blog.payne.org

A quick protocol note for entrepreneurs raising money from angel investors:   asking for referrals from one angel to another can be tricky.

If you ask angel investor A for a referral to investor B, the first question B is going to ask of A is:  ”are you investing?”

If A’s answer is “no”, it is unlikely the referral is going to go anywhere.

Is it me, or does it feel like many entrepreneurial discussions today aren’t about new ideas, but are about the “meta” stuff (processes, methods, groups, etc.) around entrepreneurship?   Everyone seems to be talking about seed stage funds, how to get funding, how to start companies, the latest Y-combinator clone, organizing meetups, incubators/hatcheries, etc.

To use an analogy I saw fly by somewhere (and can’t fully credit, sorry):  it seems like the action has moved from making money on foreclosures, to infomercials and books about making money on foreclosures.

Are ideas so plentiful they’re not the focus anymore?

Am I hanging out with the wrong crowd?

With products, it’s always interesting to compare initial impressions with longer-term impressions.  Sometimes they match, sometimes not.  The story about New Coke and sip testing is a good reminder that initial and long-term impressions can diverge.

After a week of living with the iPad, here’s my usage:

• Book reading (using Amazon’s Kindle app)
• Videos (The Blind Side via iTunes, kids videos from Netflix)
• Light email (reading only, or one sentence replies)
• Reference lookup (general Web surfing, Wikipanion)
• Games (Flight Control HD)

So far, it’s pretty consistent with my initial impressions.

I seem to have two types of friends:  those that like Facebook and those that hate it.  The haters have a range of explanations, but the common theme seems to be:  ”I don’t need a tool to manage my friendships!”

I like Facebook quite a bit, and I think I’ve finally figured out the core of why it works so well.  (Maybe I’m just slow).

It’s about “soft sharing”:   I can share things about myself, my life, my work, and my family without being intrusive to my friends.  For example, I’ve recently been hacking around on a small CNC machine in my shop.  I’d never email out project updates and pictures to ~300 friends, but I did post things about it on Facebook.   Facebook provides tools for my friends to sort through what they do and don’t want to see.

The result has been really interesting:  I’ve met a few new people (friends of friends), and ended up with some meetings that never would have happened otherwise.

So, to my Facebook hater friends:  relax, and sign up.

I just posted a long note/essay on how to run a startup board meeting.

I’m taking a lead from Bijan and Fred and am starting to trim my Facebook friend list to “real friends”:  people I know pretty well, old friends from school, etc.  I’m starting with the folks I’ve never met, or only met once.

(If you’re on the “cut list”, sorry!)

Like many modern households, we’re managing a lot of moving pieces.  Three kids w/ activities, brother & family living nearby, grandparent visits, travel — it adds up to some “complexity”.

We depend on a number of technologies to make it all work.  I’m pretty technical and have been labeled a geek.  Kellie’s very comfortable with technology, but would never get that accusation!

Here’s what we use:

• Email. For virtually everything, no paper notes.  Reminders, phone messages, questions, family business (‘Please pay so-and-so‘).  We’ll exchange several emails on some days.  And, a review of the email trail has settled more than one “you never told me!” argument.

• IM.  When we’re each at the computer, we almost always have IM running.  (We’ve been known to IM within the house)  It’s great for short exchanges, and it’s a great way to stay in “light” touch when one of us is traveling.  (And we use video chat as well).

• Text messaging. We text quite a bit, but mostly computer-to-phone since message composition is tedious (no smart phones, yet).  It’s great for short messages (“pick up so-and-so on the way home“)  If Kellie knows I’m in a meeting, she will text instead of calling.  Plus, it’s a great way to stay in touch with your kids, since it’s a mode they prefer.

• Google calendar. We each have shared calendars, one calendar for each of the kids, and a “guest/vacation/family activity calendar”.

• Private wiki (access controlled). The family note card file I’ve written about before — not well formatted or organized, but all the info is in there and searchable:  “What’s our FastLane account number?“, “what’s the teacher’s email?“, “who’s the tree-trimming guy we used 2 years ago?“, etc.  Kellie was skeptical at first, but it caught on pretty quickly.  (Note: we do not store financial account numbers or passwords).

• Google Documents. For example, we keep our Christmas card list in a spreadsheet.  It’s easy to update & refer to, from anywhere.  Since it’s hosted, there’s always one master copy.

• Scan and shred. The paper problem is killing us.  We’re trying to do more scanning of important documents and getting rid of the paper.  The key here is a good scanner and simple software to scan and file.  We’re not quite there yet.

The only thing missing is the iPhone — when (if?) Apple figures it out with Verizon, we’re there.

A few days ago, I wrote about the problems with metered/capped broadband in the US.

Then I read this article, which said:

Basically, the cable internet usage quotas have nothing to do with the internet, they are all about protecting the cable companies TV business. With any quotas in place, it is basically impossible to watch TV in an ‘average’ way over the internet. You can’t even get half of average at barely acceptable quality.

The article goes on to point out that the cap/metering issue is mostly coming from providers with a large, established proprietary TV cable network to protect (e.g. Time-Warner, Comcast) vs phone companies without any substantial TV network (e.g. Verizon).

This is the heart of it.

My Twitter feature requests (for the Web interface):

• First-class support for tweet replies/comments
• Put the search box right on the page, upper right
• Let me add “searches to track” on my page, that scroll along in little widgets
• Provide a subtle visual hint (e.g. highlighting) where the tweet stack was the last time I visited

I’m sure these features exist in the various Twitter clients.  Twitter should be more aggressive about pulling in the best third-party innovations, as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other platforms do.

(My friends know I can’t help myself from “product managing” others’ products).

Driving home today, the FastLane toll (E-ZPass for the rest of you) flashes “Call FastLane”.

So I call and am prompted for entering my account number “from my statement”.  There’s no option to bypass, but after three failed attempts, it gets through.   Then I’m put on hold for a while, and then eventually it says “we’re closed”.

Unbelievable.

Truly great designs are hard, but rookie design mistakes are usually easy to avoid.  In this case, most FastLane users will learn there’s an account problem when they get a “Call Us” flash at the toll lane.  As such, it’s reasonable to assume that many (if not most) users will be calling from the car, without statements and without account numbers.   Therefore,  an IVR menu that requires an account number is an incredibly poor design.

This stuff drives me nuts.  It’s so avoidable.