Paul The Wizard

Digital for (Smart) Dummies by Paul Canetti

[paulcanetti]

Why You Are Wrong About Apple Watch Not Being An Insanely Huge Deal

I literally do not understand how people that lived through iPhone and iPad still think the Apple Watch is going to flop…

[paulcanetti]

Why Android Is Such A Wildcard: They Have Nothing To Lose

In light of Apple’s latest earnings report, I began to think about how valuable iOS really is to Apple. For a company that was founded almost 40 years ago, it’s incredible that in only the past 7 years of its existence, iOS now accounts for a staggering majority of Apple’s revenue.

I went through the latest numbers and broke down Apple’s revenue by source. They do not give detailed breakdowns of their iTunes or accessories categories, so I am using a pro-rated percentage of each based on the ratio of iPhone/iPad vs. Mac/iPod. The numbers are most likely higher than I have here, because I am not counting iPod as iOS (even though iPod Touch is running iOS) and I doubt that iTunes/accessories share is actually split as neatly as iOS vs. Mac. It is fair to say in reality they both skew heavily toward iOS. So consider these to be conservative estimates.

By my count, 81% of Apple’s revenue last quarter was iOS-related. And again, I believe that to be a conservative estimate.

81%! Something that did not exist 8 years ago now accounts for 81% of Apple’s revenue. And that percentage is growing over time.

Now compare that to Google’s most recent earnings report.

They are very generic about these, but I suppose Android is part of the 5% labeled “Other”, and in reality it’s actually closer to or literally 0%. Remember, Android is FREE. No revenue attached to it.

Now of course, some portion of Google’s advertising revenue is tied to traffic coming from Android devices, so some percentage of the other 95% is coming from Android devices. I believe it would be unwise to call that Android-specific revenue though, because it is fair to say that if Android didn’t exist, a lot of that Google advertising traffic would stay intact as people are Googling (and viewing network sites) regardless of the device they’re on.

And that’s just the point isn’t it: If Android didn’t exist, it wouldn’t really affect Google’s revenue very much. Or possibly, it wouldn’t affect it at all.

Everyone is always making direct comparisons re: Android vs. iOS. While there are many apples (no pun intended) vs. oranges arguments to be made about software vs. integrated hardware, etc., it’s important to also remember that what these two operating systems represent to their respective owners is very different from a business and cash flow perspective.

If Google takes a bad turn with Android, and all their market share dries up, their revenues stay intact.

If Apple on the other hand falters with iOS, 81% of their revenue would be affected!

That is super scary if you are Apple– you can’t make any sudden movements because you are in jeopardy of sinking almost your entire business. On the flip side most people would argue that generating a lot of revenue from your products is quite desirable.

Google on the other hand can afford to make much more dramatic bets, because the short term risk is much lower.

Of course, longer term, I’d imagine that Android’s success is considered to be quite important to Google’s future success. But if it failed, they would still have plenty of time to figure out a different plan for tomorrow before today’s revenue dried up.

“The greatest enemy is one that has nothing to lose.” -Christopher Paolini

[paulcanetti]

What Everyone is Forgetting About Self-Driving Cars: They Can Talk to Each Other

A thought occurred to me as I was driving this weekend (a rarity since I live in the city and don’t own a car): I have no idea what the other drivers on the road are going to do. I can make assumptions on what they should do, but there’s no way to actually know in advance. That is precisely what makes driving (and being driven) so dangerous. You might be the best driver ever, but if someone else effs up, there’s only so much you can do to control the situation.

With self-driving cars, the other vehicles on the road become a lot more predictable. They will always act the way you would anticipate since they follow a specific set of rules and do not deviate from those. They don’t text while driving, they don’t change the radio station, and they don’t sneeze. (They also don't drink alcohol.) A road with exclusively self-driving vehicles seems like it would be a pretty safe place.

But what if a dog runs out in the street at the last second? The first self-driving car will "see" the dog and slam on the brakes, and then the car behind it will need to “see” the brake lights of the first car, or notice the first car’s change in speed, or use proximity sensors to detect the distance between the cars shrinking, and so on. If any of those sensory perceptions move just a split second too slow, there could still be a collision.

In everything I've read about self-driving cars to date, each has its own independent set of cameras and sensors. But in reality, I'd imagine that all cars will be connected to the Internet and in constant communication. They will have communal dynamic models of the vehicles on the road and what they’re all doing, based on shared sensory perception. The second car won’t just be using its own cameras and sensors; it will have access to the first car's as well.

