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Is that outside or on TV?

Real sound

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I’m an audiophile and I tend to spend more money than most people on audio equipment. Although, there are plenty people out there who spent more in the pursuit to true sound reproduction. I like to be more practical. It does mean I typically adorn the family room with larger speakers, but I don’t have surround nor a subwoofer – it isn’t that bad.

The idea is to create real sound or a realistic reproduction of the music or TV soundtrack. Neutral sound is the name of the game. You don’t want to impress with lots of bass or overly bright vocals. Ideally, the speakers vanish and you just hear sound. This doesn’t always work out because most sound is mixed for soundbars and non-insulating earbuds, but that’s a topic for a different post. If the sound mix is done right, it sounds amazing.

Funny thing is that it sometimes sounds so real, people coming over get confused about if the sound is real or not. Especially on TV when the sound mix is done right, background sound can become indistinguishable from real or not. Think about a dog barking, a door closing or an ambulance siren in the background. I always chuckle when that happens.

Not all products are treated equal

Feature vs mission

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A couple of days ago, I wrote about Evernote. Once, Steve Jobs called Dropbox a “feature”. He was right in his own context. But I do belief mission trumps features.

I rather use Dropbox than Apple’s iCloud, Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive. Same goes for Spotify versus Apple Music or YouTube Music. I really wish I could use Evernote instead of Apple Notes.

The problem with “features” as part of a larger corporate ecosystem, they tend to live by the whim of the corporate. Today, it is has focus and tomorrow who knows? Not that I expect any of the aforementioned services to go away any time soon, there’s a distinct possibility that shifts in priorities will cripple their product offering. A good example is Google Maps on IOS which didn’t have navigation while being generally available on Google Android until Apple forced Google’s hand by releasing their own maps product. Large corporation do not always have the best of intentions to all consumers – just their preferred.

You also tie yourself down in an ecosystem and I like to have options. I want to be able to move from MacOS to Windows or Linux without being burdened by the myriad of services I’m relying on as part of any these ecosystem – granted Linux has none.

I rather buy a movie on Amazon Video than iTunes. I’ve no problems though renting a movie on iTunes. I even pay a tiny amount for iCloud to backup my phone. I’m ok with that. All of these things don’t prevent me choosing something else in the future.

I like having choices and mission-driven independent products give me freedom.

It’s just a feature

First they ignore you

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win

Last week, the news came out that IBM was acquiring Red Hat. On some random place, I stumbled on this photo. It made me smile:

Even though it’s unclear where this quote comes from and probably not from Gandhi, it’s still a great quote.

This is often how it goes in startups. Especially if you don’t have a free consumer product which goes viral like 99.99% of all startups. Often you get dismissed as “it’s just a feature” or “it’s a toy“.

This is what keeps me up at night

Data integrity and privacy

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One of the major concerns I have with regard to privacy is data integrity. With data integrity, I mean that the correctness of the data used. Now, today much of the data is used for serving you ads, but plenty of startups are working on using the data for other purposes like issuing loans or offering insurance. For instance, imaginary startup X works on an algorithm to determine house valuations. This software is sold to various lenders and the lenders use it to determine to approve mortgages and rates. The whole algorithm is data-driven. It takes various data into account likes past sales in the area, household incomes of the neighborhood, crime rates, quality of the school system and the list goes on. The benefit is that the lender can determine more or less without “bias” (this is a topic of whole different post – not this one) what the valuation of the house is. But then startup X made an error. Somehow it is applying the wrong crime rate data on this particular zip code. It is not a major error, it just skews the crime rate with a couple of percent points. Enough though to lower the valuation of the property by 15%. Nobody recognizes this problem because software is used by most of the lenders and everyone comes to the same wrong conclusion. Obviously, this is an imaginary example, but very real risk.

There are a couple of reasons why data integrity is potentially a big problem:

  • It is virtually impossible to correct
  • It is mostly invisible

There are a few ways to solve this. First is in transparency, not every companies favorite topic, but it does help to understand the parameters which determined the outcome. This helps because it allows for auditing which is another way of solving this problem. We’re used to audit financial results of public companies to verify the reporting of a company to the shareholders who do not have time, resources and legal rights (think about that for a minute) to verify the results. Transparency enables auditing and auditing by itself increases trust. The last solution is multiple disparate systems. This is the world we live in today. But like any industry, everything consolidates to a few suppliers like credit rating agencies. This is the reason we haven’t seen this yet.

I am confident though we will see this problem crop up in the future where people get denied services because of incorrect data. It’s unfair and without transparency and auditing rights to the data, it is going to be tough to correct and identify the problem.

This is also one of the reasons why privacy and data ownership is so important. If we do not own our own data and do not have a properly enforced rights to privacy, we cannot control where our data ends up and how it’s being used. You can talk about your fear of dying because your father just passed away because of cancer and your text messages end up in someone’s database mislabeled as “cancer patient”. It may sound farfetched today, but without any rights and restrictions today this a world where heading into.

