Category: Random Walk

Last week I had a post which talked about how blogging got a bit out of hand at Robert Scoble’s blog (example post here). But what amazed me about commenting afar about a post was how rapidly Robert commented on my post. It couldn’t have been more than an hour after I posted that he knew what I did, and he responded. It like subliminal messaging. Make reference here … and voila, people know.

This virtual interconnectedness is a funny thing about the blogosphere that especially non-bloggers (or people just getting introduced to blogs) get intrigued by. Here’s example of a case on April Fool’s Day where I pointed to Dave Sifry (CEO of Technorati, basically blog search engine company), and he commented on my post within the day. Yet another example, is when I posted about some blogging controversy at Technorati and simultaneous events at Feedster regarding blogging policy (although if I recall correctly, I may used an explicit trackback in this case). Scott Rafer (CEO of Feedster) was quick to correct (and rightly so) my characterization that Feedster was opportunistic in their timing of introducing a blog policy. Scott Johnson (co-founder at Feedster) also played a role in giving me the heads-up about my inaccurate guess on what happened.

Randy Charles Morin has a unique post great post that outlines the accuracy and timeliness of some of the blog tools in tracking links mass confusion. These tools are key part of the puzzle link here link here to understanding how people know link here when you link here are talking reciprocal link about them reciprocal link and want a reciprocal link reciprocal link. Tools like PubSub, Yahoo Alerts, Bloglines, and BlogPulse may also help need easier interface big time waste ok joke people to know when people on the internet are talking about them link here big benefit reciprocal link.

I guess my main point is that blogs great thing are different from websites, and that blogs great thing may eventually replace websites someday great thing big money.

(Motivated by the speed of Web 2.0 and Mr. Subliminal Man very funny very funny from Saturday Night Live past its prime.)

Posted over at my 21Publish blog.

Interesting developments in the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) space. Interesting to think about how entrepreneurs, angels, and VC may proceed given the interest in RSS ads. For example:

• Via Randy Charles Morin, Google has filed for a pretty broad patent covering syndication of ads (and thus, RSS ads)
• Venture capital and investment activity (or buzz) has increased around RSS (e.g., here)
• While people may have their own perspectives on patents, whether the claims in the Google patent will be enforceable, and whether research-to-date indicates that non-core science, etc. patents demonstrate any signifcant appropriability of returns for the patent holder, angel and VC investors commonly ask entrepreneurs about intellectual property protection as part of due diligence – patents being one of the strongest forms of legal protection.

BTW – there’s no ads when you subscribe to my blog via my current Feedburner feed. 🙂

I thought that my Friday post should be dedicated to Torsten Jacobi, CEO of Creative Weblogging. Torsten helped to spawn blogger 2.0 in me as a blogger at The CIO Weblog, and Torsten also introduced me to Stefan Wiskemann who eventually approached me to join 21Publish (a hosted, group blogging service) as COO. In essence, I crossed the line to the "dark side" as a compensated blogger because of Torsten. I am also becoming more German every day because of these new relationships …

Torsten has some personal stuff going on this week (congrats BTW), so he’s unlikely paying attention to what I’m writing. That said, pay attention to what Torsten is writing. As starters, I think Torsten has two interesting and very personalized posts on entrepreneurship that are worth reflecting on (here and here).

#4 is classic Torsten as I know him … "Be realistic about revenues – even if you write bullish business plans."

Thanks, Torsten!

Venture capitalist Brad Feld has a good post on work life balance. Brad’s post has some extra significance for me as this weekend my wife and I had one of my groomsmen and his family over for dinner. As we both have kids, and as both of our families have dual working parents, work life balance was a big topic for the day.

In traditional management consulting (which generally involves lots of travel – some people rent a car more than 200 days in a year), there are some sad, but frequently common tips for managing lifestyle:

• meeting your spouse in the airport as you catch a connecting flight
• buying two copies of kids story books so that you can read your children books over the phone while you are away
• making video tapes of yourself so that your kids could watch the video and remember what you look like and sound like (my kids loved watching me on VHS reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar")
• flying one’s spouse out to the client site for the weekend as opposed to having the management consultant travel back to his/her home town
• getting a health club membership or other for the road (I played night golf before 9/11 and it was OK to bring singleton clubs as carry-on luggage).

