#beaconme

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Weekly Beacon Volume 37: Steady, Reliable

original article: https://goo.gl/ym0S9H

Matt’s Take: Change is hard to do. People love doing what they’ve always done and it is hard to convince them otherwise. If an app helps a person increase their productivity by 5%, is that something that truly matters to them? To the quants of the world, the amount of seconds, minutes and hours saved is huge, but to the average person it will matter very little. 

This disconnect exists because 5% over the period of one day will seem very small. We live in a world of immediacy and unless that 5% drastically alters the course of my, your, or anyone else’s day, there is hardly reason to change established habits. 

Mailbox (purchased by Dropbox) ran into this very problem. Their goal was to fundamentally change how people used and interacted with email. They wanted to streamline productivity and simplify actions. What they found is that people are happy with established norms. Why fix what fundamentally isn't broken? In essence, they followed the cliche startup paradigm of creating a solution to a problem that they have greatly exaggerated. People love email and are firmly entrenched in their ways. It is a communication channel from the early days of the internet and it will continue to persist.

Similarly, photo applications are a dime a dozen. Dropbox subversively tried to push users to their system by convincing them to offload photos to Dropbox servers. In theory, a great solution to a big problem, namely hard drive space. They tried to accomplish this feat through their app Carousel. Dropbox also found that they could not get people to abandon old habits.

I summarize the points from the article because it’s something that we run into with Beacon Me. How do we enhance people’s abilities to examine the world around them. People use text, email, and a litany of other ways to solve the problem of what is around me. Yet our goal, our hope has always been to simplify this process. We do not preach a 5% savings in productivity, but rather a glimpse into the richness of life. We want to give you a fuller world view, an ability to discover, to share and to find things to do that you may not know you want to do. Could we dangle the carrot of coupons and groupons and the like? Yes. But what we really want is for people to live, and maybe, you’ll see that we’ve created a platform unlike any that you've seen before.

[beaconme]

Weekly Beacon Volume 36: Don’t get snakebitten

Original Article: http://goo.gl/jm9WWL

Matt’s take: When building your startup, it is easy to find good people to help you get things off of the ground. There are plenty of people out there with adequate skills willing to take your money to bring some semblance of your dream to life. The art of finding great people is far more nuanced. 

Some of the things that you MUST do.

You must trust that the development group, the cofounder, the designer, the investor and whoever else has a hand in the project will be willing to work with you, not just for you. You need someone to challenge your ideas, while also staying true to your vision. We’ve had growing pains in Beacon Me because we’ve spun away from our original design, but we’ve kept our vision and ethos the same. This persistence has allowed us to create a product that we believe in.

You must research and know exactly what you need to bring your product to life. You need to know the language, the nomenclature, the shorthand. You can’t just wing it, or else you’ll find yourself left out in the cold. We may have tried to bluff early on that we knew more than we did, but it took hours upon hours of work to become experts in finding the right people to work with and for us. 

You must know the costs going into it and forecast them accurately. If not, you’ll find yourselves feeding an ever growing balloon that will never pop. We’ve definitely let this one get away from us, but we’ve done a better job of wrangling it. We’ve kept our costs significantly lower than competitors, while in many ways created a superior product. 

Lastly, (my lastly), you must believe in yourself. If you ever show any self doubt or weakness, someone will take advantage of it. When that happens, you open the door for swindlers, grifters, and shysters. We’ve been fortunate enough to not have had this happen, but we’ve been close many times. It’s hardened me, but made me better.

These are only some of my suggestions, but they are a great way of staying away from the slick snake oil salesmen out there.

[beaconme]

Weekly Beacon Volume 35: Please Love Me

Article: https://goo.gl/muv1Er

Matt’s Take: Sometimes the hardest aspect of convincing other people to love your app is convincing yourself that it’s worth fighting for. If you can’t buy in with a whole heart then there’s no reason for doing it in the first place. You need to wake up in the morning with a purpose and if believing in your app, or your company is not the first thing you do in the morning then you need to reevaluate your priorities or realize that this pursuit is not for you. 

Ryan Sheffer, the founder of Momunt, offers an excellent insight into some of the reasons why he feels that their app didn’t generate the success that he was looking for. They had publicity that lesser apps would kill for. A spot on Product Hunt, modest growth metrics, but they were never really taking off. They tried lots of different ways to make growth happen, but it never did. 

His rationale and agreement with Dave Morin that we’ve reached peak app rings true, but it also may not be the only answer. Social media apps are tricky and convincing people to change up their daily habits is never easy. They need unfailing faith from their founders and daily promotion, or else you become an also ran. In the case of other apps, you become a never was. 

It’s easy to say that people don't want new apps. This statement is true. Yet the App Store top charts, and the meer existence of Product Hunt, belie that notion. Rather it seems that with Momunt, like ourselves, if you are unable to fully commit to your brand and idea then you will always be unable to get people to download your app. 

