As I mentioned in my last post, I just got back from the Defrag Conference. One of the first day talks was “This. Is. Sparta: Creating a culture of innovators” by Jay Simons, the VP of Marketing for Atlassian. Atlassian makes collaboration tools for software development teams and is apparently well regarded by those who use their products.

Jay talked at length about steps Atlassian had taken to keep the company innovative. I particularly like #3 on their list of core values, not to mention the statement (apparently from their head of HR) that HR policies are largely BS.

Much of his talk was focused on concepts like “20% Time”, which is very similar to Google’s program by the same name i.e. 20% of an employees time can be spent working on whatever they like. He also talked about other initiatives such as “Lab Week”. During a lab week, an entire team comes together in the style of mad scientists to solve a particular problem. During the week, the entire team wears lab coats.

It’s easy to look at these kind of initiatives and make fun of them. At best, they seem like goofy gimmicks that simply aren’t sustainable in a “real” company, especially not if there is actual work to be done.

At lunch, I happened to be sat across from Vivek Wadhwa. I am a huge fan of his work, and usually find myself vigorously nodding in agreement with everything he writes. His studies on the real nature of entrepreneurship, women in tech and emerging markets (three separate areas, not one big paper) are pragmatic, thought provoking and insightful. The subject of Lab Week came up, and Vivek made a comment regarding whether or not Lab Week (and having folks run around in lab coats) was actually useful or just silly.

You might think my curmudgeonly self would be in the “damn young kids and their silliness” camp, but I’m not.

A number of years ago I had the pleasure of working with a highly creative team at Hasbro Toys. We were working on a new project and they invited several of us to join them in their brainstorming session. We camped out in a room full of whiteboards, large paper pads on easels, tape and a secret weapon: an enormous bucket of Hubba Bubba (full sugar, of course).

At first I assumed it was just a toy-company-being-wacky thing. But as the two day brainstorming session progressed, I started to see that it was an act of genius.

Brainstorming is hard to do right. You often need to cover a lot of ground. You need to bravely explore avenues that may seem foolish at first. You need everyone to forget the preconceived ideas and answers they arrived with, and everyone needs to contribute. Successful brainstorming requires a change in attitude.

Enter Hubba Bubba.

1. If you’re used to corporate meetings, it completely throws you off-guard to be presented with a giant bucket of gum.
2. It is really hard to monopolize a conversation when you have a mouthful of gum.
3. It is much harder to remain formal and guarded when everyone else has a mouthful of gum.
4. Chewing gum makes you thirsty. Everyone has to stop to drink water/soda/whatever, and that means everyone also has to hit the bathroom. This provides natural breaks for every participant, no matter how much they want to be heard.

The net result is that nobody monopolizes the conversation. Ideas flow freely and get kicked around until the right answers present themselves.

And from apparent silliness, magic is born.

I’ve repeated the Hubba Bubba process many times and it has always delivered results.

I suspect the same is true of many of the seemingly gimmicky ideas like Lab Week. You wear a lab coat to work and you feel different. Feeling different can change how you think and influence the way you approach a problem. A different approach yields a different answer, and that’s where true innovation often happens.

Categories: All Business, Concepts & Ideas
362No Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/11/21/hubba-hubba-no-really-this-is-a-practical-business-post/Hubba+Hubba...+No%2C+really%2C+this+is+a+practical+business+post...2010-11-21+19%3A30%3A55NickN

I spent much of the past week at the excellent Defrag Conference. I honestly don’t know another conference where you’ll find meaningful discussion of traveling to space, solving big data problems and why rooms in Vegas have mirrors on the ceiling (Esther Dyson, Jeff Jonas and Jeff Ma respectively).

The conference is attended by some very smart and influential people (present company excluded), from senior execs to talented developers, press and VCs.

Defrag is organized by the talented Eric Norlin and his equally talented wife Kim. Eric gets startups and every year I’ve attended Defrag (3 now) he does one thing that I think is great: he gives a startup a shot at the brass ring.

