Randall[c]Bennett.com

On overplanning

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:25:27 -0400

ZenHabits inspired this

“What happened to you?”

Rustin called me on it. I was lamenting about all the decisions I had to make in short order, and how I had to have everything all planned out.

“Chill out man. You don’t have to have it all figured out.”

Late last year I realized I was going to be transitioning from one job to another. Yet again. And as part of that transition, I started to make plans about what the future held for me. I wanted to figure out who I was, and I wanted to plan the path that would lead me to success. I was sweating over every detail, meticulously planning my metoric rise from November 2011 to today, which included stints in a prestigous program to accellerate my company’s future growth, and a big investment in a trade show booth.

Seriously, what happened to me? Within the last 5 years I’ve moved about 10 times, and had countless gigs, contracts, jobs and offices. Why the need now for a rigid inflexible roadmap?

I think three letters are to blame. Eli. My 14 month old son.

See I love this guy. A lot. And really, what I want for him is to have an awesome life, which means I need to be there for him emotionally, be physically present in his life, and make the money to make his life livable.

The feeling of a need for certainty stem from that.

So rather than go with the flow, something inside of me enticed me to start overplanning. I think I’ve since combatted it.

Thanks to Bryce, who was curtious enough to have a phone chat with me, and Rustin, I finally realized I didn’t need to plan. I needed to do everything that had worked for me before: Just go with it.

Now I’m in the middle of a phase, where I’m working really hard on a product that people are already sniffing around. It feels good to just be able to say “whatever happens happens, I’m building something awesome that will resonate with someone.”

As a bonus, I’ve picked up a cofounder, and things are moving briskly along. I’m uncertain of the future, but I am certain I’m going the right direction. For now.

Summary I use Art and Product as keywords at opposing ends of a spectrum to describe a...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:26:46 -0500

Summary

I use Art and Product as keywords at opposing ends of a spectrum to describe a person’s motivation for creativity.
Artists create art for themselves, Producers create products for other people.
Artists ignore others, sometimes to their detriment.
Product people listen to their customer, sometimes to their detriment.
True product people are whores.
True artists are starving artists.
People who make societal and cultural impact now, before they die, tend to be in the middle of the spectrum.
The creators’ Art / Product orientation determines the future opportunities around the work.
Being a true artist or a true product person isn’t bad, but realizing current spectrum placement sets expectations for the future.

Right now I’m in a weird state of my career development. I’m not riding a rocket of momentum as I have in past ventures, but instead am finding myself evaluating opportunities and work with a more measured approach. I’ve got an idea of what I’d like to do for my next startup, specifically dealing with video production, but I don’t think the ecosystem is ready. That means I’m taking some time off to be an artist, rather than a producer. The art / product distinction is one which I’ve been thinking about at length as of late. Artist and Producer are two terms I’ve thought of in my head to describe a spectrum of motivation. Artists create because they have to— meaning they have some idea in their soul which they have to get out and show the world. Producers (product people), on the other hand, create something they think the world will enjoy. Both can have a similar result, i.e. people enjoying the end work, but the motivations are the difference and set the stage for deeper thoughts about the work’s future.

Art and Artists

Let’s look at artists for a second. When I say artists, I’m talking about a specific type of person, or group of people whose motivation for creativity is simple: Because they can. Artists, traditionally, create their vision single-handedly without regard for who will consume the work. They don’t ask for help, they don’t take direction from anyone else, and their only motive is to have the work exist in the real world. That leads to some typical “artist” results: they don’t often take critiques well, they don’t produce something that can be considered a wide “hit”, and yes, they tend to fiscally starve. Artistic integrity means the pure execution of an artistic message free of an external motive. Obviously artists take into account other inspirational works, but the actual artistic work, theoretically, will be free of any bias or motivation. Works with artistic integrity can have a big societal impact, but the lion’s share of “true artists” (think Brooklyn-esque modern artists) are relegated to obscurity. Also, don’t forget, art history’s favorite artists didn’t tend to be fully appreciated until society caught up to their vision. I used to walk through New York’s Union Square on Sunday to get to my church near 15th and 7th-ish. As I walked through the square, there would often be artists set up, hocking their wares. I’d talk to a lot of pretender artists, who’d be selling kitschy glass-wares, but occasionally I’d meet someone who just wanted to show off their work. For them, a $45 print purchase wasn’t validation as much as a means to continue exploring their artistic style. They could care less if people understood their point of view, they just needed some way to pay the rent. To put it succinctly: Artists create for themselves and nobody else. Their work is an execution of their internal message, mixed with time, medium, education and place.

