Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures recently wrote an excellent blog post about the value of openness, and shares his empirical observation that there is great value in being open about your business plans as a startup. This is not a new meme, and in fact New York entrepreneur Charlie O’Donnell from Path 101, and former Union Square Ventures associate, coined the term “anti-stealth” to describe the concept of total openness when launching a new company. The idea of anti-stealth is that you tell people everything you are doing and that this will benefit your ability to execute.
Brad suggests that every time you share something about you business you will learn more than you will be giving away. In other words, in conversations about what you are doing, the informational trade balance will always be in your favor.
I generally agree with this thesis, but I do believe that, as with everything in life, there is room for nuance.
Some of the nuance I am addressing relates to level of detail. I think if you have a real estate web site idea, or an idea for how to sell books online, that there is little benefit to keeping that secret. In fact I would go as far as to say that there are very few market related ideas that are worthy of stealth. I would never say that there are no such ideas, but there certainly aren’t many. Of course the problem here is that everyone thinks *their* idea is the one idea that needs to be kept secret, so let me clarify.
The one thing I think you want to consider keeping secret are special “executional” techniques. These are often key technical or “technical-ish” insights that are hard won but easily copied. For example, imagine it has taken you 6 months to figure out the secret to building something that will cut your cost of operation by a factor of 10, or perhaps will lead to a 10x growth rate over your competitors.
Lets assume it will take you another 6 months to finish the rest of your product, but it might take an already in-market, or coming-to-market competitor a month to build it into their product. In that situation, I think you might very well be wise to keep your insight to yourself to give you a maximal opportunity to leverage it.
Admittedly, this is tricky if this insight is the key to making people interested in your business. So even in this situation it might be wise to share, but in a more cautious way. For example there is a significant difference between sharing verbally and sharing in writing where someone can pore over your every word. Providing an overview of your insight verbally might be just as beneficial as writing it down, and less risky.
For example there are certain aspects of and a certain level of detail about my current efforts that I will talk about, but will not blog about. Another technique is what I call casual compartmentalization, which is total openness, but with different people about different aspects. In many respects this is a natural behavior and not a strategy since you can’t tell everything to everybody if you don’t write it down publicly.
On another front, if your idea is something that benefits the functionality of your product but cannot be specifically observed, there may be no reason to ever share that. For example, we know Google provides great search results, but we don’t know all of their algorithms. Another example Brad uses is that we don’t know Coke’s secret recipe. There are some companies that could be appropriately described as having “secret recipe” technology, and that is indeed worthy of keeping secret.
The bottom line is I generally agree with the concept of being open and sharing. But I don’t think every single “ah ha” moment needs to be laid out in a detailed written roadmap for your existing or would be competitors. So go ahead. I agree with being open. But I don’t think that means you can’t keep a few secrets.
Showing posts with label nextNY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nextNY. Show all posts
Monday, June 9, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Media Darling Powerset vs. Non-Media Darling Hakia
Over the weekend, The web was abuzz with discussion about Microsoft considering the acquisition of natural language search company Powerset. Today there is yet more coverage. Some time ago I had heard a rumor that someone was looking at Powerset, but was relatively uninterested. Hearing that the potential acquirer is Microsoft certainly makes it more interesting, but I have to say the concept leaves me more than a bit incredulous.
From skeptic to user
I became familiar with Powerset's only competitor, Hakia initially because they are a New York company. I became intrigued with Hakia because several months ago I tried their search engine, and it worked – really well. This was a surprising result for me since I have always been a skeptic regarding all things relating to artificial intelligence, speech recognition, natural language processing, and other such fuzzy technologies.
At least in the area of natural language processing Hakia that has changed my mind. In fact, it has become common for me to use the Hakia search engine when Google does not deliver sufficient results.
Hakia and Powerset are part of the same general area of natural language search. The idea with both services is that you can actually ask specific questions and get answers. But there are critical differences between Hakia and Powerset. And those differences bring me back to my incredulity at the idea that Microsoft is taking a serious look at Powerset.
Powerset indexes 750 times slower than Hakia!
