Pandora curates music for you, but that's more about discovery than accessing music. And Grooveshark? It's cool, but I'd like to listen to my music without having to create whole new playlists, etc.
Enter Google Music.
This is a service that lets you stream music just like Grooveshark, but with all your the music in your computer. Once more, Google is launching complementary services on devices that allow you to stream that music onto your device. I think it's great.
For Android users, Music will soon become a replacement for your default music player. I've been running music from DoubleTwist because of what they call "AirSync," an amazing little app that allowed me to transfer music from my computer (dedicated folder) to my Android device without having to plugin. Music is a replacement for this and does it smoother. Once the music stores to your device (after being uploaded to the cloud via any desktop), you're good to go.
What about if you're not at your computer? This is cloud service remember? You can launch Google Music from any computer so you can retrieve your songs anywhere. So just like that, I think Google is going to disrupt the music environment in a way Apple hasn't been able to. Access all your music all the time and never lift another cord. That's the next step Apple needs to take. But as a solid Android and Google fan, I'm glad to have it at my disposal now.
I came across an infographic outlining the history of social network, marking famous and influential milestons. My favorite is the birth of "trolling"! Read on.
MVP = minimum viable product. I've also heard the QoU (quantum of utility) variety or the straightforward version - "when you have something that one person wants to use badly." Thank you Paul Graham for that. Simply put, if you have a product, figure out your core competency and iterate on that. V1 is a good way to test and validate your concept and that's exactly what we did.
Our company GetContact.Info was lucky enough to get an exhibitors booth at the 2011 SxSW Trade Show. We had a unpolished stand with a taped together sign that sat atop a TV that wasn't able to loop our promotional video. We had no standing signs or fancy stands to place our brochures and cards, or one of the retractable TV stands that everyone else seemed to have. But what we did have was an interactive way to engage the attendees, show the utility of our service in a 15 second pitch, make registration optional and simple, and give them something to share both passively and actively (their QR stickers).
If they like your product, the state/aesthetic appeal of your stand will have little effect on the foot traffic and waits that you get.
Side note: It didn't hurt to have Justin Bieber's "Baby" in instrumental looping in our promo video. Haha!
2. Be friendly and genuine
This one is simple. If you're friendly and seem genuinely interested in what people do, they'll be more interested in what you do. So be nice, smile, and answer questions, it will pay off.
3. Offer (passive) promotional giveaways
Mentioned this one earlier, but if you give people things that they can walk around with that displays your brand, the better it is. Yes, brochures are nice, but we printed 1500 brochures and came back with more than half. In contrast, we brought about 2000 cards and came back with less than 500. Doesn't that say something?
People would rather take something small the demonstrates your brand so make sure you do your business cards right and build consistency in your brand. This includes logo, colors, font type, text, etc. It ALL matters.
We set people up with QR codes that were branded with our little logo and display stickers that reflected our logo and color. These are passive ways to display your brand and for us, it was THE way start organically sharing what our product could do in the wild.
Trust me, there were more takeaways from being a first time exhibitor.It was a tiring trade show, which is not over yet, so keep hydrated and eat when you can. This was the single most revitalizing and encouraging example of customer development and validation that we could have hoped for.
I encourage anyone with a consumer friendly product to go out and display your product. Bring it to a crowd that gets it and launch early.
My (harmless) plug: to create an account of your own, visit us at getcontact.info to start tracking your business card analytics today. thanks ;)
To those of you that don't know what ST@B is, it's short for Startup @ Berkeley, an organization that I co-founded with a few other students during our time at UC Berkeley. The purpose of ST@B was to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem on UC Berkeley and within the area, which had not existed in the past. As the first of it's kind, ST@B helped pioneer the development of regular events like mixers, Startup Wednesdays, and the Hackathon that has been sponsored several times by Zynga and other organizations. We've been honored to have the likes of Dustin Moskovitz of Facebook, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress, Mark Pincus of Zynga, and James Hong of HotorNot, to name a few. Ok, enough of the name dropping.
