Hell’s Kitchen - Tips for Startup Growing Pains

ast week, Mick and me I spoke at Transaction 2.0 (part of CeBit). Mine was about some tips for surviving mid-stage startup growing pains.

Thanks to everyone that attended the talk in the room, and also via The Chaser, for encouraging me to swear alot and providing great feedback.

Here is the latest deck on slideshare:

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Hells Kitchen Notes on Slides.

Here is the uStream recording from The Chaser. Its a bit hard to hear so probably not a great deal of use. Hopefully CeBit will release something better because it looked like everything was filmed professionally.

I will blog each slide in more detail in the weeks to come because I think the message is important.

In the meantime, I have had a few requests for links to the tools I mentioned in the talk. When we formed Pollenizer, we invested immediately in Confluence and Jira from Atlassian. Because we made that decision we have collected all internal IP as we go in the Confluence Wiki and tracked tasks across all projects and (globally distributed) teams using Jira. It was some of the best money we have spent. Everyone has access to the information they need and there is never a question of who owns a certain task. More on this in a later post.

Mick was a total star with his Focus or Fail talk. He juggled AND managed to smash a glass in the audience as well as grabbing our interest with some important lessons he has learned working with startups.

On a final note, it was my great pleasure to meet Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley from Mahalo. Frankly Jason’s reputation had preceeded him and (like a true Australian) I had him marked as a bit full of himself. Instead, he came into Sydney like a whirlwind, inspired everyone (I actually think he did meet EVERYONE in the whole city) and left, leaving us whinging a little less and getting down to business as a community of awesome startups ready to take on the world. He encouraged us to just to get on with it!

Monetization and the Facebook Ecosystem

Platform eco-systems need a way for developers and creators to make real money or they will die. My question of the day: Does Facebook have this?

As a developer, the Facebook platform gives me a terrific opportunity to attract many users virally in a way that is not possible on my own domain. But am I building a business or just working for Facebook for free? Word Ads can be as low as $0.05 CPA (thanks @shalunov) and users are already at their destination (rather than on a search results page) so are not inclined to click away via an ad.

At the launch of the MySpace Developer Platform Launch in Sydney this week (nicely organised by Randal and streamed by Pollenizer) Markus Weichselbaum, the CEO of TheBroth , was asked: “What’s My Stripper Name - How did you monetise that?” 17 mins into this video of the event:

“It’s monetised by a product by IAC. IAC is a very large company called Ask.com and they have a whole division called FunWebProducts. This is a browser based toolbar that allows you to glitterise stuff, send smileys and in return, for them, basically installs a search box in your browser which will then, for them, show sponsored results. So if you do install the toolbar, and you use the search, they make money and in order for you to do that they offer you the extra stuff so you can glitterise things.”

Hmm. Sounds like an adware strategy to me. No different to the kind of business Kazaa found itself in when the value of ads in a popular social destination site were driven to nothing. I couldn’t actually find the toolbar download in What’s My Stripper Name? but did find it on TheBroth’s ClicktoGlitter. The toolbar is Webfetti. The terms of use show that it is classic adware that puts a large amount of junk on your machine to maximise revenue generation even when you are not using the app that installed it.

2. Features of the MyWebSearch Toolbar

By downloading the MyWebSearch toolbar, you will be installing a toolbar in your Internet browser (and any supported email functions and instant messenger functions) with the following features:

SEARCH BOX: This is a search box located within the toolbar that will help you search the Internet with search results from Ask.com.

SEARCH ASSISTANT: This provides relevant links and results when you make a search request in your browser address bar or if your browser address (DNS) request is invalid, misspelled or incorrectly formatted.

WEBFETTI: This feature enables you to customize a social networking profile page with layouts, graphics, custom cursors, music and video.