So when the first car sees the dog and slams on the brakes, the second car will brake at the exact same time. As will the third car, and so on. There will be no delay because they all "see" the dog at the same time. (This is assuming that they don't use Time Warner Cable in which case there will be a major delay.)

Combined with live satellite feeds, live weather updates, smart objects (a.k.a. a 16 wheeler knowing the moment a nail punctures its tire instead of waiting until a human driver manually perceives a shakiness in the already flat tire)– we are going to be incredibly safe in a world of inter-connected robotic vehicles.

Unless of course they become self-aware and drive us all off cliffs. That would suck.

[paulcanetti]

When I left Apple 5 years ago, I didn’t imagine I would end up building a new mobile browser

Five years ago I left my job at Apple. Before you get too worked up, like most people at Apple, I was not working on apps nor was I BFFs with Steve Jobs. I worked at the Fifth Avenue store in NYC, teaching people how to use their computers and, eventually, iPhones. I was there 2006-2009, a pretty insane time to be working at Apple. I got my first grey hair the week the iPhone came out. If you want your 10,000 hours of Malcolm Gladwell time in UX research, I highly recommend working at an Apple Store.

Me hard at work at the Apple Store:

Now I’m the CEO of a startup called MAZ, and today we released a new web browser called Stream Web. I designed it myself and have been working with our team for well over a year building it, and conceptualizing it for way longer. It’s a real, actual browser that you can use instead of Safari or Chrome, but it’s different and better in my absolutely biased opinion.

Just the thought of entering the “browser wars” as a small startup is so preposterous, I can’t even really think about it like that, even though I guess that’s what we’re doing.

I left in February of 2009 not to create a tech startup, but actually to pursue a career in music. My band hit some neat milestones -- 1 million views on YouTube, a song on MTV -- and on the side I was doing consulting and design work, including designing iPhone apps. At the time, there weren’t that many people doing apps in New York. (or in general)

In my music days holding a Moon Man that I did not win: 

  At some point in 2010, the app biz started to take off more than the music, and MAZ was born. We created a publishing platform which now powers over 700 apps across iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire, including ones from publishers like Forbes, USA Today, Condé Nast, The Economist, Inc. Magazine, OK!, and Star.

In our original "2 desks for 3 people" cubicle in a co-working space launching our publishing platform (now you know where the name MAZ came from):

Life has a weird way of steering you in directions that you almost definitely did not and could not anticipate. Like how within a week of leaving Apple, I met an amazing girl that would eventually become my wife. We got married in the middle of the final weeks of closing a $1 million seed round in the fall of 2012. (One day I’ll write a book about why not to do those two things at the same time.)

The coolest wife in the world:

I remember pitching my co-founders Simon and Shikha on the idea of building a web browser a couple of years ago. Like most of my ideas, they thought it was insane; to be fair, it is. My basic argument was that mobile and tablet browsers just looked like shrunken desktop browsers and didn’t take advantage of a touch interface. But what did that have to do with our app publishing business? At the time, nothing.

Back on the app publishing platform side, we were hit with an interesting dilemma: people were used to sharing digital content on the web, but in native apps there are no URLs. So how do you share stuff? We set out to create a solution, which at the time we called Clippings, and it eventually became what we now call Stream. Stream is a pretty simple concept: you tap with two fingers to cut out anything on your screen, like a partial screenshot, and then easily share it across email, social media, SMS, Evernote, and so on. (You can also just save it.) But unlike a normal screenshot, the image serves as a link back to the content. It creates a visual link instead of a dumb metadata-less screenshot. And then the second part of Stream is that you can look back at your Stream (duh) of all the clips you’ve shared or saved, revisiting or resharing if you want. In some of our apps, you can even see a public stream of what everyone from that one app is sharing, creating these sorts of localized social networks.

Forbes Is The First Magazine To Launch Its Own Social Network With "Stream"

Stream has been super successful in our MAZ-powered publishing apps, driving up engagement, referring new downloads, and generally just getting used a ton by the people reading all the publications that we help publish.

Setting up the MAZ office:

So I started to think, what if we did end up building that browser, but instead of just being a better cooler browser, it also had Stream built in? Yes, there are text URLs on the web, but why are we still using them to share? Why are we still doing it the same way we were in the ’90s? Wouldn’t it be better if we could just use our fingers to cut out what we want to share?

