Got this in my feed the other day: http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/96738/Measuring-What-Matters-How-To-Pick-A-Good-Metric.aspx

It’s a great read and has some salient points to put to work right away at your startup.

It is easy to go crazy with the term big data or the track everything mantra. Not saying tracking everything isn’t good – we tend to track more data than we need but mostly cause we have not had the time to cull it. We track, store it and analyze when we can. I figure someday at Spuul we will have more bodies and time which allow an employee to go much deeper to find some nuggets. Surprisingly some of our old data we have been collecting has already been useful in making some new product decisions.

What I like about this article is how they define some good metrics:

Comparative: this is important. You need to see something that is easily measurable against an old figure to see the difference. Something is showing as improving or getting worse.

Understandable: I digest this as make it something even the the non techies will easily understand.

A ratio or rate: This helps to deal with the comparative issue.

Behavior changing: A metric must help you make product or business decisions. Hopefully it helps to alleviate any opinion or gut feel.

There is a ton to talk about here. How does one come up with these metrics that make sense for their business? I don’t think it is too hard – you will quickly start wishing for particular data points as your business operates. Then make it happen, iterate and look again. More needs will appear, more data will get generated and you just keep going.

One day you will wake up to an almost dashboard of data that helps guide you day to day. Sure it could get overwhelming and at times you might have to cut some data or make it simpler but the slow evolution of your data needs will explain itself over time.

Trick is to start collecting, showing and making it useful.

This article just helps give you some better guidelines for getting going.

 

Takes me too long to write so some of this is dated in that WhatsApp is supposedly not games but some subscription plan on iOS. I predict revenue but reduced user base.

Watching and reading all this stuff happening around chat, games and platforms reminds me of my final, unfinished project, at Yahoo!.

I will admit I don’t use WhatsApp – I just think it is a shitty app but it looks like some people use it. I do use Path cause all my family and most of my close friends use it – therefore it is a nice way to stay in touch, post pics and share what we are all up to. I don’t add many people to Path to keep it simple and useful. Their new chat stuff is okay but still too slow and not super chat friendly. However I think they are moving in an interesting direction that will bear fruit in Asia but not sure everywhere else.

My girlfriend invited me to Line and we use it for chat sometimes and I have been checking out the games – mostly to examine the viral mechanics and such. Line is killing it.

So it makes total sense to me that WhatsApp is moving in some gaming direction but they are quite late to it and I think they have a hurdle to get over in that anyone who going to get teased into a game usually does not want to climb over a paywall to get there. This will have an impact on their viral mechanics but maybe they are thinking they are big enough already and will just add it to increase revenue and time spent. It might work but I think the newer platforms are better suited to this.

All in all there is much activity in the chat arena. New MessageMe (TINA calling MessageMe a copycat is somewhat comical but that is fodder for another post) on the block, Google with Babble and I am sure there are many other examples. For some reason the space is hot and it has products like Line with huge user bases and what I am guessing is also a decent amount of revenue.

So what the hell happened with Yahoo! Messenger? A decent product that Yahoo! let languish. A product that had near monopolies in some countries that continue to dwindle year on year. To all my friends at Yahoo! and to those working on the messenger stack – I am not calling you out but chastising the inept management teams who let a once monster product get crushed by competitors. Yahoo! messenger missed mobile, viral mechanics, gaming, and the ability to translate old skool domination into anything new or modern. Sad.

At one point in Yahoo! I somehow got pulled into the messenger product space and was stoked. My current boss was being bugged by Jerry Yang – yeah that Jerry to try and do something with it. My idea, not novel in any way, was to try and use the messenger ecosystem to add games, credits and chat all into one. Kind of looks like a few products you see killing it today. Yahoo! had a nice big, but not nimble, messaging backend. We had clients on various operating systems and we had payment platforms. We also had games and even a technology to frame up partner games into the chat apps for the desktop. Mobile was going to be much harder but doable.

So chat, games, credits and users. Seems doable.

Problem is with a visionless company the size of Yahoo!  – these types of projects just get turned into a big bureaucratic mess.

The team pulled together a quick hail mary plan and I was told to go pitch Jerry. Of course Jerry was late to the meeting and by the time he came to the Jerry waiting room my boss was already off on a plane. So I was to meet Jerry for the first time, pitch him and pray. Of course Jerry has no idea who the fuck I was but fortunately the ex Yahoos I knew were also known by Jerry so quickly we established some common ground and Jerry let me pitch. Of course he was skeptical but wanted us to try. So we flew around the world to get kiss all the regional exec rings, yes that is how it works at Yahoo!, and then we came back to Sunnyvale to try and make it work. BTW – working with Jerry is one of my most memorable experiences.

It took months to herd the cats, find partners and come up with a plan that allowed us to ship something that would work even though as a entire product stack it would need a lot of evolvement. The goal was to get something working so that the CEO staff group, yes that is a group of people who surround the CEO like a moat, to keep the bad shit in and prevent the good shit from penetrating the CEO castle. Or was it the other way around. I forget to be honest. Anyway – Jerry presented at CEO staff and the idea was blocked by powers that be that previously bought the idea but wanted to somehow kill the idea so they could line up with someone else for another idea. Game of Thrones folks. Little people get burned at these things.

