Business News

Selasa, 22 Mei 2012

The Next Billion-Dollar Startup Will Address a Basic Human Need

'I had this stupidly simple observation that maybe everyone else under 30 has already had,' says Steve Blank. 'And the big observation is that we talk about social networking and we talk about Facebook and Twitter but we never talk about the big picture. And the big picture is that these billion-dollar companies are doing nothing more than mediating basic human needs and putting them online.'

Blank is a true startup veteran. He's the author of 'Four Steps to the Epiphany' and 'The Startup Owner's Manual.' He's been around Silicon Valley since it was mostly fruit orchards and has founded or worked with eight tech startups, four of which went public. He now teaches entrepreneurship at Berkeley, Stanford and Columbia. (He's also been known to write for ReadWriteWeb, and we've quoted him before.) So even when he calls an idea simple, it's worth paying attention to.

The Big Fundamental

If you're creating a startup and you want it to go big, the first test to apply is: Does it address a fundamental human need? 'Ask yourself, does this feel like something I would have done, or maybe better than I would have done, face-to-face or without a computer? Is it a basic human thing? That's the filter. It can't tell you how to write the next Twitter. But it is a very valuable test after you've come up with the idea and built the prototype.'

Think about it. Everything we used to do without computers, from chatting to sex to entertainment - things that people are hardwired to do - we used to do without computers. The very successful startups of past years have taken those human needs and made them easier to do with computers. And the hugely successful startups have gone a step further. They've identified human problems and turned them into needs.

'That's how Apple approached the iPod and iPhone,' Blank says. 'Jobs turned a problem - how to communicate and be entertained portably - into a need. Ask Nokia and RIM what the [heck] happened. They built the world's best communication devices, but Jobs turned it into a need. That's an experiment that every entrepreneur should run: What do you do yourself that is not yet done online? I think this idea of mediating basic human needs started even before the Internet. I think video games were the first example of this. And then porn.'

'But,' you say, 'all of the good needs are taken.' Perhaps so. But there are ways to do Twitter or Facebook better. You just have to invent them. Or do what Jobs did - identify a problem and turn it into a need.

Is Accounts Payable a Basic Human Need?

Consider, for example, accounts payable. 'If you're a really great visionary, is there a way to turn accounts payable into a basic human need?' Blank asks. 'Don't laugh. Great visionaries have turned products and problems into basic human needs.'

It all starts with a stupidly simple question. 'Can you predict that next billion-dollar idea with certainty? Maybe not,' Blank says. 'But you can at least ask the question.'

Why The iPhone's Success Has Women To Thank

With 65% of the U.S. population projected to own a smartphone or tablet by 2015, it's safe to say that the gender differences in mobile are dissolving fast. Women are among the most explosive demographic segments for smartphone ownership, seeing a 13% spike between May 2011 and February 2012. Early adopters still skew male, but these days, the smartphone isn't a bleeding edge accessory so much as the gateway gadget for a new cohort of technophobes turned technophile.

It's no Pinterest, but according to data from now Google-owned Admob, iPhone users were split pretty evenly along gender lines in February of 2010, with women accounting for 43% of iPhone owners. As for Android, that number was at 27% - less than a third. In 2011, a survey of 15,818 Hunch users found that iOS users are more likely to be female, while Android users still trend male. But why?

The Axe-Like Scent of Android's Dudedom

The iPhone's adoption stats break down much more closely in parallel with the population as a whole: 43% female versus 57% male. At its core the mobile gender divide might have more to do with that apparently not-so-androgynous little green robot - because guys like robots, right?
Of course they do; just ask Verizon back in 2009.

From fighter jets to dusty cowboys to something pretty closely resembling the Eye of Sauron, it's no secret that Verizon's Droid Does ad campaign - which cost$100 million in 2009 alone - had a prototypically masculine bent. The campaign launched the original Motorola Droid and set Android as a platform on its trajectory to successful iPhone rivalhood.

