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 applications as the basis for everything we do here.  We just launched a new internal web app last week for our 360 review process, and while it’s great, I couldn’t work on it on a plane recently as I’d wanted to.

Anyway, the net of the debate is that Jack pointed me to Google Gears, in beta for only a month now, as a way of enabling offline work on web applications.  It clearly has a way to go, and it’s unclear to me from a quick scan of what’s up on the web site whether or not the web app has to enable Gears or it’s purely user-driven, but in any case, it’s a great and very needed piece of functionality as we move towards a web-centric world.

But it reminded of me of an application that I used probably 10-12 years ago called WebWhacker (which still exists, now part of Blue Squirrel) that enables offline reading of static web pages and even knows how to go to different layers of depth in terms of following links.  I used to use it to download content sites before going on a plane.  And while I’m sure Google Gears will get it 1000x better and make it free and integrated, there’s our theme — Everything That is New is Old.

The iPhone?  Look at Fred’s picture of his decade old Newton (and marvel at how big it is).

Facebook?  Anyone remember TheSquare.com?

MySpace?  Geocities/Tripod.

LinkedIn?  GoodContacts.

Salesforce.com?  Siebel meets Goldmine/Act.

Google Spreadsheets?  Where to begin…Excel…Lotus 123…Quattro Pro…Visicalc/Supercalc.

RSS feeds?  Pointcast was the push precursor.

Or as Brad frequently says, derive your online business model (or at least explain it to investors) as the analog analog.  How does what you are trying to online compare to a similar process or problem/solution pair in the offline world?

There are, of course, lots of bold, new business ideas out there.  But many successful products in life aren’t version 1 or even version 3 — they’re a new and better adaptation of something that some other visionary has tried and failed at for whatever reason years before (technology not ready, market not ready, etc.).

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, or you just rely on gut (“we aren’t going to see this price again for a long time…”), market timing is a critical factor
• Dilution:  Sometimes, market conditions dictate that it isn’t the best time to sell, BUT company conditions dictate that continuing to be competitive, grow the top line, and generate long-term profits requires a significant amount of incremental capital or dilution that materially changes the expected value of the ultimate exit for existing shareholders (both investors and management)
• Fund life:  Fortunately, we haven’t been up against this at Return Path, but sometimes the clock runs out on venture investors’ funds, and they are forced into a position of either needing to get liquidity for their LPs or distribute their portfolio company holdings.  While neither is great for the portfolio, a sale may be preferable to a messy distribution

Fred’s reasons are all very founder-driven.  And sometimes founders get to make the call on an exit.  But factoring in a 360 view of the company’s stakeholders and external environments can often produce a different result in the conversation around when to exit.

Starbucks, Starbucks, Everywhere, Part II

In 2004, I blogged about Starbucks’ implausible Forbidden City location (post includes picture) in the heart of one of China’s most prominent national monuments.

Today, under pressure from the Chinese government, Starbucks announced that they’re closing the location, reflecting “Chinese sensitivity about cultural symbols and unease over an influx of foreign pop culture,” according to a very short blurb about this in today’s Wall Street Journal.

It must be indescribably different to live in a society that’s so tightly controlled.

Book Short:  A Good Dose of Introspection

I rarely blog about non-business books since this is a business blog — and I read a lot of them!  But occasionally, one manages to slip in, and this time, it’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom.  From the author of Tuesdays With Morrie, which I also liked quite a bit, this one is excellent.  And a very, very quick read.

The book, in short (i.e., a book short <g>), is about a guy who dies, and who, in heaven, meets five people who have shaped his life and died before him.  Some he knows well, some he knows barely, some he’s never met.  Each one tells him a story that explains some part of his life to him and in doing so, helps him understand more about himself and why/how he lived on earth.

The book, as I said, is a short read.  But more than that, it’s a wonderful story and provides an opportunity for a structured moment of introspection, one that I found very valuable.  Quite frankly, this book should be a “once every year or two” read.

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 mission, have you heard the news?

The acquisition, serve those ads
The acquisition, we’re so glad
We’ll make an offer, that they can’t refuse

Google, don’t be boring
WPP, don’t feel set
Yahoo seems to be ignoring:
It’s better to lose your market cap than your market!

Hey, Steven Ballmer, what do you say?
“I just got back from Avenue A”
“Avenue A?  What’s Avenue A?”
“It’s what I ought not have bought, but I bought anyway!”

The acquisition, what a show
The acquisition, here we go
We know you’re wishin’ that we’d go away.
But the acquisition’s here and it’s here to stay!

Happy 4th, everyone!

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.

Must Read Post on Entrepreneurship

As usual, I’m a little late to the party, but let me echo Fred’s and Brad’s sentiments and endorse Marc Andreesen’s new blog.  If you’re an entrepreneur or like thinking big entrepreneurial thoughts, this is a gooe blog to add to your blogroll.  My only critique is that some of his postings are really long — but they’re worth it.

His most recent post, which finally prompted me to post this, is a list of reasons why NOT to do a startup (it also includes a good list of reasons TO do a startup).

Just a snippet to pique your interest, but you have to click through to see all of it — the richness is in the details…

Why do one?

The opportunity to be in control of your own destiny

The opportunity to have an impact on the world

Why run for the hills?

A startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced (I blogged about that here and here)

You get told no — a lot

So a belated welcome to the blogosphere, Marc, and to everyone else, enjoy!

Is Permission Still Relevant?

My colleague Stephanie Miller wrote a great post on our Return Path blog this week entitled Is Permission Enough? The essence of her argument is:

…permission is not forever…Subscribers opt in and then promptly forget about their actions…Nor is permission a panacea. Opt-in doesn’t replace relevancy and keeping your promises.

