December 2005 Archives

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.� –Henry David Thoreau

This quote is quite appropriate for this week as we sit here plugging away in the office as half of our business associates are sending our calls straight to voicemail until after the New Year. This quote should bring hope to all of the small businesses and working people across the United States who cannot afford to or do not have the resources to take off the entire week. More efficient technologies will help, but for this week: stay diligent, hard working, and disciplined—success is just around the bend.

It’s crazy how much we have going on for the next six weeks.

I leave tomorrow for London, then up to Edinburgh for their big New Year’s celebration with Jenna. As soon as I return to Prague, I will get right back onto a plane and head for New York for a week of meetings with Chris. fun. Then home to Prague, two weeks to prep and back to the US for another event.

After that, back to Prague and hopefully down to Venice for a weekend along with Peter, Chris and Jenna for Carnivali. (That’s when everyone puts on those fancy masks and has a big festival in St. Marks Square.)

I don’t have any more trips specifically planned for March on, but as I’ve told a few people, I expect to be traveling a lot.

Based on the kind of feedback we’re getting from early testers, journalists and others, I’m starting to worry more about what happens if we have more interest than we expect instead of less.

Our new product solves an important problem for people. All we have to do is deliver the goods.

We were all hoping for a White Christmas here in Prague, but we got something else. Sunlight. It lasted for about 2 hours, but we sure were glad to have that.

I guess I’ll have to count on Irving Berlin in order to have a White Christmas.

“They tried to kill us, we survived, lets eat!” That was Sally’s (our PR guru) explanation when I asked her about the history of Jewish festivals.

I have notices much of my own faith and traditions revolve around meals. Christ also did much of his teachings and miracles surrounding food. Because of my experience in public speaking and teaching I used to think he was using meals as a way to get through walls and keep a captive audience. As I learn more about traditions and the human condition I understand it had more to do with the power of eating with someone.

To share a meal in Christ’s culture meant to approve of the company and was a sign of fellowship. To feed someone takes care of a basic physical need of nourishment but to eat with them communicates more. It relays acceptance and dare I say even Love. I can say this with authority after spending 8 years as a U.S. Marine and having the pleasure of eating with the some strongest and hardest people in the U.S. It held true even there.

The point is to remember that a table, in any form, is not just to hold food but a stage where relationships are formed and strengthened. It is a time when we, for a brief moment, have the chance to express gratitude for the existence of those around us.

If you are ever in town please stop by. We’ll share a meal. In the meantime I’ll be waiting for the call… “Lets Eat!”

Fred Wilson, a VC with a popular blog wrote that he is looking for someone to help big media companies offer their content for free in 2006. For some reason, I just spent 30 minutes writing a lengthly reply on why I don’t think this can happen but also on the kind of online music business I think would do really well in 2006. Here’s my take on the subject:

It seems to me that the big hurdle here is that big media companies are not good early adopters of new business models. Media is a hit business. Execs take a lot of risks everyday when they produce new content. They cannot afford to also take too many risks elsewhere.

The only way big media will ever get to this point is through baby steps. Right now they are just trying to get comfortable with the Internet as a distribution channel. They are no where near ready to try such an unproven business model.

I think the companies to watch for in 2006 will focus on adding distribution outlets for content online. Such a company would be like Cafepress for online music and video. The company would negotiate the distribution rights with the big media companies for music and video and then provides an interface so anyone, small companies and even individuals, can create their own personalized music store.

As a blogger, you recommend music all the time. Can you imagine being able to send people to your own online music store so they can purchase and download the music right away and listen to it? I bet a lot of bloggers and small businesses would be very interested in creating online stores with their own specialty selection of music.

This would be great for the big media companies as well. Not only is this a business model they are familiar with (content creator->distributor->retailor) but it would be a great way to effectively sell their back catalog. Many of these stores would offer more eclectic mixes than you can provide in something like iTunes.

Anyway, I don’t know why I put this whole business model in a comment here, but I think the time would be right for something like this. If anyone is doing this, I’d like to know too. Maybe we could help you handle all of your email at Sproutit.com. :-)

Technology, politics, war heroes, and scientists have all earned this title. What does it take to receive that distinction? Here is a quote from someone we all know. Me.

It has got to be big. Not even something good. But, whatever it is, it’s just plain BIG. – Chris Bauman

Don’t believe me? Here are some examples:

1. 1927 – Charles Lindberg. First TIME Magazine man of the year just because they forgot to put him on the cover when he crossed the Atlantic.
2. 1932, 1934, & 1941 – FDR and for good reason
3. 1939 – Joseph Stalin. Not exactly anyone’s favorite hero.
4. 1938 – Adolf Hitler. Ditto.
5. 1997 – Andy Grove. Former Chairman/CEO of Intel.
6. Albert Einstein – MAN OF THE CENTURY.

While this is from Time Magazine, our friends at c|net news have named the founding fathers of Google as their men of the year.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both 32, were picked for the distinction because of the effects their 7-year-old company has had on Internet users in the past 12 months.

