Business

The key to the business pitch – that can’t ever be said

by Jason on May 11, 2011 · 0 comments

I’ve noticed a trend in the business pitch (yes, I’m a Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den addict, er, enthusiast) wherein people never use the most obvious analogy.

In Hollywood, or at least in movies about Hollywood, which I’m sure are 100% accurate portrayals of the culture, there’s this thing where movies are pitched as a combination or variation of previous films – there’s a good (and brief) summary of the pitch formula on everything2 (which has a great justification for short pitches in general: “forty million people were tuning in to watch TV movies on any given night, based on one or two sentences that were written in TV Guide that boiled down the entire plot.”)

In the business pitch, it seems like comparing yourself to anything that’s ever been done before is certain death, or at least I don’t see it on the TV shows. Maybe there’s a copyright rule that prevents it, and that’s why, for example, TeamBuy couldn’t say “we’re making a Groupon clone” when they were on Dragon’s Den (or it’s possible that GroupOn wasn’t big enough to be on the radar at the time of shooting.)

I think it goes beyond business pitch shows though – GameFly lets you rent video games by mail, and you can keep them as long as you want, and when you mail one back you get another one from your list. Yes, it’s Netflix for video games. But they never say that in their ads, including the long descriptions of the service given out in the Revision 3 show sponsor announcements.

I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but it looks like, for business, that you have to look original but at the same time do everything you can to implant the other brand’s name in your potential investor or customer’s head. Nobody wants to support a copycat, but everyone wants what the big guy’s got.

Waiting with Wow

by Jason on March 6, 2011 · 0 comments

While I’ve been finding that the Kindle’s instant delivery so I can start right away and the convenience of simply keeping my place has made reading books actually possible again, some materials aren’t available yet, so I ordered a few physical books, made of paper and everything, on Wednesday.

Estimated ship time: 10-14 days.

Got ‘em Friday.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but in From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War (yep, on Kindle,) there’s an anecdote about a cake mix failing because, as it turned out, just adding water wasn’t enough “work” for housewives (the dominant customer at the time) to feel like they were making something of value. Reformulating the recipe so an egg had to be cracked increased repeat sales dramatically. Ditto an ointment for cuts and scratches, which needed alcohol added because medicine should sting.

Mixed with this, there’s a trend toward differentiation through exceptional service (witness Zappos, which, oh hey, Amazon now owns,) and I almost suspect that Amazon’s fudging the numbers a bit. In fact, it’s quite possible that they invented the Kindle so people could get used to instant delivery, and any day now you’ll be able to get any book delivered within hours of ordering it. Just you wait; it’ll be like pizza.

When employees or departments set purposely low goals so they can smash through them and earn big bonuses, there’s something not quite right about it, but when a publicly traded company does it, investors love them for it.

And now there’s Apple. I think Steve Jobs’ health is fine, but if he didn’t take a leave, nobody would have believed that the iPad 2 is coming out this month. I reckon the iPad 3, 4, and 5 are already in a vault somewhere, just waiting for our perception of an acceptable time for innovation to catch up.

Light-up cereal boxes

by Jason on January 19, 2011 · 0 comments

I saw this in a CES coverage post the other day: light-up cereal boxes. Basically there’s some kind of printable electronics in the box paired with induction technology delivering power from the shelf:

It’s from Fulton Innovation (more info on what they do from Engadget) and it’s admittedly the least useful aspect of their tech relative to everything else they’ve got going on but that usually means it’ll get picked up the fastest (is there a Law for that phenomenon? Can I have it then?)

Lights on the shelf don’t interest me that much, though the cereal aisle is already plenty colourful and something like this could actually turn it into a replica of Times Square… I like the idea of “hiding” messages in the boxes though for reveals elsewhere in the store – like you’d take the box from the shelf and bring it somewhere else to see the message, and then since it’s in your hand anyway, maybe you’ll buy it. The grocery store might be the wrong market for this though – too many people leave stuff everywhere as it is, so it’d be more likely that there’d be a huge pile of boxes at the scanning station.

It might be an interesting gimmick for coupons – lots of stores do scratch tickets at checkout for an overall discount, but what if it was embedded directly on the product and the reveal came when the item was scanned, not on the register but right on the packaging? Sure, you’d probably want different bar codes to aid in redemption, and people would just learn to look for the cheapest ones, but hear me out – bar codes that only show up under induction!