And that was the beginning of my obsession: to kill the text URL. It’s ugly, it’s archaic, and we just don’t need it. Why not have an actual preview of real content that serves the same purpose?

But of course, if we were going to build a new browser that was Stream-able, we would have to make the underlying browser itself great enough that someone would really consider switching from their default. (Most likely Safari.)

Over the period of time we’ve worked on this app, we had a lot of soul-searching convos about what a browser really is, the nature of the web on mobile, and other heady topics. (Did I mention I was a philosophy major?) That’s why you won’t find normal browsery stuff in Stream Web. No bookmarks, no history, no back/forward buttons, no address bar at the top, no chrome distracting you while you’re browsing. It’s super minimal. But we also added some awesome new stuff, like gesture-based everything, a new type of tab that we call an overlay that you can activate on top of the tab you’re already on (allowing you to browse two sites at once), and of course Stream.

Stream Web:

Stream Web - A Mobile World from MAZ on Vimeo.

  Will we win the browser wars? I can tell you with pretty much 100% certainty that we will not. But will we turn some heads and hopefully get people thinking about the web in a different way? I hope so. Will people like sharing this way instead of with stupid, boring text? I believe so.

But again, it is insane -- even to me -- that we just released a browser into the market. It just goes to show that life and careers definitely don’t work the way you think they will. At least mine hasn’t. But if you’re open to it, you can end up in some pretty awesome places. And more than anything, if you find the right people to team up with, then your crazy ideas might actually end up turning into real things. That’s truly a feeling I can’t accurately describe, but one I hope everyone gets to experience at some point.

Download Stream Web for free

Me announcing Stream Web on Bloomberg TV this morning [watch]:

[paulcanetti]

In Response To "In iOS 7, The Final Straw For Newsstand"

If you've ever read anything I've written before, you know that I don't like alarmist posts that make sweeping generalizations "apps are bullshit", "the web is dead", and so on.

I read this post by Marko Karppinen, who I've never met, about why Newsstand is OVER!!! Did it get my and the publishing industry's attention? Yes. Is it alarmist? Yes.

Good he got the conversation going at least, and while he raises some good points for sure, others I strongly disagree with. I will reply inline to some of his post:

Apps in the Newsstand section get seven unique behaviors:

The app will be listed in the Newsstand section of the App Store.This is in addition to another section of the publisher’s choosing. For regular apps, a publisher would choose a primary section and a secondary section. Newsstand apps get Newsstand as the primary section and one regular (secondary) section.

His first point is not only spreading misinformation, but it also quickly overlooks the most important advantage to being in the Newsstand: being in the Newsstand!

Yes, Newsstand apps are automatically set to primary category: Newsstand.

They can also select a sub-category within Newsstand like "Fashion & Style" or "News & Politics".

If you are trying to be discovered as a magazine on Newsstand, there are basically three ways that someone would find you.

1. Search for a brand specifically – I agree, in this case, it doesn't really matter if you are in NS or not. (ex: "I'm looking for Vanity Fair")

2. Search by keyword or topic – generally the App Store is terrible at this for any type of app, but again, probably no advantage/disadvantage for NS or non-NS apps. (ex: "I want to read about cars")

3. Look for a magazine section of the store - think like at an airport – obviously being in the Newsstand is vital. (ex: I want to see what magazines are on here")

Look at this screenshot of the Newsstand category of the App Store. How could a magazine expect to get discovered if not playing in this space? (and in each sub-category, there are many more featured slots for lesser know titles)

Both in the App Store and on device, a Newsstand app will be represented by a cover instead of an icon.Unfortunately, this use of covers is purely skeuomorphic in nature: the covers are much too small to actually work. They simply don’t do much to attract reader attention. The upside, if there is one, is that you don’t have to design an app icon.

You do still need to create an app icon for various purposes (like the thumbnail for Spotlight on iOS), but it is rarely seen.

I agree that thumbnails of print magazine covers are represented too small in the Newsstand, but that is the fault of the publishers in my opinion. If you know that your cover is going to be displayed mini-size, make it look good at a small size! The best NS covers are a big photo with the logo of the magazine at the top, and that's about it. It's not skeuomorphic if it is designed specifically for digital. NS icons are actually the only dynamic icons in all of iOS (with the exception of Calendar). Don't we all complain that we want that from every app - to update whenever there is new content?

Newsstand app descriptions can be driven by an Atom feed, so that the description and cover of the latest issue is automatically displayed in the app description.