How to connect with people at a conference when you don’t know them but have common interests is a poorly solved problem. This year, Eric gave Zerista a shot at solving it.

And boy, did they suck. There’s a big suck and then a bunch of smaller quibbly sucks that you could argue may just be me. But the big one is a doozy.

I arrived in Denver on Tuesday night (November 16th) and got an email asking me to sign up for Zerista:

So I signed up and started creating my profile. When I tried to add a photo, the system belched. I tried a few more times and got nowhere. I’m running a Mac and Chrome browser. Its not exactly an unusual combination but I have seen problems on some sites, so I fired up Firefox. Different error message but the same end result: no ability to upload a photo. On a scale of 1 to 10, being able to have an easy way to recognize someone you’ve never met (like a photo) ranks at least a 12, so I was keen to solve this.

Investigative hat on, I took a look at the Zerista site and they mention that “Zerista Pro is a Mobile and Desktop Event Planner that turns your event into an interactive mobile experience for all stakeholders”.

Aha! Perhaps I can use their mobile app.

Err no. Neither my Nexus One nor my Galaxy tablet can see anything other than a hobbled mobile UI that doesn’t let you edit information at all.

But it’s not as though attendees at Defrag would have smartphones and want to edit things from them

<sigh>

But then another idea hits me. This is a startup. This conference is a big deal for them. They are probably all working 24/7. Yes, it’s 11pm at night (Colorado time) but why not send an email to their support team! I’d never bother with a mainstream product because we all know how that works out, but good startups (and Eric knows what those look like) are all over customer support.

So I did. Short and simple as you see below. I used to run a Customer Support department, so I tried to provide at least a minimum amount of useful information and a clear subject.

After sending that, I went to bed. Defrag started at 8am on the 17th and I was on East Coast time, so I was up early.

I checked my email, but there was no response. Not even an autoresponder saying “We got your email”.

Hmm.

The 17th came and went. I checked the mobile app a few times, but it seemed no one was really using it and the vast majority of attendees didn’t have a completed profile or profile picture. The 18th came and went too. Defrag is only a two day conference, so by 5pm or so on the 18th it was over.

Still no email.

I got up early on Friday, 11/19, to take my flight home. Still no email.

Caught up with my email late last night when I finally got home.

Still nothing.

This morning (Saturday) I got up late to see not one but two emails:

Uhhh, what? I already registered. I logged in several times during the conference. Why are you sending me this now? As I look at this more closely, it seems Redmine is perhaps their support ticket system, so this is perhaps a login for problem tracking, not my account login?

Way to go, clarity.

This email was followed by an even more splendid one:

So yes, I got a message that simply regurgitated the email I had sent 3+ days earlier. You’ll also see the heartwarming “NON BILLABLE” notice in the subject line.

Now I already had the impression that they didn’t give a shit about my business, but at least now I know it’s because I’ve been identified as some kind of freeloader by their system.

You’ll also see that it shows the issue as “New”, which after 3+ days I would argue with, and the priority as “Normal”. Since the conference ended two days ago, I’d recommend they change that to “Low”, or “Ooops”, or “My Bad”.

Seriously? WTF! I couldn’t help but respond, since no-one else seems to be updating my case:

Let me be clear: this is in no way a criticism of Eric. This is 100% a criticism of Zerista and their management team.

If you can’t handle simple tasks like responding to urgent support emails, you don’t deserve anyone’s business, let alone mine.

Categories: All Business, Rants 'n' Raves
3611 Comment »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/11/20/hi-my-name-is-zerista-and-id-like-to-blow-a-golden-opportunity/%22Hi%2C+My+Name+is+Zerista+and+I%27d+like+to+blow+a+golden+opportunity%222010-11-20+13%3A26%3A51NickN

Okay, I get it. There’s a smidgen of rivalry between the Android and iPhone camps.. Just a teensy bit… but occasionally that leads to the kind of mind-numbingly stupid analysis that I can’t help but comment on.