Products and Producers

At the other side, producers create works for the consumer. A product should serve the customer’s need, and not the producer’s view of the world. A true producer isn’t attached to any idea, and should be willing to change every aspect of the final product to make the customer happy. True product people exist, in their worst form, in traditional corporate America. For me, the starkest personal example of product people comes in the form of TV news. There, the product people use research consultants to come up with conclusions about what people want. Ever wonder why there’s 10 minutes of weather in a newscast? That’s because since the 80s, people have mentioned weather in focus groups, which leads the TV stations to continue to put more weather in the newscast. Typically, news directors don’t have a true point of view, but instead chase this homogenized version of TV News which has permeated to most markets in the U.S. In addition, TV News is notorious for using its validation strategy, i.e. ratings, as the only metric for success. That’s why every February, May, and November you’ll see stories trotting out the scare tactics and trying to get you to watch. Their goal is exclusively to get the most viewers in any way possible, and that goal ends up hurting the product’s integrity and societal worth. The only way I can put it: True product people are essentially whores. Whores who are completely devoid of ethics, and so concerned with the validation (typically in terms of dollars) that they’ll do anything to get it.

Making an impact

Who should you be? I think the smartest people, and the most useful people for society at large, lie somewhere in the middle of the road. For instance, a person running a startup company should start with an artistic vision for a company which inspires employees, investors and others. They should be able to see what they think the end work looks like from the get go. However, unlike an artist, they should be willing to research every part of the product, and tear down any part which doesn’t serve their customer’s true needs. They should be building their work for a specific audience and person. Unlike a true product person (whore) they shouldn’t turn design over to the customer, nor should they assume the customer knows exactly what they want. They should, however, use usage patterns, research, a/b split testing and other ways of determining what works with a given customer, and scientifically test their product vision and assumptions. Falling too heavily to one side of the spectrum creates issues. An extreme product person might solely design a product based on customer feedback, which leads to design by committee issues. On the art side, an artist would create something exclusively for his/herself, and wouldn’t see the broader picture. Sure, a group of art aficionados (aka early-adopting TechCrunch readers) might find value in the art, and truly appreciate it, but the art as a consumer item won’t have true impact on a mass scale until consumers decide they need it / take the time to understand it. A company like Apple, for instance, has a huge societal and business impact because it treads toward the middle. Steve Jobs and company start out with an artistic vision for a product, but tend to observe behavior patterns in users by referring to data. For instance, Apple uses repair data from its genius bar to refine product designs. Facebook, another example of a societal and business winner, applies a similar tact by using analytics tools to understand how its users actually interact with its product. (I’d add that Apple tends to lie more on the Art side of the equation, while Facebook and Google lie more on the product side.)

My trajectory

It’s not a bad thing to be a pure artist, or a pure product person at some point in your career / life, but realize what you’re doing, and the underlying effects. Right now, for instance, I’m focusing more on “personal art projects” instead of creating products. I’m taking my time to learn how to code, and the output is for nobody but myself. That means I’m learning, and understanding things only for myself. I have friends who work in companies that I’d tend to term “product whores.” They’re making lots of short-term money, in the hopes of a more balanced art / product life-cycle in the future. My ultimate goal is to have that middle-ground. I want to change society / the world. However, by realizing I’m currently an artist, I can put my goals in perspective. Product people can do the same thing. People who are shooting for the moon now, however, need to strive for immediate balance. Otherwise, they’ll fall short of their ultimate goals.

Why it's smart to work at a no-shot startup

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:26:16 -0500

This post originally appeared at The Startup Foundry.

Think about the promise of the Valley. Rampant hiring. Early-stage capital freely flowing to countless companies. Catered lunches and dinners. Worthy engineers treated like royalty (or worse, ninja / pirate / rockstars). While some companies do fit the Valley pipe-dream, we think there are many more startups who don’t have a shot at VCs, the top engineers in the world, or an ice cube’s chance in Hell at realizing those paper stock options. And guess what: We think it’s still a smart idea to work with them. We call them the no-shot startup, and it can be an invaluable experience, just as long as you know what to expect and when to quit.

