Legacy and the Web

I know I haven't updated this blog in forever, but with good reason. We've been working our asses off at TickerHound -- I wish I could share the big secret with you now but you'll just have to wait a bit longer.

In any case, I was finally inspired to write a new post as I was on the train this morning.

I had my headphones on and two of my favorite songs played back to back:

Big Pun's: You Aint a Killer
The Notorious B.I.G's: Warning

Aside from the fact that they both have "Big" in their names (and rightfully so), the other thing these two talented artists have in common is that they've both passed away -- too young, might I add.

But here I am -- along with thousands of other hip-hop fans -- listening to these young men weave rhymes that are over 10 years old and still thinking to myself, "Damn, these guys are good". I'll be 90 years old one day (god willing) and I'll still be thinking, "Damn, these guys are good".

And that right there is the LEGACY these two men have left to this world. Their ability to take concepts, events and emotions from their lives and craft beautiful rhythmic sentences out of them.

The same applies to many creative people:

• Visual artists
• Film makers
• Actors and Actresses

These people, 100 or 200 years after they're gone, will have left a legacy here on earth that all future generations will be able to appreciate.

But what about us?

The rough and tumble entrepreneurs who are creating, crafting and weaving beautiful web experiences and products each and every day.

Sure, we make an impact now but what about 100 years from now?

Will our works of art (read: "our web sites") even be around then? What happens if we have to close up shop and shut down our sites?

All that creative energy just fades into oblivion.

And I know what most people would say: "that's business". And while I agree to an extent I have to imagine that the web is more than just business. The very nature of it makes it so that content can persist.

Our designers and developers put just as much creative energy into building a site as a Director would into making a film -- where's their legacy?

Sure, the "Portfolio" section of a designer's personal page or an item on an entrepreneur's resume/bio gives a viewer a brief glimpse into a product that no longer exists...but don't we deserve more than that?

Shouldn't someone be able to EXPERIENCE the sites and products we've built as we originally intended? Shouldn't they be able to ask a question on TickerHound, or vote for a story on Digg or find a great wine on Snooth?

I think sites like The Way Back Machine do a decent job at preserving a site's content, but not so much the experience.

I also think sites like Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr and YouTube have also greatly helped keep legacies alive - albeit in a static form.

But I think we need a new type of web archive -- one that allows a site's experience to persist throughout time. I want my grand kids to be able to go to TickerHound (even if it no longer exists as a business) and experience something I created when I was in my 20's.

What would a "legacy" service like this even look like? How would it function? Is it even possible?

I don't know.

All I know is if there were a way to make it so a young man, 25 years from now, could use TickerHound, Digg or Snooth (whether or not the businesses were still "alive") and say, "Damn, these guys are good", then I'd be one happy entrepreneur.

Feedback Forum

So I went to my first feedback forum last night - hosted by Jonah Keegan. The presenters were the co-founders of a new online dating site, CupidsLab.com.

CupidsLab is hoping to take dating to a new level by empowering not only those who are looking to meet that special someone, but by also empowering the lesser known and drastically underappreciated "match maker" population. You all know you have a friend or two out there who has a certain knack for hooking two people up. (NOTE: my previous match maker extraordinaire did such a wonderful job that she ended up matching herself up with me! Good job baby!)

So CupidsLab is going to provide a tool set for empowering the match makers to help them do their "jobs" more effectively.

Last night we all met in a conference room with about 8 other technology entrepreneurs, marketers, journalists and even a VC to listen to some of the challenges CupidsLab is facing. Then everybody started to give feedback...and brainstorm...and give even more feedback.

It was, quite frankly, an AMAZING 3 hours.

You have to understand, I come from a background in traditional finance (brokerage, analysis, etc.) and it is such a rare thing to find people who genuinely want to help each other on Wall Street. Most of the time it's because they either want something immediately in return or because they're working some sort of shady angle.

In any case, last night was the complete opposite of that. We had a room packed with a group of fairly intelligent guys (I'd like to consider myself one of them) who wanted to do nothing more then sip a couple of beers, eat a slice of pizza and brainstorm about business. Not only did CupidsLab come out of it with great ideas and feedback, but it forced me to think through some of the issues I was having with TickerHound in some new ways.

I'll definitely be attending these in the future and I highly recommend it to anyone who has a genuine desire to help other entrepreneurs and learn more about this industry that we're in.

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."!