Highly useful. Most users shopping for magazines want to know about the latest issue, not the theoretical concept of the magazine brand. These constant updates make it feel like you are really selling the latest issue - like a real newsstand - instead of just promoting the brand generically.

That being said, I am not sure that all magazine brands are best-suited by this approach. If you are aiming to become more than an extension of your print product, transitioning more toward a CNN-type experience, then perhaps NS is not the right place for you. All depends on your goals.

In-app subscriptions in Newsstand apps can include free trial periods.Note that Apple’s implementation of free trials is more like a money-back guarantee. The subscriber will need to jump through all the hoops of a real paid subscription, with password entry and multiple “Are you sure” alerts. The only difference is that if they cancel the subscription within the free trial period, they will not be charged.

This criticism is just criticizing the whole concept of free trial subscriptions, even offline.

Free trials are actually a really powerful and important marketing tool for digital magazines. In our experience, conversion rates are way higher (app download --> subscription purchase) for apps that offer free trials vs. those that don't. 

I think Apple should offer this for all apps, not only NS apps, but yes for now it is an advantage of being in NS.

Once downloaded, Newsstand publications are hidden away within the Newstand app.

Totally agree, this is a major downside. Out of sight, out of mind.

In 2012, John Gruber said that Newsstand is a place where apps go to be forgotten. Today the Newsstand app is much worse. The folder-like design in iOS 5 and iOS 6 has been replaced with an opaque app icon. The end result is so horrible that it’s hard to avoid thinking it was done maliciously: if someone was tasked with hiding away a set of unwanted apps, they would be likely to come back with a design that was something very much like the iOS 7 Newsstand.

This scornful paragraph is exaggerated. Even the mini-shelves of NS on iOS 5/6 were completely illegible, so it wasn't much better.

iOS 7 Newsstand is more like Game Center - it takes you to some other place.

In my opinion, Newsstand apps should be placed in a pre-made folder, called Newsstand, that acted just like any other folder, with the user having the ability to bring apps in and out of it. (like if I wanted to put the CNN app in there for some reason)

We think publishers should skip Newsstand and publish their iOS apps as regular non-Newsstand apps instead.

I believe that each publisher should make an informed decisions based on their specific goals and needs.

There is one final reason for this recommendation. If you publish your app outside the Newsstand section, you can always switch to Newsstand later. The opposite is not true.

That definitely is not cool if it is true (I didn't know this).

If I didn't reply here, then that meant I probably agreed with it. But there is more than meets the eye, and a decision as major as this requires real, actual research and consideration. Don't take Marko's word for it, or mine for that matter.

[paulcanetti]

Pixel Envy writes in "Spitballing Apple’s October Event"

Retina iPad Mini: Likely available in the same colours as the iPad Mini, and likely released as a separate product (ie. I don’t anticipate it will replace the non-retina iPad Mini this year).

If they are in fact going to do 2 different models (and not just replace iPad mini with all retina), seems to me they might use the same branding as the iPhone, which also now has 2 lines.

iPad Mini - retina screen, available in black/white/gold (just like 5S)

iPad Mini C - non-retina, available in 5 fun PLASTIC colors (like 5C)

As for pricing, my guess is that iPad mini would stay at current price points (starting $329) and then mini C would start at $229.

iPad mini C is sort of terrible name so I hope it's not actually called that.

I wonder...

[mazdigital-blog]

[paulcanetti]

I remember the exact moment it hit me– we had gathered couches in the office to watch the WWDC Keynote like it was a movie, and as they unveiled the iOS 7 video segment, it became immediately clear: we were going to have to redesign everything.

Like many app designers that day, I was feeling incredibly inspired after that Keynote and immediately got right to work.

We had already been planning on a UI overhaul of the Store section of our apps, and so now I had a really good excuse to do exactly that.

The tricky part was (and always is) that the app I was designing was actually a template for hundreds of apps that use MAZ to publish onto iOS, and so while I wanted to be on the bleeding edge design-wise, it still had to be vanilla enough to look good with all the types of content we help publish.

I'll give away the ending of the story here, but these are our new iOS 7 designs for iPad and iPhone:

Here is a journey through the process:

iOS 5

Version 2.6 of the MAZ Publishing platform marked the last major update of our apps' UI, which was back in February of 2012. We launched v2.6 with the premier of Inc. Magazine for iPad. This marked an important transition as we added a web button and a Twitter button in the Store section of our apps, allowing users to visit websites in the Store. Prior to that users could only purchase/download content to view it - this was the first move toward offering free web-based content inside the apps as well.

