joshgoldstein.me

I get it, I get it.  When it comes to startups, MBA’s suck.  We’re the worst.  We cost too much and do too little.

Dalton Caldwell, CEO of App.net thinks so.  So does Jason Freedman, CEO of 42 Floors (although he later rescinded part of his argument).  Suster has ripped into us. Stu Wall did the same.  And DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, says to be mindful of those with the diploma.  Recently, Ben Horowitz took a more contraian’s point-of-view.  But it’s clear, we are not well-liked in the startup world.

I sat through two years of class.  Went through the core like all my fellow MBA’s and expect to get paid a competitive salary.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t hustle.

In fact, I hustle harder than most.  To lump me in to the group, or to even generalize about MBA’s as a whole, is to clearly misunderstand what it means to get an MBA.  I didn’t spend my time in school restudying the four P’s.   I didn’t focus on high-level strategy over real-world problem solving.  I didn’t learn how to misuse theoretical frameworks.  We have more autonomy than that.

I chose a different path.

I spent the time working (read: consulting for) local startups.  I did user testing and market maps.  I learned Google Adwords and learned how to invest in companies.  I went to conferences and I studied UI/UX. 

See, I was the first professional poker player to ever get into UNC Kenan-Flagler’s MBA program.  I had a chip on my shoulder from day one - a chip that I will always have.  I want to prove that a professional poker player can execute in startups, even with my MBA diploma hanging from my wall (or more likely, shared work station).  

We are not all the same.

While in school, I spent all hours of day consuming tech news.  I secured a full-year internship at a local software VC, begging them to take me at first.  I incubated a p2p startup out of their offices.  I transitioned from a guy who always thought startups were cool to someone who actually knows something about them.    By choosing to get my MBA, I was choosing to explore.

I could have spent the last two years working at a startup.  But that presupposes I knew that I wanted to be working in this space while I was playing poker.  It was only after I got to school and realized exactly what I was born to do that I dove in head first.  I used the two years to understand both the foundations of business and the nuisances of a startup.

You might still think I’m green, but I’m hungrier than ever having just graduated.  Don’t doubt me - unless you want to make a mistake.  If there is one thing that my poker background suggests, it’s that I hate to lose.

It’s considered wrong to lump a certain group of people together, to stereotype, to generalize.  But, what do I know?.. I’m just an MBA.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve used my mobile tumblr appl more like a notes app.  Anything that comes to mind that is worth sharing or that is too big for me to consider at once, I jot down.  So, despite the fact that most of them have zero cohesion, I will now share my smorgasbord of thoughts:

 - Most web pages work best (share the most content) when the user scrolls vertically.  Most tablet/mobile applications work best when the user scrolls (swipes) horizontally.  Why is that?  Does the fact that most mice have a top/bottom scroll bar perpetuate this design?  What would a mouse look like the other way around?

What would it look like if Google’s search displayed pages left to right instead of top to bottom?  What if search results looked more like Pinterest and less like Google?

- While on Pinterest, I’ve done a lot of thinking about the website (and about curation, more broadly).  Despite reading a lot of articles that claim to have Pinterest figured out, I’m still trying to understand what makes it so sticky.  I may choose to write an entire blog post about this, but I’d prefer to have conversations with smart people in person before I get there.

- news.me, a daily email of my curated (from twitter) articles to read, has only scratched the surface of what it could offer.  But I love the service nonetheless.

- With that being said, I have too much email.  I need a service that aggregates my emails into an easy to view form. One email that gives me everything: coupons, articles to read at beginning of day, summary of daily/weekly/monthly email conversations.   

- One thing I have talked about with a few people is the over abundance of social media sites - too many places to share content.  Most of my fellow students are echoing my thoughts and most only use Facebook.  I need an ifttt that links all of them so I hit them all at once.  A multi variable ifttt, if you will.  If check in on foursquare, check into  Path and Facebook and blah.  And let me choose the channels at the point that I check in or post.  Make it seamless, but not too seamless that I end up posting on the wrong channels.

