Category Archives: startups

What happens to old content on the web?

As I perused the recent Startup Edition on writing, I came across a great post by Kevin Dewalt. The premise of the post is that blog posts lose their value over time. This is very true. Blogs just aren’t designed for browsing past posts. Kevin proposes an awesome strategy for dealing with this by turning old blog posts into an email course.

Beyond blogs, there is a larger problem here: over time, all content on the web loses value.

This makes sense. In the daily (or even hourly) news cycle, new content gets churned out quickly. As readers, we have a limited attention span, and the old content usually disappears from our attention to make room for the new.

The problem is that not all content should lose its value. Some content is evergreen. It will never go out of date, and it is so good that it should always be easily accessible.

How should we deal with this evergreen content? How do we find it, or resurface it, when it may be useful?

There are countless news sites, social feeds, and other distribution platforms for new content. How many distribution mechanisms are there for old content?

For most, the main mechanism for discovering old content is the search engine. If an epic piece of content has the right keywords for the query, page structure, and incoming links, search will work just fine. But, this isn’t always the case.

For the more dedicated, they may search their private stash of bookmarks, or their saved posts on Digg, reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. This may help the individual, but isn’t a general solution to the problem.

The even more dedicated will organize their bookmarks, and publish curated lists on their own websites or blogs. These are more helpful, but the curation is scattered all across the Internet.

More recently, curation platforms such as Pinterest have popped up for people to organize and publicly share boards containing their favorite pieces of content. This provides a great way to discover old content based upon tastemakers. But, searching through a sea of pins can be time consuming, and isn’t always easy.

I don’t think there is a good solution here yet. Still, content on the Internet continues to be created at a rapid pace. Finding the best stuff can be difficult, and with time, will probably get more difficult. It seems like there is a big opportunity here.

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P.S. This is post number #47 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

BTW: I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot for current project: Soulmix.

Entrepreneurship and life

When I first created this blog 18 months ago, I randomly named it “On startups and life”. Turns out that although it sounds like two topics, I’ve started to find that they often blend together.

Startups/entrepreneurship is a great analogy for life. In general, we often define life by the challenges that we face. Hopefully, we face them head on, and figure out how to overcome them. When we don’t, we learn a lot, and strengthen ourselves for the next challenge.

Entrepreneurship and startups are the same way; especially early on. No matter what any early entrepreneur tells you (and possibly older ones also), they don’t know what the hell they are doing. If they did, they would succeed much faster, and with much more predictability than they are right now. Instead, we face our challenges head on and hope to tackle them. When we don’t, we learn a lot, and then hope that we have enough in the tank to keep moving on. Sometimes it means money. Sometimes it means emotional will and strength.

In the end, what matters is figuring out how to create an entity that has some kind of value in the world.

With life, the question is how do I create myself as a person of value? In entrepreneurship, it is how do I create something of value? The questions are almost one and the same. And so it helps me make sense of the blog.

As I think about (and write about) life and startups, I’m really just writing about life.

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P.S. This is post number #44 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix.

Go big

I’ve already written about how I was a little too focused on publishing during grad school. However, as I focused on publishing, I learned an important lesson about going big.

At the start of grad school, I viewed myself as a newbie. So, I set small goals, and then gradually made them bigger and bigger. My first goal was to get a workshop paper published. The next was to publish a small conference paper. And then, a top-tier conference paper.

One of my biggest realizations were that each paper was a lot of work. The top-tier paper didn’t require much more work than the workshop paper. The main difference was the size of the idea that I was working on. Given X hours to work, I realized I was much better off working on something that could be a top-tier paper.

This extends to much of what we work on in life.

Are you trying to get by? Are you simply working to finish the job? Are you trying to complete small goals? Or are do you see something big in your work? Do you see how you’ll gain leverage, and move towards even greater things?

We all only have 24 hours in a day. We all work hard. Yes, luck and talent are important. But in my opinion, at any particular level of luck+talent+skill, the main differentiating factor is simply how big one thinks.

Since quitting my job, I have apparently forgotten this lesson. That is, until last week.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on Soulmix, which was a social news sharing site on the topic of good living. It was interesting, and there was a steady number of repeat visitors to the site. It seemed like there was some promise, and I was happy about it.