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Weekly Beacon Volume 34: Don’t F**k Up

original article: http://goo.gl/J6EWnI

Matt’s Take: Sh*t happens. It’s part of life and at some points it is inevitable. Yet it does not mean that you cannot be prepared for the times when things go wrong. Bugs, Competitors, Market crashes are among the litany of things that the CEO of a company could wake up to every morning. Stewart Butterfield’s mantra to himself every morning is not one of paranoia, but rather of clarity. He realizes that there is no time to rest on the laurels of a $2.8 Billion valuation. Slack has been fortunate enough to rise from the ashes of Butterfield’s previous gaming company, a blessing and a curse that other companies don't have. On one hand, he’s been given second life and the opportunity to create something truly transformative. On the other, he’s plagued knowing that failure is not only real, but also part of Slack’s story. 

In a way, Beacon Me 3.0 has risen from the ashes of prior Beacon Me’s. We tried out assumptions, broke things, and regrouped. We’ve had our own sets of successes and failures with Beacon Me, and we constantly ask ourselves “What can go wrong?”. Yet it’s not the fear of failure that motivates these questions, it’s the quest for excellence. Anticipating problems, good or bad, shows that a company isn’t afraid of the future. They are preparing themselves for it. It’s what we’ve done and will continue to do. 

Colton’s Take: Stewart, you most certainly have completely F***ed it all up. You probably do something every single day that puts the entire company at risk. However, you also offset those blunders with brilliant decisions, great product, and an amazing team you’ve built around you.  It seems crazy that you were given the runway to make so many mistakes, to have your company fail, utterly, only to birth one of the most successful startups in the last 5 years. It seems crazy, because it is. The boom in technology funding that we have witnessed over the past 3 years is unheard of. More venture capital funding was doled out in the first 3 quarters of 2015 than all of 2014, and the rate seems to be accelerating. Exits are bigger than ever, payouts are enormous, and more and more people want to get in on the game. Some say the bubble is about to burst, while others argue this a step change for the economy as a whole. Either way, what can we learn from Butterfield’s attitude? NEVER FEEL SAFE. Just as quickly as success can come, it can disappear (Theranos). Even for companies with decades of proven success, the market can turn on you in an instant (Volkswagen). Butterfield’s paranoia might seem misplaced to this who think, “With that valuation, this guy is a Billionaire on paper!” That’s exactly what Butterfield realizes, however. He is only a Billionaire on paper, and unless Slack continues to over deliver value to its users and investors, it runs the risk of being replaced in an instant. Kudos to Butterfield for his candor and healthy skepticism amidst a massive wave of success. He’s clearly taking things one day at a time, which is the only way to do it.

[beaconme]

Weekly Beacon Volume 33: I Wanna See You Be Brave

original article: http://goo.gl/0Thx8s

Matt’s Take: Do I ever feel crazy pursuing Beacon Me and chasing after a market that has yet to emerge? Sure. More importantly though, Do I feel like we’ve got something great that’s just ahead of the curve? Absolutely. 

We’ve been working on Beacon Me (in startup terms) forever. We grind daily to figure out how we can create a product that people will enjoy using, and will enhance, not alter, their social experiences. We want to make the process of finding things to do seamless. Users shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to see what’s going on around them. Get in, get out, get living. It’s a mantra we preach and practice with Beacon Me.

Beacon Me is definitely an oddball in the social discovery landscape, but too often we find ourselves on the outside looking in at experiences that we wished we had known about. Why not be able to find experiences that you can actually enjoy first hand? Doesn't sound so crazy anymore to me.

Andrew’s Take: I love this article because I think it really speaks to what I strive for every day at my day job and what we, as a team, strive for at Beacon Me. I work in an engineering job where some of the most successful people around me are people who have taken an existing idea or process and made it better. When we talk about lowering operating overhead and driving up revenues this is great for the status quo. Improved processes yield better results on existing operations and lines of business. It's only when you take the time to think about what things will look like 6-10 years down the line that you find the revolutionary, game-changing ideas that don't just improve the business, they elevate it. 

At Beacon Me, we believe that the realm of experience and the ability to merge application interaction with real-world, physical interaction is the next great frontier in social media and we're putting our money where our mouths are. We're committed to a market that, so far, has yet to truly emerge and that's why we like it. We're playing in a space where we can make an impact and our loyal users are getting us further every day. 

[beaconme]

Weekly Beacon Volume 32: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

Original Article: https://goo.gl/Gbazum

Matt’s Take: This piece highlights pretty much everything we did wrong when starting Beacon Me. We never considered what it meant to have a plan or how long it would take to get to market. We knew that we had an idea that we liked and we were going to take it as far as we could. 

Yet we learned that this “plan” was far from good enough. An app that appeared simple had many points of friction that would slow customers down. Sometimes parts of Beacon Me worked, sometimes they didn't and that’s even before we tried to explain all of the myriad ways Beacon Me would improve your life, short of doing your laundry. 

We then took a step back and cut out a lot of superfluous features of Beacon Me to get us back to our original idea, helping people find and share great experiences. We asked ourselves, “How do we make this happen? How do we make it frictionless for first time and long time users? Why would people want to come back to Beacon Me?” These questions and more were answered in Beacon Me 3.0, but there is still plenty more for us to figure out. We are always improving and reaching for the top, but we aren't pressing forth blindly. We have your guidance and input helping us get there. 

