Posts tagged tech

keyboard cat is cool but changing video is cooler

Really, really rewarding to have Chris, who’s only been with us a few short months, already understand our vision and sum up some of it nicely in this post… 

shelbytv:

Keyboard Cat is Cool, But Changing Video is Cooler

I’ve met a host of people this summer as a part of my internship with Shelby.tv and while most in the early stage tech community tend to see the huge potential in what we’re doing, a few question the application of such a technology to do anything consequential other than keep friends up to date on the latest memes that are circling the internet (I’m looking at you, courage wolf).

Founder’s Fund published an article recently with few really interesting points, one of which is that “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”  While it’s true that I’d love to see more truly transformational tech companies, I tend to agree more with Chris Dixon that the “next big thing” will look like a toy at first.  After all, Twitter seemed like a toy (and still does to a bunch of people), but it has profoundly changed the way that people communicate and interact with one another.  In its current form, Shelby is somewhat of a toy (one that I happen to love) and while she can certainly be used for spreading nyan cat love far and wide, I’d say that our vision of the future of Shelby is far more than that.

Internet video shouldn’t just be a medium that’s relegated to tomfoolery and humor.  While I love that stuff as much as the next guy (probably more), when you think about the sheer number of people in this country that sit on their asses and watch TV for hours a day, there’s a huge opportunity to put some really interesting and engaging content in front of people that might not otherwise see it.

I’ve already discovered a ton of video in Shelby that I wouldn’t have taken the time to notice otherwise. Here are a few quick examples from the past week or so:

1. Educational Content - I’m a huge fan of TED talks, but there’s such a wide swath of content on the TED website that it’s often difficult to get through and figure out what I want to watch.  Not so when my friends are filtering that content for me - I’ve got the best of relevant TED Talks (like this one) delivered to my feed in Shelby.
2. Climbing videos & extreme sports videos - these have inspired me to set ambitious goals for myself in terms of summiting mountains and pushing myslef to get better at the things I do.  I also find the cinematography in videos like this absolutely breathtaking and when viewed in HD on a great monitor, they’re a nice escape from the concrete jungle of NYC.
3. Political content - I’ve been out of town for the last few days and as such I’m not spending as much time keeping up with the news as I normally do. I signed into Shelby and was quickly able to see highlights on what is going on in London with the riots and the financial markets. I also found the occasional comic relief.
4. Creative content from Tumblr - If you follow more than a few people on Tumblr, you probably realize that the Dashboard is not the most effective way of viewing video content.  Most videos go unwatched since I quickly scan my Dashboard only once or twice a day.  Since we’ve been testing tumblr integration recently, I’ve stumbled across a few fun and educational gems: “carnivorous plants” and “vortex bubbles.”

These videos have captured my imagination and inspired me to make the most of my time outside of the office and away from the computer.  They require less than 30 minutes of my attention a day.  Shelby can be that kind of “video sherpa” for all our users.  All this content is accessible to everyone for the first time thanks to the internet (sorry, cable, you still kind of suck) and given the rate at which this stuff is growing, it’s even more important to help people find the video that moves them and the people in their lives.  

Sure, some of you may think I’m just trying to justify my love of the memefilled internet, but I really do believe that video is an incredibly engaging and interesting medium that can help change the world.  Just like music, video can transcend language barriers, connect, inspire and educate (just ask Salman Khan about that last one).

Video is a young art form - it’s been around a fraction of the time that music, literature and theatre have.  Much like Gutenberg’s printing press did for the written word in the 1400’s, the internet is enabling video to be widely and cheaply distributed in a way unlike ever before.  And if video is still so young, then the future is bright. Sounds like music to my…err… video to my eyes. 

presenting at the Product Development Insights Conference

My friends Ty (FanFeedr) and Kevin (Hard Candy Shell) organize an event called the Product Development Insights Conference every 6 months and I’m really excited that they’ve asked me to present about our product development process for Shelby at the next event in October.

What I really like about this event is that it’s only 100 people in attendance - so instead of a crazy conference with thousands, you should be able to meet and make real connections with some great people. Also, the talks are “Ignite” style, so they should be quick and hopefully entertaining.

So if you’re at all interested in product development, check it out.

The conference is on Friday, October 07 at the SoHo House here in NYC. More details and tickets available here: http://productdevelopmentseptember2011.eventbrite.com

Expect nothing. Earn everything.