Last week, while I was writing about simplicity and unboundedness in consumer web products, I had an epiphany. The ideas in the blog posts directly applied to my work! I realized that the site I was building could actually be something bigger. There was a larger vision, if only I would let myself see it, and then let myself work towards it. So, I’m shifting things around, and working hard on changing Soulmix to allow it to become something bigger.

It is one thing to write about life and startups. It is another to be taking my own advice at the same time. Fortunately, I am, and I’m super excited to see where things go 🙂

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(Photo credit: wave-finder.com)

P.S. This is post number #42 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter: @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

The unbundling of Craigslist and reddit: the flip side

Reddit-Gold-Added-Membership-Benefits

Earlier this year, I wrote on how I believe reddit may be (or is being) unbundled. In the post, I draw similarities to how Craiglist is being unbundled, and provide several examples of startups that are within verticals of reddit.

Of course, where there is an argument, there is also a counter-argument. And in this this case, there is clearly a counter argument.

I’ll kick if off with a great comment left by Christian Puricelli:

Great post! But I think the unbundling of Reddit is more challenging of the unbundling of Craigslist, because there is one fundamental difference: on Reddit there is no financial transaction (I mean between the users). 3 key success factors of platforms are: the network effect, the curation of content, and especially on platforms that involves financial risky transaction the curation of users and trust (see also http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/26/platform-thinking-how-to-disrupt-craigslist/). A horizontal platform like Craigslist is weak on this 3rd point, allowing vertical competitors like Airbnb that can provide the trust for the transaction to grow. For a non transactional platform like Reddit, this trust factor could not be used by competing verticals for a competitive advantage. So the playing field is more even. Of course this does not mean that it’s impossible as the examples you wrote about show, just that it’s a little be more challenging.

Christian hits the nail on the head.

A fundamental difference is that there are monetary transactions within marketplaces. Where there is a transfer of money, there is a cut of that transaction to be made.

Also, because there is a monetary transaction, trust is also important; important enough that is can be a major differentiating factor. Discussion sites could play up trust also. For example, everyone on Quibb uses their real identity. So do many on Inbound and USV’s new front page. It makes a large difference in the quality of discussions (IMHO). But is trust is online discussion as important as the trust between people when money is exchanged? Probably not.

There is also the difference between need and want. People go to Craigslist to spend money on a service/product they often need. They will take the time for search for that thing they need, and then spend hard-earned dollars on it. People go to reddit to chat with people, which is usually a want (and fairly often, just to procrastinate or kill time). There is a big difference here.

Craigslist monetizes fairly easily. reddit is having a tough time.

Billion dollar companies lay within the verticals of Craigslist (i.e., AirBnb).

Do billion dollar companies lay within the verticals of reddit? If I had to guess, the answer would be “no”, but I would love to be proven wrong 🙂

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P.S. This is post number #41 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter: @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

Unboundedness in consumer web products

Recently, I wrote about the importance of simplicity in consumer web design. Most big consumer web apps seem to have only a few concepts at their core. This makes some sense. The simplicity focuses a product, and makes it easy for new users to understand.

Simplicity is great, but what other properties make a great consumer product?

Another interesting property could be the boundedness of the product. Looking through the Alexa Top Sites, many top consumer web products have an unbounded feeling as you use them.

Here are some examples:

  • Google/Baidu/Live/Bing: unbounded search queries
  • Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter: unbounded potential connections & messages
  • Youtube: unbounded videos to watch
  • Yahoo/QQ: unbounded portal of news
  • Wikipedia: unbounded portal of knowledge
  • Amazon/Taobao/eBay: unbounded marketplace of products and/or reviews
  • Blogger/Wordpress: unbounded content to read
  • Tumblr/Pinterest: unbounded content to explore and repost
  • Instagram/Snapchat: unbounded images to create

Obviously, having a useful/interesting/fun app is first priority. But beyond that, the feeling of unboundedness is very important. It means unbounded future engagement with the product, something any product designer strives for. Combine this will simplicity, you have a killer product: one that is simple to understand but allows for infinite possibilities.

Are you designing a web app?

Here are three good questions to ask yourself:

  1. Do users find your app useful, interesting, and/or fun?
  2. Is the app built around a small set of simple concepts? Even better, is the combinations of simple concepts new?
  3. Do these simple concepts enable unbounded engagement?

If you answer ‘yes’ to all three, you might be in good shape

I’ve love to add to this list. If anyone has any good suggestions, let me know!

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P.S. This is post number #37 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix.