And while the Verizon campaign was carrier specific, it remained sticky enough that the other three not-so Big Red carriers never quite shook the Axe-like scent of Android's inherent dudedom. The Droid Does campaign bolstered Google's mobile platform with a strong identity early on, but it also alienated women from the get-go - a good explanation for that paltry 27% of female Android users. Launching a hyper-gendered advertising onslaught is going to leave a good half of the population out in the cold, no matter how you slice it.

T-Mobile - which remains the only U.S. carrier without the iPhone - put up a valiant effort to feminize its largely Android smartphone stable with magenta dress-wearing spokesperson-next-door "Carly", but now the company is doubling back. Its latest rebranding campaign depicts ever-femmey Carly turning up her nose at a slew of pink dresses before peeling off on a magenta motorcycle in skintight leather. The slogan - "No More Mr. Nice Girl" - sends a clear (if irksomely stupid) message: Android is here to kick ass and take names, and women can get in on the ass-kicking too.

That message is slightly refreshing, but, really, who cares? T-Mobile might be the magenta carrier, but beyond inventing a memorable mouthpiece for an otherwise oft-forgotten company, it's difficult to imagine that Carly as an ultra-feminized (or edgy/androgynized) symbol is doing much of anything to woo women to the carrier or its hardware.

Of course, with a winning spokesmodel smile, Carly has universal sex appeal -- but the mixed message is hard to parse. Are we supposed to be attracted to Carly? Is she supposed to take the edge off of those pesky intimidating Android devices? And if so, what of Carly 2.0? Could the campaign just invert the unforeseen consequence of Verizon's strategy, alienating men instead?

Apple And The Path Less Gendered

Try as they might, carriers and manufacturers with ties to Android just can't seem to crack the gender code - but they might just be trying too hard. For a look at what works, one need only to turn to Apple, a company with a pedigree of pitch-perfect campaigns. From its iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial to the frequently spoofed 'I'm a Mac' ads, Apple's advertising chops are the stuff of industry legend.

Apple's recent iPhone spots not only run the gamut from sleek and simple to touchy-feely, but, smarter yet, they cast a wide demographic net. The company's FaceTime spots feature cameos from hip young twenty somethings, moms and wrinkly grandfathers in equal measure. In true 'it just works' fashion, its more product-centric flavor of ad revolves around what the iPhone can do, all cast against one of Apple's minimalist whitespace backdrops, of course.

Instead of wasting time divvying the population up into bite-sized demographic parcels (men with an interest in watching things be smashed, for instance) Apple appeals to some basic, very human needs. We'd all like a device that a) makes our lives easier and b) connects us to the people who matter.

All the while, we've got blunders like the HTC Rhyme, a truly ham-fisted gesture of marketing cluelessness intended to appeal to a woman's particular mobile needs, whatever those are. Because apparently women love tacky pink casings, confounding LED dongles and mid-range specs' who knew? All of those female iPhone owners must just be settling for less.

How One Size Fits All - Or Doesn't

As a woman admittedly far more interested in mobile gadgets than your average Joe or Joanna, I return again and again to the fact that the iPhone might appeal to something far more basic in the female psyche - or the female anatomy, rather.

As a former iPhone 3G user who switched to Android two years ago, the first thing that struck me was the then-gorgeous 4.3" screen. The second thing? How unwieldy it was. Cramming it into a jeans pocket of modest capacity proved awkward, and texting with my thumb remains an impossible feat of balance and dexterity. (I've been meaning to ask Carly her secret - where in that skintight leather does she manage to stash her phone?)

The original HTC EVO 4G is veritably bloated by today's slim smartphone standards, but, with the exception of the iPhone, smartphone screens are getting bigger and bigger. With Android, the smaller-pawed among us keep coming up empty-handed when it comes to top tier devices. The iPhone's success with the female demographic proves that we're just as interested in a flagship device as our male compadres - but ideally we'd like to fit the damned thing in our pockets.

From marketing to design, the iPhone proves that you don't need to divide consumers along gender lines to conquer them. Appealing to essentials like form and function (rather than literal sound and fury, in the case of the Droid's branding blitzkrieg) is a message that resonates widely.