Yesterday afternoon, TechCrunch broke the story about our funding — $1.5M from an amazing group of investors — and I have to say it was pretty surreal.

When we started out in the tech-startup world, incorporating from my parents’ basement [where I lived at the time] in November 2007, we set out to bootstrap our way into business. We had no idea what we were doing, so to learn about the industry, I started reading tech blogs, among them, TechCrunch…

…but then I stopped. I didn’t want to read about funding announcements of other companies… I didn’t want to hear about XYZ company and why they were going to change the world… why not? Because I wasn’t learning anything and none of it was relevant to our company. There was too much hype.

A lot has happened since then, but fast forward to today and here I am, working on our second company, amidst an alleged “bubble,” a very real part of the hype machine…

NOW PLEASE DO NOT GET ME WRONG… I am SO grateful for each and every second of attention anyone is willing to give our little company. It’s impossible to keep up with them all, but I did my best to thank everyone of my friends and many whom I don’t know who tweeted about our announcement - you all are awesome supporters, THANK YOU. 

But my point is, our funding announcement, like many pieces of press is just hype. All the money in the world doesn’t matter if we don’t make something people want. 

When the wire transfers came through a couple weeks ago, the team was ready to celebrate. Admittedly, I was pretty excited to have our funding done [fundraising - even in this environment - is still hard] and I DO believe in celebrating wins, creating momentum and the opportunity to continue building our company…

But someone said I should get a bottle of champagne… Many friends assumed we’d go party that night. All makes sense, but I refused… 

Why? Because funding isn’t success. Funding is just a stepping stone along a long, hard road to success.

One of my favorite mantras is “Expect nothing. Earn everything.”

I love the tone that it sets and it’s something I try to practice daily.

In a startup, no one - I repeat, NO ONE - is going to do the work for you. No amount of money is going to build your product by itself. No customers are going to just show up at your door. You have to earn everything, and that means staying humble, staying hungry and grinding up the mountain one step at a time…

Expect nothing. Earn everything.

Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m really proud to have closed what we think is a fantastic round with some of the best investors in the game, I’m excited to use it to add to our already killer team and to build our vision for Shelby.tv.

Maybe when we have $1.5M in revenue, we’ll pop some champagne, but all joking aside until then, expect nothing, earn everything… after all, I’m 28, still in debt and in the meantime, I’m back where it started, living in my parents’ basement again. 

Expect nothing. Earn everything.

Social Discovery and Implicit Graphs

Last week, I attended a panel/discussion about implicit social graphs, hosted at Union Square Venture’s (dope!) new offices by Ro Gupta (Disqus), Marc Leibowitz (StumbleUpon), Shaival Shah (Hunch), Mark Coatney (Tumblr) and Eric Friedman (Foursquare). 

Implicit graphs are something we think about a lot as we build Shelby.tv.  In particular, there are a few points that have stuck out in my mind lately:

1. The “Like” button as an endless currency:  If you have an infinite amount of “likes,” then what do they even mean?  Personally, I only really like a select amount of things online.  To that end… 

2. What does a “Like” even mean? Mark Suster brought this up on Twitter recently (and posted about it). Some use a “like” or “favorite” to actually like it, but some just use them to “save the item for later.”  I used to “favorite” Tweets with video links to watch them later - until Shelby.tv came along. ;)  

3. Overall UX demands simple inputs: I argued back to Mark that it doesn’t matter what the input is really meant to do, it’s open to the interpretation of the user. Product developers could offer multiple inputs - like and dislike or 1-5 stars - but that just gets noisy and creates a horrible UX. Good product design demands simple interactions and data inputs.

4. Which nodes mean the most? During our discussion, we talked about what it means to like something that is “mainstream” and probably liked by ‘everyone.’ Sure, you and I may both like a video that everyone likes, but if we both like a video that is really freaking obscure, doesn’t that say much more about us? This idea always comes back to me when traveling, too. An another American isn’t interesting to me when I’m here in NYC, but if we’re both in China, you bet I’m going to appreciate anyone who speaks my language. That’s the irony of diaspora.

5. The temporal element of likes: Should stuff I liked 5 years ago impact what I like now? In some cases yes, and in some no. Tastes change. Just because I liked a sports highlight on YouTube once doesn’t mean I should only see recommendations for more sports highlights for the rest of my experience. Just think about your music collection… you may have given that song in iTunes a 5 star rating once, but is it still a favorite now?