Hopeful startups

The startup lifestyle happened a bit backward for me. I accidentally worked for a successful and notable startup first, then started loving the startup lifestyle a few years later. I started out as an early reader of blogs. Specifically tech blogs. I became obsessed with Engadget in 2004 after seeing it continue to pop up on Slashdot. I read every post. I spent hours during my senior year in college, and read countless posts while cutting and pasting graphics for a local television station— my first job out of college. Since I was spending all my time reading Engadget, I figured that was a good sign of where my career should go. I dreamed of creating a new version of the defunct TechTV cable network, but on the web. I reached out to Peter Rojas and Ryan Block to become their audio podcast producer, and they accepted my offer to work for free. Free turned to paid, and Engadget turned out to be part of Weblogs, Inc., a startup founded by Jason Calacanis, Brian Alvey, and Engadget founder Peter Rojas. Their ambitious goal was to change the publishing world as we knew it. They thought the big guys (CNET, PC Mag, and any mainstream-media publication) were covering technology and other verticals (cars, video games, etc) in an extremely lazy and uninteresting fashion. Traditional publications would be spoon fed press releases. They’d go on junkets. They’d go to CES, get all their stories, and then push them out over the next few months. Peter’s model was be different. He’d focus on speed and breadth, crafting dozens of 75-150 word posts per day, and win over the hardcore readers. It worked. Through extremely focused hard work, Engadget saw great success and obviously still enjoys a leading seat at the big kids table of technology journalism. For me, Engadget meant watching courtside as Peter, Ryan, and the Weblogs, Inc. crew made Engadget, Autoblog, TUAW, Joystiq and other brands become among the most respected publications in their respective verticals in a matter of a few years.

From success to suck

Weblogs, Inc. had done it. We eventually were sold to AOL, as one of the first notable Web 2.0 acquisitions (post-Flickr, pre-YouTube). I moved to New York City and started working on projects as a part of AOL. I was living the life of a post-acquisition startup. Then, tragedy struck. My brother died in a car accident. I was devastated. I felt like I had to move back to Utah to help my family, and to help myself. So there I was. Back in a fly-over state. Back working for a TV station again. I was back on the corporate career path. The second time around, I worked for a CBS Owned-and-operated station in Utah. As the smallest station on the CBS food chain (market 32), our corporate parents made most of our decisions, and set the direction for our station. That felt awful. We didn’t control our destiny, and we had to beg and justify every business decision. Feeling the stark contrast from corporate red-tape to Weblogs, Inc., where anyone in the company could simply roll up their sleeves and get something done, I figured rather than suffer in an environment that I hated, I should probably just get out there and start something with some buddies. After all, Brian Alvey and Jason Calacanis were high school friends who ended up with a killer startup, and were now wealthy thanks to AOL’s buyout. I was sure my next startup would be exactly like that. (Naive, to say the least.) I started meeting all the like-minded folks in my area who dreamed of changing the world. One of the guys I met, I’ll call him “Steve”, came to me and tried to convince me to change the world with him. His vision? A Wikipedia like experience where instead of collaborating to create an encyclopedia, users collaborated to review places. “Yelp meets Wikipedia.” His energy was infectious. He seemed like he had really thought this vision through, and there was a shot at making something interesting. We figured we’d make money by selling NPS-style data to corporations and they’d get feedback about what users thought. Win-win. Rather than focus on things like proving hypotheses, or getting our product out the door and tested, we’d instead have day-long grandiose whiteboarding sessions with two other ~~suckers~~ coworkers who were convinced to join. We’d figure out the intricacies of our product, talk about vision, explain why it’s perfect for everything from dentist reviews to deciding our next presidential candidate. All while we were developing a product in a vacuum. We had no users. All we had was our ideas. The longer we took developing our ideas, the more it felt like we were working. On top of our ill-conceived business planning, we had managed to snare a real estate investor to put some money into our project. Spoiler alert: Uninformed investor meets uninformed startup founders. Fiscal hilarity and drama ensues. I spent three months at this startup and we never put out a product that attracted any real users. According to our business plan, month three was when we were supposed to start generating revenue. We were hopeless. With my meager post-college savings wiped, a substantial amount of debt incurred, no product / users / revenue to show for our efforts, and feeling scorned, I left my no-shot startup to move to Boston where a different startup could use my talents.

The anatomy of a no-shot startup

After all that, I still look back and still think this experience was among the most important experiences in my life professionally. It felt like I contributed little to the outcome of the startup, positive or negative, but I was able to watch, absorb, understand and identify traits and styles which I wanted to use in future business endeavors. Additionally, I was able to literally try anything, as long as I could somehow justify it to my coworking brethren. No-shot startups exist in a space where enthusiasm meets inexperience. I’d say that most, but not all, no-shot startups are created by technically minded power users with little actual coding experience. They think they have a big idea they think the world should witness. They look at the success of companies like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Groupon as proof that anyone with a good idea and some moxy can pull off a multi-million dollar exit. To be clear, No-shot doesn’t mean doomed to fail, but it does mean that the deck is stacked against the company. The upside of the no-shot founder? They know nothing, and they hold nothing back. They’re willing to push forward regardless of the odds. Skillful hopeless founders tend to attract people and sell them on their idea. Some might even convince their uninformed friends and acquaintances to quit jobs and work on the hopeless project full-time. The downside of the no-shot founder? Without the means to create a prototype or build anything themselves, they resort to desperate measures like offshore outsourced development of core technologies. They spend hours creating a complex capitalization structure before having a product. They create two sided marketplaces with no idea of how to capture either side. They convince friends and family to loan them money, which has no shot of being paid back. In short, they over promise and under deliver for everyone in the equation.