Consumer web: focus on two concepts

Following the last post on how life is simple, it has been starting to dawn on me that consumer web design is also simple.

I don’t mean it is simple to think of something and get traction. I just mean simple in design.

This is for good reason.

When a new user reaches a website, everything is new. If you do a good job with design, and if the user is interested, they might learn a few concepts.

Sites with one concept seem to be rare. You should hope to get across at least two concepts. The two concepts needed usually turn out to be (1) a data format, and (2) an interaction with respect to the data.

Here are some examples of early products:

  • Twitter: tweets, and follows
  • Reddit: posts, upvotes
  • WordPress: blog posts, follows
  • Tumblr: blog posts, and reblogs (follows could be a third)
  • Myspace/Facebook: profiles, and friending (the wall messages is a third)
  • Pinterest: Pins and repins (with board, and maybe follows)
  • Yelp: Places and comments
  • Instagram: Picture art, and share
  • Snapchat: Picture art, and temporary share

Pay attention to your product’s data format and main interaction. It seems that these concepts define what your product will fundamentally become. If you can’t get the site off the ground with these concepts, you may not have a good product. If you find yourself white-boarding or coding something with more concepts, you might want to reconsider.

A good number of startups in the short list above seem to have something that could be considered a third concept. If you have one, it should add a lot to your product. For example, people love to curate boards on Pinterest. Writing on Facebook walls were pretty popular back in the days.

Also, from the inconclusive list above, it seems like each combination of concepts ultimately becomes dominated by the one startup that executes it well. By dominating, I mean that this startup is usually serves the general user well and covers many (if not all) niches.

Be sure to clearly define your few concepts. If they are the same as another startup (particularly one who is winning already), be careful. You probably don’t want to clone it unless you have a good idea of how you are going to be different. It could be execution. Facebook beat Myspace because of how its execution influenced the community. It could be tweaking the product. As Andrew Chen says, it may be good to clone 80% of a startup as long as you tweak 20% of the product. One way is to tweak one of the concepts in a fundamental way so that your product changes. This would be the best. A second is to cater to a particular niche and add product features for that niche. If you do this, you can still succeed, but you most likely will never get as big as the main startup that dominates your combination of concepts.

In general, this is good news for consumer web product designers. Keep it simple, and focus on your two (or three) fundamental concepts.

How do you think about consumer web products? Simplifying consumer products has helped me begin reasoning about different products. I would love to hear your thoughts.

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P.S. This is post number #34 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Do you like to ponder life? You might like Soulmix.

Creating value from zero

Recently, I wrote a post on what being an entrepreneur means to me:

Being an entrepreneur means that I am making it my job to create value in the world.

In that post, I wrote about creating value, and about getting it out into the world. Today, I realized that I forgot about one key thing: not only does an entrepreneur create value, an entrepreneur creates value from zero.

This makes a world of difference.

Many people create value in the world. Those who work at startups, small companies, and large companies and are paid to value to the company. By adding value to the company, they may directly or indirectly create value in the world.

Not many people create value from zero. This is incredibly difficult to do. An entrepreneur needs to discover what adds value to the world, test it, build it, iterate on it, and get it out there in the world. You could easily fail at any of these tasks, and the world would get along just fine without you. Starting at zero means that there is no momentum on your side and you literally need to will your creation into existence.

What I’ve found particularly difficult is that there isn’t much in life that trains you creating value from zero.

Personally, I have gone through undergrad and learned concepts/theories, and built toy programs. I’ve continued through grad school where I created research prototypes. I continued to a research job in industry where I built research prototypes. In my many years of schooling, nothing involved creating real value from zero.

I have friends who have worked industry jobs for quite a while. Most companies have already figured out their money making machine. Therefore, their jobs typically involve greasing the machine, maintaining it, or adding a new contraption to the machine. As mentioned earlier, these jobs may create value, but not starting from zero.

It seems that along the “normal” path in life, it is rare to create real value starting from zero. Yet, this ability is incredibly valuable.

So how, do you go about learning how to create value from zero?

The default paths through life won’t get you there. Blogging is a great exercise in creation and may be a good start. Beyond that, you just need to get out there and start doing it.

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(Photo credit: Sarah Hempel Irani)

P.S. This is post number #30 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul.

Dreamers, talkers, writers, and doers

Since I’ve quit my job for entrepreneurship, I’ve come into contact with many entrepreneurs (at conferences, meetups, meetings, in tech blogs, etc).