(look at the RSS and Twitter icons toward the top right)

iOS 6

A year and a half later, we released MAZ Publishing 3.6, which looked like this:

Same general concept but with some tweaks. There had actually been five updates to our apps between v2.6 and v3.6, culminating in this modern and polished UI, but one clearly built for iOS 6.

Concepts for a New Storefront

Soon after v3.0, which was April 2013, well before iOS 7 was announced, I was already working on some concepts for a brand new Store UI. My basic goals were to: - give a fresh new look to the apps - emphasize new content - give even more access to web content - not stray too far from our current layout so we wouldn't need to re-process all the assets on our servers - make Clippings more prominent (trivia: Clippings was introduced in MAZ Publishing 2.8)

My first design was one which in retrospect is actually pretty iOS 7-y with it's bright colors and white background, even though I didn't know about iOS 7 yet!

I took our "full cover view" and made it the default view, instead of "grid view" which had always been our default previously, so that the newest cover would be the main event when a user launched the app, instead of many small thumbnails with none weighted over the others.

I added a Clippings Button to the right of the cover so that a user could very easily create a clipping of the cover.

I also introduced more social buttons so that the user could load any of that web-based content right inside the Store. I borrowed from our iPhone UI which had a sliding drawer and applied it to iPad.

This was the birth of the "hub" idea which is now a cornerstone of MAZ Publishing - basically that a publisher's app should be much more than the converted print product - it should be a one-stop-shop for all content, including web, social, etc.

I killed content descriptions since the content was big enough to be legible (as opposed to the thumbnails), and most descriptions were redundant with what was already designed into the cover.

Another thing I brought to the new Store was the draggable overlay that we were already using within our content Reader, instead of a full-page web view inside a UITableView as we had previously done for web content accessed through the Store.

Now when a user tapped on one of those buttons along the left, the site would open in a draggable overlay like this:

Initial Concepts for iOS 7

The very day of the WWDC Keynote, after catching a glimpse of iOS 7, I got to work on updating my designs. Ironically, I didn't really think I had that much to do.

First, I changed the fonts and toned down the gradients of the buttons. Then I changed the drawer background color to light grey to make the whole thing feel airier.

I thought I was done!

Of course, a lot of my initial impressions of iOS 7 were incorrect - my buttons were wrong, there should be no separation between nav bar and status bar, and as it turned out, going lighter was the wrong move...

Seeing is Believing

Even though I was still tweaking buttons, colors, and fonts, the new Store UI was actually already well underway with our dev team at the time of the WWDC announcements.

Soon enough, I had a live build to run on my iPad. I thought it was going to blow me away (after all, it was my own design come to life, how could I not love it?), but the truth is, I didn't really like it as much as I thought I would.

It didn't really make sense– I had really seen it a million times as I worked on it, had previewed it on the actual devices (Skala Preview is the greatest invention in the world) and simulated interaction (I use Keynote for all my prototypes and even most of my final design work - builds/transitions = fast prototyping), but using the actual real app is just different. And it wasn't good enough.

Not to mention, my initial attempts at updating to match iOS 7 weren't actually right. Once I had time to read through the new iOS Human Interface Guidelines and actually use iOS 7 firsthand, I realized that there was a lot more work to be done.

Buttons Without Buttons

For the purchase/preview/download buttons, I toyed with various arrangements, but came to find that the new iOS 7 button-less button (i.e. only text) would work well. I made the colors of the text to match the colors our users were accustomed to. Green to buy, blue to read, and so on.

I also used the fact that we were dealing with pure text to add some more descriptive language to the buttons.

I couldn't really do all the buttons as text-only because they would all be competing for attention. So for the subscription buttons, I added a simple thin border, and slightly emphasized free trials with a lighter blue.

Back to Black

Okay, well not black, but dark blue. One problem when I was using the live build of the new Store was that the covers were being drowned out by the pure whiteness of the background. Sort of like in the new Photos app for iOS 7, your eyes don't know where to focus when the pics are against the white, and really pop against the black (especially when using a black device where the black screen/black hardware border is ambiguous).

Here is a version of the UI that is very close to the final version, in light grey and in dark blue.

See how much more the cover pops out on to the dark background? Our v3.6 design for iOS 6 had a subtle dark blue gradient, and so I decided to backtrack to that palette, but without a gradient.