ZWINKY: This feature allows you to create and modify avatar characters, and use them in a social networking environment. If you use Windows XP, the ZWINKY feature will also automatically provide you with an icon that will appear in your Windows XP system tray at the bottom right of your desktop. Use of the Zwinky feature is subject to separate terms of use at http://info.zwinky.com/zwinkyinfo/tos.jhtml.

SMILEY CENTRAL: This allows you to insert smiley face emoticons and other graphics into your web-mail, Outlook, Outlook Express and instant messages.

POPULAR SCREENSAVERS: This provides you with photos and images that can be added to the user’s screensaver or PC desktop wallpaper. Also includes the ability to add personal digital photos.

MY FUN CARDS: This provides access to free electronic greeting cards that you can personalize on the Web and send to any email address.

CURSOR MANIA: Free computer mouse cursors that allow the user to change the look of his/her default cursor to something more fun and expressive.

FUN BUDDY ICONS: Free icons that can be added to an instant messenger client.

HISTORY SWATTER: This allows you to delete easily computer cookies, URL history, temporary cache, and other stored browser files.

POP SWATTER: Free tool that swats pop-up ads before they appear. Includes a “Safe List” to allow pop-ups from user-specified web pages.

SMOTOS: This enables you to post, upload, share, download and store images, and allows you to send such images to email addresses of your choice.

MY INFO: This provides one-click access to news, sports, weather, finances, horoscope, movie listings, lottery results and more, which appear in a thin window to the immediate left of your main browser window.

MY MAIL NOTIFIER: This allows you to use animated characters to alert you to new web mail messages.

MY MAIL SIGNATURE: This allows you to create signature designs to place in the footer of outgoing email messages.

MY MAIL STAMP: This allows you to insert digital stamp designs into outgoing emails.

MY MAIL STATIONERY: This provides you with background images, colors and themes to enhance the look of outgoing email messages.

Is this the destiny of Facebook applications?

Returning to the MySpace launch, Mick relayed a question from Richard McMannus at ReadWriteWeb: “Is Hypertargeting hyperhype? (19:30 on the video). Markus answered:

“I don’t think so. I’ll be very straight… Currently Facebook gives you absolutely nothing to help you monetise.  But, with MySpace and Hypertargeting, even if its just 10% as good as it sounds, it will be a substantial help for developers to monetise.”

Who can say whether Hypertargeting will work, but I think that MySpace are correctly thinking about the ecosystem in adding it. Without it, developers fail to make money, so they trick people into inviting their friends, create booster apps that have no value other than to get you to install another app, cover the screen in a cacophony of  ads and then install adware on your PC, then…  the users leave.

Am I being too simplistic?  Does anyone have any great examples of Facebook applications making money and retaining users? I’d love to hear about those if you do.

The Need for Magic

What makes great software?The magic of software is in the small things. Often, these things are tiny and not noticed by users because they silently make the application a pleasure to use. All the user knows is that they are happy. A thousand tiny moments.

Here’s some examples from my experience:

• Google Reader: When I scroll down my list of news, Reader starts to load the next batch of news before I run out. The timing is perfect. I don’t need to worry about webby things like ‘next page’ etc… I just want the news so I scroll down, infinitely with a smile on my face. It works equally well with the keyboard, mouse and scroll wheel. If I want to scroll down my folders instead, Reader changes intuitively when I move my mouse over that list instead of the river of news. I only notice these tiny details when I paid special attention. Before that I just knew I liked it. Magic.
• Wordpress: When I am writing a big blog post and run out of room in the edit box, I just drag the window bigger. No thought required. Now I can see my whole post on the screen in one view. Magic.
• iTunes: I can double click anything to play an intuitive playlist. I can double click an artist and all their stuff starts to play. Same with Album and Genre. Magic.
• Shozu: Magically appears on my phone when I have taken a picture and asks me if I want to send it to Flickr. If I say Yes, it uploads it invisibly to me, taking care of all failures. If I wander to a roaming data zone, it pauses the upload and sends me an SMS telling me it has done so. Magic.
• MS Office 2007: When I highlight some text, a mini-toolbar appears right next to my mouse pointer so that I can format it without needing to move to the other side of the screen. Magic.