Internally, I’ve begun to categorize entrepreneurs based upon how often they assume four identities. It has been a helpful way for me to mentally differentiate between what people do, and how serious I should take them.

Here are the four identities that entrepreneurs may assume.

1. Dreamers

Entrepreneurs may dream about quitting their job, starting something, and changing the world. This is aspirational, and can be highly motivational, but isn’t practically interesting until it turns into action.

A more valuable form of dreaming is to have vision. It involves the ability to dream up something to create, as well as dream up an alternate reality with their creation in it.

All startups are difficult and involve a lot of work. The difference in startups is in the value they bring to the world, and having the vision to understand this value in the early stages of a startup is very interesting as well as valuable. Still, similar to the aspirational dreaming, having vision also doesn’t matter unless it turns into action.

2. Talkers

The easiest thing to do beyond dream is to talk. That is why there are a lot of talkers.

There is an entire range here, from small-time talkers to big-time talkers.

Small-time talkers may include the aspirational dreamers. You find them at parties and at meetups talking away at what they’d like to see in the world. For the most part, these people are harmless, although not particularly interesting.

Small- to medium-time talkers may involve people doing stuff, but haven’t quite made it. Or people that have done stuff, but just happen not to be huge promoters. Some of these people can be quite interesting, usually because they are doing something that is interesting.

The big-time talkers can pretty much find a way to make a career out of talking. They find a way to gain a large following, and make their thoughts and opinions heard. Usually, this also involves being a writer (the next identity).

A key way to differentiate between big-time talkers is to look at how much they promote themselves versus how much they give.

Promoters aren’t interesting. They have found a way to gather a huge blog following, Twitter following, etc. without providing much value (there are lots of tricks you can play here). On the other hand, givers are very valuable. They talk a lot, but their words carry weight and impart wisdom.

The difference between promoters and givers usually boils down to experience. Givers have done stuff, and they speak because they have a background to speak from.

3. Writers

Writers are talkers that have put their words down on paper (or blogs).

There is one key difference with writers though. Writing is an act of doing. It involves creating (hopefully) interesting thoughts and translating them to a product of written word. This is one of the big reasons I encourage all entrepreneurs to blog; blogging is a form of creation, and the job of an entrepreneur is to create things of value.

As with talkers, there are small-time and big-time writers. And there are promoters versus givers who are usually differentiated by their experience doing shit.

4. Doers

Finally, we get to the doers. This involves the act of getting shit done.

One way to differentiate doers is by depth. There are dabblers, and there are people who can focus and make significant progress on something. Dabblers aren’t interesting. People who can focus are.

Another way to differentiate between doers is how much they have done. More is usually better. At the very least, doing builds experience.

The best way to differentiate doers is in the value they have created. This is more dicey. It is easy to create stuff. Creating value is a whole different beast, and much more difficult.

The most interesting doers are the ones who have gotten shit done, and created real value.

Judging entrepreneurs.

‘Judge’ is a harsh word, but honestly, we all do it.

I meet entrepreneurs, and categorize them based upon how much they dream, talk, write, and then do.

Many entrepreneurs do all four. I sure do. But how much do they do each of these four?

Dreaming, talking, and writing are all fine, but the dominant factor is doing.

The best way to judge entrepreneurs is simply by how much they are doing, and how much value they have created as a result. I’ve been writing a lot recently, but certainly judge myself this way.

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P.S. This is post number #23 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

University and the academic/startup idea space

(Note: my academia-related posts are strongly colored by my experience studying computer engineering. Other fields will/may differ.)

I am not shy about my opinion that universities should be more active in the startup space.

Often, when I voice this opinion, I get the reply that academia and startups are just two separate things.

This is true.

But are they actually mutually exclusive? Or do they have a relationship closer to our friendly Venn diagram?

academic-startup-idea-space

I would venture to say that they look closer to this. Most of you would probably agree.

This means that there is some overlap.

Furthermore, this overlap is should be very interesting to universities. Why? Because businesses become the big movers and shakers of the world. They innovate. They create jobs. They generate the alumni that universities are so proud of. And more importantly, they generate the money that gets donated back to universities.

Where academia and startups overlap.

It is clear that academics should be interested in the red circle above; that is, the ideas that are academically interesting. That is the entire point of academic research.

The next natural question is: how large is the overlap with the ideas that are viable as a startup?

