Until recently, Facebook was for friends, LinkedIn was for business networking, and Twitter was for yelling as loudly as possible, while covering your own ears.
Lately the lines have become blurred, particularly since Google Plus was launched.
Facebook now has highly business oriented functionality, some of it third party (various networking and job apps, pages, plus the ability to follow somebody without “friending” them).
Many third party websites have integrated tightly with one or more social platforms.
And there’s significant convergence between platforms (they’re all gradually introducing features that replicate what the other sites are doing).
The result is that the way in which I personally use these sites has changed, and sometimes has resulted in my doing things that just might be considered rude in other contexts. Continue reading →
The startup community has lately been enamored with the concept of “fail often, fail fast”.
The underlying notion is that companies whose business models aren’t functioning properly should “pivot” as quickly as possible, in order to minimize the potential cost of failure. In doing so, they hopefully eventually establish a business model that is market tested (if things work right).
The issue is that “fail fast” is a business aphorism, and like all such statements, it doesn’t always apply, and even where it does, there are subtleties.
What I’ve been noticing lately with startups that I’ve been working with are some troubling problems that result from blind adherence to this concept: Continue reading →
Everyone has heard horror stories about companies selling a coupon on one of those group buy websites, and then having a huge stream of unprofitable business, resulting in a massive loss. On the flip side, many companies have had great success from coupon campaigns.
We’ve put together a calculator (opens in new window) to try and assist anyone considering a group coupon campaign. Feel free to play around with its parameters to get a feel for when a coupon would be profitable – or not.
There’s also a new tools page that links to this calculator, as well as the previous CPC/PPC one. We’re open to suggestions regarding other tools that may be useful to businesses.
I’ve been working on a custom Firefox toolbar for a really cool project that I can’t talk about yet.
What I’ve been finding is that the quality of documentation for developers isn’t good, and is both inconsistent and frequently missing important details (or hasn’t been updated to reflect changes).
I’m going to post a few things I’ve learned over the past few days that took far more time to figure out than it should have. Hopefully somebody else will benefit from my wasted time. Continue reading →
I’ve briefly mentioned the Great Pacific Garbage Patch here before. It consists of a vast quantity of particulate plastic, floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (there’s similar ones in other oceans too).
There’s a lot of people out there who have come up with ideas for cleaning it up, including several with ideas to build floating islands out of recycled plastic.
I just came across something that might be easier and cheaper to implement.
There’s a substance called pykrete which is ice mixed with sawdust (or some other kind of fibre). You may have seen the episode of Mythbusters where they fired bullets at it (they bounced off) and then built a boat of the stuff.
Materials like pykrete can be made out of a wide variety of substances (in this case small bits of plastic) suspended in water and then frozen; the results can be stronger than concrete, and (obviously) lighter than water. The only problem is keeping it cold.
My idea is as follows:
Build a mold in the shape of a pipe. Use plastic particles dredged out of the ocean and filtered pure water to make a pykrete pipe from the mold. The result will look like a PVC pipe (except colder).
Freeze the pipe into the middle of a larger cube of pykrete.
Join frozen blocks together so that the pipes connect.
A small amount of infrastructure can then keep the pycrete cold, even in hot weather:
Attach a pumping station and refrigeration unit, and run low temperature brine through the pipes to keep the whole thing cold.
The pumps can be run by solar panels sitting on top.
Once the platform is large enough (and thick enough), put on an insulating layer and top it off with a few meters of topsoil. Then build on it. Or plant crops.
I haven’t looked at this in detail, but I think it can be made into a self-sustaining system fairly easily, once the platform is large enough to support a water recycling system, a refrigeration unit, a pump, and something to power it all. I don’t think it would be particularly expensive to bootstrap a project like this either.
For reference: there’s estimated to be around 5kg of particulate plastic per square kilometer of water in the Gyre. A boat with a large dredge and a small water filtration system could make a few big blocks of pykrete per day. Within a few weeks, it might be possible to build a big enough platform to move all of the equipment over, and to continue operations from it instead.
UPDATE: I’d like to try building a small scale model to see if this is feasible. Location would be a lake somewhere in Southern Ontario (if someone has a cottage that could work, please let me know). I’d be interested in hearing from anybody who wants to help out – particularly if they have access to a refrigerated shipping container.