And she goes on to give great examples of how marketers abuse permission and a great checklist of times marketers shouldn’t ASSUME permission, which is where the trouble starts.

So I concur — permission is never enough from a sender’s perspective.  But you still have to have it.  Why?  Read on.

I’d like to extend Stephanie’s argument from senders to receivers and question whether permission is as relevant as it once was in terms of how ISPs, filters, and blacklists determine whether or not to block mail.

The argument for permission as a relevant filtering criteria goes something like this:

1. Unsolicited commercial email = evil. It is the true definition of spam.  If I don’t ask for it, you have no right to send it to me.

The argument against permission as a relevant filtering criteria is more nuanced:

1. It doesn’t matter if something is opt-out quadruple opt-in. Users think of spam as “email I don’t want,” not “email I didn’t sign up for.”  As Stephanie says, bad email I signed up for is even worse than unsolicited email in some ways.  And look at the other side of the argument as well:  would you really mind getting an unsolicited/unpermissioned email if the content or offer was highly relevant to you, e.g., you seriously consider clicking through on it?

2. Permission can be easily faked or loopholed. Companies can operate multiple web sites and email lists and gather addresses from multiple sources and then point to the one “proper permission site” and claim that’s the origin of all the names on its list.  And companies can set up privacy policies in such a way that they can automatically opt users into multiple lists without the user’s permission unless the user reads the fine print.

3. Permission is hard to measure. Besides the fact that permission can be faked, the main way that blacklists and filters try to measure permission is by looking at spam trap hits.  Sometimes this works — the cases where the spam trap addresses are newly-created addresses that never sign up for lists.  But most ISP and other spam trap networks also include recycled email addresses as well — addresses that were real and probably did sign up for email newsletters and marketing at one point but have since gone inactive.  Yes, a mailer that hits this kind of spam trap address is probably guilty of sloppy list hygiene and poor or nonexistent targeting and customer segmentation.  But does this mean they’re a truly egregious spammer?

4. Reputation trumps permission. The world of reputation systems is driving quickly to the point where we can tell much more accurately and automatically if a mail stream is “good” or “bad” as defined by users in terms of complaints and as defined by infrastructure security, authentication, and various other metrics.

So where I come out on this is that permission is FAR LESS RELEVANT than it used to be for receivers as filtering criteria, but probably not 100% irrelevant yet.  Perhaps in a couple years as reputation data-driven filtering becomes refined and the norm, we will be able to be more accepting of highly targeted and relevant unsolicited email (as we are sometimes with highly targeted and relevant postal mail), but I’m not sure the world is psychologically there just yet.  There’s still too much egregious spam in the inbox, and as a result, while users primarily think of spam as “email I don’t want,” they also do still think of spam as “email I didn’t ask for.”

But for now, senders can certainly rely on permission — if and only if it’s up to date and contextual — as “first pass” screen on relevancy.

Where do you come out on this?

The Very Unfriendly Skies of United, Part II

In Part I, I described United’s horrendous customer service as it holds its customers hostage to pay an extra $44 to get out of a complete unsittable seat into a slightly better seat at 6 a.m. in the morning for no good reason.

Tonight, I am pleased to report that I have landed at LaGuardia on United, an hour late already and nearly 1 a.m., only to have them tell us that we have to sit on the tarmac for an hour because they can’t get their act together and open up a gate for us.

Boy, is this fun.  Frontier, anyone?  Jet Blue?  Even American with a connection in the dreaded O’Hare?

Book Short:  Shamu-rific

I re-read an old favorite last night in preparation for a management training course I’m co-teaching today at Return Path:  Ken Blanchard’s Whale Done! The Power of Positive Relationships.  I was reminded why it’s an old favorite.  It has a single concept which is simple but powerful.  And yes, it’s based loosely on killer whale  training tactics.

Accentuate the positive.

The best example in the book is actually a personal one more than a professional one.  The main character of the book has a “problem” in that he chronically works late, then comes home and gets beat up by his wife about coming home so late.  The result?  No behavior change — and probably even a reinforcement of the behavior because, after all, who wants to come home and get beat up?  The change as a result of the new philosophy?  The wife thanks her husband when he does come home at a more reasonable hour, makes him a nice dinner, etc. which makes the husband WANT to come home earlier.

That’s probably a poor paraphrasing of the story, and as I’m typing the story out here, boy does it sound a bit 1950s in terms of its portrayal of gender role stereotypes.  Nonetheless, I think it makes the point well.

Try it out sometime at work (or at home).  Pick a behavior you want to see more of out of a direct report, especially one that’s linked to another behavior you don’t like.  Accentuate the positive.  Make the person WANT to do more of it.  And watch the results!

The 80 Percent Rule (Not the 80/20 Rule)

I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said about the Republican Party that there are a lot of people in it with a lot of different views, but that as long he agreed 80% with someone, he was solidly “with them.”  The older I get, the more I find this to be a great rule of thumb.

Certainly in politics, it must be true.  In a two-party system that handles an infinite number of issues, you’re never going to agree 100% with someone.  You just have to get close.  That’s why it will be interesting to see how things like the candidacy of Giuliani works, with him running as a pro-choice Republican.

I also find it true in the non-profit fundraising world.  I am currently raising a lot of money for Princeton from my classmates, and of course everyone has different opinions about what the University is doing today, in particular about some of their policies around admissions, expansion, and athletics.  But in the end, the argument that “you’re never going to agree 100%…but are you at least at 80%?” seems to work well to persuade people to donate.

And of course, this 80% rule is very true in running a business as well.  You can’t expect your employees to agree with 100% of your decisions.  But your employees also realize that they will never agree with 100% of their company’s decisions.  At about the 80% rule, with enough transparency around decision-making to make the missing 20% at least seem rational, you have a winning formula.