Aaron White

"I’ll bring us through this. As always. I’ll carry you - kicking and screaming - and in..."

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:58:00 -0400

“I’ll bring us through this. As always. I’ll carry you - kicking and screaming - and in the end you’ll thank me.”

- Tyle Durden, Fight Club.

This is usually in the back of my head when dealing w/ difficult users.

Is There Anything Good About Men

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:20:00 -0400

Is There Anything Good About Men:

Found this (via Hacker News), and thought it was a great read concerning the stereotypical roles of men & women in society, and the evolutionary pressure that might have led us there.

"Copyright law is supposed to help consumers by protecting innovation, not producers by protecting..."

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:58:15 -0400

“Copyright law is supposed to help consumers by protecting innovation, not producers by protecting profits. If we’re not having an innovation problem, we’re not having a problem that needs to be fixed through copyright.”

- Copycats vs. Copyrights - Newsweek (via publicknowledge) (via 2105) (via mikehudack)

Unfortunately, cultural & legal momentum has lots of…. momentum.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if it were easier to return to our roots?

giantrobotlasers: What different sorting algorithms sound...

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:30:38 -0400

giantrobotlasers:

What different sorting algorithms sound like.

Honestly? I want to hear more sorts….

It’s nice to see Apple is committed to helping me waste...

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:14:14 -0400

It’s nice to see Apple is committed to helping me waste time crash-free.

mikehudack: kellysutton: I’m on BBC News today. I started a...

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:15:16 -0400

mikehudack:

kellysutton:

I’m on BBC News today. I started a little project last year to slowly rid myself of everything I owned. I called it Cult of Less. I indexed everything I had and then put it up for sale. It made moving to New York much easier. I also find myself less stressed.

I might not be as extreme as a few other folks out there, like David Karp, but owning less is a great thing to do. It’s easier than ever to replace these book and movie things with their digital analogs (see what I did there?). I realize the lifestyle isn’t for everyone—there’s still the physicality of a “real book” that is sometimes nice.

Hope you enjoy the piece and let me know what you think!

Immensely jealous of all that you’ve achieved (and un-chieved)

giantrobotlasers: Portal 2 - Propulsion Gel. This makes me...

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:19:49 -0400

giantrobotlasers:

Portal 2 - Propulsion Gel.

This makes me swell with the joy of being alive.

“Do you know the biggest lesson I learned from what you did? We’re a lot alike, you and I. You tested me, I tested you, you killed me, I… oh no wait. I guess I haven’t killed you yet. Well, food for thought.”

Portal, *swoon*; a simple idea w/ fantastic execution/production :)

Can’t wait.

Entrepreneur Super Hero Archetypes

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:13:41 -0400

robgo:

I was a huge fan of comic books growing up, but what I always found amusing is that there tended to be certain archetypes of super heroes that would keep showing up. For example - the “simple-minded strong dumb guy” is well represented by the Hulk, The Thing, Collossus, and Mr. Incredible.

As early stage investors will all tell you - the quality of the founders is incredibly important. Some investors have pretty methodical ways to determining the quality of a founder, others go more by gut feel. But I think all investors have some set of entrepreneur “archetypes” that they tend to like, and they gravitate towards entrepreneurs that fit some or many elements of these archetypes.

So for fun, I thought I’d share a few archetypes I often think about. Some of these come up regularly in NextView discussions. So here they are:

The Talent Magnet

Some folks call these “pied pipers”. In a resource constrained company, building a team is incredibly difficult when you have limited financial resources, stability, and certainty about the businesses future. But there are truly remarkable entrepreneurs out there that a) bring with them excellent teams that are deeply loyal to the founder or b) are really amazing at developing a company culture and a story around the business that makes great people gravitate towards them. This is critical both in the early stages of a company, but also in the later growth stages of the company where the financial reward might not be as significant. Companies like Twitter are just black holes of talent, and the roots of that culture were set very early on.

The “Force of Nature”

I think we all know folks like this. They just do whatever it takes to get things done, and pity the fool who gets in their way. Investors like this archetype because they are decisive, are usually really good at selling and closing, and instill a hard driving and intense work ethic in their companies. These folks are particularly important when a company’s early success is dependent on some very hard-to get deals or customer relationships that mere mortals would be too intimidated to pursue.

Note that in the image below, I used the Grey Hulk, who unlike the Green Hulk was actually very smart, but had a bad attitude.

The Heat Seeking Missle

Early stage companies end up pivoting all the time - whether it’s the business model, customer segment, or something else. Some great entrepreneurs are especially adept at entrenching themselves in interesting markets and quickly gravitating towards areas of promise. These are the entrepreneurs who look like fast followers, but in my opinion are leaders in disguise.

