Tech Bits

from Jon Chang

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Summer Reading List

Current list:

Startup Nation, Dan Senor

Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore

Stealing MySpace, Julia Angwin

  Here are some good ones I've recently read:

Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi Your Network is Your Net Worth, Porter Gale

The Long Tail, Chris Anderson

Reality Check, Guy Kawasaki

The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick The Search, John Battelle

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"Why START Summit chose NYC," a clip I wrote for AlleyWatch about START Summit NYC

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The Future of Design is User Experience

Most companies I meet have a hard time connecting quality engineering with quality design. This is even true in the tech world. Some products are built on well-coded architecture, yet look like basic WordPress templates. Others are beautifully designed with minimal functionality.

The disparity between these two skill sets is becoming increasingly important to a company’s success. More than ever companies are calling for people who can apply knowledge and creativity in both computer science and design.

Cliff Kuang, Editor of Fast Company’s Co.Design, agrees.

“Issues of design matter now in a way they never have before.”

  At WeStory, WeWork’s quarterly speaker event, Cliff Kuang spoke about the impact designers will make on future industries. He believes the role of designers is changing. They're emerging from a history of marginalizing themselves as professionals who only fix ugly products. Now, designers are also the people a company calls when the product doesn't function well.

This is because design isn't just about aesthetics anymore. It's about the user's experience: the enjoyment users derive when interacting with a product.

When building a product or service, often times the missing key factor is making sure what's built connects with its audience. Kuang believes, "Design is the relationships fostered around core interactions."

He uses one aspect of Amazon's Kindle as an example of great user experience design. Amazon spent billions of dollars to personalize each Kindle to each customer's experience, so a customer would receive a personal greeting when turning on her Kindle for the first time. For instance, mine would say, "Hello, Jon!" This personalized greeting is meant to symbolize the initiation of a dialogue and relationship between the product and its user.

As more and more companies adopt these techniques, the field of user experience design will become increasingly ubiquitous. Within the next ten years the role of Chief Experience Officer will be a prominent part of any major organization.

But, until that day, Kuang says, "We're waiting for common things redone in extraordinary ways."

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Took the pictures; made the poster

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Tech Startups: We Are Made in NY

With NY-made companies such as as Etsy, Foursquare, Tumblr, Vimeo, and Kickstarter, it's hard to acknowledge NYC's growing tech startup scene as anything less than a young powerhouse.

The City of New York is driving the NY tech start development with its We Are Made In NY campaign. Originally just for film and television companies, Made In NY now gives attention to the NY tech world, aka "Silicon Alley." This campaign started last May when the Mayor's Office created an online job board for startups, presented as an interactive map. The campaign is gaining momentum with a brand new website and set of initiatives.

The website provides startups with comprehensive resources, such as where to find funding, subsidized office space, and incubators. It also helps students find tech education, scholarships and fellowships, and jobs. Finding tech education is becoming easier as more facilities open up around the city. For instance, professionals can find computer science training at Codecademy, General Assembly, and FlatIron School. Students can now apply to growing computer science programs at Columbia, NYU, and Cornell. Also, a newer company, Girl Develop It, specifically trains women how to develop software.

If you're looking for a job, learn how to code. Don't have the money? Don't worry. There are plenty of free online resources, so all you need is some time, wifi, and a healthy dose of ambition.

"Between 2005 and 2010, the number of tech-related jobs in New York went up 30% to 120,000, according to the mayor's office." AM Newspaper, Tech keeps on booming in the Big Apple

In a recent press conference, Mayor Bloomberg announced a video campaign for all tech startups in NY. Startups are encouraged to submit 60 second videos about what goes on 'behind the scenes' of their company. Several companies have already submitted videos, but the program is still looking to showcase more of the 900+ NYC-based startups. Vimeo, for instance, showcases all of their projects down to the nitty gritty side-projects. Our Pricing Engine team even submitted a video (shameless plug).

Startups can apply to be part of the "We Are Made in NY" program here.

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Demoing for Beer

Yesterday, WeWork Labs hosted its 2nd demo day of the year, showcasing 6 new companies competing for $300 of credit at the local bar. Oh, and the valuable feedback from potential investors and fellow entrepreneurs was also an incentive to participate.

