Creativity Defined

Been thinking a lot lately on what makes a "great" start-up.

You obviously need a good idea and to solve a real problem for a large amount of people.

You need a talented team and access to resources (technology, capital, etc.).

But what else gets a company from a pipe dream to a multi-million dollar enterprise?

Rock solid execution, that's what!

And I guess that's one of the things I've been wrestling with as my product gets closer and closer to launch. There's so much inherent risk in operating in unchartered waters; how is a founder to know what to do every step of the way? How can we mitigate this risk?

Well, there's no formula - if there were then everybody would know it and successful founders would be no different than anybody else.

My feeling is that many successful start-ups and founders all operate within a certain unteachable thought framework - a framework that marries logical reasoning with creative problem solving. Now, the "logical" part of that framework isn't very difficult to grasp....

If we have this much money, then we can buy this many servers and hire this many staffers, etc. etc. No sweat...

But the "creative" aspect of this framework is where one founder shines and another flops.

When a founder, a CEO or any stake holder in a project thinks creatively and critically about a problem they tend to not only find new solutions, but they gain an edge over other players in their space.

For instance, when James Hong, et al. first launched HotorNot.com they got so much traffic that their server was crashing all the time. They had no money and no time to raise capital. So what did they do?

They got creative!

They negotiated a deal with Rack Space where they gave Rack Space free advertising on their site and in turn Rack Space gave them free hosting for a year!

A month or two ago Hong participated in a panel where he quoted somebody else (I forget who) as defining "creativity" as:

"Creativity is what happens when you chop a zero off the end of a budget".

I was reading Shel Israel's blog tonight and he had a great quote from Steve Larsen:

"Constraint spawns creativity"

And I really have to say that both of these quotes are amazingly accurate - and why shouldn't they be, they're both spawned from experience in the trenches.

I think most entrepreneurs would agree -- our best decisions have been made under less than ideal circumstances. We've created the most successful features, we've cut the best deals (sometimes) and we've hired the best people all under circumstances where others might've just folded their cards and went home.

And that's what I think differentiates a successful businessman from a bad one - the ability to creatively construct solutions to problems.

Some may call it luck, but Sam Goldwyn said it best, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."!

Your Face(book) on Google!

After reading Michael Arrington's post about Facebook allowing non-Facebook members to use its People Search feature, I decided to sign into my account and see what's what.

I wouldn't have been concerned at all until I read the announcement a bit more carefully:

Now people can search for this listing from Facebook's Welcome page. In a few weeks, it may also be found through search engines like Google.

What!?

People might be able to search for me, see my photo and personal information directly on Google? That's a little weird for me and I really think it goes against some of the early values of Facebook - privacy and control!

I understand what they're doing from a business perspective, but I just don't agree with it.

I'm sure they'll give us the option of changing our privacy preferences - which I'll be sure to do - but for people who don't check their accounts very often, or who simply don't pay attention to these sorts of developments, this could come as a HUGE shock to them to see their face plastered across Google.

Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion but it just doesn't sit well with me.

Got Picked up on Found+READ

I feel like a kid who just got a "gold star" on a spelling test. I submitted my last blog entry to Found+READ late last week and it appears that they liked it. The article is still on the homepage at FoundRead.com and I've included a direct link below:

http://www.foundread.com/view/choosing-the-right

I'm an avid reader of the blog so I was pretty proud/happy to be featured there. Hopefully I'll get a chance to put more entires like my last one together so I can submit a few more to the site - I'd be thrilled if other entrepreneurs found my advice helpful.

On another note, we're kicking off the design of TickerHound.com this week with our new design partners, BlueFlavor.com - I can't begin to tell you how excited I am!

More news coming soon...

Playboy Goes Social

Just saw a TechCrunch post about Playboy launching a social network - smart move Hef!

Here's why:

1. The way most adult content sites work is through a network model. They'll start with one site, build others and use them all to cross promote the other. It's what enables the smart companies to earn 30%+ margins and the dumb companies to earn under 10%.

Building a social network around a brand will allow Playboy to create a great funnel effect to their "pay for" services and sites.

2. On top of a reality show (which they already have) a social network is the next logical step for Playboy to hit the mainstream audience that might not otherwise get exposed to the Playboy brand or content. This is primarily due to the fact that as a paper magazine Playboy has lost a bit of its luster amongst the millions of online destinations that offer more raw, real and free content.

I think this puts them right back in the game.