Anyway, there’s something there, if not in the store then maybe outside, or in your own home. Fulton is making stuff that can adapt existing kitchens, but I already have an induction cooktop that does great things but I’m not normally using all 4 burners, and I was fine with that until now but all of a sudden it feels wasteful. What else can I set on those elements to entertain or inform myself while I cook?

Canadian government to appeal web accessibility ruling – “do as we say, not as we do”

by Jason on January 12, 2011 · 0 comments

The Canadian government was recently ordered by a judge to make their websites accessible to the visually impaired, which surprised the hell out of me, because so many of their websites and programs are so painful to use, in my opinion, that I figured that they had to be that way to comply with someone’s misunderstanding of online accessibility.

Of course, I’m not terribly surprised that they’re appealing the ruling, though I’m disappointed in the potential precedent they might set by arguing that there are other ways to get at the information without using the internet.

To be clear, it’s 100% possible to make modern, efficient, and even attractive websites that comply with accessibility guidelines for the visually (and otherwise) impaired, especially for government sites, which aren’t exactly pinnacles of web 2.0 or gaming.

The thing of it is, if you’re applying for a federal grant that involves online work, they make accessibility mandatory. That’s a requirements doc I pulled from a random government program (Heritage Canada in this case) but I’ve seen it before in client work proposals. It doesn’t explicitly say accessibility, but when it says things like “All core website content and functionality must be accessible in any browser, although its presentation may vary… all users, regardless of their browser, must have access to the site’s basic content and functionality,” well, that’s kind of what this lawsuit was about…

It’s always kind of amusing to see companies and organizations get hit with their own rules, like when Bell Canada got nailed for violating the do not call list that they maintain or record labels being charged with piracy, but as I said earlier, I hope this appeal will get squashed, or better yet, never get filed. Yes, I realize that it’s my tax dollars at stake, but it’s also a significant beachhead in the online space that needs to be protected.

Photo by Christian Heilmann.

Code thieves and the people who hire them

by Jason on December 15, 2010 · 0 comments

I saw in the news that there’ve been two cases lately of programmers stealing source code on the way out the door from their employers, presumably to use at their next job. In both cases the code was for financial companies’ high-speed trading systems.

Let’s acknowledge that high-speed trading systems are more complicated than, say, a content management system. I hope they are anyway, though recent market activity makes me doubt that sometimes. Anyway, the algorithms are complicated, probably convoluted, hopefully rigorously tested, and they contain key competitive information that other companies would probably want to take a look at. It’s valuable stuff.

That said, if a programmer doesn’t know how his systems work, he’s probably not worth the $1.13 million salary the new company was offering him (note to self: I’m in the wrong market, clearly.) Let’s assume that the new company wasn’t simply out to buy a copy of a competitor’s source code – they obviously wanted someone with experience in these matters, and knew they’d be getting some insider knowledge in the bargain whether it was ever talked about or not, but I’m willing to assume they knew they were hiring an expert in a certain subject area.

Of course, if you’re an expert, you probably don’t need to copy source code.

Here’s the thing: a good programmer is always thinking about how he’d do things better if he had a chance to do it again. A good programmer also knows how to evaluate build versus buy, and can resist the lure of not invented here system, but ultimately if you’re paying someone a premium for what’s in their head, it’s what’s in their head that you’re paying for. Yes, that’s circular, but it’s not about what notes or code they can swipe on the way out, and if your business needs that information to stay competitive, there’s a problem.

I’m not advocating open-sourcing competitive assets here, but the reality is that, for most businesses, most of the value in keeping your code secret is to create a (mild) barrier to entry for competitors.

I realize this argument would be easier to make if the code was for something where a few less dollars were involved and the competition wasn’t so fierce, and there are probably people reading who can make a case for industrial espionage at that level, but speaking as a former developer, assuming you’re going from one company to another who both have successful systems already in place (so we’re not talking about ramp-up costs,) the value of that code (assuming it’s not what you’re actually being paid to bring over) is a lot less than you realize, and if it’s not, you need to rethink your salary expectations.

iOS sightings: the iPad as PowerPoint killer

by Jason on December 10, 2010 · 0 comments

Not to get repetitive, but if I don’t monitor these things I won’t be able to tell if I just think I’m seeing more of them because I wrote about them (like that thing where you buy a car and then all you see is that model – and colour – on the road,) or if it’s an actual trend (which I suspect it is, because duh, Apple is so cool.)

