I’ve been listening to the Startup Success 2006 video for the last 45 minutes and it’s really a great listen for anyone in startup land.  One particular bit by Joe Kraus of JotSpot.  He’s talking about James Stockdale, a war verteran apparently held as a prisoner of war longer than anyone else:

“You can never stop believing that what you are doing is going to be the most successful thing you can make it.  But every day you have to face the hard, cold reality of what’s right in front of you.  And you can’t let your sense of optimism force you into denial about the facts on the ground.”

I’ve been having more reality to deal with lately than I would prefer :)  but what can you do.  We’ve reached on of these impasses at the moment.  We’ve been gearing up for a launch in the next 10 days – it was supposed to happen this week but we had some serious setbacks with design (it’s moving along swimmingly now).

Unfortunately, you’ve got to listen to your team as well.  Last night I had a conversation with my lead developer on Product 1 (soon to be announced).  While we’ve written a tremendous amount of code and are doing some things that no one hasn’t done – it’s just not right, he’s not comfortable yet.  Despite a growing sense of pressure from the forces that be, we’ve got one chance to launch and we’re going to wait to make sure we do it right.

Interestingly in this same video, Reid Hoffman makes the remark – “if you’re not embarrassed when your product goes live, you’ve waited too long”.   I totally agree – we’re not seeking perfection.  What we are seeking, however, is the right mix of features that makes our offering compelling.  Stowe’s touched on this recently as well:

Perhaps the number one argument I have with my start-up clients is about “how much is enough to get out the door in release 1.0?” I have had several clients in recent months who have released products that I believed lacked the minimum feature set needed to a/ capture attention of the digerati, but even worse b/ failed to have enough in them to allow viral uptake: the social dimension was lacking.

Source: /Message, “Learning From The Kiko Crash: Too Little, Too Late”

Balance is a bitch.

It’s nice when you can hear someout out in the trenches confirm the ideas bouncing around in your head like a ball-bearing tickling the sides of spraypaint can.  I just had one of those experiences reading Steve Rubel’s post, “Three Ways to Ride the Long Tail”.  The crux of Steve’s points relates to the power of niches:

Reach metrics are the currency of the advertising community. We’re obsessed with eyeballs, gross ratings points and page views. But in a Long Tail world, reach has entirely new meaning. Many niche sites, for example, can’t hold a candle to the traffic at the head of the media curve. However, what they do have going for them is credibility.

Micro Persuasion: Three Ways to Ride the Long Tail

I could show you slides from my pitch to correlate, but that would just bore you ;)  Steve makes three good points:

• Rethink Reach
• Fund Niches
• Demand More From Media

I definitely recommend it – especially if you’re curious about just what SocialRoots does.

After the perils of last week, it seemed like a good idea to get away from New York – sometimes moving away from the things that are so familiar to you helps numb their memory.  My brother was kind enough to snag me a ticket down to West Palm Beach to stay with the rest of the crew (my sister-in-law, her family, and of course my niece and nephew).  I couldn’t really say no.

So I”ve been here, working more than anything else.  Yesterday I clocked 20 hours alone – it’s rough being awake throughout the entire night, into the morning, shuttling milk up for the kids since you’re still awake and near the fridge.  By the time my head hits the pillow, it’s 6AM – about the same time my niece is getting prepared for her day of exploring.

But there’s bigger news down in these parts.  It’s a fellow named Ernesto.  If you don’t know, he’s a pesky little tropical storm that’s making its way up from Cuba as we speak.  I’ve only been through one real hurricane in my life, Andrew, when I was up inNew York as a kid.  Personally, I found the whole thing fascinating.  The folks down here are running mad in preparation – for some reason I can’t help but feel the news crews are more excited about having something to trump all day than anything else.  Ahh well.

I’ve got some hard deadlines this week so I’ve been hunkering down.  Considering there’s a slight chance we’ll lose power at some point, I want to get as much as possible done while I can.  We’ll see how it all turns out.

It must just be my luck.  In the last 3 months I’ve been in SF, I’ve felt 2 earthquakes already.  When the heavens are aligned against you – well, it just plain sucks.

