Privacy: where’s the limit?
Posted by Jon on Jun 29, 2008
I don’t think anyone can disagree that privacy is starting to become more and more rare. It’s an interesting evolution as we make more and more of ourselves public and freely available. There are already strong differences between generations about where the limits on privacy should be. For example, many people in my generation have no problem having their cell phone # on Facebook or their street address available on the internet. Many new services continue to break down these walls. Location based services like BrightKite post our current location to the internet and even keep a running log of where we tend to be. Profiles on social networks continue to collect more and more information about where we live, what we like/dislike, who we associate with, and where/how we work.
The trend of diminishing privacy is clear and definite. The question in my mind is how far can this be pushed before people start to push back? What are the long term ramifications of this new open lifestyle?
Some of the edge services coming out in this area include digitizing our health records. With sites like Mint.com are we really that far away from making even more of our financial and bank records public? This could have many long term ramifications if the trend continues. For example, imagine the change for potential employers. Already they can Google you and look you up on social networking sites like Facebook to get a feel for how you spend your personal life. What if they could find out your financial status and health records as well? They could determine your salary based on how desperate you are financially instead of purely on your merits and the job market. Employers could pick the healthiest employees to try to avoid the impact of major health issues on the business. This also starts to play into discrimination a bit. How do you defend against financial and/or health discrimination? Can you? Should you?
The level of privacy continues to degrade over time, but is there a point where society pushes back? Or instead, is the slow evolution completely imminent and uncontrollable? Continually dropping with each new generation…
Life without Google
Posted by Jon on Jun 25, 2008
I had an interesting discussion with Josh Fraser tonight during which a frightening proposition came up: how would your life be impacted if Google went away tomorrow? Now before you blow me off and say “I’d just use Yahoo!”, I’d like to encourage you to think about it in the broader sense of: what if we didn’t have a nice search interface to the internet?
It’s hard for me to imagine such a world, but it would definitely impact my life. I use Google dozens of times a day to look up functions, answer questions, and even spellcheck words I’m not sure about. It allows me to not have to keep reference books at my desk or keep a long list of bookmarks of sites with helpful tables of code. I even use Google as my calculator occasionally.
Often many people of the generation before me look at my generation’s dependence on the internet at large (and Google in particular) as a sign of the diminishing intellect among our youth. I couldn’t disagree with this notion more, however. The internet is a tool that frees our brains from having to memorize mindless trivia, remember hundreds of rarely used functions, and provides a seamless interface to a huge pool of knowledge. This allows us to become even more specialized in our thinking and spend more of our brain cycles solving problems as opposed to memorizing data or doing research. Not to say that we don’t still do research, but the process has just been immensely simplified.
I think of the internet as a tool…a base of knowledge “in the cloud” that is at my fingertips and frees my mind from having to remember some of the more rarely used bits that people of previous generations might’ve kept in their heads. Does this make us stupider? I think not, but I’m sure there are those out there that will disagree. The question still remains, though, how has the internet’s depth of knowledge and simplistic search interface impacted your life? And how would it impact it if it were suddenly gone?
Todo lists
Posted by Jon on Jun 16, 2008
Todo lists are a surprisingly effective tool that are often undervalued (especially by young folk like myself). Those of you that know me well (especially those of you that knew me in college) know that I’m somewhat overly concerned with efficiency. I often strive to find ways to squeeze out just a little more throughput in my work day. One of the simplest tools for this is a simple todo list. I know that right now half of you are saying, “Yeah, of course…”, and the other half of you are rolling your eyes thinking about how useless this blog post is. I’m writing this post for the latter group (so please roll yours eyes back into position and continue reading)…
Those of you that haven’t actually tried todo lists are probably thinking the same things I used to think about them:
- I don’t need to write it out…I know what I need to do
- How does writing it down make me more efficient…doesn’t it take longer because you have to make the list as well?
- What extra value does this list really create?
However writing out your daily list has many benefits that are often under appreciated. Here is just a sample:
- Writing out your list forces you to think through (at least at a high level) all of your tasks
- Often it forces you to come up with at least some type of rough prioritization of your tasks
- Allows you to free your memory for other, more important, stuff
- Keeps you moving rapidly as you never have to stop and think of what’s next to do…this allows you to stay in the zone when you get there
- Allows for a strange sense of satisfaction when you cross items off the list…it’s weird just how satisfying this can be
If you don’t already keep a todo list for yourself I would strongly encourage you to give it a try. It might just surprise you how much more productive you can be with such a simple tool.