- My biggest problem right now (besides finding a job) is my MacBook Pro freezing.  Reminds me that no matter how much tech content I consume online, I still don’t know how to fix a computer.

- I love startup videos.  Working as an intern at a VC, videos were always the easiest way for me to learn about a company in 2-3 minutes.  It typically takes a lot longer when studying (read: blankly staring) at someone’s deck.  So, this site rocks: http://startup-videos.com/.

And, I found this startup (smalldemons) through the site, which has one of the best videos I’ve ever seen (and a cool value proposition to boot).

I may have written an extremely corny post for my school’s blog about our recent NYC trek:

http://blogs.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/mba/2012/01/20/trekking-through-nyc/

A few of my favorite 2011 lists of startup content:

http://alexstechthoughts.com/post/15183923603/things-i-have-read-that-changed-the-way-i-think @alextaub

http://fi.co/posts/476 @founding

http://blog.marksoper.net/Top-10-TED-Talks-of-2011-to-Inspire-Tech-Startups.html @marksoper

http://platformsandnetworks.blogspot.com/2011/12/managing-startups-best-posts-of-2011.html @teisenmann

… I’ve got a lot of reading/watching still to do.

In DONT MAKE ME THINK A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug says, “Predictions for the future of the Web.  Your guess is as good as mine.  The only thing I’m sure of is that (a) most of the predictions I hear are almost certainly wrong, and (b) the things that will turn out to be important will come as a surprise, even though in hindsight they’ll seem perfectly obvious.”

With that, I give my startup predictions for 2012.  I know how silly this is, but it’s mostly for me anyway.

1. The direct-to-consumer e-commerce business model employed by Warby Parker will be used to start companies in other verticals.  2011 was a year for subscription services businesses (BirchBox , lollihop,  Bluum, GuyHaus, Hoseanna,  Barkbox, Craft Coffee, Babbaco, Blissmobox, Put This On, PaleoPax, Little Otsu, etc.).  2012 will be the year of direct sales.  Companies like Bonobos, J.Hilburn, Chloe and Isabel are already there.  Others will begin to pop up.

2. When Apple releases it’s new version of Apple TV, video will shift to Social TV and it will be the big nut to crack.  Netflix should be turning itself into Spotify as much as it can.  And companies like Twitvid and Shelby.tv will attempt to crack the nut for shorter content.

3. This one is kind of a no brainer, as many others have written about it, but I believe it to be true: Too much angel and seed money has led to a bubble that will eventually burst as series A, B and onward will not be as easy to acquire without real traction.

To take a poker analogy, early-stage investors will begin to fold more often after seeing the flop.  The corollary: the spray and pray mentality that has seeded hundreds of companies will leave some seed stage investors in bad shape.  One thing VC’s constantly say is most difficult is ‘knowing when to fold’em.’  And if they don’t know which ones to fold, they will be stuck holding the wrong hands.  I understand the mentality.  Put a little money in 40-50 companies - it earns the investor the right to participate in all future rounds in all 40-50.  But, knowing which is the best bet is the hardest part and will wreck some people.  There are a lot of smart people out there, way smarter than me.  A lot of entrepreneurs out there with exit money to re-invest.  But they can’t all be winners.  And that doesn’t include all the untested angels out there trying to find the next Groupon or Airbnb without the necessary startup-picking skills.

Corollary Number 2: There will be a number of smart entrepreneurs who fail.  These people will be in the job market.  Big companies like Google and Facebook should vacuum this talent up as soon as possible.  This will also give them the opportunity to do more acquisition/hires at low prices.

A sidenote: I asked a New York VC what trends he was seeing in startups.  He said companies are beginning to put more emphasis on making money.  I anticipate this to increase as the squeeze begins.