Yesterday was one of those days.  I imagine that most people can quickly sort their life to remember back the worst day in their life.  Personally, I can point to the day my dad passed away as the top of that list.  The second day would be the day my grandmother passed away.  Yesterday, that’s probably the third.

I’ll spare the gory details since it’s still not something I want to openly talk about – just a bit too personal at the moment.  In the meantime, I’ll simply channel something I said not too long ago (for my benefit more than anything else):

Beyond that, though, there’s something much more important. It’s the part that blurs into one big mess. It’s the stuff that keeps you from seeing the milestone in the first place. Those are the breadcrumbs. Walking down the road, that is life, it’s easy to squash those little crumbs into oblivion – forever ruining their usefulness. It’s only until we are aware that even those small steps are really powerful cues to our success and failure.

From “On Milestones and Breadcrumbs”

File this under the “hey-didn’t-I-just-talk-about-that” category. A few days ago I posted about BizDev 2.0 – The Wet Edge. In it, one of the assetions was that not only was business development enabled by APIs but so was R&D.

Salesforce.com yesterday provided some semblance of proof for this thinking. Their AppExchange, an API-driven marketplace that enables applications to be plugged into Salesforce.com’s applications, purchased on of the hosted applications. Woodrow (who I’ve only first discovered today) has more:

At the time, I wondered whether AppExchange was as much a chance for salesforce.com to outsource R&D and cherry pick tuck-in technologies (and people) as it was about driving near-term revenues and creating a platform.

I then asked if SfDC was using AE as a way to outsource R&D efforts; and whether they would use their considerable currency (i.e., their stock) to make acquisitions of the “best and brightest” developers and products on AE.

• Ismael wholeheartedly agreed and iterated that SfDC should be doing this; it’s good business and a great way to build up an ecosystem in a cost-effective manner
• Charlie suggested that SfDC is doing a “fantastic” job of cultivating even the smallest ISVs
• Dennis noted that SfDC has already bought two ISV partners, and agreed its likely a continuing strategy

The Ponderings of Woodrow: Salesforce.com leverages AppExchange as outsourced R&D…acquires Kieden

technorati tags:bizdev2.0, r&d, salesforce.com

CNN Money, by way of Business 2.0, has a lengthy look at the “Blogging for Dollars” movement. While the piece does quite a bit of research, it won’t be of much help to those of us not at the top of the blogging game – not that it’s not worth a read.The one thing that seems most salient, regardless of the size of your readership, is the nature of the relationship you have with them as compared to the traditional media outlets. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s meaningless – you’ve got something many, many large corporations with all sorts of money can’t muster all that easily on their own.

At the same time, advertisers–shunning old-line media in favor of the Web–are discovering the unique power of blogs. Blogs offer a personal touch in the mediascape; small sites have become our guides to a content-saturated world. As such, their recommendations are highly valued by readers–which naturally has made advertisers take notice. In recent months, big-name companies like Banana Republic and Coca-Cola (Charts) have for the first time run campaigns on blogs, in the belief that blog communities often consist of concentrated numbers of the passionate and influential people all marketers want to reach. Intel bought its first blog ad in March; now all its ads run on blogs as well as traditional outlets. Says Thom Campbell, head of media strategy for Intel (Charts), “The audience on blogs is the cream of the crop.”

Business 2.0: Blogging for Dollars – September 1, 2006

technorati tags:blogging, monetization

I’ve got to say that I am increasingly worried (see Make of Your Blog As You Will) about the attitude many are taking with regards to “blogging”. I put it in quotes because, quite frankly, it’s just as much art as it is science, er, technology.

Robert Scoble has been involved in some sort of revolving door
argument with Dare Obsanjo of Microsoft. The dispute centers around the
claim that MSN Spaces is the #1 blogging platform based on the fact
that it has 72 million blogs. OK. Let them say whatever they want, it
has nothing to do with me and I’m not sure what it has to do with
Robert either, actually.

What does, however, have something to do with me is Robert’s attempt to debunk
this claim by going through the most recently updated “blogs”.
Something made me cringe when he notes “FIRST TWO POST BLOG! But one is
about how much the poster loves her cats.” Then later, in the comments, he makes another “clarification”.

I defined a blogger as someone who posts at least twice a month with at least 500 words a month

Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger » “Where’s the blog?” in Windows Live Spaces?