Bad experiences are equally silent, equally unconscious in the most part to the user. All they know is they don’t feel good.

We need to care about the magic

Barcamp Sydney + Sleepover Next Weekend

It’s that time again, and Barcamp is back in Sydney next weekend. This one has the bar + camp. If you long for conversations about the scalability of Ruby on Rails at 3am… here’s your opportunity.

This is a video ad (made by Mick Liubinskas), which is certain to convince you to attend.

Sign up here.

Zuckerberg’s Notebook

Over-engineering the user experience is a common trap to all fall into. Most web applications break Evan Williams’ Universal Law of Simplicity by providing too many features and not hanging those features on a solid framework of use cases.

This is where Facebook has always been awesome. The user experience is un-cluttered and very firmly focussed on the social flow. Everything hangs together. No matter what nook and cranny of the site I find myself in, I can tell that someone knows where they are sending me.

But there’s no doubt about it: simple is difficult.

It takes long, deep thinking to connect all the moving parts, including anticipating and learning from the users to plot a reasonably direct course to simplicity. Oh, and patience.

I enjoyed watching Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg being interviewed at SXSW because we saw another glimpse behind the curtain of Facebook. It turns out Zuckerberg keeps notebooks. These aren’t the scrawled, disposable RAM that I create. These are the paper equivalent of a hard disk where everything is stored and indexed for future retrieval. They are metaculously kept and often referenced and updated some 4 years after an original entry.

This is what it takes to keep it simple.

HOWTO: Add a Live Forum Roll to Your Wordpress Blog

Over at Tangler we are busy finding ways for live discussions to reside where the users want them to. For example, if you have a  blog post that would benefit from swarming readers into a live discussion, you can now do that using the new ‘Share’ tool to embed the topic in your blog post.

Taking this idea further, we are slowly revealing the Tangler API and this is something of a sneak peak.

Itching to give it a go, I have added a dynamic list of all my live forums to this blog’s sidebar and giving you what you need to try the same.

Instructions 

If you haven’t done so already, get yourself an account on Tangler.

Download WP Tangler Live Discussion Roll and unpack it into the root of your current WP theme.

Edit tangler-sidebar.php at the top to your user-id and to the number of forums you would like to display.

Get your user-id by viewing your profile in Tangler and looking at the URL which will be http://www.tangler.com/people/id/12324. Grab the number off the end.

// Widget settings
$user_id = 1454; // Your id
$top = 20; // The number of forums you wanna display

In your template somewhere (mine is in sidebar template) I have then added the following:

<h5>Live Forum Roll (<a href="http://www.tangler.com">Tangler Power</a>)</h5>
<ul>
<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH."/tangler-sidebar.php");?>
</ul>

That’s all there is to it. It’s a quick and dirty hack but it gets the job done. Next task is to turn this into a WP Plug-in.
API Methods Available Today

If you want to do more, feel free to explore the first three methods released and let me know how you go.

Example: Get a User’s Public Forums

 http://www.tangler.com/services/1.0/user/1454/forums/

Example: Get a Forum’s Topics

 http://www.tangler.com/services/1.0/forum/20801/topics/

Example: Get a Topic’s Messages

 http://www.tangler.com/services/1.0/topic/34074/

Have fun!

Web App Goal #2: Don’t Try to Change the World

If your first goal when building web applications is ‘Change the World’. Stop, take a deep breath and start again. On your blog, wiki or whiteboard, write:

“We are not trying to change the world, we are trying to give users something they need/love/want.”

or

“We are not trying to change the world, we are trying to make more money than we spend.”

Probably most of the products I have worked on have been in the ‘Change the World’ category. They are over burdened with features, confusing to users, really difficult to maintain and often fail to ship at all.

Why do we do this to ourselves when there are plenty of un-built, simple products that can be built and released in a few months and give users exactly what they need/love/want?