Apple's world might not offer the choice or openness of Android, but its one-size-fits-all approach continues to outfit the mobile masses. At the end of the day, just as Apple would have us believe, the iPhone is for everybody- and it sells like it too. And, as it turns out, just about half of everybody is a woman.

YouTube's Big Transition: Moving From Amateur to Professional Era of Online Video

To celebrate its 7th birthday, YouTube boasts that 72 hours of video is being uploaded to the site every minute. That figure was 48 hours one year ago, meaning YouTube is experiencing strong growth in video uploads. This growth in uploads may indicate that emerging competition from social video apps like Viddy and Socialcam isn't yet cause for concern at YouTube. But if Facebook buys either Viddy or Socialcam, then suddenly YouTube would have a problem - because then there would be a large competitor offering easy video sharing.

Another concern for YouTube is that its video views have decreased every month this year. After a record traffic year in 2011 and an all-time peak of 21.8 billion video views served in January, monthly views started to go backwards. In February, it was 18.5B views, March 16.5B and April 15.6B.

Source: comScore, via AdAge

The good news is that engagement on YouTube is up. The amount of minutes users spend watching YouTube has grown 57% year-over-year, to more than 61 billion minutes in March 2012 according to comScore (although that too has declined since peaking in January 2012). Over the same time period, the average length of a video view grew 1 minute, to now average 4 minutes. That's almost certainly a result of more professional content on YouTube, helped by its new channels strategy and a big redesign in December. By comparison YouTube's main competition in the professional content market, network TV platform Hulu, has an average of 8.5 minutes per view.

The upshot: people are watching less videos on YouTube, but they are watching longer videos and spending more time on the site.

That's a net positive to youTube - especially since advertising dollars are attracted to professional videos.

What's Happening With Amateur Content?

There's no question that Viddy and Socialcam are a threat to YouTube for amateur content. In particular if Facebook buys either one of them; although it's also possible that one of Viddy or Socialcam could dramatically grow and become a YouTube-like sensation on its own terms. YouTube will be keeping a wary eye on developments there.

Despite the threat of Instagram-like video apps, YouTube is doubling down on content creation as a core feature of its site. It is doing this across the whole spectrum of content creation: from amateur to professional, with a lot of grey in-between. At the pro end of the spectrum, YouTube is busy making deals with big content creators such as professional sports leagues and Disney. It is also investing in new kinds of content creators, such as the gaming network Machinima.

The channels strategy is an indication that YouTube sees 'bottom-up' content creation as key to its future. As if to remind people that it is still top dog in amateur content, YouTube's 7th birthday video highlights baby videos and its usage in the Arab Spring.

Evolving Into a TV-Style Network, Web Style...

Right now YouTube is in a transition period, moving from the amateur era of online video to the professional era. But YouTube isn't just copying TV networks, instead it is banking on a new kind of professional content. To do that, YouTube is supporting and encouraging amateur content creators, giving them the opportunity to turn semi-pro or even full-on professional. The Creator Hub on YouTube entices "creators" (deliberately left undefined, so that it can mean everyone and anyone) to become a "partner" of YouTube.

A lot is riding on this new form of professional content on YouTube. Its success depends on two things:

How well YouTube transitions its amateur content creators into the professional era; and
Whether it can pioneer new forms of professional content to make money from.

Those two things are closely interlinked, the success of Machinima being a good early example. Machinima's mix of video game reviews (many done by amateur/semi-pro creators) and Web native original programming (further up the professional spectrum) are an early blueprint for success. Machinima is an original - TV style content built on and for the Web - and couldn't have happened without the YouTube platform. YouTube needs to find many other success stories like Machinima.

While the decline in video views and the threat of Viddy/Socialcam is cause for some concern, overall I think YouTube is focusing on the right things: pushing content creation across the whole spectrum and focusing on engagement levels over views.