I have no expertise in natural language processing or semantic search, or any type of full text search for that matter. But as far as I can tell, Hakia’s technology is *far* superior to that of Powerset’s. Why would I say that?
Well first, as I have already said, it works. It is a real live search engine. I use it. I can’t say the same for Powerset. Powerset has yet to show anything but a search engine for Wikipedia. A big part of the reason Powerset doesn’t seem able to offer a real search engine is the fact that according to their own reports, it takes them about 25 seconds to index a page, based on an average of 25 sentences per page. According to Hakia it takes them 1/30th of a second to index a page. Essentially this means that Powerset cannot scale. It is seven hundred fifty times slower than Hakia!
Now you might assume that Powerset is slower because it’s applying some serious, and superior indexing mojo, and therefore what it is doing is much more valuable than what Hakia is doing. But alas that is also not true.
Hakia really knows how to read
Hakia is doing something called “ontological semantics”. What this means is that over the last four years, Hakia has developed an “ontology” for human expression. In layman terms, what this means is that what Hakia does when it indexes a page is to look at each sentence and figure out what the *questions* are that each sentence answers. Any given sentence usually answers 3 or 4 questions. These questions are coded and go into what Hakia calls their Qdex, or question index.
In order to be able to figure out what the relevant questions are for a given sentence, Hakia’s indexer has to literally read the sentence. By “read” I mean it has to understand the actual meaning of the sentence semantically. This is a big deal.
Powerset uses statistics + syntax but can’t actually read
So, while Hakia is actually reading, Powerset, does not actually attempt to understand what sentences mean. It uses a system that parses the syntax of the sentence and guesses matches based on statistics. But this approach means that for questions that do not match previously encountered syntactical patterns, the system will not be able to find answers, even if there are in fact answers in the database.
Powerset benefits from the Silicon Valley echo chamber
Now, if, for a moment, you presume that it is true, or even *possibly* true that Hakia is the superior service and technology, or if you even assume that Hakia is just equivalent to Powerset, why would Powerset be so continuously celebrated while Hakia is overshadowed?
The only answer I can come up with is that the west coast is such an echo chamber that very little sound gets in or out. And so it must be shocking when a New York company develops a technology that seems to beat the pants off something that should be pure Silicon Valley. Just a thought.
In any case, it seems, for the record, worth noting that we have the clear leader in natural language processing and search technology right here. And, as an admitted New York partisan, after a while it does get a little annoying to hear such continued fawning over a west coast company that is very likely, at the end of the day, just another Silicon Valley also-ran.
From skeptic to user
I became familiar with Powerset's only competitor, Hakia initially because they are a New York company. I became intrigued with Hakia because several months ago I tried their search engine, and it worked – really well. This was a surprising result for me since I have always been a skeptic regarding all things relating to artificial intelligence, speech recognition, natural language processing, and other such fuzzy technologies.
At least in the area of natural language processing Hakia that has changed my mind. In fact, it has become common for me to use the Hakia search engine when Google does not deliver sufficient results.
Hakia and Powerset are part of the same general area of natural language search. The idea with both services is that you can actually ask specific questions and get answers. But there are critical differences between Hakia and Powerset. And those differences bring me back to my incredulity at the idea that Microsoft is taking a serious look at Powerset.
Powerset indexes 750 times slower than Hakia!
I have no expertise in natural language processing or semantic search, or any type of full text search for that matter. But as far as I can tell, Hakia’s technology is *far* superior to that of Powerset’s. Why would I say that?
Well first, as I have already said, it works. It is a real live search engine. I use it. I can’t say the same for Powerset. Powerset has yet to show anything but a search engine for Wikipedia. A big part of the reason Powerset doesn’t seem able to offer a real search engine is the fact that according to their own reports, it takes them about 25 seconds to index a page, based on an average of 25 sentences per page. According to Hakia it takes them 1/30th of a second to index a page. Essentially this means that Powerset cannot scale. It is seven hundred fifty times slower than Hakia!
Now you might assume that Powerset is slower because it’s applying some serious, and superior indexing mojo, and therefore what it is doing is much more valuable than what Hakia is doing. But alas that is also not true.