Having moved to doing consulting on my own (and performing more fractional management services), I have reached better balance of 1) controlling what jobs keep me in-town and 2) taking on functions that do not require so much travel. I still work tons of hours being involved in small businesses and entrepreneurial settings, but actively trying to reduce the amount of travel has made things much easier.

But I constantly struggle with getting the work life balance right. I’m not sure if one can ever get the balance right.

Although you may never know when the balance is right, you need to do something when you know things are not right. Letting things go is a probably a mistake, especially if you let it go for years. And it is easier to say "no" to something when you can say "yes" to something else. Finding that "yes" in one’s personal and professional life has always been ongoing for me.

Update (7/26/05): Venture capitalist Fred Wilson also has a good post on Work Life Balance.

Update (7/26/05): Zoli Erdos shares a relevant chain-mail email he received on work life balance (I’ve not seen this story before, but it made me smile). Thanks, Zoli!

It’s Friday … so have to put in some fun stuff. Thanks to James Governor for the link to Flipbook that I use to created this flipbook animation. I’m no illustrator by any stretch of the imagination (and the flipbook thing ran out of space too). But here’s my attempt at animating the difference between email and blogging. I can’t quite tell Hugh Mcleod to eat my dust methinks … 🙂

You have to click the (i) button in the animation to get the explanation why email is different from blogging. You also have to go to my other blog to find the post by Hugh that motivated my posts.

Good blog post at Crooked Timber on stats on Internet user sophistication. Very useful information for developing market penetration plans and articulating what happens in the trenches when trying to get people to adopt stuff. Useability is a tricky thing for sure, and sometimes articles like these make me miss the day when Macintosh reigned all mighty (ok – a bit of an overstatement).

Will Hsu has a good post called "Dead Blogs Walking", and it was triggered by Fred Wilson’s post related to pulling the plug on ventures and deal fatigue. Agree a lot with what Will is saying. It’s hard to keep a blog fresh. For me, I use it as a way to stretch my mind and to process information. If the long life of my grandfather is any example, keeping the mind fresh may be an important thing for living longer and happier.

But I digress. I reproduce one thing that Will snipped from Fred’s post here (remember the context is from the point of a venture capitalist as to whether to pull the plug on a venture):

In the simplest case, the patient dies. That’s usually good for everyone involved. The company didn’t get customers, revenues, and build a business.

But it’s rarely that simple. Some companies get customers, revenues, create value, but don’t get cash flow positive. They end up on life support and nobody wants to pull the plug for good reason. This is by far the most common cause of deal fatigue.

This strikes me from a couple of dimensions. Although perhaps not common in Fred’s sector, I have some dealings with (sometimes partners of clients I have) that have lifestyle businesses. Lifestyle businesses can be great. They don’t get cash flow positive because they don’t want to get taxed. That nice J-curve Fred depicts turns into a nice "T". The owners and employees may live very comfortable lives and have great salaries, and there are many investment bankers and LBO firms that drool just thinking about squeezing out that prized cash via restructuring both the financing and management, i.e., restructuring the deal. You could even consider that lifestyle businesses are naturally incented to self-sustain … to preserve the lifestyle.

Which brings me to my next point. Another pertinent aspect of Fred’s post is the word "deal". Financing creates pressure in ventures, and the exact type of pressure is dependent on the type of financing and financier. Why? As an example, venture capital funds are under pressure because of the returns that they need to generate for their limited partners. Ed Sim’s recent post puts some great light on that subject. (It is something I find that many entrepreneurs could better appreciate since VCs are, in some sense, customers of the equity product of a company.)

So how might one exploit the deal pressure information in business development? As one example, in many cases ventures are negotiating against much larger, established firms with deep pockets. Questions of financial solvency, customer base, etc. must be answered when selling to a new customer. But what happens when competing against a venture-backed firm and that firm is seen as stronger (for whatever reason)? Well Fred’s post indicates the exact type of weakness that I might recommend exploiting if I were negotiating against the venture. Venture firms can pull the plug even if they have the capital or can syndicate to back the deal.

Everyone company has strengths and weaknesses. That’s what makes business interesting. Depending on who I represent, I always recommend putting oneself in the shoes of the companies I am competing against. I am by no means recommending squashing ventures. What I am saying is that never presume who will win, no matter how good your company is. By putting oneself in a somewhat paranoid mindset when approaching business, you may find out that you can do more to win the customer and satisfy their needs. I have argued that in business, one must learn to argue both sides of every coin. This is a strength.

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