4.  Airbnb goes into more verticals. Once they’ve spent their money going international, they will turn to other peer-to-peer markets.  I’ve heard CEO Brian Chesky hint at this in interviews.  Maybe its cars.  Maybe its parking (I was praying this was not the case when I was incubating my company).  Maybe its just stuff.  But it will be something.  2012 will be the year.

5. Location gaming finally becomes a big deal.  High trafficked areas will become hot spots for gamers to compete against each other.  Imagine playing Zynga poker at the airport against only others in the airport.  Or people in a stadium playing a trivia game (Jeopardy?  Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, etc) against each other.  I don’t know what the game will be just yet, but it will be addicting and fun to beat someone that is sitting right next to you, whether or not you know them or not.

6. Mobile-only apps continue to take shape.  No need to build on the web just yet.  Hotel Tonight is a perfect example of this (and is also one of my favorite apps right now).

7. Corporate America still misinterprets social media.  OK, this one is a softball, a grapefruit, a no-brainer.  But as a business-school student, I cannot begin to tell you how misinformed even my fellow student is about social media.

Begin Rant: There is one class for social media taught at my MBA program.  Over 75% of the students taking the class were not on Twitter.  And when asked why, most said they didn’t understand the allure.  Most were marketing majors, headed off to run a product at a corporate giant.  And because they are young, it will be assumed that they understand social media.  The professor, the one teaching the course, had less than 75 followers on Twitter.  Needless to say, I took one look at the other tech person in the room and smiled.  And then we both dropped the class.

You can’t learn about social media in class.  You need to engage in the conversation.  And these students, many of them my friends (maybe not after this rant) are not.  Corporate American is a microcosm of this problem.  OK, slowly stepping off of soapbox.  Crazyperson rant…over.

8. And my longshot of the year: Google buys Twitter.  I read a great blog post the other day from someone (can’t remember where) that suggested Google’s search is stale.  Twitter offers the closest thing to real-time search as it gets.

I get flak from my friends for asking the server at restaurants the question all the time.  “What do you recommend?”

But, the truth is, I value the waiter/waitress’ opinion.  They might not know what I like, but they certainly can tell me what to avoid.  This simple question drives a lot of my decisions when I eat.

Yet, I don’t have an aggregated recommendation engine for the digital world.  Twitter is my closest thing to it - at the moment.  It drives a vast majority of what I read and discover.  But I still feel like I’m missing things.

So, how do really good recommendation engines work?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question.  What is my digital footprint and how can it be used to recommend new experiences and technologies to me?  Every day, I find something new and exciting.  I find it through social media.  I find it through review sites.  I find it through blogs.

Surely, I use a number of services that have data on me. 

In aggregate, that data is valuable because it gives companies a better sense of what I will/won’t buy.  Obviously, when you have great insight, you can make a lot of money.  The user will buy more things and the advertisers will pay you more money.  That’s why facebook is currently winning - they have the best insight into who I really am as a person.  It’s superficial (and clearly not perfect), but it’s way better than others.

What, then, does my digital footprint look like?

I’ve thought through some of the websites I use when deciding on things like food, travel and experiences:

To book a reservation, I use Opentable, Trip Advisor and Savored.  Those guys know what I like to eat.

To book a hotel and/flight, I use Kayak, Hipmunk and Airbnb.  Those guys know what types of places I like to stay at and where I like to visit.

For experiences, I use Yelp, Trip Advisor and Urban Daddy.  Those guys know what types of experiences I am looking to participate in.

You get the picture.  The problem is that none of them are synced.  Yet.

The company that finds a way to aggregate those and then push opportunities back to me, wins.

I know this post is relatively obvious, but I’m still thinking through this concept.  Just feels better to write some of it down, ya’ know?

Seacrest out

Like millions of people, every morning, I wake up to emails from Groupon and Living Social.  I roll over, reach for my phone and hope to find responses from friends about a party or an important email from my bosses.  Instead, I wake up to ‘67% off Microderm Abrasion Service’ or ‘50% off of Pole Dancing Class.’