Hakia really knows how to read
Hakia is doing something called “ontological semantics”. What this means is that over the last four years, Hakia has developed an “ontology” for human expression. In layman terms, what this means is that what Hakia does when it indexes a page is to look at each sentence and figure out what the *questions* are that each sentence answers. Any given sentence usually answers 3 or 4 questions. These questions are coded and go into what Hakia calls their Qdex, or question index.
In order to be able to figure out what the relevant questions are for a given sentence, Hakia’s indexer has to literally read the sentence. By “read” I mean it has to understand the actual meaning of the sentence semantically. This is a big deal.
Powerset uses statistics + syntax but can’t actually read
So, while Hakia is actually reading, Powerset, does not actually attempt to understand what sentences mean. It uses a system that parses the syntax of the sentence and guesses matches based on statistics. But this approach means that for questions that do not match previously encountered syntactical patterns, the system will not be able to find answers, even if there are in fact answers in the database.
Powerset benefits from the Silicon Valley echo chamber
Now, if, for a moment, you presume that it is true, or even *possibly* true that Hakia is the superior service and technology, or if you even assume that Hakia is just equivalent to Powerset, why would Powerset be so continuously celebrated while Hakia is overshadowed?
The only answer I can come up with is that the west coast is such an echo chamber that very little sound gets in or out. And so it must be shocking when a New York company develops a technology that seems to beat the pants off something that should be pure Silicon Valley. Just a thought.
In any case, it seems, for the record, worth noting that we have the clear leader in natural language processing and search technology right here. And, as an admitted New York partisan, after a while it does get a little annoying to hear such continued fawning over a west coast company that is very likely, at the end of the day, just another Silicon Valley also-ran.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Geek NY
As many of you know I have been fairly focused on the question of how to improve the state of the technologist community in New York.
Unfortunately, we do not have the same kind of technologist community as other geographies such as Silicon Valley, and while there are many many technologists in the New York area, in my view there is not sufficient connectedness among us. Many of you are buried inside much larger institutions such as investment banks, and other organizations for which technology is more of a necessary means to an end, than something in and of itself to be interested in or excited about.
So today, I am proposing the creation of a group called the Geek NY.
Geek NY will be modeled on several ideas that I have seen work, and that I think could be effective. The anchor of the concept, which I hope can be similar to the NY Tech Meetup, is a monthly meeting where one or two people will present a technical idea or issue that would be of interest to the technology community at large. An example might be someone coming in to talk about the concept of map/reduce as a new paradigm for programming.
The idea is, at the monthly meetings, to offer presentations that are broadly valuable to the technologist community. Presenters will be a mix of local technologists, and presenters from the corporate or academic world. However, the idea would never be to promote specific products, but more to discuss new ideas, processes and thinking.
Once we begin to improve connectedness, I believe there will be an opportunity to tackle some of the broader issues that keep New York from really being on the map as a great place to create technology and to build technology companies.
Several months ago we formed the New York Tech Boosters mailing list, which I would encourage everyone to join, as it will be the starting point for all discussion about Geek NY. If you are in the Tri-State area, join us.
Unfortunately, we do not have the same kind of technologist community as other geographies such as Silicon Valley, and while there are many many technologists in the New York area, in my view there is not sufficient connectedness among us. Many of you are buried inside much larger institutions such as investment banks, and other organizations for which technology is more of a necessary means to an end, than something in and of itself to be interested in or excited about.
So today, I am proposing the creation of a group called the Geek NY.
Geek NY will be modeled on several ideas that I have seen work, and that I think could be effective. The anchor of the concept, which I hope can be similar to the NY Tech Meetup, is a monthly meeting where one or two people will present a technical idea or issue that would be of interest to the technology community at large. An example might be someone coming in to talk about the concept of map/reduce as a new paradigm for programming.
The idea is, at the monthly meetings, to offer presentations that are broadly valuable to the technologist community. Presenters will be a mix of local technologists, and presenters from the corporate or academic world. However, the idea would never be to promote specific products, but more to discuss new ideas, processes and thinking.
Once we begin to improve connectedness, I believe there will be an opportunity to tackle some of the broader issues that keep New York from really being on the map as a great place to create technology and to build technology companies.