Start a company. Make sure everyone online uses it. Have a big stock price. That’s it, I guess. Hmm. I’ve got my eye on 2013. Just you wait.

We have some big news coming. But I can’t talk about it yet. For the few of you still not off for the holidays yet, the two dates to watch are January 6 and February 6. We’ll tell you a lot more then.

As I mentioned, I did my first radio interview yesterday with Anita Campbell on Small Business Trends Radio. We had a very interesting discussion on Web 2.0, the changes happening on the web today, and how it will affect small business. We also talked a bit about Sproutit.com, how we got started, and why we moved to Prague (our “new garage”).

Listen to the entire show online or as a podcast at Web 2.0 – What Is It and Why Should You Care?

“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.” —Buddhist proverb

Seems to me that the quote above is perfect for this week, when every small business owner is desperately trying to tie up all loose ends before the holiday weekend begins. Just keep walking, everyone. The holiday will be here before we know it and then we can all put up our feet and drink a toast to ourselves, the 20 million U.S. small business owners, who keep the economy humming precisely because they keep on walking. Best wishes to all for a happy, healthy holiday!

I was a guest on “Small Business Trends Radio” yesterday with Anita Campbell. We spent an hour talking about the growth of Web 2.0 and what it means for small business. To read some recent popular blogs, though, you might think hit upon this topic a few weeks too late.

Yesterday I wrote why Microsoft can never win search. In the online world, people generally only remember one website per product category. Amazon owns books, Yahoo owns portals, and Google owns search. Once enough people associate the same website with a category, the company that owns the website owns the category. It is very hard, if not impossible, for anyone else to come take their place.

The search category is owned by Google. They can’t easily take Google’s spot, even if they paid users to search on MSN. (And they have tried.) Microsoft ought to just give up, right?

Not so fast. It turns out that Microsoft could still find a profitable business in search, they just need to stop competing with Google.

In today’s strategy session, I will explain how Microsoft can win in search and how the same strategy can work for other companies too, even startups.

There has been a lot of news lately about all the things Microsoft is trying to do to gain some traction in the search engine market. Unfortunately for them, it’s not possible. Google has owns this category. Their money would be better spent looking somewhere else to dominate.

Here is a little lesson in marketing strategy to explain why:

After rampant speculation that Google was in talks to buy Riya, a cool new Flickr-like service that can learn to recognize faces, the CEO, Munjal Shah, finally chimed in today to put those rumors to bed.

So Google will not buy Riya for now. But, in the same post, Shah also said “Riya is more than photo search. Our goal is to help you find every photo of yourself on the web.” Perhaps they did a deal with the Great Search Engine anyway?

I hope so.

Auto-tagging of photos on the web would definitely be a very cool feature for Google and access to Google’s great database of photos on the web would make Riya much more useful too.

Anyway Riya is going to DEMO in February, so I expect we will find out then.

Sproutit.com’s launch is coming fast. We are hard at work on several new businesses applications designed exclusively for small businesses.

Right now, our first product is about 80% complete. We have a handful of people using it and they love it. We want to make it perfect, though, so we are looking for a few more people to join our Alpha Tester team.

Here’s how it works: If you or your small business spends a lot of time answering email, then our new product may be able to save you a lot of time and money.

As part of our Alpha Team, you will be given early access to our new product. You will be expected to use our new product and tell us what you think it still needs. In return, we will build our product specifically for your needs and provide you with a free account for all of our apps as long as you remain an active tester.

You have a unique chance to have someone build software specifically for your business in exchange for just a little time and some honest feedback. If this interests you, please send an email to beta@sproutit.com and tell us why you think you would be a great Alpha Tester for the coming business apps from Sproutit.com.

UPDATE: If you are just joining us, you can find out a little more about what we are working on at our story page

We have a ‘blue light’ special on aisle 7.

Now you can get our cool new shirts, caps, and coffee mugs at our store front on CafePress.com.

If you want something that you don’t see, let us know. There are a slew of other items we can make, just for you.

We even have a limited offer on a Sproutit Christmas ornament that has our Holiday logo.

“Those who dance alone are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music.” —-George Carlin

I selected this quote by George Carlin for what I think is a very sane reason. All of us involved in Sproutit.com are hearing the “music”—we KNOW that the time has come for small businesses to have the same powerful software advantages that Fortune 500 companies have had all to themselves for far too long. So don’t let those who can’t hear the music get you down. Just keep on dancing.

Last night was a bit of a struggle. Only 7 showed up (normally it is 10-12) so we had teams of 3 v 4, but of course, only 3 at a time. My team had the extra bench relief. But, one hour of running back and forth is really tiring.

Score? I think 16-13 and my team lost. I did score twice, 6-7 saves, but I let 5 goals get past me. When you get tired, you just can’t move as fast. In addition to that, I think I may have rolled my ankle, pulled my quad (again), and I got a ball shot at my,.. well, you can imagine.

Hope next week goes a bit better.

I think this is where we play in Prague. Should give you an idea of where in the city we play.