Case in point, this past week saw a slew of reports and commentary on Android accounting for one quarter of all mobile web traffic (see this search for some of the results). This follows some rather silly back and forth between Apple and Google on the actual number of handset activations (see this Computerworld article for a good example). Jobs felt it necessary to belittle Android’s numbers, Google responded and the whole thing became something of a lesson int the Streisand Effect. I would imagine Mr. Jobs wasn’t looking to provide additional publicity on Android’s growth.

But for once, I have a little bit of sympathy for Apple. Following the aforementioned web traffic reports, there have been a variety of headlines about Android trouncing Apple’s numbers… Android web share is up. Apple web share is down… Android wins… Apple loses… Road to death… Lost their edge… Blah blah blah.

I, for one, am a little tired of sensationalistic journalism based on flimsy (or non-existent) facts.

So is Apple really on the down and out? No. The numbers we are talking about are the share of web browsing done from a mobile device i.e. a single, static pie. Anyone that made it through 8th grade maths probably remembers that all the pieces of the pie have to add up to 100%. If Android is growing (which it clearly is), its percentage of the whole pie will grow, unless everyone else grows at exactly the same rate. And if everything has to add up to 100%, that means some other folks will see a corresponding decrease in their overall traffic share.

Duh.

So what this really says is that the number of Android devices is increasing faster than the number of iPhones. And that gets right back to sloppy journalism, failing to compare apples to oranges (no pun intended).

To get an idea of how misleading the comparison can be, look at desktop/laptop web browsing. Nine out of ten machines browsing the web are PC’s, not Macs. Aww. Poor Mac. Poor Apple. Will they live?

But wait, let’s look at sales volume by manufacturer rather than by OS… #1 is Dell, #2 is HP and #3? Why, it’s poor little Apple.

Apple’s iPhone product line is essentially a single device from a single manufacturer. Android is an OS with devices from many manufacturers. If Android wasn’t getting to market on many more devices, Google would be doing something wrong.

Furthermore, at this point in time, I don’t think there is a single Android handset manufacturer shipping more units than Apple.

And just in case you were still feeling sorry for Apple, there’s always this little nugget…

In Q2, 2010, Apple had about 3% of the worldwide market for mobile phones. They also had 48% of the profit. No, that’s not a typo. A company with just 3% of the market (by volume of devices sold) captured nearly half the worldwide profit. They made more than twice the profit made by Nokia, and Nokia has 38% of the market. See the full report here.

So Nokia manufactures and sells 12 phones for every iPhone Apple sells. They support 12 customers for every Apple customer. On a day to day basis they do twelve times as much work, and they do it for less than half the money Apple makes.

So don’t believe the bullshit. Apple are doing fine, thank you very much. And so is Android. There’s a lot of fight left in both camps, and deciding the “winner” isn’t just about a simplistic pie chart based on traffic, which is relatively meaningless at the best of times. Certainly not worth going to war over…

Categories: All Business
3502 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/09/08/lies-damned-lies-and-mobile-statistics/Lies%2C+Damned+Lies+and+Mobile+Statistics2010-09-09+02%3A35%3A57NickN

Episode II. Attack of the Moaners.

Like I said at the start of my Episode I post, as an entrepreneur, you are naturally very optimistic. One of the interesting results of this is that you spend 99.9999% of your efforts focused on everything related to when things go right. You’ll sweat scaling, customer development, feature sets, bug testing, social media, adequate coffee and pizza… The list is endless.

But the one thing you probably won’t sweat over is optimizing processes for when things go wrong.

And yes, here lies an oft-trod path to madness. Welcome to Episode II of Clusterfrak to the Darkside…

Here’s an example that happens to be a huge pet peeve of mine. I want to cancel your service. How hard are you going to make it for me to do so?