Senin, 21 Mei 2012

Why Every Startup Founder Needs a Mentor - And How to Find One

No "Yes Men"

Surrounding yourself with 'yes men' is a stupid startup move. Instead, 'all' you need to do is find someone who's 'been there, done that,' and is willing to tell you the truth. Don't scoff. There's true value having someone you can bounce ideas off of or who can offer a different perspective.

'Why wouldn't you want to learn from the experience of others?' says Bob Godlasky, a mentor and counselor with SCORE OC in Santa Ana, Calif. SCORE, a nonprofit partner of the Small Business Administration, has more than 13,000 business experts and offers free mentoring and low-cost workshops nationwide. 'There's value in getting nonfamily, nonfriends' points of view. It's amazing what we can't see until someone with no particular bias reviews the same picture or the same data,' Godlasky adds.

Janet Crowther and Katie Covington, founders of For the Makers, a website for DIY design and crafts projects, met while designing jewelry for various fashion houses, including Kate Spade, Anthropologie and Marc Jacobs. As first-time entrepreneurs, they had tons of product and design experience, but had never worked in the tech field. 'We went everywhere and asked questions of anyone that would listen,' says Covington about the startup of their social community website. 'We set out looking for validation of our ideas, but over time found mentors who can help with more specific questions.'

Ask Questions

How do you find the right mentor for your business? 'The only way to find mentors is to be out there, meeting people and asking questions,' Covington says. 'We've met people at events, through friends, on Twitter and by following blogs. As long as you are respectful of time, mentors are almost always willing to help you and your company evolve. We look for mentors who believe in us, have experiences that are vastly differently from ours, and are always creating.'

Crowther and Covington were fortunate to find tech entrepreneur Cindy Gallop (pictured above), founder of the websites If We Ran The World and Make Love Not Porn. 'Often the smartest, most interesting people all seem to know each other and are happy to make introductions,' Covington explains. 'After talking with Cindy for 10 minutes, she was making parallels between For the Makers and a handful of other people she knew.' The companies don't have a ton in common, 'but both of our companies are about giving people tools to create something for themselves,' Covington says. 'Mentors can use their experiences to frame your business in a unique way.'

And don't worry about the relationship being too formal or structured. Gallop, like her mentees, is a busy entrepreneur. 'Sadly, I cannot possibly mentor all the people who approach me asking me to be their mentor,' she says. 'I mentor a small number of chosen startups on an ad hoc basis [for] sporadic, intensive hourlong discussions of a particular issue or consultation on a particular situation.'

Gallop's advice for a great startup-mentor relationship: 'Don't just fall in love with someone's reputation, perceived celebrity or name. Identify someone who could be directly relevant to what you want to do, or who is pursuing a similar vision. And someone who is likely to have the time and the inclination to help you.'

Slow and Steady Wins

And take it slow. 'It's like any other human relationship,' Gallop explains. 'You need to have established a direct personal relationship and rapport with someone before you ask them to take the relationship to another level.'

The best mentor/mentee relationships are ones that are mutually beneficial. My mentee is a Jamaican entrepreneur who launched Study in Jamaica, a successful website that already ranks in the top 250 for traffic in her native county. I always get one or two takeaways from our monthly hourlong conversations. So if you've already hit phase two of the startup cycle, consider mentoring those just launching.

Disassembling Android Part 2: Who Wields the Blowtorch?

To truly disrupt Android, other OS makers face an uphill battle. It is no longer 2009, when Android stepped into a mobile market hungry for options beyond the iPhone (then only on AT&T) and the aging BlackBerry and Windows Mobile ecosystems. The market is now well established and the only two players that currently mean anything are iOS and Android.

For the sake of clarity, let's look at the other contenders (in order of importance):

Windows Phone: On its way to becoming a solid Number 3 behind iOS and Android.
BlackBerry 10: Research In Motion's next BlackBerry operating system and perhaps its last gasp to save the franchise.
Mozilla B2G: Open, browser-based OS currently in development from Mozilla and the open source community.
Tizen: Formerly MeeGo. Has the backing of the Linux Foundation and Intel, and it has caught the eyes of several manufacturers looking for an alternative.
Linux/Ubuntu: Pure, open Linux-based OS has been kicked about by the open source community, but generally unavailable in devices until 2013 at the earliest.
webOS: Open-sourced by Hewlett-Packard, may have a legitimate future if developers embrace browser-based mobile interaction.