Focus on a known use-case, keep it simple and release as soon as possible to test against real people.

Oh, and I also agree with Web App Goal #1 .

The End of Downloadable Applications?

For my last two years at Kazaa I was working on a brand spanking new desktop application. It was completely awesome but the details of that are not for this post.  This post is about what I slowly understood over those two years - that the time of the desktop internet application for consumers is over.

I 2004/5 I watched the emergence of excellent desktop applications like iMeem and Grouper (now Crackle). These had really raised the bar in terms of user experience and quality in media sharing applications. But it wasn’t long until they each started to re-invent themsleves as web applications.

This was during the emerence of the web we know today. The web that we own. The 2-way web. The web we use to connect with our friends. The web that doesn’t have the spyware, the hassle, the need-to-install-on-every-machine-i-want-to-use. The web that does have the capacity for massively viral effects, the web that is an application more powerful than we have ever seen before.

Check out the evolution of iMeem for example.

• 2005: Its all about the download
• 2006: The download is an optional extra
  
• Today: There is no download

They adapted to survive.

This is what I learned on that last project at Kazaa. We needed to connect with the web and, ideally, remove the need for an extra application.

Now it seems that even the biggest of modern desktop apps, Joost,  is in trouble.

Let’s see what happens next.

Evan Williams & the Universal Law of Simplicity

When designing software, the temptation is to add features. If the users aren’t loving our app as much as we need them to, it must be because we need to add that extra feature. That’ll get them! Rarely does this have the impact we desire, but the cycle continues and we add more and more features in the hope that, one day, we hit the sweet spot.We forget the universal law of simplicity.

One of the founders of Twitter, Evan Williams, presenting the powerful idea that less is more at LeWeb3 (LeWeb channel is here). Twitter itself was built around the constraint that the primary communication platform was SMS and that the web was just another interface. Twitter is dead simple to grasp. Tell everyone what you are doing in less than 140 characters of text. People can follow you and you can follow them. Following means you see what they are saying. There’s no video. No audio. No categories. No complex privacy settings. I don’t need to read the help pages because I can look at the home page and get it almost immediately.

There are a couple of powerful dynamics behind this that I want to talk about.

People not Features

Technology is a means to an end and not and end in itself. Users don’t put photos on the web because of the cool new embed feature, or the API that allows them to upload from their mobile phone. They simply and purely want to share their photos with other people. Great technology serves a simple need that people have. Twitter is an inspiration. It asks “What are you doing?” and we answer. In your app, what is the user trying to do?

Creativity: How it Works

Complexity is the enemy of creativity. In a former life I was a theatre director. I ran a course on improvisation at the West Australian Academy or Performing Arts. I began this course with a simple exercise in which I asked the group to form a circle (we do that a lot in theatre) and for a volunteer to step into the circle to do anything they liked. They had a infinite palette of possibility and the result was paralysis. Their eyes filled with fear as they free-falled through their minds trying to think of something interesting to do. Introducing constraints quickly changed the dynamic: “You are very heavy” or “This ball is precious” or “It’s dark”.  Constraints caused wonderful, creative moments to happen.  It’s a lot like “Tell me what you are doing in less than 140 characters”
Seesmic is bringing the universal law of simplicity to video which can be the most paralysing of all web experiences. I find that if I can film anything I like, wherever I like with my camera and then edit it in Adobe Premiere using After Effects to add titles, before uploading to YouTube I usually give up. It’s too much and I lose the most important thing: Something to say. With Seesmic, I press the big red button and do something. Awesome. I can’t wait to see some of the moments that come out of the Seesmic community.

Check out Evan’s presentation for some more great examples of how constraints can make great software.

Oh, and if you want to add me on Twitter, here I am.

Peter Van Dijck's One Stop Scalability Shop

Here’s an extremely useful resource for my geek friends. Peter van Dijck has collected some of the best presentations available on scaling web sites. Bookmark it!