Since then, I've become an Alumni Advisor for the organization and help coordinate events and contribute my input for new segments like the ST@B Dialogues with Ben Parr, Co-Editor of Mashable.
On to the juicy stuff, here's some of the main arguments I got from Paul Graham in his experiences as an angel and running Y Combinator:
Winners will win and losers will lose
on differentiating the promise of a great team with a hyped product vs. a weak team with a stellar product
It's more about the team than it is about the idea
on establishing a solid team with a history of collaboration
more on that, if you have a great team with no idea or an idea with no business plan, you should talk to Paul, serious
Determination is just as important as intelligence if not more
on vetting people for YC for persistance through the standard startup struggle
Launch as soon as you have a quantum of utility
on launching a product and MVP
Building a great product rests on a great user experience, you want your users to love you
Get a co-founder, it's easier to bear the work and it's discouraged by YC
on vetting teams for YC
Well that's all for now. I'm glad we had a chance to pitch GetContact.Info to Paul and get some honest feedback from him.
Ok, the title is a bit misleading, but it has some substance. I was prompted to write this post (after an extended hiatus) because of the latest update to the Android OS on my Nexus One.
GINGERBREAD!
Hooray, it's here with all it's Androidy glory. So what does that mean? Well it means those suckers with the third party OS installations like Motoblur for Motorola Android phones and Samsung Galaxy Android phones don't have it yet!
Ok, well enough of that showboating, but that's truly one of the benefits of owning pure Google phone, with none of those fancy third party developments, the Nexus One and now Nexus S is pure unadulterated Android glory.
So here are some very basic surface things that I've noticed:
Some basic UI changes
Native Google widgets like the power monitor
Notifications bar
New black and Android green theme for applications and windows instead of the standard grey and black
Launch bar is in the same color palette as the rest of the OS
Standard app home menu screen in a darker color palette
Highlight effect for vertical scrolling
I've also noticed INCREASES in battery life and strength of WiFi signal, but that must just be a placebo because I don't see any documentation to validate this
All I know is that actions are crisper, more responsive, and feel a bit more intuitive. Can't wait to see what comes next after the S.
Oh, and more more thing. With the release of Gingerbread for Nexus One also came more development for the Nexus S and greater support for NFC. I really think NFC is the future for close contact communication - whether it's transactional or to gather user data to serve customized interactions - but it's definitely going to be a big part of our near future.
In light of the recent filings for IPO, I thought I might repost this data visualization from a Mashable article today. This infographic emphasizes the sheer volume of data that is being created, shared, and transfered in a single social network - let's not forget the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. So what does this have to do with IPO? Well as many of you have seen, LinkedIn made their intentions to go IPO publicly a few weeks ago. This website is really the first of its kind - social networking site - that has demonstrated a monetary valuation. And how do we judge it? The database, the content, the numbers! It's all data baby, get it through your head!
Due to an article published on Mashable in October of last year called "3 Things Any Video Needs to Go Viral," I was prompted to write my own rendition (written by an avid Youtuber).
So, what does it take to get to a million views, tens of millions of views, more? Well, the people have spoken and called these videos "viral". Yeah, viral. Not a pretty name, but it gets the message across. These videos have some immutable power that helps them spread like wildfire and today I'm here to show you the 3 things you need to make a viral video.
Like author (and expert in social video advertising) Dan Greenberg states, creating a viral video is very much a science, and here's the formula.
1. Auto-tune
The recipe to success of very many viral videos rests with autotone, enough said. Well, the same holds true with popular music, so why not videos. Haha.
Time (~7M views):
And Time (~68M views):
Again (~21M views):
2. Babies
We can't get enough. Countless times, we've seen these babies (usually laughing) - it's actually a bit creepy that we spend so many collective hours watching other peoples' children, but we're still glued to the screen why? Because it's the #2 element of making viral videos. What's the most popular type of baby - it seems to be of the british and laughing variety.