I can really only speak for the tech space, but that overlap may be larger than people think it is. Google and VMware are good examples of technology startups that sprang out of academic ideas. Many people may think that the big consumer apps aren’t academically interesting, but is it really true? Twitter is a new type communication protocol. Facebook is concerned with translating human networks into the virtual world. Apps like Instagram and Pinterest are very interesting from a design/UI/UX standpoint. I fail to see how these couldn’t be interesting academically.

The main problem is that most academics don’t make it their problem to work at the intersection, and even if they do, they don’t carry the project out to the real world. It isn’t really their fault. The problem is that it isn’t rewarded within the university system. But, this is a slight tangent.

Let’s not forget about that blue circle.

That isn’t even the whole picture. As of now, we have only considered the red circle of ideas that are academically interesting.

What about the blue circle of ideas that are viable as a startup?

Yes, these ideas aren’t all interesting to technical departments…

…but what about the school of business?

Shouldn’t that be their bread and butter? Shouldn’t the school of business be interested in all ideas that are viable startups, getting startups off of the ground, and then graduating them to full-fledged real operating businesses?

Of course!

What are universities doing?

Both of those circles in the academia/startup idea space are of concern to universities.

Stanford has understood this for a while. They have (1) cultivated the startup ecosystem over generations of entrepreneurs and businesses, (2) geared many business, undergrad, graduate, and design students towards startups, (3) spun up StartX (a startup accelerator), and (4) recently begun to actually invest in startups from their alumni.

I hope that in my lifetime, a few other universities realize this and place significant resources in this direction. It would do the universities, their alumni, and the entire world a whole lot of good.

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P.S. This is post number #19 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

The graduate school startup accelerator

My PhD stomping grounds where I should have been trying to build startups.

My PhD stomping grounds where I should have been trying to build startups.

(Note: my academia-related posts are strongly colored by my experience studying computer engineering. Other fields will/may differ.)

Being an academic-turned-entrepreneur puts me in the interesting position of continually second-guessing my prior academic career. In an effort to cover both sides of the story, I’ve already written a post on how my PhD has carried over surprisingly well into entrepreneurship, as well as a post on the two biggest differences between academia and entrepreneurship.

Aside from the similarities and differences, one question has constantly been on my mind.

Why couldn’t I have done a grad school for startups?

Look, I spent 5+ years as a funded graduate student. In those years, I met a lot of really good people, and was able to study almost anything that I wanted (granted that occasionally, I had to publish some research findings).

It was an intense period of time where I was learning rapidly and investing in my future.

I came out of those 5+ years with a PhD degree, a few good papers, and a gut instinct for interesting academic research that made me a candidate for faculty positions, industry research positions, and lots of other good tech jobs.

Pretty good right?

And let me re-iterate, I was completely funded for 5+ years! It wasn’t a lot of money, but enough to live a pretty good life.

Fast forward to the present.

What am I doing now?

I am 18 months into my new career as an entrepreneur. I am doing what I can to meet interesting people. I am learning whatever is necessary to create stuff, ship it, learn what works (as well as what doesn’t), and then iterate.

It is an intense period of time where I am learning rapidly and investing in my future.

It feels a whole lot like graduate school, with one big difference.

I am NOT funded. Instead, I am bleeding money.

But it is worth it. I know it is worth it because I am learning ridiculously fast. I can only imagine where I’ll be in a few years; that is, if I find a way to sustain monetarily.

So back to the question.

Why couldn’t I have done a grad school for startups?

It feels to me like a grad school which functioned like a startup accelerator would do a lot of good for the world.

I don’t mean an M.B.A. It is only 2 years, and the goal isn’t to build a startup during school. Plus, you have to pay for it.

I don’t mean a normal accelerator like Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 Startups, Angelpad, etc. These are three month programs to accelerate you to Demo Day, and then it is over. Yes, you are plugged into an amazing network, but it isn’t 5+ funded years to figure out how to do startups.

There has be something else. I’m pretty sure of it. I don’t know if it would be better off inside or outside of the university setting. But, it would be an interesting new direction for people to go (I may have to try one day when I have the resources).

I often imagine myself, and all of my academic buddies, with 5+ years of funded time to build startups. We were a good bunch, and I’m fairly confident we would have done some good shit. At the very least, we’d all gain valuable experience. But really — if we all had 5+ years to build and ship stuff? I bet at least one valuable business would have popped out the other end.

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P.S. This is post number #18 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the private beta!