Anyone heard of photo bloggers, video bloggers, or podcasters (audio bloggers)? Most of these “posts” don’t have any words – it’s not the media they choose to create with. By Robert’s defintion, cornershots.com isn’t a blog either.

When did Scoble become the authoritative source on what blogging is and isn’t? Oh I remember, it was when he wrote his book. Speaking of Naked Conversations, there’s this gem from Shel Israel:

The other thought is that maybe you should reflect on just quitting your blog. You don’t like the blogosphere. You certainly don’t seem to like those of us who are dedicating lives and energy to its promotion, and–don’t be offended by this Nick–we really won’t miss you a whole lot if you just sit down and shut up.

Naked Conversations: An Open Letter to Nick Carr

Excuse me? Is someone telling someone else to quit blogging because they don’t like what they are saying? Get over it. Blogging is not your darling, it’s ours.

Stowe sums it up well: “So, my take is we are back to counting dark blogs and the variousflavors of sinner blogs that don’t follow Scoble’s Five Commandments.Yes, leave out the real mechanical splogs, but everything else counts.”

technorati tags:blogging, robert+scoble, shel+israel, msn+spaces

Just a quick shout out to my main bud, Jimmie and Cornershots.com for his recent publication in Popular Photography. Jimmie talks about a technique he has been experimenting with called High Dynamic Range. For you photo nerds out there, it is basically a method that involves overlaying one source image taken with different exposures.

It’s really a joy to see things working out so well for him and his continued success.

Steve Rubel reports today on a new, experimental Sponsored Blogroll service announced by the Washington Post today:

Basically, the way this works is that the WaPo is building a network of bloggers who want to participate in the program. Like BlogAds, advertisers can browse the network and find blogs to advertise on within their verticals. The bloggers and the Post split the ad dollars. The Post has put out a call for blogs that focus on technology, business, health, automotive and travel topics. Nevertheless, they are interested in all submissions.

However, there’s more. Where it really gets interesting is that the bloggers who opt into the program don’t just earn dollars but also a rotating link to their site in a special Sponsored Blogroll box that sits right on the Washington Post home page. Three blogs are already in the pilot, Jeff says. The box, below, is already on the WaPo home page in the lower right.

Micro Persuasion: Washington Post Launches Blogroll Ad Network

This is fascinating in a number of ways:

1. It further calrifies that blogging, and it’s other social media kin, are not only important to the media landscape but that those we look to most for it increasingly recognize the value.
2. It furthers the agenda that the content created has not just informational value, but also monetary. Too often, the tendency is to hang the “traffic carrot” in front of those less connected in exchange for their intellectual property. The Post has, gratefully, not chosen this route. A win-win doesn’t need to hurt.
3. The landscape for social media “monetization” has broadened in a significant way and now begs some new questions for lots of the upstarts in the business – myself included: How do we work together? Who’s the next visionary?

I’ve been considering these things quite a bit as of late so it makes me happy to see it quickly becoming reality. We’ll be launching next month and extending this universe even further. More details in future posts.

technorati tags:blogroll, sponsoredblogroll, washingtonpost, blogads, steve+rubel, newspapers, advertising

You know you’re spending too much time some place when the locals don’t know you’re not from here. That’s what the experience has been like for me here in the Bay Area. Quite frankly, I love it out here – it really feels like the home I never had.

As we continue to grow things with SocialRoots, it’s becoming more and more clear that my time here is not just enjoyable but required. I anticipate that I will be committing anywhere from 1-2 weeks per month for the remainder of the year – going live is a real pain in the arse.

The problem, of course, is that Starbucks doesn’t scale all that well. I’ve been working from Starbucks for the last 2 years or so – I even work there despite my office in NYC. Sometimes you need some quiet, other times you just need some space to write on the walls. I’ve found that space.

Starting September 1, I’ll be joining friends like Chris Heuer, partners like Stowe Boyd, and a league of other very cool and innovative startups who will remain nameless. It’s a sweet location 2 blocks from the ball park and 2 blocks from South Park. I’m one block away from RubyRed Labs as well as 21st Amendment – great beer.

Ironically enough, I’m also leaving today – back to New York, the proverbial “home”. I’m not sure when I will be back actually. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks, but it seems unlikely.