British Babies (~274M views, yeah this is in the top 10):
Laughing Baby #1 (~158M views):
Laughing Baby #2 (~25M views):
3. Cats
There's something about cats that we just can't get enough of. It may be their curiosity that makes cat videos so appealing.
Funny Cats (~47M views):
Actually, this category should be called, cute animals or cute things our animals do (~15M views):
Haha, so there you have it. The formula for a surefire viral video:
Auto-tune + Babies + Cute Animals = Guaranteed Viral Video
Lol, so get to work! Auto-tune your baby speaking gibberish in aut-tune, while riding your pet cat that's chasing it's own tail. You'll get MILLIONS of hits! :).
Well yes, this statement is a little harsh, considering I'll only be discussing one particular issue, but I think it's about time to reevaluate whether Google's mantra of "Don't Be Evil" is really something they abide by. Let me first say that I have nothing personal against Google and that I think they've made some incredible products and have helped to mold the industry I am currently involved with today. Google has helped set the groundwork for the growth of the technology sector, the acceptance of things like social networking and making data more readily available, etc. And as you can see with my other posts, I passionately love all my Google related accounts and products. What I am trying to say is - is it fair Google to say it's not evil? Companies run under very many motives - many of which are driven by things like the bottom line and market saturation of their own product (aka monopoly). Are these motive not evil? Isn't the goal to force people to use your product so you have greater market share and higher profits? With this being said, an since Google is obviously one of these aforementioned companies, is it safe to say that Google isn't being evil. Now onto the matter at hand: Kongregate Arcade. For those of you that don't know what Kongregate is, it's a GameStop-owned website, home to thousands of independently developed flash games. Yes, they host games that you might have seen on other sites like AddictingGames.com or some other variation of that URL, but they added a new spin to flash games. To make these web games a little more exciting, Kongregate founder Jim Greer introduced "achievements," which added a hint of community building that drove user retention through the roof. Think of Xbox achievements for flash games. Yeah, it's pretty cool when you get to compare your skills across multiple games against other people online. Or...maybe that's just me. In any case, this was years back when I first started playing on Kongregate in 2008 and then slowly lost interest. I found myself interested more and more in mobile applications and mobile social gaming, a space that is heavily fragmented, but is also home to big hitters like Zynga, Glu, Gameloft, etc. Mobile games are much easier to play when you're on the go, especially in transit for long public transportation rides like on BART, Caltrain, or ACTransit/MUNI if you're in the SF Bay Area (this is also why games like Angry Birds have had so many downloads - that's where the people are). So naturally, you'd think this was a good place for Kongregate to insert themselves. That's where Kongregate Arcade comes in - essentially an arcade of flash games only available on your Android device because it supports flash and flash-based browser entertainment. But can you find Kongregate Arcade in the Android Marketplace? Even with all that FREE flash game glory? Simply put...no. Why is that? Well according to Greer in a recent article written in VentureBeat, "Google said the Kongregate Arcade app behaved like an app store, violating the non-compete clause in Google’s terms of service agreement." That's a load of BS. What do you call the default Amazon Music App that comes as a pre-install that you CAN'T uninstall (easily) from your phone, or what about the Amazon Kindle store that lets you buy books directly from their virtual bookstore. Yeah... Well, let's think about this a bit more. Lately, Google has had a couple things on their mind to get back in the spotlight. Something along the lines of - "perhaps we should launch a suite of social-based web apps like Buzz/Wave/Profile that helps Google users (and ONLY Google users) interact with each other on a more social basis, kind of like that social network site Facebook". And when they saw Facebook firmly plant its stake in social gaming with the integration of Zynga games, it only aggravated Google more, something like "HEY! we