Several months ago we formed the New York Tech Boosters mailing list, which I would encourage everyone to join, as it will be the starting point for all discussion about Geek NY. If you are in the Tri-State area, join us.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Who Needs Market Research?
This is a question that was brought to mind by the current episode of the NextNYers video series, where every week they interview entrepreneurs who are building companies in the New York area. This episode is about a company with an online video speed dating web service called Camlink.
Indeed it wasn't a bad interview, but the host, Courtney Nichols, asked one question that troubled me. She asked what sort of market research the company had done to determine if there was a market for this kind of product.
This, it seemed to me, was an unfair question, because it implied that market research is a needed and/or valuable way of determining whether a web service will be successful.
I don't generally believe this is the case.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that without actually building a consumer service, it is rarely possible to determine whether it will be successful. This is because with these kinds of products, the devil is in the experience. Who would have thought that Facebook would have been able to come into the market so strongly and to catch up to or beat MySpace? On paper, it would probably not have been compelling.
The only thing you could have perhaps determined from market research is whether people want to connect with each other. But the truth is it's like asking someone if they would prefer Coke with lemon or lime when they have never tried either. You can ask people if they like lemon. You can ask if they like lime. You can even ask if they get thirsty. But the only way to know what they really are going to like is to observe their behavior after trying both.
In this case, I don't think there is much question that there is a demand or need for tools to help people find dates, partners, or spouses. Will their particular approach work? I don't know, but I don't think any market research would tell me.
But this does bring to mind the question of how you determine if there is a market for a web product. I think the best way is by solving a problem that you personally relate to. Of course its never that simple, particularly if you do not have sensibilities that match those of the mainstream. No matter what, some combination of insight, luck, and execution will always be required, and indeed I think finding that sweet spot is more art and iteration than science.
For developers doing consumer web products, doing pre-launch market research surveys, or anything other than testing product usage is a silly exercise. Post launch, real market reaction is the only research you can really trust.
Indeed it wasn't a bad interview, but the host, Courtney Nichols, asked one question that troubled me. She asked what sort of market research the company had done to determine if there was a market for this kind of product.
This, it seemed to me, was an unfair question, because it implied that market research is a needed and/or valuable way of determining whether a web service will be successful.
I don't generally believe this is the case.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that without actually building a consumer service, it is rarely possible to determine whether it will be successful. This is because with these kinds of products, the devil is in the experience. Who would have thought that Facebook would have been able to come into the market so strongly and to catch up to or beat MySpace? On paper, it would probably not have been compelling.
The only thing you could have perhaps determined from market research is whether people want to connect with each other. But the truth is it's like asking someone if they would prefer Coke with lemon or lime when they have never tried either. You can ask people if they like lemon. You can ask if they like lime. You can even ask if they get thirsty. But the only way to know what they really are going to like is to observe their behavior after trying both.
In this case, I don't think there is much question that there is a demand or need for tools to help people find dates, partners, or spouses. Will their particular approach work? I don't know, but I don't think any market research would tell me.
But this does bring to mind the question of how you determine if there is a market for a web product. I think the best way is by solving a problem that you personally relate to. Of course its never that simple, particularly if you do not have sensibilities that match those of the mainstream. No matter what, some combination of insight, luck, and execution will always be required, and indeed I think finding that sweet spot is more art and iteration than science.
For developers doing consumer web products, doing pre-launch market research surveys, or anything other than testing product usage is a silly exercise. Post launch, real market reaction is the only research you can really trust.
Friday, February 8, 2008
The State of New York Tech
This Last Thursday I went to an MIT Enterprise Forum event here in New York. The discussion topic was how technology transfer from universities to the entrepreneurial world works, but I attended because the issue of the state of New York technology is in my view, not good, and I believe the connection between the university and business community is one of the core issues.
I have been extremely frustrated that there is a contingent of the community who seem to believe that none of this is an issue. I have had discussions on the NextNY mailing lists where people have provided a list of successful IT related exits as proof that the tech community in new york is vibrant. This to me is the community sticking its head in the sand.