Here's an overview of the presenting companies and the founders:

Rukkus, the champion of yesterday's demo day, helps users find location-, interest-, and price-based events, based on individual user preferences. For instance, I can learn about upcoming concerts in Bushwick (the crap town where I live) by filtering by date, location, and price - all on the Rukkus dashboard. Users can even learn more about artists by scrolling through an aggregation of their social media activity. Really, just name the type of event and Rukkus will help you find it. They'll also help you find the cheapest tickets on the web. Founder Manick Bhan graduated from Duke with a degree in Neuroscience, taught himself finance and took a job at Goldman Sachs, then taught himself how to code so he could make Rukkus. Needless to say, he's kind of a smart guy.

Bungee lets you anonymously tag anything you own and connect it to your email address and phone, so you can easily have it returned. This process relies on the finder to connect with the loser. Skeptical? I was, too. But co-founder Bryan Davis drove around the country purposely losing valuable, Bungee-tagged belongings. Almost 80% of his valuables were returned. Check out his video case study here.

Tradembark is a social stock idea platform. Jesse Podell created this service to aggregate and curate actionable stock articles from the premier sites on financial websites. Users can vote on articles and track the actual performance of the underlying security and uncover the articles trusted connections are voting on. Jesse is a a former trader, who spent years on Wall Street.

Gravity was by far the most intricate and intriguing company of the night. I would've voted for them if they were a startup. However, Gravity is a fully operational recommendations tools that can be adapted to most any interface. It uses the Interest Graph to semantically understand each user's individual interest and calculates the strength of those attachments over time and returns recommendations. The founders are the same 3 founders of MySpace.

Delve speaks to my own content marketing heart. It's a social news reader for the enterprise and professionals who want the most relevant and influential news in a single, easy to navigate dashboard. Dr. Tom Weingarten has fine-tuned an algorithm that does just that.

Super Stock Jockey is a Facebook add-on, allowing users to play a social stock market trading game. Users can play tournaments against one another for cash prizes.

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WeWork Labs: Where everyone should Beta test

I work in a collaborative workspace called WeWork Labs. It’s kind of like an everlasting summer camp for tech startups. I mean to say the office is filled with nerds who never want to “grow up.”

Myself included…

But there’s nothing wrong with this type of environment. How else is tech innovation fostered? Not in stiff boardrooms. Yeah, we take work breaks to play Foosball, pinball, and Sega Genesis, but we discuss new tech ideas while intensely playing NBA Jam. Having fun and working hard are inherently intertwined in our community.

And because of this unique adaptation of “Work Hard / Play Hard,” WeWork executives decided last October to use its members as Beta testers for a new internally built social media platform. Currently, it’s exclusively made for its members, but the development team has discussed the possibility of eventually opening the platform to the public.

The platform integrates necessary daily business tasks (i.e. reserving conference rooms, general community announcements) with the natural social characteristics of a collaborative work environment.  For instance, the user dashboard is separated into three columns: news feed (like Facebook), reservations and guests, and community updates.

The news feed is populated with user posts, which range from business suggestions/help to gifs of neon cats. Again illustrating the bizarre nexus of productive and playful. I’ve even used the newsfeed to find freelance work for friends, give search marketing advice, and find the latest tech world news.  It’s a useful tool as is, but WeWork’s social media platform has the possibility to do so much more.

Enter WeWork Labs members.

Successful, industry-changing products and services are built when innovative, hard working, and fun individuals work in close quarters. That’s why the WeWork Labs open floor “Pit” is an ideal place to Beta test.

WeWork Labs is mostly an open pit of individual tech companies ranging from 1-5 people. It opened March of 2012 and has since expanded to office spaces in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The basic concept is to provide affordable office space for early stage tech startups. But since its birth, the companies that have rolled through its floors have expanded, broken down, and reformed. And new side projects have been created. For instance, Test Tube Tuesdays came out of a new friendship formed in the Labs open pit.

Because Lab'ers are constantly testing products and making revisions, we understand how to give important, actionable feedback.  In other words, we know how to break things (and rebuild them). These characteristics combined with the amazing amenities provided by WeWork Labs, such as private demo days and influential speakers, make for a fast-paced, rapidly-growing space.

Labs is a living, breathing entity – it’s a beast growing with its inhabitants. If I were testing a product, I’d use us, too.

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A promotional video I made for Pricing Engine. Proud to work for a startup made in NYC!

