Here is an interesting video interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
It was number 5 on a list of the top interviews of 2008 conducted by and published in the Mckinsey Quarterly.
* Mckinsey & Company are management consultants. I’d recommend registering (free) for their articles.
If you haven’t already, catch this interesting radio interview with former world surfing champ Shaun Tomson on Nine to Noon (Radio New Zealand National).
He speaks about his latest movie Bustin’ down the door and the formative years of surfing in the mid 1970’s in Hawaii by a few visionary Australian and South African surfers.
There’s some interesting stories in there, some of death threats and contracts out on the young surfers’ lives.
Check it out! The audio link again:
What is the most asked and most unanswered* question on Trademe?
Can you guess?
* (Initially unanswered)
When it comes to weather here’s what my antenna is tuned into:
I’m so far removed when the weather girl reads out what the temperature was in *Masterton* today yesterday, and whether it’ll be sunny tomorrow.
Ben Matson (surf forecaster) said it best on Storm Surfers:
“I don’t care if it’s raining. I don’t care if it’s overcast. I just want to know what the wind is doing and what the swell is doing.”
Check the trailer for Storm Surfers. Ben comes on around 1:10.
It’s been on Discovery and should replay at some stage.
What do you listen for most on the weather? …Which town was the hottest on the day?
Merry Christmas!
Some thoughts ranting on elements of Christmas culture in New Zealand (some we could do with, and some without).
I was at a house a couple of days ago and being a primo day I went to open the french doors. My impediment, icicle Christmas lights hanging from the door frame. The irony struck me.
Our Christmas culture in NZ is changing thankfully.
My parents generation and their ilk are clinging onto the empire’s representation of Christmas being about winter, snow, sleigh’s etc. Hence we eat hot roast meals inside while the sun is booming down outisde and the lawn is gagging to be run upon.
Christmas in this part of the world should be the complete oppoisite from the white Christmas many of us have been accustomed to. The only connection to snow I can think of that is remotely relevant is Santa.
NZ at Christmas is better accompanied by:
Images of irony on Christmas day:
Let’s as a country embrace our own style of Christmas, doing away with the northern hemisphere’s white Christmas. It’s been a while since the british settlers arrived and it’s high time we stopped this hot meal nonsense.
I feel anyway.
This is the last of the series of posts titled: What I learnt from web-failure.
Alot is said about market research or market validation. Whatever it’s called it can be both beautiful or futile, depending on how it’s done.
When you have a business idea you’ll be excited. It’s also often something close to your heart. Because of this it’s hard to listen to anything other than cheerleading for your concept.
Whatever nice thing you want to hear, you’ll find someone to say it. Just ask:
They’ll all say things like “awesome, that’ll work, what a great idea”.
Truth is, it doesn’t much matter what they think (apart from the fact that their support is nice). I had no lack of people saying “What a great idea, that’ll be helpful, that’ll work”. Who were these people? Not tradesmen in the main!
From this post on VentureBlog: (Paul Graham paraphrased)
‘…to “build something you want” is to build something you know others will want. This is harder. It is a unique but powerful skill to have what I’d call “product empathy.” It requires a lot of listening and a lot of luck. Happening upon the right product idea for other people is even harder than happening upon the right product idea for yourself.’
Two things i’d recommend when seeking market validation:
Seek encouragement in the right place, because in business the foundation encouragement has to be payment for a valued benefit.
Also, don’t get totally obsessed with market research. It’ll be easier to get feedback when you’re up and going. That’s why a basic version 1 followed by flexible iteration is often recommended.
On that theme, here’s more from VentreBlog’s post quoting Paul Graham:
‘I can’t think of a single startup in which I’ve invested or advised that ultimately built the exact product that the founders had originally envisioned. Startups are necessarily fluid and agile. It is what gives them a chance of succeeding despite the long odds and giant competitors.’
