What do pig intestines and squid have in common
This is just funny. Ok it's also a little scary as I love Calamari!
"Calamari is on one side of the plate, sliced hog rectums are on the other. Which is which? We got a tip about a meat plant selling pig intestines as fake calamari, wondered if it could be true, and decided to investigate. Doppelgangers, doubles, evil twins and not-so-evil twins, this week. Fred Armisen co-hosts with Ira Glass." (from This American Life)
Get someone to clean your gutters for you
I am not being metaphorical, in fact, I am talking about gutters on your roof. A few years ago I wasn't regularly cleaning my gutters and had a close call with roof leaks when we had an extensive period of rain and freezing that caused ice dams and all kinds of ugliness to many New England residents as well as friends of mine. I had a scare and since then I've been paying someone to clean my gutters each year.
Here's a far more 2013 solution to the same problem. Yes, Robots are no longer just for sweeping your living room!
Aaron Swartz Links
If you are in the tech community you've likely heard that Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday in New York. I didn't know him but I was in the same room with him, at conferences or conversations a few times about 10 years ago. I certainly knew of him.
I've read many things about him in the last 24 hours. Here are some of the ones that spoke to me the most:
Harvard Business School: No Women Entrepreneurs
I was surfing around preparing for my class and happened to look at this page on the Harvard Business School web site. The page is called "Entrepreneurs " and it says, among other things:
"A video archive that captures insights from learning members of the School's entrepreneurial community. Entrepreneurs speak on a common set of themes including their development as entrepreneurs, strategies for identifying opportunity, and leadership. (from Harvard Business School)
Notice anything?
Not a single female in the picture. (And only a single female on the whole
list, Orit Gadiesh) I got to thinking, there are lots of prominent female entrepreneurs. Are we to conclude that for some reason HBS isn't generating them or that they were just overlooked by whoever made this page?
What happens if you set up an eRoom on the North Pole?
Here's a new product I just saw, Igloo. It's very nice and it reminds me of what eRoom might have looked like if we designed it 15 years later. They have a beautiful product. Here's what they say:
At its core, Igloo is about communication: In your day, you might give updates, have discussions and share files with your team. With Igloo, that all happens in one place. Igloo helps you communicate in an elegant and integrated digital workplace. You get visibility into what's happening throughout your whole team and your whole office. (From Igloo Web Site tour)
Virtual Assistant advice
I have a regular need for a small project to be done, a little bit of research, some following up on projects and so on. I've thought about using a "Virtual Assistant" for this but there is now so much noise in the area that it's hard to navigate. An example of many many is Zirtual.com
My needs are definitely episodic, so I don't want someone that I pay a fixed monthly amount to unless it's pretty small, knowing that it can go up and down depending on the work.
Any feedback on your experiences or thoughts about this would be really interesting!
Free pdf of Eric Ries: “The Lean Startup” (huh?)
I am a big fan of this book, so I was really surprised to find a freely downloadable copy of the file in pdf form. I snooped around and the site seems legit but it's odd that a very popular book is made available for zero dollars.
Here's the link to Lean Startup on PdfBook.co.ke
If you are wondering, .co.ke is Kenya. I posted a question to them to explain whether this was above board. I wonder…
What is the cellphone equivalent of a hat rack?
I am just as guilty as anyone of being overly addicted to looking at my cellphone, and that's not an original observation! It's a cliché that has been written and talked about ad nauseum.
This article points out that there was a time when men wore hats outdoors and the social norm was always to take your hat off when you were indoors or were interacting socially. Maybe the reason is that the brim of the hat covers your eyes and interferes with normal social interaction, who knows. But if you watch Mad Men you are quite familiar with the phenomenon. The article makes a funny analogy with our use of digital devices:
"It seems that whenever people meet in person these days, they do so while separating their attention between the people in the room and the devices in their hands. Somehow, it has become socially acceptable to digitally masturbate in each other’s company. You might say, “but I’m taking notes or responding to an important request!” No you’re not, you are digitally dicking around." (from Tech is Making Meetings Worse - it's time for Digital Hat Racks")
Great idea! Let's see it on Kickstarter soon!
Good tips for building products that people want
- Draw On Previous Experience and Understanding – The biggest problem is startups in search of a problem. Chase what you’re passionate about; you’ll probably already have knowledge in the space.
- Have A Hypothesis About How You’re Different – Have a point of view about your startup. Why is there a special opportunity for this now?
- Never Build Without Sketching – Mike says he and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom would go to a cafe with little iPhone design pads where “we’d build and throw away entire features. You’d waste three or four pieces of paper, not three weeks of coding.”
- Learn In Weeklong Increments – Start with a question: “Will folks want to share photos on the go? Can we build filters that look good?” Spend the week investigating, and by Friday have a conclusion and move on.
- Validate In Social Situations – “We called this the Bar Exam. If you can’t explain it to the guy or girl at the bar, you need to simplify.” Don’t just test with your techy friends.
- Know When It’s Time To Move On – “I know ‘pivot’ has become a dirty word, but if there’s no unanswered questions left, then it’s time to move on.”
- The Wizard Of Oz Techniques For Social Prototyping – You don’t need to build everything at first. You can be the man behind the curtain. Krieger says him and Systrom tested an early version of a feature which would notify you when friends joined the service. Instead of building it out, they manually sent people notifications “like a human bot” saying ‘your friend has joined.’ It turned out not to be useful. “We wrote zero lines of Python, so we had zero lines to throw away.”
- Build And Maintain A Constant Stream Of Communication With Your Audience – Don’t spend months building something without any idea if someone actually wants it.
Teaching at Olin College next year
I'm excited to tell you that I
just accepted a position as Visiting Lecturer at Olin
College for Spring 2013!
Actually the full name is Olin College of Engineering.
Olin is a small engineering college, actually in the top ten of engineering colleges according to US News' Rankings. Olin is a very young college: it just celebrated its 10th year!
I'll be teaching Entrepreneurship in a course called "The Tech Startup " (at least I think that will be the name of the course.)
As you might know, I was teaching at Brandeis University over the last three years. The course I taught at Brandeis was more computer science oriented, aimed at getting the students the experience and helping them gain the skills to build software products in a way that looks like the real world.
At Olin the focus will be on the broader topic of how engineers should think about startups, how to come up with products that have a chance at selling, making sure they match what customers want and are willing to pay for. I
am still nailing down the details of the curriculum but it's very exciting to have this opportunity and I am totally psyched about it!