want to be a good social gaming platform too!" And that's why I think Google banned Kongregate Arcade - because they were thinking about their non-existent social gaming platform to launch in response to Facebook. Yes, Google is facing hard times, but their entire no evil mantra and push for "open source" everything doesn't approve of this marketplace ban. I can see why iTunes would do something like this since they're stood by their super "walled garden" approach for years, but Google, come on Sergey/Larry! Give us flash games! I know you want this social gaming niche for Android all to yourselves, but what about Android being an open source partner for the independent developer crowd! It's so not like you and that's 13M active gamers you're leaving out in the cold. Well thanks to the nature of the Android OS, it's still possible to download the Kongregate Arcade app - AT YOUR OWN RISK! Well, it's obviously a real app and not some scam, so please feel free to download as necessary. If you're a Kongregate fan and want these games on a native app in your phone, follow these instructions: Disclaimers: this will not work if you don't have Android 2.2 (Froyo) and you don't have the Adobe Flash player 10.1 installed. but if you do...awesome! 1. Navigate to http://www.kongregate.com/android (if it doesn't automatically work as the website indicates, you can download the .apk from the website on your computer and install manually) If that's too hard, let's do it this way: 1. Navigate to http://www.getjar.com/mobile/53364/kongregate-arcade/ (for those of you that don't know getjar, it's a trusted publishing platform which acts as a mall for mobile downloads) 2. Select your phone as it prompts you so you get the right download 3. Opt to send a text to your phone with the link 4. While you wait for the link, you'll have to allow "unknown sources" for now (it's not that scary, companies like Glue do it all the time to secretly let out alpha/beta app releases) 4a. Go to settings 4b. Go to applications 4c. Check the "Unknown Source" box. 5. Go to your text and to the link to download, ignore the advertising link 6. After it downloads and installs, go back to your applications and uncheck the "Unknown Sources" box And there you have it. It wasn't that hard...and now you have Kongregate Arcade to play flash games to your hearts content. If you too think that Google is becoming a little more like Apple has traditionally been in its walled garden approach, I'd like to know your thoughts too! It's rare for Google/Android to flex its might muscles against independent developers because it poses some kind of threat to the native app store, but hey it might mean Google Games is coming out soon. Let's just hope it's a bit more polished than Google's attempts at socializing. Good luck Kongregate, I hope Larry realizes that these little decisions are big mistakes and allows indiscriminate publication of (tasteful and virus-free) apps. Here's GameStop's Youtube promotional video:
A few months back, I had the pleasure of attending a meetup hosted by the Lean Startup Circle of San Francisco. It was an amazing experience and I'll tell you why. It was more than the fact that I'd learned immensely from the keynote speaker Drew Houston of Dropbox and that I'd met a room full of people that I can now call my network, but it was one time that I can truly say I was in a room that displayed the drive and tenacity to build and succeed that we are missing everyday given the current economic climate. Everyone in the room had their eyes set on a prize, a goal that they were attempting to reach, and that's why they were all here to listen to a guy that started a simple business a couple years back and made a million dollar business from simply identifying a market pain.
Let me start off by giving Dropbox the utmost praise it deserves. It's an amazing SaaS (software as a service) product that I've been using years back when it was nothing other than http://www.getdropbox.com and a cool little video. Since then it's developed into a service that millions of people around the world use (and rely on) daily. I must confess, when I first learned about Dropbox, I was nothing like I am today. I knew little about the startup industry, other than that I was growingly interested in the developments of social networks and very niche verticals like "web-based file hosting services in the cloud." Yes, I learned about Dropbox by doing a "similar" search on Google of an app that I downloaded through the Blackberry App World called SugarSync.