One of the things I find interesting about this is that the people who think there is a problem seem more commonly to be on the tech side of things, and the people who don't think there is a problem tend to be more on the business/marketing side. I am not sure this will continue to hold as more people join the discussion, but it does make sense to me that the closer you are to the issue, the more obvious it is. Given that we had a room full of people directly involved in the technology issues, there was a strong sense that there is a problem here. Some of the most interesting and relevant points made by the panel were as follows:
My personal interest is in trying to figure out a way to improve the technology community in New York, particularly as it relates to what I call "hard core" technology. The New York Tech Meetup is great, but most of the products we see are not solutions to hard problems. The tech often seems thin.
One of the more obvious tasks is getting the major New York area universities to encourage technology entrepreneurship or working in an entrepreneurial environment as an exciting career path. In New York, a disproportionate number of the computer science students are ending up working on Wall Street. I think it would be helpful if there was more of a spirit of creation in the New York computer science graduates, as there is in those from the bay area.
In any case, the MIT event surfaced all of these issues both on the panel and it lots of informal discussions afterwards. Lots of people approached me and wanted to tell me their war stories. It appears to me that there is serious problem bubbling up to the surface.
But the goal of this piece is not to complain, but to figure out how to move the ball forward. The first step of attempting to fashion solutions here has to be people from the various constituency groups coming together. As such, I would like to begin an ongoing dialog about the issue. Please leave comments below, or join the just formed http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-tech-boosters mailing list so that we can continue the conversation.
I have been extremely frustrated that there is a contingent of the community who seem to believe that none of this is an issue. I have had discussions on the NextNY mailing lists where people have provided a list of successful IT related exits as proof that the tech community in new york is vibrant. This to me is the community sticking its head in the sand.
One of the things I find interesting about this is that the people who think there is a problem seem more commonly to be on the tech side of things, and the people who don't think there is a problem tend to be more on the business/marketing side. I am not sure this will continue to hold as more people join the discussion, but it does make sense to me that the closer you are to the issue, the more obvious it is. Given that we had a room full of people directly involved in the technology issues, there was a strong sense that there is a problem here. Some of the most interesting and relevant points made by the panel were as follows:
- Panel moderator Brian Kelly, Director, Cornell Center for Technology, Enterprise and Commercialization, indicated that essentially all biotech in New York leaves immediately after getting funding.
- Panelist John Fox President and CEO, Innovation Fuels said that New York VCs are far more conservative and lose deals to the west coast because they are more aggressive. And since money is so much easier out west, people leave.
- Panelist Franklin Madison, Technology Program Director at ITAC, said that there is lots of IT in New York, but that it is buried in the infrastructure of New York and not as visible as it is in Silicon Valley.
- Chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum, Bruce Bachenheimer, and Clinical Professor, Director of Entrepreneurship at Pace University asked which if any of the New York area universities are interested in helping students become entrepreneurs.
My personal interest is in trying to figure out a way to improve the technology community in New York, particularly as it relates to what I call "hard core" technology. The New York Tech Meetup is great, but most of the products we see are not solutions to hard problems. The tech often seems thin.
One of the more obvious tasks is getting the major New York area universities to encourage technology entrepreneurship or working in an entrepreneurial environment as an exciting career path. In New York, a disproportionate number of the computer science students are ending up working on Wall Street. I think it would be helpful if there was more of a spirit of creation in the New York computer science graduates, as there is in those from the bay area.
In any case, the MIT event surfaced all of these issues both on the panel and it lots of informal discussions afterwards. Lots of people approached me and wanted to tell me their war stories. It appears to me that there is serious problem bubbling up to the surface.
But the goal of this piece is not to complain, but to figure out how to move the ball forward. The first step of attempting to fashion solutions here has to be people from the various constituency groups coming together. As such, I would like to begin an ongoing dialog about the issue. Please leave comments below, or join the just formed http://groups.google.com/group
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
New York Tech Meetup Review - February
Last night's New York Tech Meetup was the best since I have been going, which is at least a year and a half. If you want to see video of the event, you can check out CenterNetworks recap.