I removed all the drop shadows, even on iPhone behind the drawer. We also added some gesture based navigation, like swiping back to the Store from the Reader instead of needing to tap the back button.

For the navigation bar icons, I made some modifications to our buttons to make them a bit larger, more geometric - I made them solid white with no drop shadows, and generally made them look cleaner.

Similarly, for the interactive buttons inside the content, we flattened all of them and made them feel lighter.

Here are a bunch of other side-by-side comparisons between our iOS 6 iPhone design and iOS 7 (two different apps but you get the idea).

So that's the story! It was a long process, but I believe we landed on the right final product. Submitting those hundreds of app updates was no fun, but that is a story for another post another time...

To send you off, here is a classy animated GIF of the various iterations of our iOS 7 design. I recommend listening to a Justin Bieber song while you watch.

Paul Canetti is one of the founders and CEO as well as lead UX/UI designer at MAZ. He tweets about publishing, design, and media at @paulcanetti and teaches at General Assembly in physical reality.

[paulcanetti]

Highly biased but I'm really loving the new @inc design for iOS 7 #clippings

[mazdigital-blog]

Apple’s big reveal of the iPhone 5c on Tuesday has market gurus and trend pundits fiercely debating the company’s fate abroad. Everyone can agree that the plastic, price-reduced model of the iconic phone is Apple’s first real bid for Asia, a rapidly expanding market where Android giants like...

[paulcanetti]

Apparently I launched my first Tumblr 5 years ago: http://paulsplace.tumblr.com/

[paulcanetti]

The News Feed keeps getting spammier. This is the problem with adding a business model after the fact... Magazines had such a great run because it was established early on with consumers that there would be ads. (AND they charge for the content to boot!) It's all about setting the expectation correctly and then playing within those parameters. "Facebook’s future growth potential as a business hinges on its ability to strike the right balanace between revenue from advertising and the quality of user experience."

[paulcanetti]

30 Under 30! Read here!

[paulcanetti]

My interview with online magazine "Speak Without Interruption". Reposting here:

Behind The Scenes – Paul Canetti – On the Birth of MAZ DIGITAL Inc. by Jorge Paez

Paul Canetti has been and done many things over the last few years. He’s been an Apple one-to-one trainer, lead singer and guitarist for the New York City based Love and Logic rock band, and now founder and CEO for the newest and fastest developing brand in the digital publishing industry, MAZ Digital.

So, for this edition of Today’s Rising Stars, I thought I’d ask Paul to share some of the wisdom he’s learned since the start of MAZ.

Jorge: OK, so first let’s talk about business and start Up related things. How did you come up with the idea for Maz Digital?

Paul: I was doing freelance app development, and when the iPad was announced, there were a lot of inquiries about creating custom iPad apps for publishers. I realized quickly that building custom apps was not the right solution. It would be much too expensive and labor intensive. So instead, we set out to create a self-service platform that publishers could use to produce their own apps.

Jorge: So the first thing you realized was that you had a market, and so you wanted to provide customers with what they were asking for. Why was it first called MagAppZine and why did you change the name?

Paul: At the beginning, we really were targeting exclusively magazines, but as we started to work with other types of publishers – books, catalogs, enterprise, websites, digital-only, etc. – the name didn’t really work any more, so we changed it to MAZ, an acronym which we had always used internally.

Jorge: Right, that makes sense. What about money though? What did you do for financing? Where did you start and what resources did you find along the way?

Paul: We started with friends and family. That really got us off the ground. Then we found some angel investors that put in some seed capital, and eventually closed a proper round led by a venture capital firm called Expansion VC. It is very hard to raise money! It took a full year and hundreds of meetings with investors. It’s really about finding the right investors that believe in your vision and your team.

Jorge: So you just mentioned how investors have to “buy” into your vision or product, which is a vital key for getting customers as well. When it comes to investors though, what do you think defines a good business plan? What are the keys to create a vision that investors will buy into at the start up stage?

Paul: the best weapon is actual customers. The second best weapon is an actual product. A business plan is good too – you need to prove that your model will work at scale. But that rests heavily on whether it will work at all, so nothing proves that better than real life traction.

Jorge: It makes sense. If investors see that you have customers it means you’re receiving money, which is one of the keys for investors over the long run, because they want to get a higher return then what they invested. OK, so let’s talk about the internal stuff now. What holds a startup together? What do you think is the core attribute that maintains company loyalty?

