thinking different[ly]

This past weekend, a friend caught me thumbing incessantly through my phone, and asked if I was on Facebook. I replied that I was on Twitter, and that I only use Facebook when I get a notification or post a picture through PicPlz/Instagram. 

I went on to explain that, for me, Twitter seems much more personal… it’s a real-time conversation that bridges the offline-to-online gap.

Facebook, however, is usually more impersonal… I know that the status updates and comment threads will live forever in plain sight, so I pay less attention to the content. And really, it’s much less relevant to me if it’s been days, nay weeks, since a given update was posted.

I communicate on Twitter with personal & professional contacts with which I currently hold [or will soon hold] a relationship. Facebook, however, is a mish/mash of high school & college friends, most I haven’t spoken with in years.

He seemed a little confused, and that’s because Facebook is his primary means of keeping in touch with friends & family.

I took it a step further and put it this way… Twitter are the people I’m more likely to text message, whereas Facebook friends are usually more likely to receive a phone call.

Of course there’s some crossover between Twitter followers & Facebook friends (where the conversation goes from FB status update to Twitter @ reply to DM or SMS) but I try my best to segment my social circles - moreso for my own benefit.

I’m giving Google+ another try; it may be creeping in considering I’m a longtime Gmail/Gtalk user.

I have few indulgences, one of which is always my haircut. A few months back, I started frequenting the Barbershop Lounge. It’s clearly more expensive than your average SuperCuts, but the experience alone quickly trumps the price difference. In fact, I would probably pay more.

From the second the door opens, customers are warmly greeted by a receptionist who hands over your drink of choice. The employees are professional, friendly, and, if you’re early, encourage you to sit at the bar to read the paper or slide into a game of pool.

Bottom line, the end to end user experience is nothing short of spectacular, and I’ve taken notice of every step in the process (which has been calculated and laid out).

I’ve started approaching new web/mobile products and services the exact same way - from the first to the final ‘touch’ (placing an order, posting a photo, etc) I take notice or the product’s flow, and have started noting where I come across friction in the process. 

In most cases, the end consumer or user is never aware of the user experience with which they interact every day. They’ll go about their normal routine, and be blind to the slight dopamine squirt rewarded upon completion of a task or order.

For the product owner, it’s the difference between a successful conversion or purchase and a big, fat bounce from their site. On a more macro level, it’s the difference between a repeat customer or positive word-of-mouth marketing and a brick wall standing in front of of the customer acquisition funnel.

There are many synergies between online and offline UX designs. Have any that stand out in your mind? I love to hear about it - leave a comment or find me on Twitter.

I had lunch yesterday with a friend that was comparing/contrasting the pros/cons of startups vs. the larger corporate world.

His main gripe (and personal experience) working in a company shaded by corporate bureaucracy was that top execs get complacent and innovation suffers (take a look at RIM). Their wallets get fat, their bellies get filled, and somewhere along the line people forget to push the ball forward (nothing revolutionary here). 

Not to mention that externally facing vision is very ‘tunneled’. It’s easy to get caught up in your own niche and ignore the world around you.

Startups, however, constantly keep you interacting, thinking, and learning. There’s no opportunity for complacency; it’s arguably one of the greatest contributing factors to a company’s demise.

Early stage companies aren’t for everyone, but [outside of the MIT Media Lab or a host of select PHD programs] I’d argue there is no better place to be if you’re up for an intellectual hurricane. 

OR “Why people still love their ideas, and why they are still worthless if you can’t out-execute everyone else.”

And interesting email came into my inbox yesterday. It was from a good friend of mine, forwarding an email from an ex-classmate/friend regarding his new business. The friend is looking for an investment in his new business, and requiring an NDA be signed and emailed/faxed before the business plan and/or pitch video is sent.

At first I thought it was a joke.

I did a little research and found out that the two founders already run a credible business in the education space and this seems to be a social extension, operating with the same virality model as Facebook circa 2004.

But why the NDA? I’m not an investment professional and I still wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. “Delete” was my first though. I sent an email back advising that his friend lose the NDA and refocus away from the spray-and-pray investment approach.

For the record I’ve signed a few NDAs before. It wasn’t a good feeling and I wouldn’t do it again. I heard a story yesterday of a guy that used work for Redhook Brewery. He had signed a 5 year NDA, and when Anheuser Busch purchased a majority share of Redhook, he was let go. And barred from working in the industry he loved. For 5 years.

Working on Grinnit taught me that ideas are abundant; the ebbs and flows come as the industry evolves. Since shutting the doors a few weeks back, I’ve been contacted by no less than ten people working on the same problem we set out to solve in 2010. 

It all come down to this: your idea probably isn’t unique, your execution is. Chances are, it’s been thought-up, discussed, and iterated upon many times over. 

Tell the world about the big, nasty problem you’re solving. Being in “stealth” might be good for some spaces, but in most cases it’s hindering your growth potential.

Ask for intros, ask for feedback, but please don’t ask me to sign an NDA.

On Friday, we announced that we were folding Grinnit.

It was a good way to reflect on the past 10(ish) months and communicate some of what we had learned with the startup world.

The post made its way to Hacker News and managed to trend up at #3. After having a friend tell me he had seen a random Tweet of the post, I decided to check out Bit.ly + Google Analytics this morning.