I have seen smart people that I respect actively defend the “hide it and they won’t come” version of service cancellation. You know exactly what I mean. You can upgrade, sidegrade, recommend or otherwise engage with the fine minutiae of any aspect of a product except one.

“To cancel your account, please call…”

This is bullshit.

It is built on the premise that if you make it hard to cancel, a customer won’t cancel. That’s the underlying assumption. If you can make them call, you can talk them out of it and avoid losing a customer.

NEWSFLASH: if a customer wants to cancel, it’s because the DON’T WANT YOUR PRODUCT. It may be for a dumb reason. It may be for a good reason. It doesn’t matter. If they want to cancel and you get in their way, you’ll make them angrier than they were already.

“But what if they don’t understand and we actually do what they want, they’re just using it wrong?” I hear you cry.

Well, I never said you shouldn’t find out why someone wants to cancel. I just saying don’t put roadblocks between you and them if they want to cancel.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think of the last product you paid money for that pissed you off. Did you cancel the service and/or get your money back? I bet yes. Did you have to fight to cancel it? If yes, did that make you happier about the company you were dealing with? I’m guessing no.

Exhibit A: Shortly after I moved to the US, I recall trying to buy my first car and stopping in at a Mitsubishi dealership. The sales guy asked if I wanted to talk numbers and I said I wasn’t ready to buy but would like to know what the numbers would look like. I was then ushered in to a room in the back while they did their thing. He brought the numbers, and his manager, and asked if I was ready to buy. I said no. Lots of paper shuffling, big markers circling all the key points of the ever-so-amazing deal I was getting and increasing rhetoric about wasting his time. And then, (and I’m not kidding) two other guys turned up and stood in front of the door blocking my exit while the manager proceeded to rant about what a great deal he was giving me. Needless to say, I left. I have never visited a Mitsubishi dealership since.

Exhibit B: I signed up for a VisualLink “Learn Spanish” CD-ROM a number of years ago (please note: the company may have changed its policies since then). It was a standard subscription deal with some kind of intro period. The discs were arriving way faster than I was able to get through them, so I tried to cancel. The only option was to call, and when I called the wait times were enormous and then the operative put me on hold. It took multiple calls before everything was taken care of. In this case I actually liked the product, it just wasn’t right for me at that point in time. But I’ll never spend money with them again.

Exhibit C: I recently canceled my AT&T service. Even though I had already ported my number, it still took three calls. On the first call, the guy refused to let me cancel. He pointed out that we were in a “good” coverage area, based on AT&T’s map. He suggested I ditch the iPhone on the account for a different phone with better reception (yes, I swear he did). He refused to put a supervisor on the phone. I hung up. The second call, we got repeatedly cut off due to AT&T’s shitty service. Oh, the irony. Then the battery in the phone died, so I had to call again. On the third call, I explained that I did not want to talk to a “Retention Specialist” (that’s what they actually call their cancellation department — a big clue, no less) and that nothing would prevent me from canceling the account. The CS person I spoke with was one of the few humans at AT&T. She politely informed me that the hold times were currently very long for the cancelation department and proceeded to take care of the cancelation. She was professional and apologetic, and I was done in about 5 minutes. While that didn’t go terribly far in offsetting the general abuse I experienced at the hands of AT&T, it’s definitely the best ending of the three examples I’ve talked about here.

So when you launch your Next Big Thing, spare a moment’s thought for the unhappy customer. If they’re not happy, make it easy to cancel. Ask for feedback when they do. Follow up with them gently, and respect when they ask to be left alone.

Don’t fall in to the classic sales trap of a NO being a YES waiting to happen. It’s BS. And it’s a swift road to the darkside…

I’ll perhaps talk about ways to optimize customer service in another post…

Categories: All Business
349No Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/08/22/clusterfrak-to-the-darkside-episode-ii/ClusterFrak+to+the+Darkside+%2F+Episode+II2010-08-23+02%3A36%3A11NickN

        “Is the dark side stronger?”