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Facebook Conversion Tracking: Why advertisers are skeptical and excited

Conversion tracking isn’t anything new to the online advertising world, but Facebook’s trying to shake things up with its own tools. Originally announced in November 2012, last week Facebook finally launched an updated version of its advertising conversion tracking tool – for the second time. The first attempt was a 2010 Beta version, which lasted a year before being shut down and limited to just a few large advertising companies. Advertisers found the beta version too confusing, partly because the customizable conversion pixel tool was hard to use. This new version, however, is much improved (for the most part).

Facebook conversion tracking is a way for advertisers to track clicks on their Facebook ads to interaction on their websites. For instance, a shoe store can track its Facebook ads to sales on its website. Yes, yes this is how all conversion tracking works, but Facebook stands out in two major ways.

“The key difference is that other conversion measurement systems rely on dropping cookies on the users when they see or click on the ad. We understand who the user is regardless of whether they’re logged into Facebook on the app or on the mobile phone.” - David Baser, Facebook Product Manager

In other words, Facebook conversion tracking can tie pings (conversions) to a user’s unique ID instead of needing a cookie ID.

The second way this tracking system stands out from its competition – most notably Google AdWords and Bing Ads – is its use of Optimized CPM (OCPM). This metric measures adcampaign progress differently than traditional measurements, such as Cost-Per-Click, because it automatically adjusts campaign settings according to real-time results. And, according toFacebook Product Marketing Manager Richard Sims, it’s also the most accurate consumer targeting tool.

AdWords veterans cringe at this thought of having less control over their campaigns. Once the campaign is set up with targeted goals, Facebook takes over the bidding process – yet another example of Facebook claiming to have everyone’s best interest in mind. Understandably, advertisers are hesitant to let Facebook run their budgets. However, a couple case studies show significant results attributed to Facebook’s conversion tracking.

Regardless, this is a huge step in the social advertising world. Tracking conversions on Facebook was limited to Likes, Fans, and website analytics that track which visitors landed from Facebook. Also, social media platforms have historically been used primarily as lead generation tools, because social media more often than not catches consumers near the beginning of the buying cycle. Whereas search engines reach consumers later, while users are already searching for products.

Cue Graph Search.

With its release of both a social search engine and conversion tracking within the same week, Facebook is blatantly warning Google and Bing of future competition. In fact, conversion tracking seems to be Facebook’s first step in building a competitor to Google’s suite of products – AdWords, AdSense, Analytics – that allows use of social targeting data instead of search targeting data.

But while Facebook users talk about brand names and products in everyday interactions, Google still has the upper hand. Graph Search may eventually help Facebook even the playing field, but it isn’t currently suitable as a product search tool.

For now, Google is still search advertising king, and Facebook is the social media giant.

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For newcomers to NYC startup networking

After four months in the NYC startup world, I’ve found myself attending almost nightly networking events. All of these events are fruitful in one way or another, some being more beneficial than others. But, as Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson put it,

“At some point you need to admit to yourself that meetups are just excuses to get drunk – it’s time you could spend being productive.”

However, the allure of free alcohol and snacks is hard to pass up, especially when living on a tight budget. Nonetheless, I’m figuring out that finding a work/meetup balance is important. Here are some of my observations about the startup meetup scene, alongside advice to those just joining its activities.

The obvious

Networking is a great way to meet hard working people and learn about innovative ideas. I’m certain some of these folks will end up incredibly successful.

For instance, I recently met Ashley Woodruff, Founder of FashDen. She has the enthusiasm and energy of a serial entrepreneur. I’m excited to see where she goes.

“Networking goes both ways”

More often than not I meet people who are just looking to get something out of me. So phrases I’ve learned deter people from getting to know me include “junior associate,” “23 years old,” and “hipster living in Bushwick.” Just to clarify, I’m not ashamed of any of these parts of my life, nor do I want to talk to people who are unattracted to those qualities. Really, those people are just “douchebags.”

Matt Shampine, Co-Founder of WeWork Labs, wrote an insightful article for Inc. about the importance of community building. He stresses the importance of fostering real, honest relationships – a concept people often overlook. To me, growing with other authentic people is a critical part of career development.

The ‘Karma Boomerang’

Jeremy Kagan, CEO and Co-Founder of Pricing Engine and Prof. at Columbia MBA, frequently and enthusiastically preaches the merits of the Karma Boomerang. It’s the idea that all the good you do by helping others will eventually find its way back. Keep this in mind when networking.

I often lose track of any long-term career plans, but it’s comforting to believe my excitement for helping entrepreneurs build their ideas is naturally shaping my professional life.

“As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.” ― Mary Anne Radmacher