Further reading:
http://www.paulgraham.com/newthings.html
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While scouring this years pipe masters highlights on the triple crown of surfing website I came across an insightful video interview (link at bottom of post, as I can’t seem to embed from quiksilver video) with 9x surfing world champion Kelly Slater. It gives insights into the greatest surfer of all time.
Every sport has it’s superstars:
In surfing it’s Kelly Slater (he has is own PS2 game)
Slater speaks:
“ Surfing’s as raw of a sport as it gets.”
“The joy of surfing is so many things combined, from the physical exertion of it, to the challenge of it, to the mental side of the sport.”
“Your surfing can get better on every turn, on every wave you catch. Learn to read the ocean better. A big part of my success has been wave knowledge.”
The Mind, Body, Surf interview presents a comprehensive amount of information that will be of interest to anyone wanting to reach their potential in whatever field.
A Kelly Slater quote (not from the video) that stands out and can be related to any project in life:
“When you do something, you’ve got to hope that it can keep leading somewhere else.”
*The video link once again: Mind, Body, Surf – Kelly Slater 9x World Surfing Champ.*
Watch for Kelly’s switchfoot antics at Padang Padang.
BTW, Kelly Slater’s ranking is no. 42 on the list of pro-athletes who play golf.
This is the fourth post in a series titled: What I learnt from web-failure.
Idealism as defined on Wikipedia:
“The property of a person of having high ideals that are usually unrealizable or at odds with practical life.”
Be on your guard against idealism in Web 2.0. There are a bunch of scenarios or ideas that in theory would turn the world upside down, but in practise might not fly.
Availabuild is an idealistic concept. It works great in theory but when all the intricacies of the trade industry are added, it becomes severely hampered as a workable tool.
Some reasons why a web business idea could be too idealistic:
Those reasons using Availabuild as an example:
Funnily enough, a few months into Availabuild we realised that alot of the tradesmen that had registered simply wanted a place on the web that had their business name and contact details. As time went on we were marketing Availabuild as a web presence with the diary system as an optional feature. It was surprising how many google searches for trade businesses failed to return a result even for their phone number. This became the value proposition: If someone google’s your business and you’re not anywhere online the potential client may never make contact. Of course there were other issues at work like tradesmen not actually wanting any more work. The main point however, was that a feature rich/innovative product wasn’t the necessity.
Final thought:
I remember doing a sales presentation at a MasterTrade breakfast. I spoke with a plumber whose response was something like…
“there are too many tools developed for no benefit that simply create more work for us”
At the time I didn’t agree for obvious reasons, but now I understand where he was coming from.
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This is the third post in a series titled: What I learnt from web-failure.
When you’re coming up with an idea for a web application or start-up and you’re ready to take on the world, take one step back and ask yourself this…
Am I solving a problem for the customer or for myself?
If it is a problem you’re solving for yourself, make sure you’re part of the target market (target market in this case meaning the intended customer you will ask to pay).
Availabuild was about helping tradesmen and their clients interact better through a shared knowledge of the tradesperson’s schedule/availability. Trouble was, the customer (in terms of paying subscribers) was the tradesperson. At the time tradespeople didn’t have a problem. They had plenty of work. It was the person needing a house built (concidentally me at the time) that had the most pain. Free alternatives for the general public meant it was not an option for Availabuild to charge the general public for the service. It’s that chicken and egg scenario with Web 2.0 and the fact that there are two types of users. You need both sides to make it work but have to make sure you’re charging the one with the most pain. I’d recommend doing so, because they are the true market.
In the words of Marc Andreessen from this fabulous post;
“…you can have the best product in the world and an absolutely killer team, and it doesn’t matter – you’re going to fail. You’ll break your pick for years trying to find customers who don’t exist for your marvelous product, and your wonderful team will eventually get demoralized and quit, and your startup will die.”
Be sure not to simply create a blissful product that will be great only for the party not paying. We made this mistake. Tradespeople didn’t have enough of a problem to want to pay for our product as much as we’d have hoped.
It’s cool though, because nothing can stop you trying something else.
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