My customers frequently ask me about the profitability of cost per click (otherwise known as pay per click) campaigns.
Over the years, I put together a spreadsheet that I send them when asked.
Not that I have any interest in running ad campaigns for my customers (or SEO work for that matter), but I have a vested interest in making sure that my customers are happy long term, and that often includes educating them with regards to topics like marketing their business online. Continue reading →
I’m been bouncing this idea off people at both companies for the past week, with mixed feedback. I think the idea could work though. I’m interested in hearing feedback.
The two companies are roughly the same size, so this would be a merger of equals.
It provides some temporary bandaid solutions for both companies executive teams and boards (I think there’s enough talent at the top between the two companies to address some of the gaps).
Yahoo! (correct me if I’m wrong) was part of the team that bought Nortel’s patents, so there’s already some kind of mobile intent. And RIM looks like it could use some bolstering.
The real rationale is fairly simple though – the combined company would have a number of options for strategic direction, and would be large enough to stand on its own if it so chose.
If it decided to sell out (hint: Microsoft), the combined patent portfolio (in addition to Y!’s advertising business) would ensure a far more equitable price.
I freely admit to pumping my fists in the air and yelling out loud when SpaceX has successful launches.
The first truly successful private space venture, what they’re doing is the start, the very beginning of the future of everything.
Now that they have a robust launch platform, and their Dragon capsule is already undergoing the testing regime to become human-rated by NASA, what will they do next?
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO has announced on several occasions that their ambition is to put people on Mars. The following is a three stage plan – with profitability in mind – that just might get them there.
The underlying notion is to build a set of standardized components for each step along the way – much like the way the automobile industry works (vehicles filling various niches, companies to service them, refueling stations, leasing etc). This isn’t a new concept, and all of the players in this industry already understand this strategy well. Continue reading →
Once in a while (actually every few weeks, give or take) somebody asks me if I’ll do a project for equity instead of cash.
My immediate response is “what’s your exit plan?”.
Usually this is met with a blank stare, which is when I follow my question up with “what I mean is, how do I sell those shares, and when?”. At this point, in 90% of cases, the other party is already starting to look panicky. I then usually politely excuse myself and leave.
It isn’t that I’m opposed in general to holding equity in a project that I’m working on. Far from it. The lack of an exit plan, however, implies a number of things about the person doing the asking though:
No business plan (if they had one, they would probably have an exit plan)
No cash (this makes launching a business an uphill battle from the start – I know this from bitter personal experience)
No idea of valuation (and in turn probable lack of general business know-how)
Possible utter lack of respect for the developer (more on this bel0w)
By asking a developer to work – possibly for months, or years even – without cash, the person isn’t paying much attention to how the developer will pay their bills in the interim, and how the developer will ever get paid for the project (i.e. by selling their shares).
What they’re saying is that they want the developer to assume all of the project risk, in exchange – maybe – for some pieces of probably worthless paper. Even worse, if things go completely pear-shaped, the developer might even wind up on the hook for company debts or legal issues. Even with paper, the developer can also still wind up with their equity diluted or out and out taken away – contracts can be tricky things.
Aside from all of the above, they also clearly haven’t thought through what happens when the developer runs out of cash (i.e. they leave, or they become unmotivated).
The converse to this situation is one in which a business has a clearly defined plan, cash on hand to pay contracts or salaries, and wishes to align staff with the overall goal – this is the only time when I would ever want to be holding equity in somebody else’s company.
The news that Google is buying Motorola woke me up prior to my morning coffee. In retrospect it makes sense, but it was big news, and most unexpected.
Assuming that regulators let it go through, some interesting things are likely to play out:
I’m calling stalemate or ceasefire in the patent war. Motorola has a very large holding of patents – probably sufficient to make Apple and Microsoft rethink their strategy regarding Android.
I’m guessing that they won’t try too hard to fully merge the two companies. The cultures are quite different, and probably incompatible (although they’re both very engineer-driven, so maybe I’m wrong here).
This is not good news for RIM. I was discussing this this morning with somebody who has a lot of connections there, and he thinks that unless they get their new OS out soon (and it is very good), they’re dead in the water.
I’m also guessing that some other big software players are going to get serious hardware envy. This could trigger a real wave of M&A in the near future (which would be good news for the markets, for a change).