These are clearly deeper questions that are worth more discussion and to that end, I think I may do a series on these questions as it’s worth discussing for a lot of us.

What I loved about the event was there was some actual discourse among the crowd instead of just panelists speaking the entire time. Nice work by the hosts to get the discussion going. I’ve already been talking with Eric about ideas for the next one. Looking forward to next time and participating in the group!

Here’s some more worthwhile discussion from other attendees in blog posts by Chris Kurdziel and Eric Friedman.

Bonus! My friend David hacked this together based on the conversation.  Dishing.us maps food preferences to location history.

Northside Ideas Festival

This Thursday is the kickoff for the Northside Ideas Festival [tickets available here].

As described on The L Magazine blog, the Northside Festival is… “a four-day showcase of the work [Brooklynites] do behind the closed doors of rehearsal spaces, studios and makeshift home-offices, as well as glimpses from their contemporary creative communities around the world. Above all, it’s a celebration of these so-called dreamer types. Because they’re the reason you’re here, at the center of the universe.”

Pretty “dreamy” description, but we wouldn’t get anywhere if we didn’t chase our dreams, so I’m really excited to participate in a panel discussion called “An Overnight Success Years in the Making” with Alex Rainert (Foursquare) and Jim Moran (Yipit), moderated by Alyson Shontell (Business Insider).

Should be a fun discussion to wrap up the evening, especially given that it’ll be at the Brooklyn Brewery, but the whole night will be great as it starts off with Charles Smith (Extension FM) and Emily Hickey (Hashable) talking about “Where Ideas Come From - How to Come up with an Idea and Actually Execute” and then Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) will be interviewed by Caroline McCarthy (Google) about “Institutions: Record Labels, VC and their place in a new era of creativity.”

That is a stacked roster of people speaking, but hopefully by the time you get to us, the Brooklyn brews will make me sound smart. ;)

The best part is all the ticket sales go to DonorsChoose and it’s just $10. So go buy your tickets and come hang for a fun night in BK!

Null’s Idea

We’ve been doing a ton of brainstorming as a team lately - whether on product ideas, feature sets or marketing strategies, we love letting ideas flow.

A natural tendency when brainstorming is to label a given idea with the name of whomever said it. ex: “Reece’s idea.”

The problem with that tactic is that it personalizes the idea and naturally creates possession and/or defensiveness around it. After all, if it’s your idea, you want it to “win,” right?

We believe in team first, so at the end of the day it doesn’t matter whose idea it was. And really, chances are the idea generator never would have gotten to their idea had it not been for the 100 other ideas thrown around first (after all, “chance favors the connected mind”).

So now when we brainstorm, any idea is immediately chalked up to “null” - our imaginary collective brainstorming partner. It’s a great way to let ideas exist without personal attachment, which truly lets them evolve for the best.

Caveat - don’t give me credit for this idea, it belongs to null.

‘When you’ve got a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail.’

I recently finished a book in which one scientist references the Handy Hammer Syndrome:  

‘When you’ve got a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail.’

He’s referencing some research by a student who claimed (against established thought) that early man evolved into runners, but the scientist knew the student was an avid runner himself (so he was using the hammer in his hand).

Let’s look at a few cases* of the Handy Hammer in web-tech:

• Google’s hammer is Gmail.  They used it to hammer away at social and are failing miserably with Buzz.
• Twitter’s hammer is was its developer API.  Without it, Twitter would not be where it is today, but after their recent announcement to acquire Tweetie, the Twitter developer community is not happy at all and scared for the future.
• Facebook’s hammer is the social graph.  They’re banging away furiously now and users are not psyched about their data being collected and used without first opting in.

In each case, these companies are using the hammers in their hands to bang at problems that may actually need a screwdriver, or a wrench… or no tool at all.

Though it’s not necessarily the right approach, it’s pretty natural.  Think about anything you’ve done in your life, any problem you’ve solved.  You likely have a few standard answers or remedies for any given situation… but that doesn’t mean it’s the right solution.

People rely on their hammers (their strengths), settle into habits and consequently develop a weak tool-belt for creatively solving problems.

Think about yourself, are you using the same hammer for every problem?  Next time think twice and make sure you’re using the right tool for the job…

*Note: These companies have more than one hammer, but I picked these cases as they are the most current examples.