Wall Street never really fell before.Has the money, fame, power - 2009 policies just rattled the cage but business is as usual. Intelligent people joining for high paychecks to crunch numbers and game the system. The real pain will be felt when the best & brightest avoid working for Wall Street and instead join companies with the same pay but improve the world.

Ask anyone working in finance: "What are you doing to make the world a better place?" and their face goes blank with shame but the color fills in starting with dollar signs in their eyes. Now ask the same thing for others in other industries especially high-tech companies even places like Microsoft once declared the "Evil Empire". Older companies have a diluted mission, but there's still an insistence to change the world for the better. Now ask people at Google, Facebook, GitHub, ... I mean just any startup that has more than 10 employees and you'll see starry eyed people talking about a better future (sounds like campaign ads, except they get shit done).

This is conversation is less about Wall St vs Tech (that battle has been won ;), it's more a conversation about why Wall St. will radically shift its direction. It'll never disappear as it's vital to the economy and we'll always need banks, investors, experimental financial firms, and other financial institutions but they will refocus on delivering lasting social change on a global scale. Triple bottom line is real and it's less about "feel good", it's about what makes more money. Also, it turns out when consumers have power (like they do now) it's what works best for them collectively which is the same as what improves their lives (social) and what improves the future of the their world (environmental).Exploitation phase is over, it's the exploration phase (though it's cyclical).

Exploitation - extracting more value from customers. Exploration - finding better ways to increase value for customers. Wall Street must adhere to the new principles or they will get washed out by innovative financial firms outside Wall St that'll eat their lunch. For example, watch out for Bank Simple, even if they fail they'll breed a new generation of ambitious entrepreneurs who will make it their life mission to destroy the leading banks.

What makes money is what empowers the largest amount of people. Finance seems to think that empowerment is about controlling their power allowing themselves the greatest concentration but it's the opposite. It's about distributing power to all people and positioning yourself as the inspiration to the idea.

See: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Ultimate validation of your idea is your customers sell it for you. #evangelism
Basically, you know your product has legs, when it literally moves without you pushing it. When your customers, collectively, put as much time as you've put into them you're successful. As the [(customers' time) to (your time commitment)] ratio increases, your product does exponentially well.  

 Value differs based on financial/emotional motives. Maintain emotional consistency.
People buy products at different income levels differently. When you're poor or ignorant about the product, you purchase the highest features to price model. As you become more wealthy in terms of knowledge, time, and money, the product you buy will be higher quality products to graduate as you graduate from the "cheaper" stuff. This may be used to show opulence because you're buying a "prestigious" good. Finally, when you've when choosing between many similiarly developed products, decisions are based on which company most suits your emotional/moral values. 

At a certain pt ppl see they realized their world state and want others to feel the same emotions. They want the world to change.
Continuing from the previous point, you realize that you've made your world the way you want to. So your mission becomes helping others achieve the same level of satisfaction. As social animals, we thrive on sharing with others the way we feel. I have a hunch that humans communicate via emotions. Language is one of many representations of emotional communication (part of why I now feel that language should be cherished and maintained as culturally relevant. In short, a language encompasses the entire culture's range of emotions). 

Crowdsourced incongruent to evangelism. Crowdsource is akin to saying "customer you're smart, do my work." #crowdsource
Many people think that if you crowd-source something, it will instantaneously become successful. The belief is if someone creates something they'll tell all their friends. Actually, it tells your customers you're too stupid and lazy to think for yourself and are looking for cheap labor. 

Successful crowdsourcers build a community and innovate on community development opposed to the selling product.
However, successful crowd-sourcers (or is it sorcerers) actually put an amazing amount of time and dedication to creating a community. Their innovation and expertise lies in community development. Furthermore, they listen to the customers well and determine what's the best for the community. I have never heard of crowdsourcing the community, because that's THE JOB of crowd-sourcing. They think and provide for the community better than the community can for itself. 

Crowdsourcers sustain with the profits of the product but manage the community well.
Finally, crowd-sourcing product is the community as opposed to the tangible. Threadless is selling their customers a medium to outlet their creativity and they sustain themselves with the production of collective sweat. Yet, they're working incredibly hard to make sure their community is well-served and their community reciprocates with marketing, sales, and creating cool shit people buy. 

 

Over the last few weeks, I've heard, read, and watched a ton of startups give pitches. Recently, I started a consulting company called Devs' Devs (developers for developers) and went to Kairos Society event in NYC. It's awesome watching the explosive growth of startup founders around the country and the huge interest in entrepreneurship. But the biggest problem is most pitches suck! They suck for a ton of reasons, but the biggest one that sticks out to me: NO EXPLICIT DIFFERENTIATION!