These entrepreneurs are especially effective in rapidly evolving markets or in grabbing hold of markets that are exploding (ie: social gaming, online ad exchanges and DSP’s, etc). These are the kinds of entrepreneurs that investors think will “figure things out” and will spend capital wisely in that process.

**Honorable Mention: The Knife Fighter

One of the entrepreneurs we’ve backed calls certain folks “knife fighters”. This is a great archetype for early team members, maybe more so than founders.

Often, you’ll hear of companies with great executive leadership that fail in early stage situations because they are used to operating with large budgets, a staff, an assistant, a strong brand behind them, etc. Then you hear about a competing company with unproven but scrappy 20-year-olds that have an unbelievable level of output and somehow crank out double the output with 1/5th the staff.

Or another example - some companies have very well groomed, high-brow Chief Revenue Officers or Marketers who struggle to deliver meaningful traffic or monetization in the early days of a company. Then you hear about a guy who looks like a dwarf, stares at his computer all day, and somehow gets 200K uniques to a brand new site. Sure, some of this traffic may be low quality, but sometimes, you need to knife-fight your way to early scale for more traditional, high-brow customer acquisition tactics to start working.

Thoughts? Any other archetypes you see and admire among entrepreneurs that you know?

I’m a sucker for super-hero startup/technology analogies, and this fun post by Rob does the trick.

I’ll add one to the mix: the “Seer”, represented by Professor Xavier. The Seer has an uncanny, nay, psychic ability to see the opportunity nexus created by current seen, and unseen, trends. This is the entrepreneur that tells his story freely, and when the time comes and those trends converge, the Seer’s company is there and capitalizes on it with such precision, one wonders how he saw this outcome so clearly.

I think this type of entrepreneur is thoughtful, and exceedingly rare. Certainly, you can only identify Seers ‘after the fact’ (success bias anyone?) In general, I prefer those that have skills that can be learned or emulated, however, when you meet a Seer, it’s awe-inspiring & just a little supernatural.

You Are Not So Smart

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:28:50 -0400

You Are Not So Smart:

giantrobotlasers:

Go check out this blog. Every post is excellent and covers another self delusion.

Great articles on important psychological truths.

Hail Mary, full of Maine

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:19:49 -0400

On October 3rd, I’ll be participating in the Maine Marathon.

Well, I’ll be participating if I get my act together! The marathon is 9 weeks away, and I’ve been putting in about half the distance I need to. This week, I kicked it up a notch with a hot & humid 8-miler down Jamaica Way. It’ll take an agressive schedule of adding 2 miles per week to get me where I need to be (and still have room to taper).

It’ll be impossible to top the excitement of doing the Boston Marathon earlier this year, so instead I’m looking to vastly improve my barefoot (vibram’d) running pace.

And now that I’ve posted this, I need you to hold me to it ;-)

Gaming and Education

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:15:20 -0400

thegongshow:

Speaking about gaming in general, to play a video games is to make many small decisions in a short window of time and instantly get feedback on those decisions. In that respect I think gaming helped my analytical skills in the long run, and it definitely helped my sense of exploration… I’m willing to make a decision without full knowledge, and then iterate quickly based on the result of that decision.

Gaming (board games, video games, card games, etc.) has provided me with a lot of value, understanding rule frameworks & probabilities, fostering a competitive spirit, encouraging exploration, driving a sense of perseverance (back when games where hard…). Ultimately, computer games piqued my interest in programming, which guided my college choice, and so on.

And so, I feel strongly that educators, parents, and game-makers should agree that games are an opportunity.

Theme, story & features can draw gamers in, and once hooked, they’ll learn to solve any puzzle, or memorize any answer to make forward progress, so long as the game upholds the experience. If we take the time to craft those experiences to teach the important lessons, we’ll have a better educated and interested youth.

If we slap together “edutainment” and simply call it a “game”, we turn that same youth off from learning.

My grandfather was a voracious consumer & collector of books. “Food for the mind,”...

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:44:00 -0400

My grandfather was a voracious consumer & collector of books. “Food for the mind,” he’d say. I’m lucky to share his value system.

The size of a serious collector’s library after 70 years of adult acquisition is unfathomable. I’d estimate he had over 6,000 books in his possession when he passed this spring.

Today over 6 hours, my parents & I catalogued 600 of those books (using an iPhone w/ Red Laser, an iPad for collecting un-scannable ISBNs, Delicious Library 2, and a little AppleScript to grease the process)

I do believe ‘liquidity is the new luxury’, and after moving hundreds of pounds of books, I’m glad my reading habit’s total burden is the weight of an iPad.

One thing that shocked me though: of the 600 books from decades of collecting, total retail value at purchase was $9,000. Total ‘current value’ as estimated by Amazon’s used book market? About $9,000.

While we’ll likely donate most of the books, I was surprised the numbers worked out so closely.