TheIssue
This is a very attractive blog aggregator. The way it works is its homepage is like a directory or a newspaper with links. The links point to articles, but what is kind of interesting is that the articles appear below in a frame that is maintained by theIssue. This allows you t browse while always remaining in the context of theIssue, making it easy to return once you have viewed the article. The publication is organized by human editors which, if they can afford it, seems like the best way to curate something like this because they will clearly find content, particularly for breaking stories, that can't be found via automated systems. It's well done. I suspect I will use it.
Aviary
Aviary is a set of online tools for creating content. This will include a variety of tools including vector drawing, video editor, 3d editor, etc. The tool they demoed was the image editor.
The image editor is impressive. The concept is that you can edit art in a Photoshop kind of way. The tools look slick and reasonably fast. But the amazing thing is the collaborative and business model. The idea is to make work public, and to allow others to modify that work. Its like the open source development model for art. Anyone can contribute. But even better, everyone along the creative chain can specify a cost/value for their contribution. And you can see all of the iterations of the item. I think this concept and the tools are revolutionary. Note that you don't have to make your work public, that just seems like the most interesting aspect of this.
Xerpi
Xerpi is a fancy bookmark manager. In this case, the fancy is a very good thing. After wasting a minute or two showing some silly Powerpoint, they actually got down to business and showed what I could best describe as bookmark pages. The idea is that you can create named pages. Within those pages you create bookmark groups. Within those bookmark groups you can put bookmarks. Everything is very drag and drop. You can make pages public, or private, or share them with a small group of friends. Elegant and simple. Well done.
Plink
The idea behind Plink is that you can visually mark your pictures in Facebook and associate areas of the pictures with commerce information. For example you could mark the watch that you are wearing in a picture of Facebook, and you can link that to an item in the Plink system. The idea seems to be to get people to link all the purchasable items in a picture to items in the Plink database.
What I can't understand is why anyone would do this. The user doesn't get a cut. And it seem kind of gauche to be marking up all of your pictures with e-commerce links. On the other hand it was a very slick implementation. This would work better as a part of facebook, but even then, without the revenue share I don't get it.
Launchbox
A Y Combinator clone.
This one disturbed Scott. He effectively pushed them off stage because they didn't have a demo because they are not a product. Launchbox is an incubator VC. To quote Scott, "this is not what we want here."
TakesAllTypes.org
Simple, beautiful idea. Apparently the blood supply in America is very poorly organized. Blood has a very short shelf life, and is not transportable over any significant distance. And when there is a shortage, it is typically of a particular type. There is no way to find and encourage people with a particular blood type in a given area to give blood. ItTakesAllTypes is a Facebook app that allows people to register their willingness to give blood. The idea is that when there is a shortage in an area, a message to all people with, for example, O-negative blood signed up in the New York Area, would be sent an SMS or email message asking them to come in and donate.
This is a super simple idea that really can save lives. Awesome.
TechPresident
This was the most fun of the night. It felt like my friend Andrew Rasiej, the founder of TechPresident, was going to start a fist fight with my friend Doug Krugman. Ok, well it wasn't quite that interesting, but here's how it went down.
TechPresident captures all sorts of interesting statistics about the presidential campaign. Andrew’s point was that Obama understands how to use the Internet better than Hillary, and that is why he is doing so much better with online support. Andrew showed a great user generated Obama video. Then he showed a really lame Hillary video. This is where things got interesting.
It felt to many as though Andrew was a clear Obama fan. People started shouting at Andrew. The Hillary fans were heckling him. They booed. “Is this a political speech.” Scott tried to insist that Andrew really is just making a non-partisan presentation about the numbers. It didn't hold water with the hecklers. Then Doug starts yelling out. Asking how Andrew knew the video was really from Hillary. Andrew pointed out that it had the Hillary logo on it, but Doug was undeterred. This went back and forth for a while but didn’t quite escalate to fisticuffs.
In short, it was a fun and exciting little bit of unexpected drama. Nothing like a Tech Meetup food fight!
