Category Archives: Technology

The Anti-Social Network

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“Do feelings of deprivation drive entrepreneurs and economies?,” asks Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School. After watching ‘The Social Network‘ one evening this week, I was left with feelings of inspiration and speculation, much to do with the same question.

Speaking at Startup School, Mark Zuckerberg got a laugh out of how accurately his wardrobe was represented in the movie. “It’s interesting what stuff they focused on getting right,” Zuckerberg reflected. More importantly, Zuckerberg took a stab at Hollywood, “They just can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.” I think that’s the key aspect of the discussion. Feelings of deprivation do drive entrepreneurs and economies. Most entrepreneurs build what they need and this dogfooding leads to bigger things. Evidently, economies innovate the most during recessions. Scarcity and necessity are the catalysts of invention. When Michael Arrington asked in his essay, “Are you a Pirate?,” and wrote about the “risk aversion algorithm,” it gave me goosebumps for the same reason. Some of us want to be in the game, not just watching it.

The other aspect of the film that I found intriguing was the palette of Zuckerberg’s character. He doesn’t come across as a likeable person, yet he has friends (albeit few), enemies, a life and some ideas. While Zuck’s character has been shown as cocky, cunning and deceitful (what would you expect, he’s the CEO b**ch), he is also shown to be calm, focused and optimistic. In a way, the Zuck in the movie and the Zuck in real-life, both understand the trap of “cognitive afterimage”, because one of the fascinating things about “building things” is that it lets you see beyond that trap. Entrepreneurship can be a dope and an anti-depressant, at the very same time. It can make you dreamy, sometimes overly optimistic and sometimes deeply stressed. But it all literally spirals into a larger psychological mind-set.

In a study conducted at Harvard Medical School, 27 students were paid to play Tetris (the video game where shapes fall from the top of the screen while the player rotates them to create as many unbroken lines as possible). For days after the experiment, the students couldn’t stop “seeing” and even dreaming about shapes falling from the sky.

“This stems from a very normal physical process that repeated playing triggers in brains,” explained researcher Shawn Achor. The students became stuck in something called a “cognitive afterimage,” where seeing something for an extended period of time actually clouds your vision because this image has (temporarily, anyway) changed the wiring in your brain. “This explains why unhappy people get stuck in negative thinking patterns, both personally and professionally — their brains are searching for more reasons to fail and be miserable.”

“Focusing on the good isn’t just about overcoming our inner grump to see the glass half full,” stated Achor. “It’s about opening our minds to the ideas and opportunities that will help us be more productive, effective and successful at work and in life.”

Like attracts like. Some refer to it as the Law of Attraction, as did the documentary ‘The Secret‘ that I saw sometime back on the recommendation of my sister. Time and again, personally and externally, I’ve found that the anticipation and the process of “building things” is so engrossing and fullfilling that it lets you see beyond the negative thought patterns. Creativity helps in avoiding negativity by means of innate expression, and it helps attracting simplicity and prosperity by means of realistic optimism.

Feelings of deprivation can be constructive or destructive. Some individuals try to focus on the former and some focus on the latter. But in the end, we all belong to the same social network.

[from the film]
Mark Zuckerberg: Your date looks so familiar to me.
Sean Parker: She looks familiar to a lot of people.
Mark Zuckerberg: What do you mean?
Sean Parker: A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants to buy his wife some lingerie but he’s too embarrassed to shop for it at a department store. He comes up with an idea for a high end place that doesn’t make you feel like a pervert. He gets a $40,000 bank loan, borrows another $40,000 from his in-laws, opens a store, and calls it Victoria’s Secret. Makes a half million dollars his first year. He starts a catalog, opens three more stores and after five years he sells the company to Leslie Wexner and the Limited for four million dollars. Happy ending, right? Except two years later, the company’s worth 500 million dollars and Roy Raymond jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. Poor guy just wanted to buy his wife a pair of thigh highs.

The Transparent Toaster Corollary

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Here’s a meme that resounds quite often in the startup world:

Execution is more important than ideas.

Good ideas are only so good in the mind of the beholder, unless proven to be useful or effective through execution. Ideas matter. The execution of those ideas matters more. But, what is execution?