Paul: It’s the dedication to creating something bigger than yourself. It’s understanding that what you are really building is the company itself. Products will come and go, users will come and go, but the company is what remains.

Jorge: Right, because that’s the engine behind the brand, the reason for customers to buy products in the first place. So what about networking? What did you do as far as networking in the beginning?

Paul: I went to a lot of networking events, basically anything that I could get invited to or found out about. I said yes to everything and just mingled like crazy. Over time you start to meet people that know other people you’ve already met, and that’s how you start to create a network. It’s being the cross-reference point for various other people.

A lot of our biggest customers came from networking, and not only professional events! Meet someone at a party, exchange business cards, meet up for a coffee, get introduced to their cousin who works with someone in the industry, get an email intro, get a drink with them, and little by little you make your way to whoever it is you actually want to talk to.

Jorge: So you mingled like crazy–that means face to face conversations. But with the rising influence of social media, what role did face-to-face networking play in the development of MAZ overall and what about all the social media networks? I’m guessing each side contributed a lot, right?

Paul: Face-to-face networking played a huge role and continues to play a huge role. We are in NY, and a lot of publishers are in NY, so we always try to go face-to-face when possible. Same with investors. There is some power in saying, “We’re right down the street, let’s get together in person!” It makes it much more real.

But really the key to my networking was going to meet people for coffee. I have had more business coffees than I ever thought humanly possible. Have a coffee with someone once, and you’re friends forever. A year from now, when you need an intro, you can email that person because you had coffee once.

Social media was important as well. We met our third co-founder, Shikha, on LinkedIn. She lives in India, so it would have been pretty hard to have bumped into each other face-to-face. Social media is such an insanely powerful tool in that it makes the world very small. It’s also great after you have met someone in real life, to follow them on social media, and so even though you may not be communicating directly, you are learning about them and staying up-to-date. Very powerful.

Jorge: So, let’s move on to marketing now. What is your general marketing strategy?

Paul: To date, it’s been mostly about word of mouth and referrals. The tech and publishing press has also been very kind to us which is how we get a lot of our clients. This year, we are looking at creating a more aggressive marketing strategy, but we are just beginning. We’re so lucky to have made it this far without any real marketing.

Jorge: What about social media in marketing terms? What, if any, is your social networking strategy?

Paul: We use it to stay in touch, but do not do a lot of outreach this way. I’d like to explore social media as a way to actually meet potential clients. There are a lot of barriers that are already broken down for you, especially on a public-facing social network like Twitter.

Jorge: Well said. I have seen this a couple of times myself as the former producer for several podcasts in which I got to interact with people who I wouldn’t have met otherwise, mainly from the UK. Its really good what social media can do if you use it properly.

So what about readers who are looking over this looking for advice from someone who’s already well on their way? What would be your advice to someone who wants to start their own business? What books, software, conferences, etc., would you recommend to this person?

Paul: Make sure you really love whatever it is you’re going to be doing, because if you don’t love it, you’re going to have a terrible time. No one is prepared for how life-consuming owning a business is. When you work for someone else, you do your job and the rest is their problem. When you have your own business, you do your work, but then all the rest is your problem too. It’s a lot to take on, and as you grow, it only becomes more overwhelming.

But if you love it, then it’s like being overwhelmed with the thing you love, so that’s pretty great. Books, conferences, blogs, and so on will only teach you and show you so much. The real key is to get your nose down in the dirt and do whatever it is you are setting out to do.

If you are doing it right, you will not have time to do anything else except build.

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, but if you’ve got the bug, and you’re willing to put in the work, it is incredibly rewarding! I wake up every day and decide my own destiny. That is worth a lot.

[mazdigital-blog]

The TV appearances continue with Paul being interviewed on CBC all about MAZ. Start watching around 13:30. Watch now!

[paulcanetti]

Temporarily ignoring that this is the shittiest website ever, the new Samsung S4 does have some cool new features like having a hover state and gesturing without touching the screen.

It also knows to pause your video when you look up for a second.

I wonder how well it really works. Can't tell because this website has no videos.

[mazdigital-blog]

MAZ on Bloomberg TV

[paulcanetti]

Sooooo yesterday I was interviewed on Bloomberg TV talking about Samsung vs. Apple.

My first time on TV (live TV!!). Pretty wild.

[paulcanetti]

In case you missed it, here is my last MAZ Webinar, 2013 Digital Publishing Trends.