TheIssue
This is a very attractive blog aggregator. The way it works is its homepage is like a directory or a newspaper with links. The links point to articles, but what is kind of interesting is that the articles appear below in a frame that is maintained by theIssue. This allows you t browse while always remaining in the context of theIssue, making it easy to return once you have viewed the article. The publication is organized by human editors which, if they can afford it, seems like the best way to curate something like this because they will clearly find content, particularly for breaking stories, that can't be found via automated systems. It's well done. I suspect I will use it.
Aviary
Aviary is a set of online tools for creating content. This will include a variety of tools including vector drawing, video editor, 3d editor, etc. The tool they demoed was the image editor.
The image editor is impressive. The concept is that you can edit art in a Photoshop kind of way. The tools look slick and reasonably fast. But the amazing thing is the collaborative and business model. The idea is to make work public, and to allow others to modify that work. Its like the open source development model for art. Anyone can contribute. But even better, everyone along the creative chain can specify a cost/value for their contribution. And you can see all of the iterations of the item. I think this concept and the tools are revolutionary. Note that you don't have to make your work public, that just seems like the most interesting aspect of this.
Xerpi
Xerpi is a fancy bookmark manager. In this case, the fancy is a very good thing. After wasting a minute or two showing some silly Powerpoint, they actually got down to business and showed what I could best describe as bookmark pages. The idea is that you can create named pages. Within those pages you create bookmark groups. Within those bookmark groups you can put bookmarks. Everything is very drag and drop. You can make pages public, or private, or share them with a small group of friends. Elegant and simple. Well done.
Plink
The idea behind Plink is that you can visually mark your pictures in Facebook and associate areas of the pictures with commerce information. For example you could mark the watch that you are wearing in a picture of Facebook, and you can link that to an item in the Plink system. The idea seems to be to get people to link all the purchasable items in a picture to items in the Plink database.
What I can't understand is why anyone would do this. The user doesn't get a cut. And it seem kind of gauche to be marking up all of your pictures with e-commerce links. On the other hand it was a very slick implementation. This would work better as a part of facebook, but even then, without the revenue share I don't get it.
Launchbox
A Y Combinator clone.
This one disturbed Scott. He effectively pushed them off stage because they didn't have a demo because they are not a product. Launchbox is an incubator VC. To quote Scott, "this is not what we want here."
TakesAllTypes.org
Simple, beautiful idea. Apparently the blood supply in America is very poorly organized. Blood has a very short shelf life, and is not transportable over any significant distance. And when there is a shortage, it is typically of a particular type. There is no way to find and encourage people with a particular blood type in a given area to give blood. ItTakesAllTypes is a Facebook app that allows people to register their willingness to give blood. The idea is that when there is a shortage in an area, a message to all people with, for example, O-negative blood signed up in the New York Area, would be sent an SMS or email message asking them to come in and donate.
This is a super simple idea that really can save lives. Awesome.
TechPresident
This was the most fun of the night. It felt like my friend Andrew Rasiej, the founder of TechPresident, was going to start a fist fight with my friend Doug Krugman. Ok, well it wasn't quite that interesting, but here's how it went down.
TechPresident captures all sorts of interesting statistics about the presidential campaign. Andrew’s point was that Obama understands how to use the Internet better than Hillary, and that is why he is doing so much better with online support. Andrew showed a great user generated Obama video. Then he showed a really lame Hillary video. This is where things got interesting.
It felt to many as though Andrew was a clear Obama fan. People started shouting at Andrew. The Hillary fans were heckling him. They booed. “Is this a political speech.” Scott tried to insist that Andrew really is just making a non-partisan presentation about the numbers. It didn't hold water with the hecklers. Then Doug starts yelling out. Asking how Andrew knew the video was really from Hillary. Andrew pointed out that it had the Hillary logo on it, but Doug was undeterred. This went back and forth for a while but didn’t quite escalate to fisticuffs.
In short, it was a fun and exciting little bit of unexpected drama. Nothing like a Tech Meetup food fight!
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Last night at NY Tech Meetup
Gomobo
Gomobo was one of the slickest presentations I have seen at a Tech Meetup. Typically the products are presented by techies that cant talk, but Gomobo's founder was slick, fast, and got to the point. I am not saying the product is earth shaking (its not) but it does serve a need. Basically its a service where you can text in your order to a bunch of restaurants via a cell phone. Not that deep. But very nicely done.