This problem occurs at every business school. I'm convinced they relearn English and are provided buzzword dictionaries for reference. For example, instead of saying "we are creating a company that allows people to create their own X and sell those to others" they say "we are a crowdsourcing and e-commerce platform for user-generated X" Thankfully I translate MBS (Mostly BullShit) and have been able to dig through all the shit and get to the point. However, it seems that even though MBA students and their disciplies learn about all kinds of techniques to differentiate competitively, they fail to exercise these concepts when telling someone their story. Actually they make it sound as bland, boring, and banal as possible. It's almost as if they hide under shit so no one will sniff out the details. They turn their story into a predictable investor deck so that it's easier to raise money. Fuck that noise! Entrepreneurs need to be the ones that break rules, throw out convential wisdom, and have investors chase them*!

Your pitch is your story! You are talking about why you'll revolutionize the world, change the course of history, make people live better lives, destroy status quo in the industry, etc. Even if you have smaller ambitions, talk about the story. Why are you working ridiculous hours, staying up late, working for yourself for a shitty idea that may die in infancy? Why do you care for this to exist, people live their lives without it existing?

As an entrepreneur, focus on the explicit differentiation of your business. Talk about what drove you the insane side of startups and why you're the one to pursue this opportunity for mankind. Appear to be sane but talk about why you're driven to succeed for this particular idea. Furthermore emphasize the clear execution you're developing and why you see it working. Finally close out with numbers and now you have a unique pitch. If you take nothing else, keep this in mind: STOP HIDING BEHIND BULLSHIT, SHAKE THINGS UP AND BE DIFFERENT!

*Note: Obviously, investors are important in startup land, and it's nearly impossible having them chase you....blah blah blah. Go big or go home! You're an entrepreneur so own it and if you do have to chase make sure you do it in style. Make sure you own every presentation and the investors share the story of meeting you the first day. Ask any investor who met Steve Jobs, Seth Priebatsch, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin & Larry Page, etc. They all had weird eccentries that made them rise to the top, even the ones that rejected them remember the first day they met them (they would have to figure it out when they have to explain why they didn't invest).

It's been 2 months. I messed up.

Today, George Kassabgi spoke at the weekly ACM speaker series at Northeastern University.

Bio: http://acm.ccs.neu.edu/?q=node/744

His presentation: http://tinyurl.com/GKnuTalk

Disclaimer: These are my remarks and my interpretation of his talk.

He compared entrepreneurs to explorers. Talking about how explorers had incomplete maps, directions, or answers. All these men knew is where they wanted to go. He claimed that to be successful none of these qualities are vital:

• Intelligence - It's never about knowing the right answers. It's knowing which questions to answer. He had an example of an anecdote where Einstein's student came to him exasperated that this year's final would be the same as last year. Einstein calmly explained that even though the questions were the same, the answers are completely different. George later elaborated that even though he had studied computer science and was asked similar or even the same questions, the answers are completely different.

  Success comes from "fast failure".

• Skills (e.g. most popular, smartest, ...) - Some are able to succeed in structured environments but that's untelling of future success in the chaotic world of entrepreneurship. He draws upon Darwin's research: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

  Success comes from being "most adaptable"

• Planning leads to success - He said that just as you would never conceive a baby and then start drawing up plans of which college they'll go to, what type of girl they'll like, what kind of house and mortgage they should get. Instead he suggested trying to channel your "inner child" and try things out. Very similar to a baby who wants to reach for something on a table will just go for it with everything they know, a startup should avoid long-term planning and just do it.

  Success early-on comes from knowing "near-term moves"

His biggest point of all is entrepreneurship is about a particular type of perseverance. Entrepreneurs need the tenacity and determination to succeed but that's drawn their optimism. Top entrepreneurs share that with others.

Obviously, there are times our optimism gets the best of us (aka delusion ;), but in that case he suggests "go until you're out of money and/or friends who want to start something with you." Otherwise, he says "how will you know when you're at your last pivot." Of course this goes back to an earlier trait of adaptability, if you see things are working differently than you thought then figure out how to make it work.