For me, it was love at first site with Dropbox, and this meant that Drew and the whole Dropbox Team had done their job. If they are able to snag the early adopters (like me) that are key influencers within smaller circles, then they surely had a solid marketing strategy and scalable business plan for customer acquisition. Here are the lessons learned from the horse's mouth (Drew) and boiled down by yours truly:
Make something that people want
There is always early risk
Launch at a time that's ready for your business
Learn about potential early success early
Learn early, learn often (not launch early, launch often)
Go where your early adopters hang out
Cut to the point (draw initial attention fast and remove friction)
Capture and retain early interest
Niche first, world later
Create a repeatable and scalable mechanism
Be scrappy
Make sure what you are doing is valuable (validate, validate, validate)
Get mainstream interest
Move beyond TechCrunch as a goal
Real organic growth comes from W.O.M. (word of mouth)
(For beta) Let people in when you need to learn something useful
For those of you that care to stick around, let me break it down for you:
Make something that people want. It's very important. Before you start any new venture, validate that market and do your due diligence. Building a scalable business starts with a product and the strength of the product will amplify itself. Drew pointed out specifically that the segway was an amazingly designed (and marketed) product that failed because it was a poor market fit.
There is always early risk. With any startup, there is always early risk. With that being said, if something is bound to fail, make sure it fails as fast as possible. There is no use pumping resources into a product that no one will use even if it has all the world's marketing force behind it.
Launch at a time that's ready for your business. This applies to certain companies better than others. From the experts, there are starkly conflicting views. We have Paul Graham from Y Combinator who says launch as soon as physically possible. Joel Spolsky says launch "when it doesn't suck," aka take the Marimba Phenomenon into account (this is when more money is spent on marketing and PR than development). In the case of Dropbox, it made sense to launch only when the entire product was 100% because they didn't want to risk the one outlier experience that could spoil the milk
Learn about potential early success, early. What does this mean? Well it means validate the need in the market to prevent yourself from spending money on an already dead product. Save money spent on resources if you know it's not going to work. In the case of Dropbox, Drew pointed out that the online storage space was very fragmented and no product would fit a single purpose - that's where Dropbox would fit perfectly.
Learn early, learn often. I cannot stress enough about how important it is to learn who you audience is. It doesn't matter how great a product is and how much time and sweat you put into it, the only thing that matters at the end of the day is who will use it - and will they use it.
Go where your early adopters hang out. This is a topic that I emphasize with EVERYONE I meet. It's important to influence your audience early on - even before your product is fully built. You want to build interest, you want to validate your product, you want to do as much as you can early on to ensure that your product will succeed within your specially built niche. If you come from the audience you are trying to appeal to, your conversation will be much more organic.
Cut to the point. This can mean a variety of things, but what I'm referring to is your marketing. When you want to entice people, you don't want to show them how to log in, you want to show them the usefulness of your product. How do you do that? Draw initial attention fast and remove friction. For example, on your landing page, instead of putting detailed instructions on how to work the program, lead them to a video that can convey the utility of your product. And instead of trying to capture all your user data upfront, make it easier (less friction) for users to register and use your product. Don't give everything up front, put enough out there to tease your audience into using your product. If your product speaks for itself, there won't be any problem keeping them once you've got them.
Capture and retain early interest. Simple enough, right? Some of you might contest that this point contradicts the philosophy of "launch at a time that's ready for your business," but it really doesn't. All this means is throw up a simple email form so that you can capture early adopter interest instead of pushing them away since your product isn't complete. This doesn't mean you have to show them everything prematurely. It just means you might have to put them in a bit of suspense.
Niche first, world later. Had it not been for Drew, I wouldn't have ever thought of this. What does it mean? it means focus on your community first and then bring your product to the world. You can get more market saturation if you limite the audience. Yes, you heard right, and it's not the first time you've heard the story. Remember that website called Facebook? Yeah, they started in Harvard, the Ivy League, and eventually expanded to college students, high school, and then the world (missing a few steps in there, but you get the point). If you can learn from anyone in this case, it's the success of Facebook in implementing this idea. Target your community first, the world can come later.