Start small, grow tall

Endless Tweaking

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Regardless the kind of startup, the secret of all tech startups today is software. Marc Andreessen wrote a seminal post about it a long time ago; why software is eating the world. One of the major advantage is that software allows for endless tweaking. It’s almost impossible to tweak hardware when it’s out of the door though you can influence hardware by software. Tesla proves that regularly by improving or changing the performance of their cars by an over-the-air software update. It makes BMW’s dealer performed software upgrades which takes 24 hours to “program” the onboard car computers look like a dinosaur.

This endless tweaking allows to keep up with changing expectations and user behavior. A great example is Google Search. On the surface, Google Search hasn’t changed much since it was launched, but Google has been steadily improving search results and making subtle changing the UI/UX. I think most users would be hard pressed to point out all the changes Google made in the last decade to their product, but if you see Google Search of 2008 and today, you can clearly see a myriad of changes and improvements.

It also allows to start small and keep growing from there. Initially, Facebook was nothing more than a digital version of the school’s yearbook with a few limited options to communicate. From there, it grew into what it is today. Facebook constantly tweaks and tunes the timeline. It added stories to fend off Snapchat. That’s the power of software at work right there.

I personally find that the most fascinating aspect of the new breed of companies. In the past, we had companies with big product launches every so many years. Every product introduction also made existing products obsolete or at least feel behind the times.

I got inspired to write this post because I own a Bluesound Node – a product which launched 4 years ago. I still get regular monthly updates of the software. Bluesound’s products are now two generations since the introduction of my Node, but they keep my Node up-to-date. I like that, it makes me confident that the company stands behind their products and I’m not afraid they’ll become obsolete with every release of a new generation. Their products are expensive, but they’re build and maintained to last.

In contrast, Google Android is a mess. Most Android phones do not get security updates – let alone a new major version of Android. In essence, your Android phone is obsolete the moment it is released. Google is now pushing for vendors to provide security updates for at least 2 years. This is a major improvement, but still it’s nowhere near Apple’s commitment to keep their old devices current and up to date. IOS 12 still runs on a iPhone 5S. The 5S was introduced in 2013. The cut-off is even reasonable to explain because it’s the oldest model supporting 64-bit software.
Even Microsoft changed Windows to a rolling release model. They earned their scars with the never dying XP and the never released Longhorn debacle. At the time, it took Microsoft 5.5 years to bring a major update to Windows to the market. I think it’s the best example on how to not to use the advantages of software and try to mold it into old-school big product releases on multi-year schedule.

You can argue that Apple is doing the same with their yearly rhythm to release big updates. But that’s not entirely true. Apple brings minor updates throughout the year. Most features are presented and released during the yearly update, but bug fixes, security updates and delayed feature updates come throughout the year. My son’s iPhone 5s is still humming along fine albeit more slowly than my iPhone X.

On the other hand, big changes or paradigm changes are very risky and I’d argue unnecessary. Snapchat’s changes to the core product to become more of a social media company than a messaging app is a good example. It didn’t go down well with their user base. It was unnecessary. It’s fine to set the goal – in this case more social media because it allows us to sell more ads – but the way to get there is to migrate from where you are today to your desired end-state.
Google Plus had the same problem. Google has the properties to become a more social company and even launch a social media or network property. They aimed too high and it set expectations too high. They could only fail. With Search, Gmail, Youtube, Photos and their other properties, they certainly have the reach to launch a social media / network property. If they had chosen a more gradual switch by introducing social features into their core products and linking them together, they could’ve pulled it off. It was too much at once, users never had the chance to start the new journey and get on the bandwagon.

Software enables us to choose a small starting point and keep growing from there. It’s a very powerful paradigm, but it doesn’t get enough attention. “Release early and often” is a adagio preached by developers and they’re right. It should apply to companies as a whole. Software makes this possible.

At any startup, I hear myself repeating “I know where we’re heading and where we want to end up, but I’m not sure how the road looks like to get there. Let’s take one step at a time and each step should bring us a step closer to the end goal”.

Nobody gets it right

Conference calls

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There are a few product categories which see constant new entrants, but never gets solved. Note taking apps is a good example. Same goes for calendar or email apps. Today, I wanted to talk about conference calls. Another category with constant new entrants. Yesterday, I had a atrocious conference call on Google Hangouts. The sound and video was slow even though we were on a fast enough internet connections on both sides of the call. Also my webcam was only outputting a black image. My webcam works fine on Skype and FaceTime.

I always wondering how much productivity we loose on fixing conference call issues. It must be enormous – besides that it is simply annoying.

For a while now, I routinely dialin by phone. I try to avoid using my computer for anything else than sharing my screen. This strategy works pretty well for me. The connection is always reliable and I’ve never issues with my side of the connection.