The Creativity Crisis

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:37:00 -0400

infoneer-pulse:

roomthily:

Overwhelmed by curriculum standards, American teachers warn there’s no room in the day for a creativity class. Kids are fortunate if they get an art class once or twice a week. But to scientists, this is a non sequitur, borne out of what University of Georgia’s Mark Runco calls “art bias.” The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.

via Newsweek

(Emphasis mine)

This is an important point, and related to the title of this blog (Restriction is Expression)

Creativity and problem-solving are largely synonymous. The better trained and resourceful the mind is, the faster & better it can solve constraints, whether the constraints are the laws of the universe, or the properties of a physical medium.

It’s a copout to think creativity is best developed in the art-room; every discipline can be taught in such a way to foster “better thinking”. If not, why are we teaching it at all?

"For Woot, our vision remains the same: somehow earning a living on snarky commentary and junk."

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:28:52 -0400

“For Woot, our vision remains the same: somehow earning a living on snarky commentary and junk.”

- Woot.com CEO Matt Rutledge’s letter to employees regarding the Amazon purchase.

File under “awesome.”

(via gbattle)

This press release is amazing. <3 Woot

markitechture: Turn Off Your App

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:00:18 -0400

markitechture: Turn Off Your App:

I want you to do something, and this is not a joke.

Turn off your web application. Seriously, pull the plug - don’t put up a ‘site maintenance’ page. Wait an hour. Turn it back on.

Miraculously, the world continued to rotate, didn’t it?

Great post by @markitecht on continuous deployment, product/market fit, and getting over fear of change & small failures.

Revisiting Cialdini's 6 Principles of Influence

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:36:53 -0400

performableblog:

A great resource over at Online Marketing News: An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence & Persuasion
If you’ve never read Robert Cialdini’s Influence, you should run to a book store, buy it, and read it all immediately. Cialdini provides an excellent overview of persuasive principles that drive human behavior that are widely applicable to almost any situation.
The principles of influence are:

Reciprocation: Doing a favor for someone often gets you a favor in return.

Commitment & Consistency: People hold an ideal of staying consistent with their behavior.

Social Proof: People look to others when they’re not sure how to act themselves.

Liking: People do business with others they know, like, and trust.

Authority: People defer to others in authority when making decisions.

Scarcity: People don’t like to miss out on something valuable and scarce

These principles have been covered in-depth in many places, but this handy guide goes a bit further and applies them to web marketing. While the author’s applications are high-level, they can be a good introduction to the concepts and get you started about thinking how they might apply to your specific marketing situation.
via An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence & Persuasion | Online Marketing News

Cialdini book is fascinating and immediately actionable, highly recommended.

josephwalla: ‘cube grenades’: using my cartoons to help your...

Mon, 17 May 2010 14:40:56 -0400

josephwalla:

‘cube grenades’: using my cartoons to help your business kick ass scc001B – gapingvoid

Ballsy & wonderful

The Cleverest Little Feature - Copy & Paste (with a surprise)

Mon, 17 May 2010 08:15:00 -0400

I was just reading an article on Business Insider’s website, and wanted to share an excerpt with a friend. Eschewing the share-tools, I did what was most natural, selected text on the page, hit ‘copy’ and pasted it into an email.

Something really special happened when I hit paste (quoted as follows):

Why? Because as Lee explains, the “check-in” is going to be a commodity in a matter of months — everyone will have a “check-in” feature, ranging from the likes of Foursquare to Facebook and Google. It’s what happens after the check-in that is going to be valuable, Lee says, and he and Booyah plan to use location data specifically to make games.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/booyah-foursquare-rival-raises-huge-20-million-round-from-accel-2010-5#ixzz0oBj9WfkQ

That “Read more” link most certainly isn’t at that location in the article, but provides tons of value for my copy-paste sharing via email.

I have no idea if this invention started with them, but it’s the first I’ve seen it. Kudos to BI for augmenting (and tracking) the “dark matter” of article sharing.

Startup Lesson: Unfair, Initial Compensation

Fri, 07 May 2010 14:28:25 -0400

benwills:

In the beginning, if you’re not unfairly compensated - if you’re not giving more than you’re receiving - your business will die.

There are too many lessons to learn from your initial customers that, if you don’t overly-support them, if you don’t spend an extra few minutes on each support call getting a little more information, if you don’t spend extra time communicating your gratitude for working together, if you don’t spend extra time behind the scenes helping them out….you’re losing, forever, the most valuable information your business could receive.

In the beginning, some of your largest - if not, *the* largest - expenses should be the time cost of customer support.

iPad finger animating with DoInk

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:20:00 -0400

iPad finger animating with DoInk:

Did a little late night finger-animating using DoInk’s Vector Animator on the iPad. Who knew the iPad was a serious content creation platform, capable of spitting out h264 & flash swf files? (oh, the irony)