Anyway the region that killed it was the region that would benefit the most from it. The region that chat is exploding in. Go figure. Logic has no bearing at this level.

So needless to say the project died and I moved on.

What I learned is it is really hard to take disparate assets at a big company and pull them together. Each asset owner wants to call the shots – even to the detriment of the combined assets. I think Yahoo! could have actually acquired something that had a similar outcome and this would be probably have been able to make it all happen faster. Which seems so illogical but is how big companies actually work. Stunning really since Yahoo! has the pieces, a big enough user base and interesting partners but there is not the wherewithal to actually force an outcome.

So chat is hot again. Yahoo! is cold on chat. Such a bummer.

It all started with MM at Yahoo telling all the remote folks they can come to the office or they can quit. Maybe it is more nuanced than that but the gist is Yahoo is trying to clean up and purge some employees. Of course everyone and their dog has jumped on the bandwagon to proclaim what a fuckup it all is and that Yahoo will destroy employee morale and such. I worked at Yahoo for a few years and had the opportunity to bounce around the globe doing cool work. I also had to deal first hand with remote employees and the Yahoo remote is very different from the remote I know and practice.

Yahoo remote is mostly about some long term employees who are resting and vesting. For sure it is not all – and yes MM is probably throwing out a few babies when she dumps the bathwater but I think that will be okay. The signal to the masses is very loud. Yahoo is in a turnaround (yes the stock is up but this is mostly optics. Yahoo has yet to ship anything cool or new and their reach is going down. Not up). Yahoo has WAY TOO MUCH FAT still. Losing hundreds if not thousands of employees would be okay. Yahoo needs to reinforce that some people actually do work hard and come to the office – these people have to constantly hear about overpaid employees who don’t come to the office. Nothing to boost your morale more than the employee who never shows up and actually says no to your ideas even though you have never met. Yeah – that shit happens at Yahoo.

So MM is trying to purge, force change and reinforce some sort of work ethic. The rumors you hear about empty parking lots and people not VPN’ing in are true. Trust me folks – you can’t do shit at Yahoo if you are not logged in to the VPN. No email, no code and none of the glorious Yahoo tools like twikis. I think MM did a bold thing and I think it will help. Sure – down the road when Yahoo is doing better I am sure they can look at this issue again.

The main point is I don’t think what Yahoo is purging is the remote work that others talk about and practice. Yes – there could be a few star employees that need to work remote, still produce and are not the problem. I am not sure how MM and team will deal with this people but my guess is this is not the norm or the bulk of remote workers.

I recently signed up for RDRC and was reminded of this post: http://andycroll.com/2013/02/13/remote/

What Andy is doing at Impulse Flyer is not what Yahoo is doing. Andy is building a new company and has a tight, integrated team. So it works. Although he highlights some of the issues that may come down the line – like scaling it with the growth of IF, how to deal with junior employees (engineers or not really) and just the complexities of growing a startup when people are not all sitting together.

I myself have these same issues. At spuul we have some employees remote and I work usually a week or so in Singapore, where spuul HQ is, and then a week or so in Thailand – where my family is. In general I am the remote one most of the time and then when I am in Singapore I try to work like I am always there. It is a tough trade off but my little one, the cutie strapped to my frontside, will only be little once. I didn’t want to miss out on the magic of being around her when she is young.

It is not easy to work sometimes when she can stroll into the office in her walker but at the same time – I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It is also not easy to be in Singapore missing her 4am feeding time. I get a lot done when I am in Singapore and my focus is all about work but I miss my family.

These are the trade offs but fortunately I work with some seasoned founders who know that it is a marathon versus a sprint and that family is #1.

So for me – remote is an amazing lifesaver. For Yahoo, who needs saving, remote might just be too complicated at this stage of a possible, but highly unlikely, turnaround.

Just saw this on pando:

http://pandodaily.com/2013/03/05/how-apple-caused-the-ios-kindle-glitch/

It makes some good points but I think it over complicates it.

I have written before about the app stores – http://www.nokpis.com/2013/02/24/a-tale-of-two-app-stores/

I personally think a broad fix that would make a huge difference is just allowing people that have already shipped an update to easily ship updates. They could have make it a quota system where each app developer gets 6 unchecked updates a year with no hassles. So as needed we could ship fixes or updates without waiting for approval.

If someone ships something bad or breaks the rules then they get this privilege revoked.

Anything to make shipping updates and bug fixes simple and controlled by the dev so that we can keep improving and fixing bugs as needed. It kills me how easy it is to update my google app but at the same time google should have a proper approval process for new apps – the amount of shit in the play store is stunning.

We need changes.

So recently I had my first experience shipping an Android app. It went pretty smooth – actually better than I thought.