It takes me all of two seconds to delete.  But, every time I get a coupon with which I have no interest, I am more irritated.  I am slightly more and more turned off until finally, I decide to put an end to the service altogether.  Unsubscibe.  Groupon and Living Social probably hate the word.

What is the overarching problem here?  Put simply, coupon companies are engaging in a one way relationship with users until a coupon has been purchased.  They have very little history for most users.  The data is not robust so they can’t target appropriately.  It’s like a 25-year old male getting a GAP email for a women’s mittens sale.  The marketing department and the technology department are not segmenting together.  They aren’t sharing information.

And they won’t be a data company unless they are getting better data.  I have never purchased a Groupon.  I’ve purchased 4 Living Socials.  Groupon therefore has no idea what I like.  They do know what I don’t like.  But they don’t seem to care because they continue to send me coupons for unwanted things.  They should be segmenting not just by where I live, but also by what I like.

This is a bigger problem than it seems.  Most often, reviews are posted to a product or service only when it is at the extreme.  If the product is merely average, reviews are not posted.  Same goes for tweets @ the company.  It’s a problem Yelp has been trying to solve for a while.  It’s obvious.

So, how can Groupon and Living Social solve this problem?  Well, as a consumer, I’d be willing to answer one question per email as long as it meant one click and no time wasted.  Something along the lines of, “Did this coupon whet my appetite?”  So, the question then becomes, if they put this in the email, how would I go about responding?

This is where my lack of a CS background hurts, but I’m going to take a few shots.

One, there could be two links on the email.  One big green yes.  One big red no.  After clicked, I’m sent to my web browser where it says my information has been received.  Each coupon needs to be specific to the user then, but you start accumulating data on things that I like vs. things that I don’t like.  Very valuable.

It would be even better if I wasn’t sent to the browser.  Rather it would be better if it just happened.  I don’t know if that’s possible; I’d imagine it’s not.  Another potential solution (and once again, I’m not an engineer) would be to put a native software application that sits on the desktop and receives the click and sends it off to the company (all behind the scenes).  It’s possible that this is a new business idea in and of itself, assuming the technology works and doesn’t slow down the computer.

Like the argument people made when Facebook launched the recent newsfeed, it’s free and therefore, I can choose not to be a part of the listserv.  But, that’s not my solution.  I want to be a user just in case that great coupon comes along.  But, until then, I will have to settle for Groupon and Living Social’s cold emails.  I will continue to feel unsatisfied.  Maybe one day they will actually care who I am and what my needs are when I wake up in the morning.

Sometime this summer, I had a business idea that just wouldn’t go away.

Like most people, I get these new business itches all of the time.  Sometimes, they go away in a few minutes; other times, they take weeks to leave my system.  I’ve learned that most of these ideas aren’t worth much.  In fact, my brother and I always joke that one of our business ideas is to write a book about all our bad business ideas.

Still, this idea was keeping me up at night.  The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.  So, I began pitching it to anyone that would listen.

The idea was simple enough.  Airbnb had just received ~$100m at $1b valuation.  Getaround had just won Techcrunch Disrupt.  Collaborative Consumption was here to stay.  There had to be other verticals that had yet to be fully addressed. My idea: to build a peer-to-peer marketplace for short, medium and long term parking.

It wasn’t novel.  In fact, I soon learned that there were others attempting to do the exact same thing.  I didn’t care.  No one was there yet and despite a big enough player like Airbnb or Zaarly coming into the space, I felt confident that I could execute better than everyone else.  I was arrogant but I was also hungry.

So, I continued to pitch to people.  Interestingly, my pitch rarely changed.  Throughout the ten weeks I ran with the idea, my pitch was almost the same.  For some reason, despite my understanding that iterating a pitch was best, everything I was saying was getting a response.  I pitched to friends, entrerpreneurs, VC’s (including my bosses) and angel investors.  They all said the same thing: the idea is good - keep going.