The startup spectrum

To be clear, no-shot startup-dom is not a binary situation. At one end you have completely hopeless startups like the one I joined. At the other are “scrappy” startups that might start out seemingly hopeless, but through sheer determination, end up giving themselves a shot. AirBnb is a great example of the “scrappy” side. At some point, there’s an event or series of events which moves a startup from scrappy and disadvantaged, to scrappy and legit. Normally that’s through social proof of some sort, like a big name investor, big name client, or actual user traction. That turns scrappy startups into “legit scrappy” startups. These are the ones you read about on TechCrunch like YoBongo, ZeroCater, or ones that might be funded by Y Combinator. All the way at the other end of the spectrum are big-shot startups. These are the ones like Quora, FourSquare, and Color, where the founders are either already proven enough to attract legit investor attention, or, in the case of a lot of ad networks, they have enough friends in high places to score them VC money.

To work in startups, work in startups

If you’ve already identified that your goal is not to work for soulless companies, you need to start working for startups. Ideally, you should try to find a startup that shares your values, aligns with your career objectives and do it with people who you like. Ideally, everyone would start out with a well formed set of skills, and obviously be able to contribute greatly to a big name startup. Good quality coders from a notable school (MIT, Stanford, etc) automatically get their pick of where to start on the spectrum. For you, we’d recommend landing somewhere in the “scrappy” part of the spectrum. However, for you wanna-be business cofounders without legit coding skills, there’s a big way for you to contribute. For hopeless startups, you just need to show up. Show up and be willing to hustle your way through your hopeless startup. Read every business blog you can, and start to identify problems with your no-shot startup as soon as you can.

The no-shot startup advantage

Crucially, the biggest advantage of working lower down the spectrum is that mistakes don’t stick with you. In general, mistakes don’t typically stick with you, but the further up the spectrum you go, the tighter knit the community. Make a mistake at the bottom of the spectrum, and there’s enough people making mistakes that it’s unlikely your mistakes will give you a bad reputation. On the other hand, screw up a company with $41mm in funding, and those mistakes are more likely to follow you.

After the no-shot startup

Chances are, if you’re reading this after the publication date, someone sent you this essay because you’re in a sketchy spot. You’ve worked with a startup that just isn’t going anywhere, and you’re wondering where to go next. My simple advice is to move on to the next one. Work with people who are smarter than you. For me, that meant moving to San Francisco and working with some of the smartest and most talented folks I’ve ever been around. For you, it might mean getting more domain knowledge in your favorite topic area. Maybe even working at a corporation that plays in your area of expertise. Whatever you do: Move up the spectrum. Don’t spend your time bouncing from no-shot startup to no-shot startup. I know those people. They dream big, but never realistically. If your first company didn’t have a launched product, be an employee at one that has a product that has minor traction. Work in support for a funded company. Work on side projects to show how valuable you can be. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing. Focus on diverse professional experience, and you’ll give yourself the best shot you have available now. For more startup news, follow us on Twitter @startupfoundry or on Facebook.

I’ve always found whales to be really endearing. In...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400

I’ve always found whales to be really endearing. In elementary school, my teacher told me that whales were among our closest animal brethren in the seas. They also live for about 50-75 years, and, according to Wikipedia, can teach, learn, cooperate, scheme, and even grieve.

Those majestic creatures swim through the ocean, from place to place. The other oceanic animals I’m sure are aware of whales, but unless they’re plankton being eaten by whales, I doubt they pay much attention.

That is, until they die.

You see, whale death, also called a “whale fall,” is a pretty magical event. After the whale dies, often times they sink… deep to the ocean floor.

Curious scavengers can smell the decomposing whale from afar, and make the trip to come pick it apart.

After the scavengers leave though, all that’s left is a skeleton of this once magnificent beast.

Eventually, a “fugitive species” of little worm-like creatures find the skeleton, and start a thriving ecosystem based on the skeleton. In fact, 30 species of tubeworm have only been found present at whale falls. Their entire life and prosparity seems to depend on the whale skeleton.

According to RadioLab from where I first heard about whale falls, the ecosystem continues on for another 50-75 years; another full lifetime of life based on what the whale left around.

Steve was a whale. His skeleton? The bicycle of the mind.