This is a great look at the way a Tesla is built from raw material to completion. The sophistication of the supply and manufacturing process for a car company is pretty freaking astounding...
Bellroy makes the best products...love(d) my wallet from them. Unfortunately, even the best leather doesn't stand up well to puppy attacks. Thinking about getting this passport sleeve next with all the travel I plan on doing soon.
Love Google Now. Just saw the walk/bike stats for the first time today. Very interesting case of a big/established company flipping the script on upstarts. I imagine companies like Runkeeper and Strava aren't too stoked upon seeing this.
"Momentum? Momentum is the next day's starting pitcher." - Earl Weaver
I've been thinking quite a bit about the importance of momentum lately and I think this quote from the late Earl Weaver is brilliant.
All yesterday means is that you have one extra W in the win column or one more L in the loss column. As far as what needs to be done to accomplish today's goals...yesterday doesn't and shouldn't matter.
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I've been spending some time learning the basics of interaction design and user experience. One of the primary things I have come away with is the idea that you are never designing (or doing anything related to a business) in a theoretical vacuum so you need to be sure that the decisions you make include your stakeholders.
I came across this video featuring Aza Raskin, creative lead at Mozilla, while checking out a great, quick UX tutorial called UXApprentice and came away with some very practical lessons.
Design is about selling a dream....to your colleagues, bosses, customers, everyone. You need to position your idea (or prototype or product) in a way that tells a story. How does it make that person's life better?
Christine Tsai, of 500 Startups, recently wrote a post outlining some great ways that people can become involved in the "Startup World". As she mentions, the post is targeted at people that have been around the technology industry for a while and want to try something new and a bit more exciting. Obviously, this leaves out a large swath of people that at the beginning of their careers and working in more traditional industries that would still like to be a part of a cool, emerging company.
I joined Krossover, a New York-based startup, about 7 months ago as Director of Operations after working in Banking for just under two years. After I had about a year under my belt in that position, I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do long-term. At that point, I began looking for ways to get involved with a startup company. Unfortunately, I couldn't code (although I am learning now!) and didn't have any real experience that would be translatable to working at a startup. To overcome this I had to put together and follow a plan that ended up working well for me and could be useful for others as well:
Seek out people who have taken a similar path.
When I was in Chicago, I was constantly looking through the websites of local startups to see if there was anyone on their management teams that I would be able to connect with (same initial profession, same college, etc.). I eventually found an individual working with a very cool company, called FeeFighters, that had started out his career in banking in a similar role. After a cold email, he agreed to meet up for coffee and offered me some relatively common, but extremely useful advice about making decisions based on what is essentially a regret minimization framework.
It can be daunting to try to gain entrance into a community that seems so exclusive and it may be difficult to find someone that has taken the exact same path as you, but with a little digging, you should be able to find someone whose lead you can follow.
Become an expert in something and find companies that are in need of that skill set.
During one of those classic entitled, early-20's bitch sessions where everyone takes turns discussing why their job sucks so bad, I told all of my friends that I wanted to work for a startup. One of my buddies stayed above the fray in the conversation and asked me what skills I actually had that could help a startup. Turns out I didn't really have any.
When I met with the former banker that I discussed before, I was wondering what special skill set he had that allowed him to make the switch. Turns out he didn't really have one either so he decided to learn the ins and outs of online marketing and SEO. He did this by taking unpaid jobs on Craiglist and learning on his own time. The progression certainly wasn't glamorous but the work got him to where he wanted to be.
Be sure to make use of Angellist, Twitter, and the portfolio sections on VC websites to find companies that seem interesting to you and then see what kind of people they are looking for. Ideally, when you pick skill set or expertise to develop, it will be something that you are very interested in. If this is the case, a company in need of your services is one where you should fit in well. In some cases, you may get lucky and run into a company that needs someone with skills you already have but didn't know were in demand. That, fortunately, is what happened to me. Krossover needed someone with an expertise in sports and as a former athlete and sports fanatic, I fit the bill (they also needed me to move to India which, I suppose, is a skill as well).
Offer to help out a company in your "Spare Time"
I put "Spare Time" in quotations because in reality, if you want to make an impact, gain an education and foster solid connections with the company you are helping, it will take up much more than just a few hours every few weeks. It can become almost like a second full-time job and you have to be willing to take on any task! The company I offered to help out was GrowVC, a platform for equity-based crowdfunding. I volunteered to host the company's weekly podcast (among other things), something I had never done and was terrified to try. It ended up allowing me to meet and interview some very influential people and has helped me to connect with some individuals working in startups here in Bangalore. In the process of conducting these interviews, I learned a lot and had some start-up related experience that I could now reference when trying to find a company to work at full time.