Microsoft and Nokia would love nothing more than to see Windows Phone eat Android's market share. In the short term, that is not going to happen. The best Windows Phone, the Lumia 900, available through AT&T, does not measure up well with the best Android phones, either in specifications or user interface. What Windows Phone does have going for it is increasing traction with both carriers and manufacturers tired of dealing with the array of Android devices and the never-ending need to support them. Windows Phone is a known quantity and will continue to rise in market share. It will not reach the levels of Android, but it can shave 5% to 10% of its market share within a couple of years, especially if carriers continue to market and subsidize Windows Phone devices.

The problems for Windows Phone in disrupting Android are the macro-problems that face any OS aiming to usurp the crown. First, the Windows Phone Marketplace is a wasteland of copied and boring apps (with a few exceptional entries). Developer support is critical to the success of a smartphone OS, as developers create the content that drives adoption. The better a developer can fare on a platform, the harder it will work to build a productive ecosystem around it. Windows Phone and BlackBerry do not, at this point, have developer interest equivalent to Android and iOS. With almost 500,000 apps in Google Play (against 70,000 for Windows Phone and BlackBerry), conquering Android is bound to be an uphill battle.

Manufacturers and carriers may be starting to look at throwing more weight behind Windows Phone. There are a variety of reasons for this. The most important is that Microsoft is willing to pay for visibility, and manufacturers and carriers are happy to take money whether or not Windows Phone actually sells well.

While Windows Phone appears to be on the rise, Blackberry is still in wait-and-see mode. What will BlackBerry 10 ultimately look like? Will it be sexy enough to not only compete with the current crop of Android phones but remain viable for two or three years? To take market share back from Android, RIM needs to focus as much on what it releases this year as what that platform will look like in 2014.

Tizen occupies an interesting space in this ecosystem. It has indirect backing from Samsung and could easily add HTC to the list of supporters if manufacturer relations turn sour with Google over its Motorola acquisition. Tizen will continue to be pushed by Intel - but the fact is that there may be little hope for it. It does not have the industry clout to disrupt Android in the short or long term. A wild card: Tizen has been seen running Android apps, a development that could give it traction.

What applies for Tizen also applies for webOS. These open source projects will likely produce nominal results and devices, at best.

That leaves the two most intriguing candidates ' Ubuntu and Mozilla. These are also open source projects, but they have significant developer communities behind them. Canonical has proposed an Ubuntu mobile operating system that has potential to step right into Android's position. One can imagine that an Ubuntu mobile OS would be very similar to Android (both with a Linux kernel) but not tied to Google. That would please Google's manufacturer and service partners that would love to be free of Google's regulations about how a device must behave to be allowed access to Google Play.

Mozilla's Boot2Gecko Mockups

Mozilla is in a different category. It is an operating system that is of the browser, by the browser. In that way, it's similar to Google's Chrome operating system, though B2G would be specialized toward mobile devices rather than notebooks. This is where HTML5 could truly disrupt Android, as it would run through the mobile Web and not be restricted by' anything. The trick for Mozilla is to create a browser-based operating system that has all of the device capabilities that Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone have with native APIs and hardware acceleration. That is not something the HTML5 environment does currently (at least, not well) and will be the biggest challenge for Mozilla as it develops the OS. Right now, Mozilla's problems are technical in nature. Get the OS right first and then we can start talking about how it deals with manufacturers, carriers, developers, marketers, advertisers and the rest of the mobile ecosystem. Of all the methods and technologies used by would-be Android competitors, HTML5 has the highest ceiling. The company that pulls together a browser-based mobile operating system could fare very well, especially with developers.

Taken individually, each would-be Android killer has strengths and flaws that will help and hinder it in trying to unseat Google. The near-term players (Windows Phone and BlackBerry) will have to battle OEMs and manufacturers and curry favor with developers. Everybody else still has to work out development and technical issues before they can gain the kind of traction that Android has created.