Recently, I started shaving with a Merkur HD "Classic" (pictured above). I started to realize the experience I got from using this shaver was vastly better than my previous multi-blade shaves. That got me thinking what was the new found appeal. It's more work, takes more time, and is less forgiving of mistakes. Using this shaver takes time to adjust and yet I'm shaving more often and feel way better after using it. I started to realize that my full concentration and focus went into shaving with it. Furthermore I feel really bad ass using it because it takes some skill and it feels so much more manly ;)

Then I started to think: what could this mean about tools in general? It seems that tools need to do the following:

• Make your people feel awesome - If you can create a tool or a culture where tools are supposed to give your team the feeling of kicking-ass-and-taking-names then you have made them much more effective at their jobs. It's obvious tools are created to help people be more efficient, but largely my experience has shown that most tools suck. The tool developers wrote it a long time ago, cut corners on the UI, or just designed it for engineers but its meant for marketers. These tools make people feel like they are burdened with the task and it actually reduces morale, takes more time, and slows down everything. 
• Make your people think - When you have a tool, force people to think about the task and be done with it. Now this is only possible if you allow them to feel kick-ass. Most people want to crush the tasks they're working on so they can move forward. Additionally, when you make sure that carelessness is heavily penalized, people will become more attentive. Finally, since they are more focused they'll get the job done faster thus serving as a self-fulfilling prophecy: using this tool makes me more awesome! 
• Simple with leverage - The tools need to have leverage. For example, I'm using one blade shaver but get a much closer shave than a multi-blade setup. The principle is the same, more blades = more irritation due to higher friction over my skin. Similarly, tools that are too complicated for one person suck. They require coordination which burdens each party and causes delays & deadlocks in the system. However, if you can create simple tools that achieve the task with less people that's a win. AND when you have a task that previously took 3 people into a tool one person uses, that's the ultimate bad-ass feeling. 

Next time you build a tool, think is this going to make the users feel kick-ass!

(photo credit: Charlie Esser)

(photo credit: XWRN, flickr.com)

If you've ever shared living space with others, you're quite aware of the problem: Dishes in the sink! It's always been a problem ever year (mostly because I've had different roommates every year). This year I ended up diagnosing the problem and it the way it starts is when the dishwasher is running someone innocently places their dish in the sink (after all the dishwasher is running). Then the next person comes up and sees a dish so places his/her dish and so on. All of a sudden, the dish is full because everyone saw a dish in the sink and thought “Why should I wash all these dishes?” Additionally, until the sink is full the new standard to balance a stacking act of dishes. Then finally, the situation worsens until everyone realizes that the stack is dangerously high and then drama ensues over who has to wash all the dishes.

This is an interesting problem as it happens all the time. It all starts with a simple situation when we can defer an action to another date due to the present state.  In the example of the dishes in sink, we have a queue to keep our dirty dishes until the dishwasher is clear. However, it turns out others are less opposed to moving dishes from sink → dishwasher than actually cleaning the dish. It turns out an easy solution is to clean the dish while the dishwasher is full and leave that cleaned dish waiting to be placed in the dishwasher into the sink. Thus cleaning is the action we defer. Similarly, if we're faced with a situation where we can defer action, stop and think about how work will just compound. Rather just commit as many actions as possible to minimize future effort once you're ready to move your “dish” into the dishwasher.

Bottom Line: Minimize as much effort for the future because it'll eventually compound and “overflow your sink”.

 

Recently, I've been looking at television advertisements with the
intent of understanding the company's understanding of the strengths
of their own products.

It seems the commercials that have a very clear, simple message i.e.
ones that display one product or feature are the easiest to
understand. Moreover they help the viewer figure out how to tell their
friends (most important for traction) and the values of the company
(important for retention). However, very few companies can accomplish
this task (which is surprising). Even when external ad companies
create the ad, its very easy to tell what each company thinks of
itself.

The way to tell a company's self-perception based on the commercial:
+ What's the product/feature advertised?
+ What problem is it solving?
+ What is the benefit of their solution?
+ Who cares about this problem? (The demographic of actors in the commercial)
+ The emotion the actors display in the commercial.
The story the commercial tells is what the company wants the viewer to
know of itself. It relates to its intended person with the problem
felt by its actors (which should look like and relate to its
demographic). The benefit is how they alleviate the problems and
reduce their negative emotion (transition of emotion through the
commercial of the actors).

The less you can deduce from the commercial, the less the company
knows itself. The argument that an external company could introduce
noise, but the company should have a way of managing expectations
consistently and enforcing certain guidelines. Additionally, if you're
unable to articulate and teach others a concept then you are less
educated in the topic than you think. Finally, the piece you're unable
to deduce is exactly the piece the company as a whole is ignoring or
cares less about.

Any company's sole purpose is to improve the lives of its customers.
But if they have a less than clear idea of its customers or product,
the less focus they can put into keeping their customers thrilled.
Additionally, they'll spin their wheels finding the problem.

Bottom Line: Companies' marketing materials are used to educate their
customers. But they can always teach you about how much you actually
know about yourself. The harder it is for you to teach, the more you
need to learn about your customer. The best case - your material is
used by your customers to teach/convert others.