Understand the "Startup Mindset"
At a small company, everyone is responsible for offering insight into which direction the company should be taking. That is not usually the case in more traditional industries with more structured hierarchies. There is so much startup-related content out there (some good, most bad) that it can be difficult to sort out what you should actually be reading. Try to stick to just a few primary resources or else you can easily get lost in a fog of information and not retain a thing. Fred Wilson's blog, Andrew Warner's Mixergy interviews, and certain startup-related Quora threads are my favorites. You can also attend conferences in your area if for nothing else than to understand how people talk and what they talk about (as stupid as this may sound, it is important in any industry).
Conference Attendee Protip: Try not to hit every conference in your area and steer clear of the "founders" that you see at every single one. The real founders and difference-makers don't have time to make it all of these things. They are building their companies!
While consuming content (blogs, talks, etc.) is an important part of learning, it is probably more important to create some kind of content on your own. For example, I wrote blog posts about companies I thought were doing cool things - StarStreet, Quickish, and Quora were some that I talked about. Creating content forces you to take an opinion on things and really think through the decisions being made by companies or people you may be discussing. This becomes useful once you finally take the plunge and join (or even start!) a company.
Hopefully these points give you a place to get started. Even in the booming "Startup World" jobs are hard to come by (if you are non-technical) so it will take a lot of effort and time to really execute on the plan that you set for yourself but the reward of working for an exciting company in a challenging position is a great payoff. Good luck!
Have now been back in India for just over a week and the transition has not been particularly smooth - jetlag, combined with baseball withdrawals, is still kicking my ass. Despite this, it is a very interesting time to be in India as the economic and political landscape of the country continues to change rapidly.
For the last decade, the India growth story has been mostly inspiring as the rising tides of the country's businesses and infrastructure were supposed to help in lifting millions out of poverty. In the last few days, reports peg India's recent GDP growth well below expectations while strikes due to outrage over fuel prices (Bharat Bandh) have effectively ground cities to a halt. The country also faces other serious issues that signal a significant deferment of India's 21st century dream.
This article (it appears to be from way back in '06), which I saw first on Hacker News, laments a lack of IT talent brought on more or less by a lack of passion for what is being worked on. The resonant point for me was his discussion of the poor worker treatment and dispiriting working conditions in many of India's large companies (primarily in consulting).
While I can't speak to the the level of actual talent in the country, I have witnessed the ridiculous restrictions placed on young, incoming workers by large firms. It essentially amounts to indentured servitude for the large part of one's early career.
Our company primarily hires young people fresh out of college and often competes with major companies when trying to recruit and retain these people. These competitors offer strong salaries and a prestigious name that students (and their parents) strive for all the way from grade school. Unfortunately, this is coupled with a HUGE deposit that is generally considered a "training expense". I have seen the amount of this deposit go as high as 6 months of one's salary! And once the person begins with the company, he or she is required to stay with the company for 2 or 3 years or risk losing the deposit.
In my first job out of school, our only barrier to leaving was that we would have to repay our initial signing bonus if we took off within one year. I have to imagine it is very difficult to motivate a workforce to create strong products or offer solid service when there are these kinds of restrictions hanging over the heads of such a large part of the skilled workforce.
If the economy continues to slow and the career paths for new employees remains so restricted, I can certainly envision an increase in the political turmoil that has been witnessed in the country recently. One, maybe two, generations of people has grown up with the rosy, up and to the right, Indian growth story that is now being fundamentally challenged from many angles. While I remain bullish on the country as a whole reforms should be a top priority in numerous arenas if India hopes to remain competitive with China and not fall too far behind other emerging behemoths like Brazil and Turkey.
"China has the fastest growing economy in the world. But the American free enterprise system, which allows anyone with a better mouse-trap to compete, is what will ensure that the United States remains the world's greatest superpower of innovation." - Elon Musk
This quote, from SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, comes from a blog post on the SpaceX website explaining how the US can beat China in the ongoing economic arms race. The crux of his argument rests on the above quote. If the US continues to foster innovation by making it easier to start and grow businesses, we have a great chance to beat or at worst continue to compete with every nation that may emerge. If the US does anything to stunt innovation from companies of all sizes (read: Government trying to outsmart itself), we are going to be in trouble.