3. They now have a HUGE talent pool to scout from.

Before, young girls aspiring to visual "deposits" in many a young man's "spank bank", had to submit photos and ID information directly to the magazine in order to be accepted for consideration.

Now they just post a few provocative profile pictures and their on their way!

To what? I don't know - as long as it's not my daughter or girlfriend I could care less.

All in all, well done Hef -- you've combined two of my favorite topics into one: Tech and Porn!

Gotta love a guy that can date 5 women at once while in his 80's.

Where did Friendster go wrong?

In my personal opinion - which, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't amount to much - one of the most important things one can do as an entrepreneur is to learn from past mistakes. Not mistakes of one's own doing, but rather from the mistakes of the countless entrepreneurs that came before us.

"Standing on the shoulders of giants" is a phrase that comes to mind.

Now we all know of the well documented technology problems over at Friendster, along with the internal VC and management conflicts - lessons to be learned from those two issues alone but we need to dig deeper here.

Here was one of the very first large scale social networks - this company had the world in the palm of its hands but somehow watched it all slip away (like my shot at becoming a professional basketball player when I never grew taller than 5'11'').

And while this company is starting to pick itself up by its boot straps it still has never manged to "get it right" -- what are they doing wrong?

Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Poor Information Architecture and Usability

I've brought this up to a number of people and while some agreed, there were many who didn't. But I really stand behind this one and I'll talk about why.

First off, why do ads take up almost a third of the profile screen? They have a massive leader board at the very top and then two big boxes on the right. I can see how that may benefit the bottom line but how does it add value to a user's social networking experience?

And have you ever tried using Friendster's photo feature? Forget the fact that you still can't tag other people in photos, click on a photo to go to the next one, etc... those things are annoying enough, but have you ever noticed this:

If you hit the back button in your browser while looking at an individual photo it'll take you right back to the gallery view of all of the photos (usually causing me to lose my place, say "Oh fuck it" and go elsewhere). The site is essentially forcing us to go against conventional wisdom in favor of Friendster's desire to use AJAX in their code - sorry guys, big "no no".

The list goes on but I'll stop here.

2. Day Late and a Dollar Short

Contrary to popular belief, Facebook didn't originate the idea of a news feed in a social network. The originator of social networks did - that's right, in case you forgot, Friendster was the first to offer users a peek at what their contacts had been up to on the site.

However, until recently the social news feed wasn't very "social". Let me explain...

When Friendster first released this feature it would simply tell me that one of my friends added a new friend, but it wouldn't say who. It would tell me my friend added a new photo, but it wouldn't show it to me. It would tell me they got a new comment but not tell who wrote it and what it said.

Essentially, the system was designed to promote click-throughs, page views and revenue. It wasn't designed to increase the utility of the site - again, another big "no no".

They did finally started to head in the right direction recently - now I can at least see who my friends are becoming friends with - the comments and photos are still off the mark though.

By releasing a half-assed feature that was meant to increase revenue and not utility, Friendster was once again passed over and Facebook reaped all the glory and benefits of the social news feed.

3. No Platform, No Traction

My friends are probably sick of hearing this one but history has proven that the companies who help other companies make money are dramatically more likely to succeed than those who don't.

Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Google, MySpace, Facebook - what do they have in common?

They all created a platform that allowed other individuals and companies to make money.

Microsoft allowed software vendors to create software that could be marketed and sold to millions of users on a standard operating system.

Wal-Mart made it so people from all walks of life could afford to buy DVD players and TV sets.

Google helped start-ups monetize their traffic and gave marketers the ability to advertise in every corner of the web.

MySpace and Facebook both allowed application developers to piggy-back their networks and market their wares in a viral manner - Facebook is unarguably doing a better job at this than MySpace which is why I think they'll eventually "win" but I'll save this argument for another time.

Friendster just hasn't caught onto this concept - they're operating a closed social network (which is mediocre at best) and not allowing for the third "C" in Hagel's "3 C's" of the web. They have the Content, they have the Community but they just don't have the Commerce!

Lessons

And the moral of the story kids: Don't be a "Friendster"... j/k ;)

But in all seriousness, these are the things that go through my head as I toil away in my crappy office space building my latest company.

How can I make my web application as easy to use as possible? How can I reduce friction, clutter, excess, etc.? How can I make this site as elegant as the iPod?

How can I use the technology I'm building to solve a real problem for people - how can it become a utility for my target audience?

How can I give other people the opportunity to benefit from this service monetarily?

Tough questions - but I think if we keep them in mind we'll at least avoid many of the mistakes made by those that came before us.

And those are my two pennies for the day!