Unfortunately, Google Hangouts does not support phone dialin so I was stuck (and got promptly reminded why I always dialing in by phone). Personally, I use UberConference. They provide me with my own personal conference phone number which is easier to share than a phone number with a pin plus there is no annoying menu system to get through. I can share my screen right from the browser. It just works.

I routinely encounter Skype for Business and Zoom in my calls. Skype for business never works for me – probably because I’m not on Windows – but they do provide a solid dialin number. Zoom is more reliable and works on most platforms. Google Hangouts still feels immature. I don’t understand why companies consider use that.

The platforms of the many turn into platforms of the few

Local stardom

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One of the most interesting trends of the internet in the last decade, is what I like to call local stardom. Not everyone is the same on the internet and it is caused by algorithms. I call it local stardom.

The amount of content we need to consume is so vast, we use algorithms to filter it. Algorithms analyze content and your behavior to present you with the most relevant information. Sounds useful right?

Algorithms are just rules encoded into software. Nobody knows exactly what the rules are for platforms like Facebook, Google or Instagram, but we can infer them based on action-response results of our activities. They even influence our behavior because more likes is better.

The problem arises that some people figure out those rules and start exploiting them to gain more exposure. Many of these people are professionals – sometimes whole organizations are setup for just that purpose like Buzzfeed.

The end result is local stardom. Local stars own a particular segment – let’s say cooking or skateboarding. People interested in those topics will automatically gravitate to these local stars because that’s what the algorithms guide them towards to and that in turn increases their local stardom.

Google as a search engine is not exempt either. For instance, when you search on my name, Google presents my LinkedIn profile first. My blog is second. LinkedIn owns people’s names thanks to Google’s algorithm. My blog is second while it carries my name and the domain is older than LinkedIn.

Local stardom exploits algorithmic ranking by reverse-engineering the rules. I always smile when one of the platforms changes their algorithm and all the local stars are in up and arms because their content is not getting the same reach as before. It’s a game.

To see it in another way, the top 1% producers get 80% of all the attention / traffic.

Why is that a problem? It reduces the diversity of the internet and makes it a less interesting place. It turns platforms into entertainment and marketing machines. It turned social networks into social media. Somewhere along the we chose to label Facebook as a social media platform and no longer a social network – it’s fascinating.

A simple realization with profound insight

What Drives You

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Yesterday, someone asked me what drove me. It’s a good question. Some people know from “birth” what drives them, for other people like me it takes longer. I can remember the day I realized what drove me. Let me tell you the story.

Back in 2007, we started Shapeways. I worked, nurtured and grew it for more than five years. I worked my ass off to build a platform which was manufacturing and shipping hundreds of thousands of products every month. We raised millions of dollars from reputable tier-1 venture firms. We had a team of talented people and we made countless thousands of people happy with making their ideas to come to life.

But none of that really drove me to do what I did.

One day, someone in the team sent around a link to Wikipedia. It was back in 2010 I think. Someone wrote an article on Shapeways on Wikipedia. It wasn’t any of us. The team was still small enough to quickly assess that it wasn’t anybody from our team.
The article described Shapeways and what we did. It wasn’t expansive, but written in clear, concise and authentic terms. In the sidebar, it listed the name of founders.

When I saw my name, I knew. I realized what drove me.

I created something which mattered enough to people and the world that it got an honorable mention on Wikipedia. It wasn’t a unicorn or changed the life of billions. It wasn’t a Nobel-prize worthy invention. But it mattered.

At that moment, I knew that my drive was to build things which matter to people and the world. That’s what motives me.

Slow disruption

When was the last time you visited your bank?

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Sometimes disruption happens fast and is very visible like the introduction of the smartphone. Other times it happens very slowly. I came across this article that HSBC put a cute robot in their flagship (who knew that’s a thing for banks?) branch on Manhattan. Obviously the idea is to increase foot traffic. It’s a good a marketing stunt, but I doubt it’ll increase foot traffic because in all honesty who visits their branch anymore?

I’ve been banking with USAA for years. I like that they don’t have any branches at all. They’ve a decent app and for everything else there’s always a friendly customer service people I can call. It’s much easier. Before I moved to the US, I banked with ING and I still hold an account there. They did have branches, but they prided themselves there was no reason to visit it because you could do everything by phone and nowadays using their app or site. They realized a long time ago that technology will replace most of the branch activities.

Banks are wrecking their brain about what to do with their branches. They’re costly to maintain and not that productive anymore. It’s easier when disruption is fast, it’s like ripping off a band-aid. When disruption happens slowly, you define the pace. We all now where it’s going, but when do you pull the plug. You see something similar happen in retail. Toys”R”Us is a great example of reacting too slowly. Sears is another one.

Slow disruption is like a thief in the night. If you’re not careful, you won’t know what hit you.