It is inspiring to learn about and from people like Elon Musk; people who seem dead set on pushing the US (and in turn the world) forward. With the passing of the JOBS bill (not without its detractors, but still) I think we can expect more people to jump and take the risks, albiet on a smaller scale, that people like Musk have.
Related articles
The SpaceX cost record - By Elon Musk (spacex.com)
Video: SpaceX's Elon Musk Talks Space on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (universetoday.com)
Elon Musk of SpaceX on CBS's 60 Minutes (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
Interesting article from a few days ago in the New York Times about the children of US immigrants leaving to find jobs and start companies in different countries. There have been a lot of articles similar to this in the past few years and as someone in my Twitter feed pointed out, they would all benefit and be more powerful if they were to include a bit more hard data. Nonetheless, it is something to keep an eye on and the stories are pretty neat.
It seems like this trend has been inevitable for almost a decade, especially during the pits of the financial crisis. We have been inundated with articles and news reports about the acceleration of the economy in BRIC-like countries and the likely end of the U.S. as the financial superpower. Now it is beginning to look like both extremes may be a little overstated, as the U.S. economy has rebounded stronger than expected (despite recent shakiness) and China and India have started to decelerate a bit.
This may bode well for job seekers in the US but doesn't significantly diminish the prospects for people looking to take an international step in their careers. Regions with developing economies offer so many positive things (along with frustrating obstacles, trivial and otherwise) to young professionals. More responsibility, high degrees of uncertainty, and steep cultural and business learning curves all combine to make the experience enriching if not always easy or fun. With the ability to communicate easily from anywhere and the relatively low cost of travel, now is the perfect time for a person contemplating a move to give an overseas assignment a shot.
With last week's acquisition of Instagram by Facebook and the multitude of "Aquihires" recently in the technology industry, I'm reminded of this Infographic (below) of bank consolidation. As you see, the chart ends with 4 major players having swallowed up all of the little guys.
Could this be the future of the technology sector? A few main players, perhaps Eric Schmidt's 'Gang of Four', utilizing their scale to devour every competitor they come across?
It will be interesting to see what the tipping point is as far as when these companies begin to be looked at by the general public as "enemies". As of now, they all have their detractors and they are still huge multinational corporations but they have somehow managed to avoid the public hatred that so many companies of their size face. That is obviously because they all continue to make really cool shit and offer services that no one has before.
The love will likely subside when the big guys stop innovating internally and have to gobble up the cute and cuddly "indie startups" that consumers love (and don't want to have polluted/ruined by some old, out of touch corporate exec). Maybe that is starting to happen now, maybe it isn't, but I think we all hope it goes better than the wave of banking M&A that has all but ruined that sector.
Cool film by Casey Neistat for Nike's new Fuelband product. He was given a budget to create a commercial for the product and decided to use the money to travel the world for 10 days.
Good example of how the we have the opportunity to shape the opportunities given to us and experience things on our own terms...Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if this were the plan Nike put in front of Neistat when giving him the commercial budget. As a company they are killing it on so many levels - traditional apparel, marketing, and now technology - so they definitely know what it takes to light the Internet on fire some good old virality.
I'm well aware that baseball's regular season officially started last week in Japan...I actually watched all 9 innings of both games.
I'm well aware that baseball has ceased to be the pastime it once was. The reasons are plentiful and not worth getting into in this post.
I'm well aware that the advanced stats revolution has essentially reduced the sport to a PhD level math problem. (I'm on my third time around with the book 'Moneyball' and spend my days refreshing Fangraphs so I'm down with the movement, by the way)
None of these things diminish, for me, the meaning of Opening Day. Baseball is just a sport (and a declining one, at that) but it certainly holds a power that other sports don't. I won't do a disservice to the sport (or waste your time) by trying to articulate the romantic and nostalgic notions it elicits from people that love it. But what other game makes even bad writers like me want to wax poetic about its merits and importance?
Anyways, it's Opening Day and all is right with the world - unless you root for any AL Central teams outside of Detroit!
Thoughts on Howard Lindzon's Thoughts on Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding has (finally!) been in the news a bit lately with the passing of the very important JOBS act. Earlier today, Howard Lindzon posted his thoughts on crowdfunding in a concise and (as always) entertaining post. This came on the heels of a great TWIST discussion on the topic between Jason Calicanis and Naval Ravikant (TWIST should be a staple in any businessperson's media diet by the way).
I've had a strong interest in alternative finance for some time and even ran the podcast for GrowVC for a few months last year (I also did the video voiceover!!!) so it is great to see more of a public discussion forming around the merits of an economy that gives everyone the ability to start or fund a business venture.