Andrew’s Take: One of the things I think we struggled with early on when creating Beacon Me was a lack of a true MVP. We kept thinking of cool things that the application could do and then adding them in on the spot. This led to a slow, bloated application that did a bunch of things reasonably well but never did anything great. I really sympathize with a lot of what this article mentions about the Everest app. Luckily for us, we aren't burning $90K+ per month, but we've none the less learned some of these early lessons. We've spent much of our time lately trying to get back to basics and do a small amount of things in ways that are truly original, intuitive and purposeful. As long as we continue to have great, active users to help us iterate, we'll have a bright future.

Colton’s Take: The lesson that the founders tell of the rise and fall of Everest is one that we see time and time again. An enterprising group of founders has an idea they continue to build and build on. They hit a sticking point, and try to tack features on in order to push through it, and ultimately they lose sight of why they built the product in the first place. Currently, as I’m spending lots of time studying the best ways to prepare for success in a New Venture while earning my MBA in Entrepreneurship, these lessons are beginning to seem obvious, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s not obvious that, before you build anything at all, you need to get out of the building and test your hypothesis with potential customers or users. What good is the solution you’re building if nobody cares about the problem it solves? It’s not obvious that a beautiful, professional looking experience with no substance is no replacement for a minimalistic, maybe under-designed, but valuable one. It’s not obvious that an MVP is mostly about the first two letters, not the last one (Minimum Viable Product). It’s not obvious that even if you are first to launch your solution, you may not be the one that users gravitate towards. It took Everest two years and a total meltdown to realize that. At Beacon Me, it’s taken us a few builds of our own to realize we have something that is good enough to get out there. Good enough to get into peoples hands, but maybe not good enough to be the final version, yet. That’s why we’re excited to get this new build into your hands, and have you tell us what you REALLY want to see it do. We think we’ve got something great here, but it would be better to hear that from you all.

[beaconme]

Weekly Beacon Volume 31: The Boys are Back

This week we offer our thoughts about our upcoming version 3.0 launch and what we are most excited to offer our users! 

Matt’s Take: It’s been a process finding out what makes people tick, and what drives their daily lives. We’ve found time and again that people don’t need more steps to complicate their lives when there are perfectly good substitutes out there. Keeping this in mind, we reimagined Beacon Me not as a swiss army knife to attempt everything at once, but rather a pair of binoculars to see what’s around you. These activities can range from a walk in the park to a pop up beer garden to a secret EDM show. There’s no commitment to go to these places, but sometimes you need help in finding out that they exist. We will never force our users to sign up, and always will encourage them to get out there and live life to the fullest. Beacon Me 3.0 makes this happen with a completely new approach to “social networking”, it’s social living.

Colton’s Take: I’m most excited for Beacon Me to help users uncover more of their city. 3.0 is all about helping people find what they love to do and connect with people who love doing it.

Andrew's Take:I'm really excited for the new BeaconMe! I think we've created something we can all be proud of. We took your feedback into account, went back to the drawing board, and put together a clean and accessible user experience. We've gotten out of the way and let our users get out there and connect with friends and family in a meaningful way. I can't wait to see how our users embrace the new BeaconMe

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Weekly Beacon Volume 29: Good at Everything, Great at Nothing?

Original Article: https://goo.gl/8hCQH1

This week’s article could not ring more true as Colton begins his MBA journey, Matt gears up to teach another year of Latin and Andrew sets his sights on his own graduate studies. 

Matt’s Take: No one would ever accuse Steve Jobs of being a great engineer. In fact, it’s well known that he was not. Nowadays engineers at Facebook could easily defeat Mark Zuckerberg in a coding contest. Does it mean that these so-called “experts” are/were frauds because they weren't specialists? Absolutely not! 

Rather it’s through their diverse backgrounds that they were able to create a vision and pursue it. Zuckerberg famously said that if he had not gotten into computer science, he would’ve been a Classics professor. His love of the classics helped him focus on simplicity, while also inspiring him to singularly pursue greatness. Similarly, Jobs was inspired by pursuits as diverse as calligraphy and Buddhism. We all know how these interests shaped the ethos of Apple. It is clear that these “liberal studies” shaped and molded two of the greatest minds of our time to think outside of the box. In hindsight, it is possible to see that these men were clearly destined for great things, but at the time it would have been impossible to say that these pedestrian interests would have changed the technological course of history. 

Andrew’s Take: Jack of All Trades has been a dirty word in our culture lately. A friend of mine jokingly said to me the other night that "jobs these days are impossible to get without a masters and, by the time our kids are in the workforce, you won't be able to get a job without a PhD." He was being hyperbolic but that sentiment does feed into our culture of specialists. Graduate school is encouraged and almost mandatory for success in some industries.

This article does a great job of demystifying this issue for the reader. There are plenty of very successful people out there who never even went to college let alone graduate school. But they've prided themselves on sticking their noses where they don't necessarily belong. Steve Jobs got into type faces by taking a calligraphy class. Elon Musk's first success was a video game. These guys went on to build major technology empires. If there is one thing I've learned in my short time in the working world, it's that often times your biggest successes will come from the places you never expected them to come from.