The only people I got a negative response from were technically-minded individuals.  They were not convinced I could execute.  They said I didn’t need a CTO - the architecture was too simple at this point.  I was essentially asking them to build a marketplace were sellers could list an item and buyers could buy said item.  It was easy enough.  So, they said, come back to me when you’ve gotten some traction.  Come back to me when you’ve talked to customers.  So, that’s what I did.

I pitched to 95 people (and kept documented record of most, if not all, of the conversations).  I found a few CS PhD students looking to do freelance work and began the back-end coding development with them (for free).  I found a front-end designer and paid her a nominal fee to begin working on the logo, design and 5 pages of website design.  I built mockups on Balsamiq.  I found a mobile development shop that quoted the job at 10k deferred equity.

I met with lawyers and investors.  I even had soft commitments from a few.  I built a marketing plan based on an animal character as the mascot.  I walked the streets of Chicago talking to potential users (both parking owners and parking renters) to test the concept.  Most were interested - enough to keep going.

I began negotiations with a small company that had built some technology (hardware, software, application) that would allow users to share their garage opening capabilities through their mobile.  And, I tried to bring on a friend as a COO with explicit knowledge of algorithms so as it build a trust algorithm that took into account social, criminal, driving and any other records we could get our hands on to vet users.  I didn’t want to have a peer-to-peer trust catastrophe ala airbnb.  

I did all this because I didn’t know any better.  Everyday, the company consumed me.  Everyday, I was hustlin’.  And, I loved every minute of it.

I went through moments of shear terror, like the times I found another competitor (I’m convinced I now know every company in this space attempting to do a peer-to-peer parking marketplace).  I went through moments of shear joy.  I had conversations with a potential CTO that actually said he was so impressed with my progress that he would begin the build when he came home from work each night.  And this individual had a family (wife and children), which meant he’d be doing this late into the night after the kids went to sleep.  And, he was a rockstar CTO-type.

Then, something happened in my personal life and made me put everything else on hold.  Luckily, everything turned out OK, but I wasn’t able to do anything.  I was frozen in time.  And, my business was slowly dying around me.  Everything I was promising to myself and to those I pitched was suddenly in jeopardy.

And then, school picked back up.  My second year of MBA.  And it sucked.  I was contemplating leaving school.  I wasn’t learning anything.  The startup courses were teaching things I knew intuitively.  Things I had done for the past 10 weeks.  I didn’t need someone to teach me how to do a cold call.  I didn’t need someone to tell me I needed to do market research.  I didn’t need someone to tell me that a deck was more important than a business plan. 

But, the personal issue made it hard to pick the company back up.  And now, I’ve decided I am moving to NYC, the one place the company doesn’t work, after school for personal reasons. So, the company is on hold, indefinitely.

Weirdly enough, I’m not upset about leaving the business behind.  I feel like I got my second MBA in those 10 weeks - a real world MBA.  I now am confident that I can do it again.  I know what a company should like from the pre-launch stage.  I know how much sweat and anxiety goes into it.  And I can’t wait to do it again at some point in the future.

For the past few summers, I’ve kept digital record of my Vegas escapades.  And, since moving on to business school, I’ve written blog posts for admissions and the UNC EVC Club.  Safe to say, my life is way different nowadays but my desire to share is not.

It was only natural, then, that I start my own tumblr blog to discuss my summer (and beyond) as a associate intern at Southern Capitol Ventures, a Raleigh-based tech venture capital firm.

I will continue the blog once my summer gigs runs out, but because it is the first thing on the docket, it will consume many of my initial thoughts.  I will discuss some of the day-to-day goings on, and in the process, also discuss some of the more interesting stories in the startup world (e.g. products I find worth sharing, etc.).

Stay classy…