Tagiton
I think, I'm smart, I think I'm smart, I know I'm smart, I know I'm smart!
Unfortunately I am not smart enough to understand what Tagiton does. But then again I barely get Facebook which they say they are kinda like, but based around your email contacts. Oh well.
Gilt Group
Luxury brand name stuff sold at sample sale prices online, sold by a hot chick. Nuff said.
Ok well not quite nuff said. It appear they have a few sales a week of specific items. So initially they won't have a great breadth of stuff. They organize the sales themselves, take all the pictures of the merchandise etc. Obviously there is a market here. But I doubt they will ever sell anything I care about as I suspect it will be totally female focused.
Blockles
Tetris + talk. A slick app written in flash. I'd love to know more about the framework they use. He said it was homegrown, and given that they wrote is app in 15 days, I bet there is some opportunity for these guys to leverage their brand with their development framework like the 37signals guys do by making rails available open source, or by maybe even selling it.
Tablexchange
They allow people to sell their highly coveted reservations. I'm not sure this will work but interesting idea. Scott asked who thought this was genius, who thought it was evil, and who thought both. I think the evil crowd won but I'm not sure.
Anyway, I asked if they had Rao's in the system. No one got it so I will explain here. Rao's is the hardest reservation in New York to get. Essentially if you don't know someone you're not getting in. They have eight tables and the regulars have life long standing reservations. Calling five years advance will not help you. One of the regulars has to give you their table. Anyway the place is, as I understand it, kinda mobbed up, and someone was murdered there a few years ago so maybe you just wanna go to Fairway and just buy a bottle of their pasta sauce instead.
US First
This is basically a promotional site for Dean Kamen's FIRST robotics competition for super smart high school kids. They build robots which fight each other. This is a very worthy cause but does not present well at a meetup. Perhaps they could have brought a robot!
Gomobo was one of the slickest presentations I have seen at a Tech Meetup. Typically the products are presented by techies that cant talk, but Gomobo's founder was slick, fast, and got to the point. I am not saying the product is earth shaking (its not) but it does serve a need. Basically its a service where you can text in your order to a bunch of restaurants via a cell phone. Not that deep. But very nicely done.
Tagiton
I think, I'm smart, I think I'm smart, I know I'm smart, I know I'm smart!
Unfortunately I am not smart enough to understand what Tagiton does. But then again I barely get Facebook which they say they are kinda like, but based around your email contacts. Oh well.
Gilt Group
Luxury brand name stuff sold at sample sale prices online, sold by a hot chick. Nuff said.
Ok well not quite nuff said. It appear they have a few sales a week of specific items. So initially they won't have a great breadth of stuff. They organize the sales themselves, take all the pictures of the merchandise etc. Obviously there is a market here. But I doubt they will ever sell anything I care about as I suspect it will be totally female focused.
Blockles
Tetris + talk. A slick app written in flash. I'd love to know more about the framework they use. He said it was homegrown, and given that they wrote is app in 15 days, I bet there is some opportunity for these guys to leverage their brand with their development framework like the 37signals guys do by making rails available open source, or by maybe even selling it.
Tablexchange
They allow people to sell their highly coveted reservations. I'm not sure this will work but interesting idea. Scott asked who thought this was genius, who thought it was evil, and who thought both. I think the evil crowd won but I'm not sure.
Anyway, I asked if they had Rao's in the system. No one got it so I will explain here. Rao's is the hardest reservation in New York to get. Essentially if you don't know someone you're not getting in. They have eight tables and the regulars have life long standing reservations. Calling five years advance will not help you. One of the regulars has to give you their table. Anyway the place is, as I understand it, kinda mobbed up, and someone was murdered there a few years ago so maybe you just wanna go to Fairway and just buy a bottle of their pasta sauce instead.
US First
This is basically a promotional site for Dean Kamen's FIRST robotics competition for super smart high school kids. They build robots which fight each other. This is a very worthy cause but does not present well at a meetup. Perhaps they could have brought a robot!
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