Execution may mean different things to different people. In it’s basic form, execution means:

a carrying into effect or to completion

I believe that execution fundamentally derives from two inter-related facets: achievement and focus.

Achievement comes from continually completing a thing, more than repeatedly starting many things. Initiation is important, but without completion it’s worthless. Having said that, it’s practically impossible for one person to start many things and complete all of them. So, basically, the secret to achievement is to start fewer tasks or projects, and focusing on completing them before starting anything new.

Focus, and more precisely – uni-focus, is related to achievement. It’s an equally important factor in execution.

Let’s look at an example of a toaster. It’s a common gadget in many households, available in many shapes and sizes. Its primary function is to toast bread.

The ‘Back to Basics Egg & Muffin Toaster’ does it all. It has a 4 slice toaster, 2 egg cooker, slots for toasting muffins & bagels and a host of device controls.

On the other hand, the ‘Transparent Toaster’ has a radical design. It’s a novel idea, but it only does one thing. It toasts bread. And it is transparent, so you can see it all happening, thus avoiding the dreaded burned toast. The sad part is that it’s only a concept design. It couldn’t be mass produced due to a lack of heated glass panel technology.

Then there’s the ‘Magimix Vision Toaster’, which is similar to the ‘Transparent Toaster’ concept, only that it is an actual product. It toasts any kind of bread. It has minimal controls, and it is a classic example of uni-focus execution. It does less, yet its streamlined design overshadows the lack of bloat. Most importantly, it’s a finished product with paying customers.

If you look at some of the most popular and widely used Web applications today like Google Search, Facebook, Twitter or even the Google Chrome Web browser, you’ll find a common theme. They are all uni-focused. Their primary function is based on a single point of operation. The Google Search box is where the world starts their search. The Twitter status update box is the epicentre of real-time micro-messaging. The Facebook status update box helps millions of users to express themselves. The Google Chrome Omnibox is another brilliant example of a uni-focused control where you can search and navigate from the same textbox. All of these applications do much more, but 80% of the users only use the primary function on a daily basis.

Execution is about finding the right balance between achievement (the ability to do less, but get more done) and focus (the ability to concentrate and streamline).

How To Build Something People Want?

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The real question is not “how to build” something. There are enough technology experts around us who can build stuff. Capital, technology, processes and standards are only secondary to good product design. The real question then, is “what to build”, or “what to build” better.

It’s a tough question, but an important one for any entrepreneur (aspiring or established) to address early on. Most startups fail because they build something people never wanted in the first place (i.e. it doesn’t really solve a real-life problem or doesn’t add any value to an existing process), or they take too long (often over-engineering) to build something and hence fail to gain early feedback.

Over the past few months, I have observed that a successful (viz. revenue generating at the very least) product should be able to satisfy one (or more) of these four broad scenarios:

1. It directly helps people make money. Such a product would allow the users to monetize their own creations or digital assets. A few good examples of this product category are Google AdSense, Square, Etsy and oDesk.

2. It directly helps people save money. Such a product would allow the users to save money on their current expenditure (personal or business), or at-least help them manage their money better to start with. A few good examples of this product category are Mint and Google Apps.

3. It helps people to collaborate easily. People like to share stuff and stay in sync (across devices), while saving time and effort. That makes collaboration really effective and lucrative. It also makes this the most crowded category of all. Everything from Project Management apps to Social Networking apps to iPhone/iPad apps try to fit in this broad segment. But only a few genuine products survive due to two factors: most products are too bloated to be used efficiently, and secondly the sheer volume of this segment requires ingenuity. A few good examples of this product category are Dropbox, Evernote, Posterous and Basecamp.

4. It helps people customize a physical good or object. People like to stand-out in the physical world, by looking unique or by creating unique things. A few good examples of this product category are Shoes of Prey, Arduino and Blank Label.

These scenarios can be interpreted as statistical buckets. I’m not suggesting that all products follow (or must follow) these scenarios or that these are magical in any way.

On the contrary, I believe that a successful product is ingenious and simple. It should do less, but it should do that better than the rest. It’s not a novel idea, but first and foremost – you should consider building what you want. Keep it small. Build something that you would want to use everyday. Keep it simple. Build something that solves your own problem.

If you enjoy eating your own dog-food, you’ll eventually find others willing to pay you to share your dog-food with them.