In general as someone leading product at a startup – there are only 2 mobile ecosystems to focus on. iOS and Android. I am keeping windoze mobile on the horizon cause I think MSFT will keep dumping money into it and Nokia is tied to it. They will keep at it but for now it is too small. BB, RIM or whatever you want to call them – isn’t going to make it. I have been saying that for some time. Their new phone is not that amazing and the price points are borderline ridiculous. So no, I don’t think their chances have improved much at all. Neither does one of their founders.

Palm is toast. Tizen and Jolla is interesting but at the moment there is no way to take them seriously at all.

So it is Android and iOS for me.

This is not a deep, exhaustive comparison. Just my thoughts from having to dig into both ecosystems each day now.

I am not a developer so I can’t give you the bird’s eye view of writing code for these ecosystems but I have some sense of managing getting something launched, dealing with the payment systems and dealing with admin portals.

App Stores:

Apple – C: It is really a horrid management interface. The mobile tools help but they suck to. The review time is pathetic. Why can’t they throw more bodies at it? Why can’t someone with an approved app with no infractions manage their own updates. If you do and break the rules you are out. This idea of waiting for reviews for every app changes is really silly. The reporting tools are abysmal and the ability to see rankings across the ecosystem is best done with outside tools. In general Apple could build a much better ecosystem for their apps all the way around.

Google – B: So far I like the Play Store better. You can push an app anytime you want. The tools for seeing what is going on is nice as well. It shows you lots of data and I find it easier to dig through it. It is not amazing either but just feels better than Apple.

Discovery:

Apple and Google – F: Both ecosystems fail with discovery in my opinion. Sure Apple acquired chomp but other than a revamped app store I don’t see anything new or interesting. Appsfire is interesting but I have not gotten into the daily habit of using it yet. However I think they are on to something. The problem I have with both ecosystems is that they rely heavily on ratings and comments – it is such a flawed system with people using the comments and rating to lodge complaints or feature requests. Thus totally destroying any notion of the ratings and comments being valuable. I notice google is allowing developers to reply to comments but so far it is not turned on for everyone. I think both companies should overhaul this systems entirely.

The one thing Apple has going for it is they review apps which means there is less shit in the app store – so that means generally the quality of apps is better and decent apps tend to rise to the top. However in the Google store there is just a shit ton of shit. Any app gets in and even apps who pirate crap or are trying to mislead the user get away with murder. So this means quality apps get buried by apps working the system. There are even sophisticated developers using things like mechanical turk to work the comment/rating system to drive app the discovery of their apps.

Plain and simple – discovery is broken IMHO.

Payments:

Apple – B: I give Apple credit for pioneering the way and for allowing users everywhere to easily pay but I think they need to open up a bit more and allow other methods to feed into the system versus just credit cards. Things like carrier billing, cash/voucher systems and so on would help a ton. Their management interface for the money sucks as well. Also Apple is being slightly disingenuous when it comes to not allowing anyone to pay for rentals outside of the iTunes/apple tv system. Maybe they will open this up when they open up the Apple TV but they need to stop protecting their own turf with the silly no rental of media rule.

Google – B: I don’t have enough experience yet but already I would give it a B and depending on how we go with it – maybe an A. You can sell practically anything and the interface for managing it all is pretty good. We shall see how reporting and stuff goes. It would also seem that you can implement other non google payment methods in your android apps. Let’s hope that holds.

All in all both ecosystems are unavoidable. Apple has tons of users who will pay for things and the app store is not the wild, wild west. Google and Android are just too big to ignore but the quality of apps is low and the system is too easily worked over. They are making strides to deal with it by making sure only google+ profiles can be used for commenting, users can say things are spam and eventually they will open up replying to comments by all devs.

I assume the next app ecosystem I will get any experience with is going to be windoze in some form or another.

Read this the other night : http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/02/14/11-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-starting-my-first-startup/

I always try to have the motto that the doers are doing and don’t have time to not be doing. Obviously I don’t mean that all events suck or that one should not seek the community but people do tend to get carried away with eventing versus doing. So I thought this was appropriate:

What you learn at most startup networking events, is the same stuff you can learn online. The only difference is, startup events typically cost money. There are a few networking events that are worth attending, but most aren’t.

Look for attendee lists before you register for conferences or networking events. Make sure there are either potential clients or people who are a lot smarter than you at these events. If you are the one teaching the room on how to run a company, something is off. You can only learn if people smarter than you, are at the event.

If you want to attend good networking events, look for the ones that are intimate and invite only. It’s hard to get into those events, but when you do, it will be worth it. Those are the type of events that will allow you to create new friendships and business partnerships.

Few other ones in there I like:

Lesson #6: It’s never too early to start making money

This one is so true. I think the longer you wait to force a revenue model on users the harder it will be.

Lesson #9: The grass is always greener on the other side

I struggle with this all the time – thinking that where I am right now is not possibly as good as where my buddy is, ex colleague, or that guy I read about in online. It is easy to think that the grass is always greener – usually it is not.

have a good sunday!