Period Three Blog » Business

Aug272008

Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuck

Posted by Gene in Business, Branding

I am no way a Wine snob, I know very very little about it. But I feel like I can sort of hang now, thanks to Wine Library TV’s host Gary Vaynerchuck. I started watching his video podcast about a month ago and have just gotten hooked. My point isn’t wine or even Gary, but more how he uses the web and social media to help his business grow.

He started out getting into the family business of selling wine, over the years he’s used his video podcast to help sell wine. He’s passionate about wine and loves to talk about it, he shows it, every week. He doesn’t make any direct money off the video podcast he does it to push his personal brand which in turn helps sales. He uses a barrage of online media; facebook, twitter, iTunes, etc. He’s everywhere, even on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. A year or so ago he purchased the social web-app for wine tasting Corkd.com, a free resource but again helps to push his brand.

Check him out, but aside from that, just pay attention to how he markets himself.

Comments (0)
Aug112008

Build it to last not to sell.

Posted by Gene in Business

I’m an entrepreneur, but I don’t like to admit it. I think of myself more as a product scientist, that name “entrepreneur” just seems to have too much baggage for me personally. I’ve been watching this show called Startup Junkies, you can watch some episodes on hulu.com for free, for a while now. I find it addicting, not because I want to be like them but because I can’t help but watch the train wreck happen. Pretty voyeuristic of me I know. The thing I keep getting migraines over while watching it is the amount of focus both the show and the company seem to place on raising money from investors, and all the talk of going public and cashing in by the employees. I know that makes for good TV but it just hurts my head.

What I’ve learned over my tenure of running my own business is, that you have to build a company that you can live with. Something that you would feel comfortable with for the rest of your life. Something that you would never — NEVER — sell to anyone else (even if you wind up selling it later). We have had many clients at Period Three that are “start-ups” and I guess at a certain point we were a “start-up” ourselves. I believe in letting your business fund itself naturally and organically very early on (I know some businesses have a larger scale than P3) and I believe you can’t be afraid to work very hard to achieve and continue any money making sustainability. That means you must be willing to work ALL THE FREAKING TIME…

A good read is this post on the Diary of a failed startup blog:

It’s a marathon, but it’s a marathon made of sprints
Initial conditions matter. A lot.
Developing in a vacuum never works.
Beware the chicken and the egg.
If you’re doing anything other than building your project and getting users, it’s premature.
The product will take longer than you expect. Design for the long-term.
People have an incentive not to crush your dreams. Take everything they say with a grain of salt.
Know your limitations.

Good advice all around. Another useful set of points is this 17 Mistakes Start-ups Make list (some of these are fast killers):

Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it’s viable.
Miscalculating market size, timing, ease of entry and potential market share.
Underestimating financial requirements and timing.
Over-projecting sales volume and timing.
Making cost projections that are too low.
Hiring too many people and spending too much on offices and facilities.
Lacking a contingency plan for a shortfall in expectations.
Bringing in unnecessary partners.
Hiring for convenience rather than skill requirements.
Neglecting to manage the entire company as a whole.
Accepting that it’s “not possible” too easily rather than finding a way.
Focusing too much on sales volume and company size rather than profit.
Seeking confirmation of your actions rather than seeking the truth.
Lacking simplicity in your vision.
Lacking clarity of your long-term aim and business purpose.
Lacking focus and identity.
Lacking an exit strategy.

Comments (0)
Jun252008

12 Rules for Success From Tiger Woods

Posted by Gene in Business

I don’t care if you like Tiger Woods or not, if you hate Golf or not or simply don’t think he can be motivational because he is young or plays golf or whatever… If you’ve ever tried to play the game of Golf in even a remotely serious manner you will find that it takes a great deal of focus and you actually need to practice to get good at it. This list that Alex Shalman has put together on Tiger’s rule book for success inspired me. You can directly apply this to business and life in general.
1. Constant and Never Ending Improvement
2. A Bigger Plan
3. Embrace Defeat
4. Take Life Lightly
5. Don’t Stop
6. Live Your Own Expectations
7. Do What You Love
8. Focus
9. Pay It Forward
10. Learn From All Mistakes
11. Celebrate Your Victories
12. Pay No Attention To Naysayers
You can read the full post here.

Comments (0)
May052008

CMLS Rules Obstructing Competition

Posted by Gene in Business

I’ve been interested in the real estate market for most of my professional career. Not the buying and selling of homes but specifically in areas where real estate touches the internet. I’ve worked for two real estate technology start-ups (that shall remain nameless for the sake of good karma) and in each instance I only grew more interested in it. So naturally I’ve still followed this stuff over the years. I’ve always known the Columbia Multiple Listings Services (CMLS) to be behind the times, in a major way for most of their existence. This lawsuit by the Justice Department against the CMLS comes as no surprise to me.

By providing an efficient means of exchanging information on home listings, MLSs can benefit consumers, but that same role makes access to the MLS database - and therefore MLS membership - critically important for any broker seeking to serve clients efficiently in the MLS’s service area, the Department said. Consequently, the rules adopted by CMLS governing who can be a member and how members must run their businesses have a significant impact on competition among brokers in the area served by the MLS.

This is the rub, they provide the service but they control the data as well. Realtors willingly give them their data, and even pay to do it in one form or another. I’ve always thought of starting a 100% free MLS service for the Columbia area, but CMLS has always been the warlord of the area and significantly controls the mind-share of the local Realtors.

The Department said that CMLS’s rules also give Columbia real estate brokers the ability to exclude rivals from outside Columbia who might offer local consumers innovative brokerage options that save them money or provide services that better match their needs. The Department’s lawsuit challenges these and other CMLS rules that unreasonably restrain competition among real estate brokers and thereby lead to reduced consumer choice and higher fees paid by consumers.