What I found was pretty interesting:

• 4,555 clicks on links to the post
• 55 tweets
• 3 FB likes
• Views from 72 countries
• 63% of traffic came from news.ycombinator.com
• .0006% of traffic came from my own blog post
• Grinnit’s blog saw a 3,377.59% increase in traffic, 94.59% of which was from new visitors. 

In the end, our biggest traffic day occurred on our last day of operation.

Just a note that analytics are always useful, even on dark days.

Truth be told, I haven’t directly applied much of the systems engineering training imparted to me by academia. Oops.

Regardless, I still use feedback loops quite often to better understand the world.

“Skate to where the puck is going” is a phrase beaten into the minds of anyone in an innovative space, but the meaning itself is a bit abstract. Is the puck the industry, the technology, the products?

I’d like to think that all are governed by ‘underlying user behavior’, whereby the user governs the system.

It all starts like this:

Change in behavior is observed and/or predicted, feedback signal is sent.

Infrastructure:

Cells towers, ground fiber, wifi networks, etc. All are the backbone of many reliant technologies. Once infrastructure changes are in motion, the system moves to…

Hardware:

Chip sets, motherboards, batteries, antennas, display screens, and the devices constructed by combining these emergent pieces. Faster hardware, operating on a more robust, reliable network begets…

Software:

Applications, operating systems, programming languages to facilitate/expedite change in software. Once completed, the software operates on the hardware, which relies on the infrastructure.

User behavior dictates how and *if* this system will operate properly. If it doesn’t, the system begins it’s cycle again.

Innovation is in a constant state of flux, and the system always changes. User behavior is something I’m always observing; I believe it’s at the very core of technological improvements.

Don’t agree? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Note: A friend of mine mentioned that I didn’t take into consideration any entropy (environmental or economic changes) that would place a strain on the system. I don’t think this would even be a factor in a closed loop system, but I’m probably wrong. 

A little over twelve years ago, I broke up with a girl a month before her senior prom. Over the phone (I’ll pause for ‘boos’). I was completely ignorant of the timing and the ramifications of my action.

Nicole was an absolutely sweetheart, but the decision was rash, immature, and completely unfounded - to this day I still can’t figure out why I did it that way.

Today’s decision is a little more thought-out… it pains me to say that we’ve made the decision to close the books on Grinnit. 

The decision was well analyzed, and analyzed again before we made any moves. And then we talked about it some more, and then analyzed and agonized over it some more.

I’d like to think I’ve come along way since that May night in 1999, phone clutched by a clammy palm.

The last twelve months have been an absolute whirlwind, and I feel humbled to be a part of the burgeoning startup community here in Boston.

I’ll be jumping head first back into the startup scene. If you’d like to connect, email me me[at]alexjmathews[dot]com.

Very lost.

A year ago tomorrow, I posted that I’d be shorting $RIMM as if my life depended on it. Not such a revolutionary thought, but lucrative nonetheless. Year-to-date, RIMM has dropped 51.4%. You could argue tha witha P/E under 5, it’s pretty undervalued (with Google & Apple trading with a P/E of 18.59 and 15.36, respectively.

The “median analyst 12-month price target was $85” and everyone thought RIM was poised for a *cough* bounce *cough* (maybe I should have been a tech analyst before going the entrepreneurial route). But one delayed release and engineering snafu after another has led to a severe browbeating by analysts and tech pundits alike (latest TechCrunch bashing here).

Ok, so financials aside, what’s going on with RIM?

Well, a couple things:

1. They’re no longer a dominant platform, and developers are turning tail. Native smartphone apps provide the richest consumer experience, and BlackBerries simply don’t provide a suitable platform (hardware + software in this case) for an optimized experience.

2. The old guard hasn’t listened to their evolving customer base. A few months back, I spoke with an former product mgr at Palm. He had been [stealthily] working on a revolutionary tablet, which had inexplicably been scrapped by upper management. (Note: this is several years before the ipad)

He went on to explain that his management team was drunk on power, and making snap decisions that threw customer value to the wind. We all know how this story ends.

More than two years ago, big bank employees, once married to their RIM devices, began demanding the use of the iphone as a solitary work device. IT managers had long-praised RIM for it’s superior enterprise security and integration. The iphone was viewed as a security nightmare.

Guess what Apple did? They listened wholeheartedly to their customers and beefed up enterprise compliance. And what happened? The ipad made it’s first appearance on the NYSE floor long before the Playbook.

So where do RIM’s strengths still lie?

Well, they steal the show when it comes to data compression, and the separation between corporate and personal data. This should allow the long tail of their revenue stream to sustain itself with legacy enterprise customers.

How do they win?

1. Stick to the fundamentals. Battery life, durability, security, & enterprise integration have been RIM’s backbone since it’s inception. Make these your focus going forward from a product perspective.

2. Fire the existing marketing team, outsource all creative branding efforts to Fahrenheit212 (disclaimer: a friend works there, yes I’m trying to send them business). RIM’s positioning in the marketplace used to focus on prestige, not design or an app store. Having a BlackBerry used to mean something. Sure, maybe that was “I’m more important than you”, but it was still an effective marketing vehicle

3. Do a top-down management overhaul. Throw out the grey hairs, and bring in a Steve Jobs clone that masterfully bind marketing + hype + hardware into one beautiful package. 

An acquisition may seem like a sure-fire outcome in the next 12 months, but all isn’t lost. Not yet.