Consequently, for the next two years or so, the mobile world will likely be a race between Apple and Google. 2012 will not be the Year Of Something Other Than Android. 2015 and beyond? Perhaps.

What do you think has the greatest potential to disrupt Android? Let's hear your picks in the comments.

How Social Video Could Kill YouTube

From January to March, people spent 10% less time watching YouTube videos online, while users of mobile video apps increased their viewing time by 52%, according to San Francisco-based Flurry, a mobile advertising and analytics platform provider. In March, each active user averaged 425 minutes on YouTube and 231 minutes on mobile video apps.

While the numbers are interesting, Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, acknowledges they do not prove that mobile apps are taking viewer time from YouTube. That kind of proof would have to come from a statistical study.

Nevertheless, Farago believes the numbers are a canary in the coal mine. With increasing processing power, higher bandwidth and high-definition cameras, smartphones are becoming a good platform for capturing memorable moments and then sharing them with friends and family. So, it is certainly possible that people are spending less time watching online video, and more time creating and sharing it. "When you put all that together with a Viddy or SocialCam, which are very cool, fun, editing, sharing tools, you start to get the perfect storm, or the planets align," he said.

So what's so special about apps like Viddy or SocialCam? Simplicity. YouTube has a mobile app, but it can be a multistep process to post video. While the steps may not seem difficult, they're enough of a hassle to prevent people from bothering. That weakness is what mobile video apps are attacking. SocialCam, for example, does not require a separate step for uploading. The app automatically moves the video to SocialCam servers, which then shares it based on the user's preferences.

This kind of simplicity is only possible from startups that begin and end with the smartphone or tablet. The online world of websites and PCs is so last generation to them. The generational shift from the PC to mobile devices in accessing the Web is the kind of rapid change that can mark the downfall of companies as powerful as Google and Facebook in as little as five years, Eric Jackson, founder and managing member of Ironfire Capital, recently argued in Forbes.

In roughly 20 years, the world has seen three Internet generations starting with the Web portals (Yahoo, AOL, Amazon, eBay and Google), then the social media companies (Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon), and now mobile. Each new generation brings changes that the older generation can't quite adapt to fast enough, Jackson argues. Yes, the seniors can try to buy their way in, such as Facebook paying $1 billion for Instagram, but they are still left with trying to bolt the new platform onto the older platform, which is still driving profits.

While older companies struggle to reinvent their legacies, Viddy, SocialCam and other startups remain focused on the technology people are quickly moving to today - in this case, mobile devices. This razor-sharp focus has led to Viddy and SocialCam amassing more than 60 million users. Meanwhile, the previous generation is reaching for the oxygen mask to try to keep up.

Of course, with Google's billions of dollars behind it, YouTube, which has a mobile app, has the resources to adapt. However, having money and even millions of users may not be enough to keep up with the speed of change. Just ask Yahoo and AOL.

Image by mauritsonline.

Minggu, 20 Mei 2012

Weekly Wrap-up: Google's Knowledge Graph, SlideShark's Presentation App and More

Google Goes Back to What It Does Well: Finding Things

Google released the Knowledge Graph this week and Jon Mitchell explains the ins and outs:

In the new Google, with the Knowledge Graph online, a new box will come up. You'll still get the Google results you're used to, including the box scores for the team Google thinks you're looking for, but on the right side, a box called "See results about" will show brief descriptions for the Los Angeles Kings, the Sacramento Kings, and the TV series, Kings. If you need to clarify, click the one you're looking for, and Google will refine your search query for you.

Learn more about how this will affect your search experience by reading Jon Mitchell's Google Goes Back to What It Does Well: Finding Things.

Giving iPad PowerPoint Presentations Just Got a Lot Better

If you've ever tried to give a presentation with your iPad, you know it's virtually impossible if you want to use presenter mode. That all changed with the recent release of SlideShark. Get a good look at the app by reading David Strom's review of the presentation app, SlideShark.