Medical device firms are giving iPads to their reps, claiming it’s a more engaging way to pull out sales data for prospects that beats out sheets of paper or waiting for a laptop to start up to run a deck.

It’s not clear in the article how many sales presentations are custom apps and how many are simply Keynote presentations. It’s possible that some are using special sections of the company website, which would allow for quick distribution but then you’ve got latency and possible network outages. I know I’ve seen a few sales presentation apps in the store (not tools to make presentations, actual presentations,) but one would think that these things would be best distributed internally to avoid competition. But hey, what do I know.

I’m also curious what the going rates are for custom-built sales presentations for companies going the app route. We’re at a weird nexus point in time here, where development costs are still high (for good development, anyway,) but you could literally (badly) photograph a pile of poop and show that on the iPad and prospects would still oooh and aaah over the device, and probably buy whatever the poop’s covering (or the poop itself. Note to self, contact fertilizer companies for sales pitch.)

The other angle would be the divide between good salespeople and good sales tools. I’d wager that good salespeople could compete against poor salespeople with an iPad, but as a retention policy, companies would be well off to equip their people with every tool they want. Closing rates might not justify the deployment and maintenance costs in themselves, but the HR savings might make it work.

iOS sightings: the future of food ordering

by Jason on December 8, 2010 · 0 comments

Following up on my last post about the iPod (and by that I mean all iOS devices) being an “anything device,” New York’s JFK and LaGuardia airports now feature iPad-based food ordering systems with a custom menu application. The food gets delivered to you or something, but you know what? I don’t care. If I’m going through the airport and I see a chance to use an iPad, I’m much more likely to approach than if there was the friendliest order counter you’ve ever seen. People love iOS devices, even if they don’t know what they do.

Granted, a few years back I thought this would be done with Microsoft’s Surface, but $500 (or less) portable iOS devices generally win out over $15,000 boxes the size of a desk (do Surface units still cost that much? I haven’t heard any updates in a while.)

iPod: not a tricorder, but an “anything device”

by Jason on December 6, 2010 · 1 comment

Tricorder (noun): a fantastic futuristic device that Apple's turned into the equivalent of the 1980's brick cell phone

Just saw that Gap is starting to pilot Apple’s iPod-based point of sale system in some of their Old Navy stores. I saw this coming, which isn’t to say I’m a genius, since it’s pretty obvious, but it’s really exciting to see this happening.

In a past life, I built online event registration systems (a.k.a. buy tickets online,) and we had to use expensive handheld scanners to make check-in work at the door. The technology’s ready for custom (or generic, really) apps that can do this on $250 hardware (there was a custom app on the old scanners, so assume the coding cost is the same,) and more specifically, hardware that has a use beyond the event, which might solve a lot of the deployment challenges for one-off venues.

The iPod touch and iPhone family of devices can be compared to the Star Trek tricorders, but I think that’s too limiting. Granted, the Star Trek universe didn’t have a lot of retail stores, but how many people thought of commerce when they saw a tricorder on TV? They’re measuring devices, basically, and the iPod is much more.

But as I alluded to earlier, the most exciting part, to me, is the low price point. We’re going to see these devices in a lot of specialized roles, possibly with add-on hardware but mostly leveraging the onboard electronics and the iOS SDK. Putting aside the incredible bonus that these devices are sexy and consumer-engaging, the commodity nature of the things (need more? Go to Best Buy!) makes maintenance a breeze, and every potential customer knows what they are.

We’re going to see a lot more of these plays, from a lot more companies.

Tasti D-Lite extends social media to the point of sale

by Jason on February 26, 2010 · 5 comments

It doesn’t appear to be available online yet, but the latest issue of Inc has a piece on how to get people on Twitter to follow your business. One of the companies profiled was Tasti D-Lite, which sells, I don’t know, desserts or something. OK, I do know. In the course of writing this post I’ve learned nearly everything there is to know about the company, because fact checking is awesome. But that doesn’t matter right now.

What matters is that they spent $10K to upgrade their point-of-sale system to incorporate Twitter and other social networks into their loyalty program.