See: http://vox.fastcompany.com/1669300/fail-more-win-more

For some reason, in the last few years, people have become more inclined to encouraging others to fail and make mistakes. My take: NO! That's terrible advice. It's never been the mission of highly successful people to fail, there's never been a "good" way to fail. Actually, just the opposite, highly successful people execute and succeed and win more than regular people. The gap between the average person and someone great is less about how many mistakes were made than about focused execution. Great people are aware they can make dramatic change and can solve highly difficult problems out of reach for most others. When most people encounter difficult problems they are unable to grasp, they walk away since they are unaware how to take control of the situation. People at the highest peak of awesome, on the other hand, will solve that problem (if there's an interest, anyway). When they take time to think and act on solving a very difficult problem beyond their reach, they inevitably make mistakes. They're trying to do something no one else has tried or others have failed to solve. With enough time, effort, or money, any problem is solvable (obviously, there's still unsolved problems but we just need to keep trying ;). When they have figured out the right path to solving their problem, they've created a gap which is proportional to the amount of effort required to solve that problem. Additionally, they have a bridge that they control that's in the form of their solution (opening it up allows free access; otherwise they charge in whatever form they want). 

Update: 

Researchers (Bloom (1985), Bryan & Harter (1899), Hayes (1989), Simmon & Chase (1973)) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. 

http://norvig.com/21-days.html

Bottom Line: Stop trying to make mistakes/fail the "right" way. Solve difficult problems. You'll make mistakes, but iteratively they'll lead to a winning solution. 

My last review was me getting out the slump thanks to Eminem's album so here I'd like to outline my review of the album: 

Preface

As I said before, the album is amazing. It's simply fire, but it's from a new angle: Eminem is re-defining himself, the art of music, and the entire genre of rap. Before, he came out spitting satirical pieces littered with relevant pop-culture references and nuanced insults at various celebrities. They were hilarious, engaging, and silly e.g. My Name Is, Real Slim Shady, Just Lose It. He also has hard-hitting pieces such as Mosh, Marshall Mathers, The Way I Am. And then the borderline insane e.g. Kill You, Bitch (I, II, & III).

Slim Shady

Slim Shady LP was amazing because that was when he broke out and defined himself as one of the best rappers of all time. He created a unique style that addressed new content material that no one else was doing. On Slim Shady LP,  he was talking about drugs, messing around with underage girls, his messed up life, and pushed out all the frustrations he had as an emerging artist. He conveyed his message elegantly with mostly pieces with a ton of dark humor.

Marshall Mathers

Then came Marshall Mathers LP that was pure lyrical talent dripping from each syllable he rhymed. This was the album where he put it all out and it came out superb with the angst of just getting famous and how everyone wants a piece of him, now. Never before did people even acknowledge his existence but now he's famous after Slim Shady LP and now he's doing it big, people are calling him to "catch-up". He even brought up his disgust with parents blaming media with respect to Columbine i.e. Marilyn rather than figure out what they did wrong. He saw how fame brought more of its problems for him and the old ones he had disappeared but replaced with even larger problems.

The Eminem Show

Afterwards was The Eminem Show which was a solid album but it (for me) showed that he was no longer in the "under-dog" mentality he had in the previous two albums. In the third major release, he realized he made it and he acknowledged his influence on youth, but found it a double-edged sword. Of course, it gave him the fuel because he has all these fans but he was angry at them for allowing him to be a scapegoat for their actions. Additionally, more people hated him for his fame and he hated them back even harder. Yet, he was more laid back compared to Marshall Mathers where he viciously tore apart his critics. In this album, he showed up, hit hard, and proved himself beyond any reasonable doubt. 

Post-Show/Pre-Recovery

All the albums during this period, I felt he had very little fuel. He was creating a few good songs but mostly he had the success, and found ways through it i.e. drugs. And it showed that the drugs were getting the better of his judgement and his songs were declining. Of course he had some amazing songs and even his moderate songs beasted everyone else, but his prime seems past him. Additionally, every new year it seems he's declined and is in a ditch. 

Recovery

With his latest album, I sensed that the biggest revelation Eminem had was he needs to revitalize himself. There's nothing out there left for him to conquer, he has to get it from himself and shine. It seemed he was more upset about himself and he's made a promise to his fans to make the next generation of music work. Its this revelation that I believe will lead him to his best music ever! I think he's realized that he's going to leave behind a legacy and he's going to leave a mark that only a few will ever manage to attain. He'll redefine himself thus an entire generation of musicians and inspire with an redefined focus on the essence of his musical experience.