Howard is well-qualified to speak on the intersection of finance and social business (along with everything else, I think). Here are a couple great points from the post...
It is Apple, Nike, Starbucks, Intuit, Schwab, Linked In, Facebook, Google, Interactive Brokers, Visa, MasterCard, American Express (yuck), Silicon Valley Bank and a slew of other companies you have never heard of yet that will rule the future. Figure out how to work for them or start a company that gets in their grill!
The companies listed above are transforming the way we view corporations. Nike doesn't just sell shoes anymore. It's a technology company too. Google is doing absolutely everything under the sun (although with middling success outside of search), and even the dreaded card companies are branching into interesting areas (see: AmEx's partnership with Foursquare).
Despite the ever increasing reach of America's corporate tentacles (not always vampire squid tentacles), there has never been a better time to put together a company from scratch. With the media environment as it is, corporate takedowns are cheaper and easier than they ever been and consumers are becoming less likely to put up with the corporate abuses of the past (unless the make sweet shit with retina displays!). This is a point that Howard brings up in his post:
We have an almost perfect storm for startups:
1. Governments are printing money (liquidity)
2. Election Year
3. Social Graph
4. Smart Phones
5. The JOBS Act
The entire post is great and informative but the best quote comes right at the end:
Don’t chase crowdfunding in 2012, but learn how it works and embrace it. It’s not early anymore, but it’s definitely not late.
It is imperative that all people involved in business in 2012 (in corporations, startups, or otherwise) are aware of crowdfunding. It is a large part of our present and an even bigger part of our future. It has the potential to democratize capital like no other movement before it. Just like all "democracies" however, the smartest and most well-informed will be the ones that can exploit the inefficiencies that inevitably emerge in any marketplace.
Finally made it out of Bangalore this weekend for the 1st time since arriving in December. Took a quick trip to Hampi, a historic town in Northern Karnataka with beautiful temples and fascinating rock structures. Did a little biking, some motor cycle riding, tons of hiking and mountain climbing, and a fair share of beer drinking. Extremely laid back place.
Have hundreds of pictures and videos from the trip and included a few images that I like from the trip above. For some reason they are coming out a bit blurry but I have thrown a bunch up more on Facebook.
Was fun getting out of the city for some R&R (if you consider hiking up rocks to mountain top temples R&R) before returning to the city of a million honking horns. Back to work.
This is my favorite thing on the Internet about my favorite weekend of the last year. Nathaniel doesn't write on his tumblr anymore so I felt the need to repost this again. Definitely miss ridiculous weekends like this now that I am away from home but I'm not sure how many more of these weekends I could handle while remaining both alive and gainfully employed. Here is the awesome post:
Getting Stoopid Loose on the 4th:
Once you turn 21… or get a fake ID… or go to college… or convince your parents to go against their better judgement and let you drink underage, certain holidays become much more appealing. These holidays include St. Patricks Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, your Birthday, the Fourth of July, and anything else that is improved by drinking and/or outdoors. This past weekend happened to be the 4th and I happened to make the trip from Detroit to Chicago to see some of my best friends that now live there. I left right after work on Friday (the 1st) and picked up Matt in Kalamazoo. From there we met at Justin, Brett, and Mark’s house and awaited the arrival of Tim. Once the 6 of us were united we decided to rip a few back and start the weekend…
I just gave you the Hangover treatment with regards to my trip details. Guess you’ll have to settle for the slideshow style rundown of the highlights that made this one of the best weekends I can hardly remember. Note: I decided to leave out our names in the various activities that I’m about to mention. That way we can all maintain some form of plausible deniability in case the proverbial shit ever hits the fan and the policeanyone starts asking questions.
Dancing - Lots and lots of dancing. Cover bands are the greatest.
The majority of us were able to convince one of us that our waitresses name was Xiao Ping. She was in fact Asian, but her name was Kelly… or was it Jenn? I honestly can’t remember.
One of us (if you know our group you can easily guess who this may be) picked up hot chicks (lots of hot chicks) then refused to make any moves on them because they were 4’11” - see also: a guidette, see also: dumb, see also: who the f*ck cares Bivens she was gorgeous
Getting educated on how Carlos Marmol could strikeout the entire MLB without his right arm.
Rip Throughs - A great move that Tight Ends use to get off the line in football. It’s truly harmless and involves hardly any contact. One of us decided to practice his rip throughs on the way out of the bar on Friday night. One guy took serious offense to having he and his girlfriend rip through’ed. This guy suddenly wanted to fight the rip througher until he was told by another one of us to, “Walk away” - this statement carries a lot of weight, trust me.
