Lighten Up! As with Brad, I love a good rant, and Dave McClure’s wild one this week about how VCs and Lawyers Need to Simplify, Innovate, and Automate is fantastic. I have a roughly 3 foot shelf in my office that has all the bound paper documentation for the financings and M&A we’ve done here over the years and have always felt like it’s an enormous waste on many levels. The insanity of the faxes, zillions of signatures, original copies, and triplicates is overwhelming. But the core of the rant is a beautiful and simple suggestion that those who invest in lightweight technology companies and automation platforms should learn how to use just those technologies in their own businesses. I…
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We’re Right Up (Down?) There With Lawyers Now
We’re Right Up (Down?) There With Lawyers Now I remember reading somewhere a while ago that the least respected professions in America were used car salesmen, politicians, and lawyers. Well, step aside everyone — according to a J. Walter Thompson study reported in DMNews, only 14% of Americans have respect for people in the advertising business. I’m going to include that anyone who works in marketing services, by extension. Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t have expected people in the advertising profession to join the upper echelons of the study with military personnel, doctors, and teachers. But 14% is a pretty low number. Beneath that single number, though, lie some conflicting data. For example, · 72 percent agree, “I…
The Wheels of Justice Move Slowly
The Wheels of Justice Move Slowly I am on Jury Duty this week, or Jury Service, as it seems to have been renamed since the last time I did it. Although it’s a pain and disruptive to my schedule, I never mind doing this — it’s all part of the social contract here, right? I have two main observations so far from my general view of the world: 1. How on earth does the justice system actually function? "Business hours" are basically 10-12 and then 2:30-4:00. I assume that at least some work happens before and after, but yeesh. If I ran my business that way…well, you know. Could it be that our government might be a little more effective…
Unleashing the True Power of Email
Unleashing the True Power of Email A recent Behavioral Insider column had a truly tantalizing quote from iPost’s Steve Webster: "There is the presumption that when someone receives an email message they then click on the email go to the Web site and either make a purchase or not and then they are done interacting with your email. This turned out to be wrong. We discovered very quickly that the power of an email impression lasts for weeks after the customer has actually received the message. The particular interaction they will have with you later really depends more on their personal preferences than on your putting a new email in front of them." The highlighted portion is a point we’ve…
Personal Reputation
Personal Reputation There was a recent New York Times article that covered a relatively new company called Rapleaf that aggregates publicly available and privately submitted data about individuals, mostly from social networks, and then resells that data in bulk to marketers to help them target advertising more effectively, supposedly to names they already have permission to mail. I’m sure the company would think I butchered that description, but it’s close, anyway. While there are a lot of comments and posts flying around about the ethics of that data collection, I won’t focus on that here. Publicly available data is publicly available data. This isn’t a lot different than banks swapping your data to create a FICO score, Abacus swapping your…
Spam Filter and False Positive Reality Check
Spam Filter and False Positive Reality Check For a variety of reasons, we had to take our spam filter offline for a day or two here, so I am getting a good look at what raw, unfiltered email traffic looks like. It’s not pretty. I have two main observations: – Spam filters are getting pretty good at eliminating false negatives (e.g., catching real spam). There’s a virtual tidal wave in my inbox of crap that I never see. I have multiple, very old, very public email addresses feeding the same inbox, so I am probably seeing more than most, but wow. Spam is a far worse problem on networks than it is in actual inboxes – Spam filters are still…
A Viral Marketing Program That Needs to See a Doctor
A Viral Marketing Program That Needs to See a Doctor I hate sites that make you register in order to read things sent by friends. What a crappy consumer experience. If you’re going to make people register to use the site, fine. But at least allow a small crack in the walled garden for friends to read articles and try your site out. Today, my friend Len Ellis sent me what looked like a really interesting article in Ad Age via the “send to a friend function.” When I clicked through the link in the email, it first made me complete a lengthy registration process, including various special offer checkboxes and subscription offers for the magazine and its newsletters. I…
Everything That is New is Old
Everything That is New is Old With a full nod to my colleague Jack Sinclair for the title and concept here…we were having a little debate over email this morning about the value of web applications vs. Microsoft (perhaps inspired by Fred, Brad, and Andy’s comments lately around Microsoft vs. Apple). Jack and his inner-CFO is looking for a less expensive way of running the business than having to buy full packages of Office for every employee to have many of them use 3% of the functionality. He is also even more of a geek than I am. I am concerned about being able to work effectively offline, which is something I do a lot. So I worry about web…
Why Do Companies Sell?
Why Do Companies Sell? Fred has a good post today about Facebook and why they shouldn’t sell the company now, in which he makes the assertion that companies sell “because of fear, boredom, and personal financial issues.” He might not have meant this in such a black and white way, and while those might all be valid reasons why companies decide to sell, let me add a few others: Market timing: As they say, buy low – sell high. Sometimes, it’s just the right time to sell a business from the market’s perspective. Valuations have peaks and troughs, and sometimes the troughs can last for years. Whether you do an NPV/DCF model that says it’s the right time to sell,…
The Acquisition (a parody of a parody)
The Acquisition (a parody of a parody) I just spent a great 4th of July with my brother Michael, one of the finer and funnier people I know. Among other things, we treated ourselves to about the 18th viewing of Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I on DVD. One of our favorite moments in the movie is the Broadway musical version of “The Inquisition” (lyrics, download MP3). Since both of us work in the online marketing industry (Michael is a marketing manager at search agency Did-It), Michael came up with the brilliant idea of a parody of a parody…so here goes, all in good fun. The acquisition, what a show The acquisition, here we go We’re on a…
What An Ugly Way to Use Email
What An Ugly Way to Use Email From our friend Andy Sernovitz comes this tale of horror about how Vonage is using viral email. Talk about creating NEGATIVE word of mouth. Yikes! This qualifies Vonage for my customer service Hall of Shame with Verizon, United Airlines, WebEx, and FedEx/Kinko’s. Thanks to my colleague Margaret Farmakis for the inspired headline.