                …”No…no…no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.”

Hmm. Should perhaps have started on Episode IV, because we all know how Episode I turned out… Moving swiftly along. Welcome to what may be a series of posts. Only time will tell.

I had several product experiences in the past week that coalesced into the theme of this post.

As an entrepreneur, you are naturally very optimistic. If you weren’t, you’d pack up and go home, because as we all know, more than half of all new businesses fail within five years.

But to even have a chance at success, your shiny new business needs to be built on an honest promise… something better, cooler, faster, cheaper… Take your pick, but it has to genuinely do something and do it well.

Otherwise, you’re on the path of ClusterFrak to the darkside [insert dramatic music]…

It can start innocently enough, with what seems to be a good idea. Let me start with Exhibit A — a wire closet shelf remarkably similar to this one. It’s a shelf. For a closet. Passes the sniff test as your basic good idea. It’s affordable, shelf shaped and, according to the package, it doesn’t need many tools to install.

But wait until you get to the final stages of installing the darn thing. It has 3 brackets that go from the front of the shelf to the wall. They clip on at the front and attach to the wall using a funky little nail and plastic clip combo device. Except that the hole in the bracket is larger than the nail head, so the brackets won’t stay in place.

Doh.

So a few sloppy/easy decisions in the design process led to a product that is basically unusable without some customer intervention (in the form of washers and drywall-friendly screws). Given the price of the shelf, I would guess most customers suck it up rather than return it, but it’s a shittily executed product.

Exhibit B – a book I’ve been trying to read on the history of Samsung and Sony. Again, it’s a nice idea: Korean electronics upstart slays mighty Japanese empire. Should be a good read, and before I got in to it, I was expecting a good discussion of how Sony was the cause of their own demise by (a) being utterly unresponsive to market changes and (b) insisting on creating proprietary systems rather than participating in open standards (which is really just another face of point (a) in the big scheme of things). And how conversely, Samsung was pretty nimble, watched consumer trends (like Plasma TV) and focused on customer value.

I think it’s pretty clear that Sony lost ground starting with Betamax. Why did VHS win? Because it was cheap and easy to license. Did Sony learn their lesson? No. They followed it with Minidisc, Memory Stick and many other proprietary products. They charged premium prices for reasonable quality products (mostly) that locked you in to the Sony way of doing things. And unlike Apple, it wasn’t a seamless experience and it wasn’t usually on the cutting edge of design or functionality.

In contrast, Samsung kept it simple. They focused on products that the market wanted at prices people wanted to pay. I still remember the first time I bought a Samsung TV instead of a Sony Trinitron. I got a bigger TV for less money and the picture was almost as good. I had a brief pang of regret for abandoning my lovely 21” trinitron TV, but instantly felt good about the 26” Samsung that replaced it for about half the price.

But not twenty pages in to the book, the author utterly blows it. His conclusion: Sony lost because management didn’t execute on strategy. What?! So who sets the strategy? Do they have some kind of Burning Bush spitting out Stone Tablets that Management blindly followed for 30 years? It’s a cheap get out that destroys what should have been a good piece of analysis. It could have been doubly relevant given that Sony appears to be turning a corner both in profitability and its adoption of more open standards.

So again, sloppy/easy decisions led to a product that is useless. And unlike the shelf, there’s no easy fix for the book.

So Rule One in avoiding the ClusterFrak to the Dark Side is:

        Don’t be lazy. Don’t take shortcuts. Keep your product honest and do the work you need to do to get it built*.

* No, that doesn’t invalidate minimum viable product and agile development, just laziness and poor judgement.

p.s. Zero points for guessing the source of the quote.

Categories: All Business
3482 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/08/15/clusterfrak-to-the-darkside-episode-i/ClusterFrak+to+the+Darkside+%2F+Episode+I2010-08-16+01%3A23%3A17NickN