Sally, our publicity consultant, has been visiting us here in Prague this last week and the next. As we’ve been working together, I’ve just been struck again by the amazing team we have working for Sproutit.com right now and I just wanted to take a moment to publicly thank everyone who is involved with our little venture here.

Peter, Chris, and I decided early on that we wanted to work with only the best as a part of Sproutit.com. We take a lot of time to vet new people before we make them a central part of our team. This decision has really paid off.

Topher, Sally, Scott, Shanti, and Andrew: you all do exceptional work. We’ve had to keep adding new people to our team just to keep up with you.

So thanks for your hard work! This is by far the best planned, best executed startup I’ve ever been a part of. I’m excited to get to work everyday because of you.

I don’t really know when I started using it, but Podcast started to become part of my everyday language. It seems to be catching on. Podcast was selected by the New Oxford American Dictionary as the Word of the Year. Check out the press release and the other runners-up.

I would like to introduce a new weekly post to our Big Act blog. One of our team members Sally Stewart, author of Media Training 101, Guide to Meeting the Press will be blogging a quote of the week. So make sure to RSS-up to our blog to catch these wonderful Quote of the Week.

“I believe that everybody is creative, and everybody is talented. I just don’t think that everybody is disciplined. I think that’s a rare commodity.” —Al Hirschfield

I selected this quote to inaugurate our new feature, the Sproutit Quote of the Week, because it speaks to many of the qualities I so admire in many small business owners, including the Sproutit founders, Charles, Chris and Peter. You can be creative and talented to the max, but if you don’t have the discipline it takes to become a success, then your small business will be out of business before you can say “cash flow”. The quote also speaks to the optimism that is inherent in every small business entrepreneur: You don’t neccessarily need to be the most inventive or most clever person in your field. Your business CAN succeed as long as you are willing to turn off the TV and turn on the discipline. So quit reading this blog and get back to work!

Scott Adams, Dilbert creator, writes on The Dilbert Blog:

In today’s blog entry I will teach you how to write humor, thus removing the mystery and in the process turning you into a joyless zombie, albeit a witty one. (from Humor Formula)

This is a great post and definitely worth a read, especially if you are not funny. It’s like an instruction manual for being funny and, as luck would have it, I think many people who are not funny also like reading instruction manuals.

So if you are not funny, or if you think you are funny but you are not, or if you like reading instruction manuals, be sure you check out Scott’s latest post.

Peter and I spent probably an hour last night working on UI issues for Mailroom. Designing the user interface (UI) for Mailroom has been an interesting experiment for me. I believe very strongly that the Web is a different medium, so Web UIs should not be designed the same way desktop software UI’s are design. A lot of my UI design time in the last few months has been spent on familiarizing myself with how Web user interface design is different.

To me, one of the biggest differences on the Web is the lack of defined standards. Both Apple and Microsoft publish something called Human Interface Guidelines for their operating systems. The documents basically explain the standard user interface conventions used on the platform. It is because of these documents that you, as a user, can expect that a button in one application will generally behave like a button in every other application. It makes software easier to use because there is less to learn.

In the Web world, however, no such document exists. Sure there are books here and there on effective web design. But web-based applications like Mailroom are different. They are a mix of desktop software functions with web page technologies.

Recently, a few people have been posting their views on web application design like Alex Bosworth’s recent 10 Places You Must Use Ajax article. Maybe someday someone with enough clout will put these together into a single set of guidelines that everyone can follow. That alone would be a major to step towards creating the web as a true platform for application.

I found this drawing today on Creating Passionate Users web blog which I truly believe in. And, what’s more, I think we have found a great balance of here at Sproutit.

Of course, it does help being in Prague.

Here is a quote from CRM-Daily about the challenge facing small businesses and their customer relationships.

The battle within customer service support organizations is not how much data can be collected and parsed (there is plenty of data), but rather how efficiently customer issues and questions can be solved, and at the right cost.

Big enterprise software doesn’t work for small businesses because it collects so much data and can generate thousands of reports. This will appeal to your upper level MBAs and C-level execs, but what about the customer.

Every customer expects attention to his or her specific issue and flexibility—“Serve me how I want it and when I want it.” But how do you deliver and still retain a repeatable work flow?

What if there was a way to provide precise responses to your customers consistently? I know that we are trying our hardest to create a simple solution to provide consistent responses to incoming emails in a very efficient manner. Not only email, but with all of our future ideas, this is central to our way of thinking. What good is the information about your customer’s purchase if they don’t like your support and subsequently stop being your customer? Not much good at all, I say.

One of the things that appealed to me about moving to Prague was the opportunity to see first hand a country that until 1989 had been ruled by a totalitarian Communist regime. Often when I meet someone who has lived here since before the Velvet Revolution, I ask them how they think things have changed. I usually get something vague and uninteresting. In fact, most Czechs act as if they can barely remember the Communist days at all.

Today I read a very interesting article that explains a big about the Czech history with Communism. Prague is one of the few cities in Europe that has been through every major war and yet was never destroyed. I think its mostly because of how the Czechs have learned to cope-and to quickly forget-when control of their government passes from one ruling party to the next.

Read more about The Czechs and Their Communism