Tips for TechStars Teams
Posted by Jon on Jun 8, 2008
Admittedly many of these are applicable to all startups, but I target the TechStars specifically because of my own experience with the program. This is also partially in response to Rob Johnson’s post where he calls out to me (among other previous TechStars) to share our advice to the new class. So, onto the tips…
1. Delegation - I can’t stress this one enough. Make sure that there is as little overlap in responsibilities within the team as possible. Also, just as importantly, make sure everyone knows their role. In our experience I ended up with a hand in just about everything we did as a young company. I attended every session, every meeting, and worked on every aspect of our project. Part of the reason in my case was situational, but in general I would highly stress that people should break up into at least two camps: the product/project and networking/business. Try to be as firm in this regard as possible, if there’s a session/meeting about Amazon and infrastructure then send the product/project people, but if it’s just about the best corporate structure for startups you probably don’t need to send them. The business/networking people should spend their time finding key mentors and building these relationships, while the product/project people need to be cranking out code as fast as possible. There is a lot of opportunity in a very short time, and the best way to capitalize on the experience is to divide and conquer.
2. Get your product out there - Even if this means releasing a product with an extremely stripped down feature set I think it’s extremely important to get something out as soon as possible. You’ll have tons of people around to give you feedback and help to build out the product and you want to use them as much as you can. It’s a lot harder to get feedback on an idea or a screenshot than it is to get feedback on a working (even if it’s only “working-ish”) product. You’ve got mentors, other teams/startups, and (hopefully) some early users all with plenty of helpful feedback that can save you a lot of time in the long run and overall make your product better. I would encourage stripping down the feature set instead of cutting back on quality and working around a prototype that finds its way into production. This is one area that I think we missed the mark on, trying to do too much too fast instead of perfecting a smaller feature set from the get go. People in general seem to have more tolerance for “we’re still young and that’s not done yet” than for “we’re working on fixing it”.
3. Don’t try to connect with everyone - When you’re working in a startup, if you’re lucky you’ll have tons of opportunity to connect with some really great people. In particular, in the TechStars program there are plenty of really amazing mentors that are all available at your fingertips. It is important, however, to remain focused and not try to connect with every single person. Instead, find a handful of mentors/people that you respect the most and that can help your startup succeed and focus on them. With relationships in general, quality over quantity is often underestimated. This is exceedingly true with mentors to early stage startups, as the level of attention and help is key.
4. Force feedback, and don’t take it personally - This one can be tough for people, but I think it’s very important. As you work your way through the startup, be sure to ask the people around you for feedback periodically. In particular, look for negative feedback. Positive feedback might make you feel good, but the truth is the negative feedback is much more valuable as it provides a plan for improvement. Be sure to ask the people you respect around that you respect the tough question: “What do I/we suck at?” Sometimes it’s tough to get a truly honest response to this question, but you can’t take it personally. Just focus on assuring that you understand their criticism, deciding if you agree with it (most likely you should), and finding the best method to address the issue. Improvement over time is an important characteristic. Most people won’t hold failure against you as long as you learn from it.
5. Know what is a competition and what isn’t (and act accordingly) - When we first got into TechStars we saw ourselves as competing with all the other teams. I think part of this was seeded by David and part of this was just that we didn’t know what to expect, but we definitely all learned over time that in general, we’re not competing with the other teams. In most cases the startups are different enough that competition is unnecessary. Instead, leverage the other teams for feedback, advice, and networking…you never know who will end up making it big. There are times, however, where there is a bit of a competition. The biggest examples of this in my mind are demo days and investor day. In these situations you’re fighting for the attention of the crowd which puts you in direct conflict with the other teams. You want to make sure you’re the one that is remembered. This can be hard, but be sure not to be caught blindsided by this. Have a plan and execute it, but don’t go too far; after the event you’re no longer competing, so be sure not to burn any bridges.
So that’s my list of tips (for now). Hopefully someone will find these helpful and can learn them from my short comings instead of going through them on their own.
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