Pop-Ups / Flip Kicks - You know how Rocky, Colt, and TumTum never miss a chance to do that thing where they flip up off our back onto their feet? Well neither do we. We did this for a good 45 minutes on Friday night, and one of us, after pulling off a successful pop-up, managed to put his foot through the wall. (God I’m glad I decided not to use names)
B-Dubs - It’s never a real trip to Chicago without going to BDubs in Lincoln Park. Unfortunately, one of us forgot his ID and credit card at the bar the night before… Rats!
A couple of us got our picture taken with the Miller High Life guy. He was really nice, but he had this publicist who was a real wench. The real question is: The Miller High Life guy has his own publicist?
Group Dinners - I always think these are underrated. No one is ever off-the-wall drunk yet and everyone is shootin’ the shit and breakin’ each others balls. I’m a big fan of the group dinner.
After our group dinner on Saturday, two of us happened upon a young lady that needed help carrying beer to her apartment. Being the fine gentlemen that they are, they happily obliged and escorted this dame up to her apartment where they found a group of people (guys and girls) that were happily drinking and hanging out. Our gentlemen friends then accepted their proposal to stay and drink some of the beer that they so graciously helped carry up 3 flights of stairs. These girls lived right down the road from us, so eventually the remainder of the group joined and we laughed and joked about this semi-humorous happenstance. Finally most of the group left and the original two us that helped with the beer were left there with these strangers, who also happened to be leaving soon. Long story short, these two “gentlemen” were forgotten and left alone in the apartment. So naturally their first inclination was to steal the groceries and liquor for everyone else back at the house (Robin Hood-esque if you ask me). They made out like bandits. (Before you go judging, these chicks had only lived there for one day and didn’t really have anything of importance… unless you count 2 bags of chips, some green tea, twizzlers, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Reese’s Puffs cereal, and Captain Morgan as “of importance” - which we totally do)
JORTS - One of us thought it would be a great idea to cut a pair of jeans into JORTS. This was a big hit everywhere we went, but was especially popular with a fellow JORTS wearer that was standing in line for a bar. This was so popular that this random stranger found it prudent to pull a single testicle out of the zipper of his JORTS and show us. So, not to be outdone, our own JORTS wearing friend takes his own nut out and touches balls with this random stranger - Ball Brothers. Mind you this is on a crowded street in front of hundreds of people. I will say, however that watching this happen live didn’t seem nearly as gay as typing this just did… damn!
Kickin’ Names & Takin’ Girlfriends - On Saturday night our JORTS wearing friend was a big hit with a girl who was with her boyfriend and some of his friends. She reminded me of that Becca chick from Superbad when she get’s drunk and promises Michael Cera the “best blow-J ever”. She really loved us and her boyfriend and his friends really hated us, so we thought it would be a fun game to egg him and every other male in the bar on. For the life of us we could not get one of these guys to start a fight with us. The closest we came was a guy that was in our face, but was intimidated by a simple phrase - you guessed it,“Just walk away”. (I know we sound like real bad-asses, but trust me, the 6 of us combined have been in about 7-10 actual fights in our combined 144 years on this planet)
On Sunday morning one of us was still going strong (26 straight hours strong) with the help of pure adrenaline and an unhealthy number of 5 Hour Energy shots, coffee, and Kid Cudi. At 7:30AM a couple of us joined him to watch Novak Djokovic bend Rafa over the nets at Wimbledon. A few hours later, this champion crashed like his precious Team Rafa campaign and we didn’t see him the rest of the day. Some might say that their grass court prowess was not enough…
Vomiting! - Someone can’t hold their liquor and, after sipping on some of the finest scotch he had ever had with Billy Bob White, puked and passed out on his last night in the Windy City.
Just typing these things takes me back there and reminds me of how fun the weekend was. I missed/omitted a few things, but you get the gist. My friends and I got together on a beautiful summer’s weekend, forgot about our worries, problems, and adult lives, and acted like the children that we all are at heart. These are the things that you take for granted and that come fewer and farther between as you grow older. That is why whenever you get a call or an email from a friend with a subject header like “CHICAGO!” or “VEGAS!” or (in my friends’ case) “Open at Your Own Risque” you better make damn sure that you do everything possible to get some time off work and get your ass there.
Thanks to my 5 friends (plus some) for making my weekend memorable and as always, Thank You Chicagooooo!
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