Create a repeatable and scalable mechanism. This is almost the most important (and viral) aspect of getting traction. This mechanism for Dropbox refers directly to their "share Dropbox with a friend and you BOTH get a reward" plan. Getting traction starts with one user and if you build a repeatable and scalable mechanism to facilitate the process of spreading the word there are endless possibilities for growth.
Be scrappy. Yes, you've heard it thousands of times and it may seem cliche, but it's true in the case of almost ALL new startups. What does it mean? Well it means "fake it 'til you make it." If you have a service that requires user generated content and usership to entice new users, make the damn content yourself. Yes, faking it works sometimes. In the case of Aardvark, the social Q&A website recently acquire by Google for $50M, the founders didn't have the resources or the focus to build an algorithm to solve answers posed by the community and they didn't have a big enough community yet to self sustain the incoming questions. What'd they do? The founders hand researched the answers to questions and sent them directly to the askers. Yes, that's being scrappy and it seems they did quite well for themselves.
Make sure what you are doing is valuable. I can't stress this enough. I've mentioned it before and I'll mention it again. Validate, validate, validate. Learn about your audience, learn about how they change and how they use your product, and make sure you don't alienate anyone. You have to constantly learn about your demographic and how it reacts to your product. Without the audience, there is no product.
Next, get mainstream interest. How do you do that? It's tough to give a definitive answer for all companies. For some, it might mean buying AdWords from Google. For others, it might mean hiring a VP of marketing to focus directly on SEM, SEO, PPC, etc. You really need to use your own discretion to drive this user acquisition in the context of your own business. What will work for some will not necessarily work for others. A/B test, test, and test some more. It doesn't hurt to try everything in your arsenal before you hit eureka.
Move beyond TechCrunch as a goal. Don't rely on scoring a publication in a major publisher like TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, VentureBeat, yes, I can keep going. Things like a repeatable and scalable mechanism and organic W.O.M. are much more sustainable goals to reach in order to grow your company.
Real organic growth comes from word of mouth. Werd.
Let people in when you need to learn something useful. Well this really only applies to beta launches. When you are initially testing out certain features or A/B testing graphics, it's important to get in new faces. Funnel in new faces (from your stored list of early adopters) to get a new look on your product.
At the end of the day, there are three things that you MUST take away if anything:
You can't build a billion dollar company without a billion dollar audience. The goal is always to build an audience, but there are infinite ways to get there.
Create something that makes people happy and solves a problem (pain). Or there really is no need.
Focus. Keep your main thing your main thing. You'll hear this over and over again. You can think of all the great ideas in the world, but execution is key. Focus on your product and how relevant it is for your audience and put the rest on the drawing board. If it's a good enough idea, it will wait for you while you build your billion dollar company.
During this time of year, there is almost a mandatory look back on the year past and forward to a forecast on the new year. I wanted to try something a bit simpler than the traditional - "this is what was significant of last year and this is my resolution."
Simply put, everyone needs to take a look back at their own 2010 and how they can change or improve in 2011. Here's what I recommend:
1. Tagline for 2010
2. A Single Word to Describe your Efforts in 2011 (as a reflective action)
What is mine?
1. Learn fast and move on.
2. Build
I don't want anyone to get it wrong. 2010 was a great year for learning new things, but also a year where I've hit hardships as well. It's a good time to let myself know that there is a bright future ahead and that I need to continuously "iterate" myself to make a better impression in 2011. And build? Why build? Well, I want to take this opportunity to tell myself once and firmly that 2011 will be the year I strengthen friendships, make partnerships, and build my own reputation within the startup scene. It's time to build a bright 2011 and I'll see you in the new year.
Here I write anything and everything that I've been thinking about. News, reviews, activities from my summer abroad in Beijing, China. This blog mostly details my accounts as a student at Beijing Normal University where I am studying with UC students through the Education Abroad Program for Summer and Fall Semesters.
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Why is that? Well according to Greer in a 