Did you know the only way you can gain access to the CMLS data is if you are a licensed Realtor?

There you go, it’s all about the money right? By controlling the data they control the money, clever. I have to think that by keeping the technology that powers the MLS itself they also control the money by controlling the way you can access it.

Comments (2)
Apr282008

Rackspace files IPO

Posted by Gene in Business

Looks like Rackspace has filed with the SEC for an IPO. They are going to do an auction round just like Google originally did when they went public. I don’t normally care too much about this kind of thing but this one peeks my interest both because we use them as one of our hosting providers and that they’ve already tried to go public a few years back. Good luck Rackspace!

Link for more info here.

With the filing we also get a clearer picture of Rackspace’s business and financials. Its revenues grew 62 percent last year to $362 million, but it posted net profits of $17.8 million, which were down 10 percent from the year before. Cash flows from operations, though, remained healthy at $105 million last year, up from $61 million in 2006.

Another interesting tidbit: that truck accident that took down one of its data centers in Texas last November cost the company $3.4 million in credits to customers.

Comments (0)
Apr152008

Cabel Sasser and the epic development back-story behind Coda

Posted by Gene in Business, Software

This is a really great presentation given by Panic’s Cabel Sasser about the epic development back-story behind their recent product Coda. He reviews design decisions, development roadblocks, how they overcame their biggest issues and the ins-and-outs of product development. It is specific to developing a Mac application but the lessons really transcend the platform I think.

In style and substance, Panic is arguably the canonical indie Mac dev house. A day after their tenth anniversary they shipped Coda: an app that history will record as changing the face of website development software.

The always-entertaining Cabel recites Coda’s epic development back-story along with tangential takes on software design, usability and what it’s like to be resolution-independent.

View the entire presentation on Viddler here.

Comments (0)
Apr092008

Another reason why you should NEVER use NetworkSolutions for your domain registrations

Posted by Gene in Uncategorized, Business

TechCrunch has reported that NetworkSolutions is now hijacking subdomains when you use their domain registration (specifically their DNS) services. This is most reprehensible. I’m sure this is copyright infringement too. If you haven’t already, you should move any domains that you have registered with them to another registrar, who knows what they will do next…

Subdomain - Generally known as a “Domain within a Domain”, subdomains are web addresses built upon an existing domain name. For example, “subdomain.domain.com” is built upon “domain.com”.

Comments (0)
Mar282008

Conflict of Interest

Posted by Gene in Business

Hmmm, looks like Google’s acquisition of DoublClick has been finalized. Which as it turns out includes the company Performics, which is DoubleClick’s SEO division. Check out their website. Is it just me or is this a huge conflict of interest for Google?

Comments (0)
Mar102008

Calacanis and 37signals different perspectives on workaholics

Posted by Gene in Business

Here are some pretty interesting diverging opinions on the “how to run your business and treat your employees” or as I like to look at it “how to squeeze the most or best production out of your employees” blog post(s) battle. Both Calacanis and 37signals have dueling posts on the issue.

From Calacanis.com:
- If you do meetings, have them over lunch, because you shouldn’t let your employees eat alone
- Don’t provide people with phones, they can always use their own cellphones, and this saves money
- Buy a decent espresso machine and provide food in the office, because you don’t want your staff to ever stop working, this way you keep them in the office every minute of every day
- Buy people who work hard a computer for home, so they can work after hours, on weekends and public holidays
- Fire people who are not workaholics…. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life.
From 37signals/svn blog:
- People who are workaholics are likely to attempt to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at the problem.
- People who always work late makes the people who don’t feel inadequate for merely working reasonable hours.
- If all you do is work, your value judgements are unlikely to be sound.
- Working with interesting people is more interesting than just working.
Both of these look pretty naive to me, Calacanis certainly comes off as a pretty big “fill-in-the-blank” but 37signals comes off as really utopian at the same time. They both certainly come off as neither running businesses with employees that have kids or of running a typical small business or startup company (even though they are both couched as such.) People need to be told what’s involved when they join up to work with your startup so everyone can be adults when things go bad. At the same time, no one who 37signals is hiring isn’t going to be taken care of, it’s been pretty loudly touted how well their company is doing, which is certainly not typical in the industry. Where’s the reality?

Comments (0)
Mar072008

Network Solutions - wrong any way you slice it

Posted by Gene in Business

I know this isn’t exactly new news to some of you, hey i’ve been busy here at Period Three since January, but I just personally got hit in the face with what I believe is probably one of the most unethical things in my corner of the professional world. Network Solutions, apparently “front-running” locked down a particular domain name one of my business partners was looking at. After a really exciting discussion one evening on a new business venture my buddy went out on the web and performed a “whois lookup” on a domain name idea, the name of the new business venture to be exact and it turns out that they, Network Solutions, the place he did the lookup at immediately locked the domain up. They couch this in the vein of “customer protection“, they say they are protecting their customers from front-running.

1. By holding the searched domains at Network Solutions for a short period, it allows our customers time to decide whether this is the domain name that they really want to register.
2. Although the domain name isn’t specifically held for the initial customer who searched for it, this reserve period helps to protect our customers against domain front running.

Who said we were your clients yet?

They also don’t seem to have a problem with locking up others’ copyrighted names, like microsoft-dell.com to name one…

I’m not normally an all is black or white kind of guy, but in this case i’d have to say front-running is front-running no matter how you present it, the facts are thus; I’m effectively locked out of gaining the intellectual property i’ve created in the name of my new business - unless I get it from Network Solutions.

I sincerely hope they wind up paying a huge price for this practice. Go get ‘em Go Daddy, take ‘em down!

Sources:
TechCrunch
circleid
Domain Name News

Comments (2)