Based on the article, this was going to be a different kind of post. See if you can guess why:

“To get points for tweeting, a customer submits his Twitter username and password. Then every time he buys something at a store, he swipes a loyalty card at the register. Tasti D-Lite’s point-of-sale system automatically logs in to his Twitter account and sends a tweet informing his followers of the purchase.”

Thankfully, it looks (from the description anyway) that they’re using Twitter’s OAuth integration instead of actually collecting usernames and passwords, so I don’t have to write an article called something like “security schmecurity – people will do anything for ice cream.”

Instead, we’re starting to see early examples of physical/virtual integration, and it’s kind of exciting, if not early (a Twitter search today for Tasti D-Lite suggests that well under a dozen people participated in the past week.)

Lately I’m of a mind that Facebook got people online, Twitter got them more comfortable with telling the whole world a little bit about themselves, and FourSquare made it OK to track their every movement. The interesting part is that people new to these services find themselves mentally blocked for updates, so the ability to automatically say they’ve bought ice cream is actually a potential value-add as opposed to a minor sellout of their individual identities – it’s really no different from “I’m at Starbucks.”

At the moment, of course, the Facebook – Twitter – FourSquare – Tasti D-Lite (et. al.) funnel is pretty narrow. For it to grow there’s going to have to be large scale investment in point-of-sale systems, and I can only hope that someone will step in and make something that’s open and extensible to make room for the next generation of players instead of yet another exclusivity play. Credit card terminal makers, are you paying attention?

Fordlandia: showing us how incremental the internet age really is

by Jason on January 24, 2010 · 0 comments

I picked up Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (affiliate link) at the local library both because it was listed as a top ten business book of 2009 on some list somewhere and because the premise seemed so bizarre: Henry Ford once owned a chunk of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of Delaware and attempted to build a rubber plantation there!

As it turned out, the plantation story was fascinating enough on its own, but I was blown away even further by what was basically the background material for the story, which talked about the sheer impact that Ford had on the way things worked in the beginning of the 20th century.

The industrial revolution on its own was pretty huge, but most of what I knew about it was from the brief talk Clay Shirky gave about the use of gin as a universal coping mechanism to handle the sudden influx of free time that city workers found themselves with.

Ford not only brought a new means of production to the world, but he seemed to recognize that workers were as much a part of the factory as the thousands of tools he’d built to fashion the cars, and he took extraordinary steps to make sure the workers were in, well, good working order as well.

This not only included higher than usual wages ($5 a day!) but he also had a whole department that visited employees and their families in their homes to make sure they were spending their money wisely and learning basic life skills like keeping flies off the food.

There’s an incredibly fine line between fascism and Ford’s style of capitalism, but some of his experiments and theories were unbelievably audacious. Forget factories; he’d build whole towns in the most extreme cases of vertically integrated manufacturing I’ve heard of to date. For example, cars had wooden floors, so Ford harvested and milled lumber. Cars were metal? Ford had foundries. Oh, and this was all done in the same factory at River Rouge.

I can’t express the degree of change that Ford tried to and in many cases managed to implement on society that go far beyond the assembly line – not due to length or time restrictions, but simply because I don’t understand them fully and the book’s been retured – but I’m left with this impression:

For all the hype and talk about the degree that the internet has changed modern society over the past 15 years, it’s a mild incremental process compared to the upheaval that must have happened between, say, 1879 and 1929, a span which would encompass Edison’s light bulb, Ford’s work, and, to a lesser extent, the airplane (I chose that 50 year span to go against the, oh, now 63 years that have passed since the transistor was invented in 1947.)

For example, there’s a clip at the 52:34 mark of the Code Rush documentary (available here) where someone (analyst David Readerman?) stands at a town’s main intersection and points to the banks and stores and claims they might be all gone in 2 years, replaced by the internet: “I don’t know why [The Gap]‘s even renovating this store. Why aren’t they investing the money in their website?” That didn’t happen, but if the change was “Ford big” it might’ve.

Maybe that change is still coming, awaiting only one more big (or even small) thing to bring the stars into alignment, but it’s left me wondering:

What Big Change could result in a remoulding of the world on the level that happened not even a hundred years ago? And if it’s coming from the tech community, are those Two Guys in a Garage that we kept hearing about working on the prototype as I write this?

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