The Musing Mill

As many of you know I’ve been working on a startup for about a year now, and it’s been a struggle with financing.

Most of the angst is self-inflicted, since we are trying to raise all the funds privately and not through VCs. So to those of you thinking about starting a business I give this advice;

Never underestimate how hard it will be to get people to part with their money.

Really. Leonid and Irwin were able to do it fairly easily with Revit because of the climate at the time and their incredible track record of success. I think it clouded my expectations.

For the length of this summer it’s been hard to tell whether the Solo business will survive. People have asked, why don’t you take it to a VC, but the controlling interests in the business don’t want to. So, it’s not my choice.

I was very close to pronouncing it dead this weekend when I had not heard from architect of the deal in almost a week. We would normally talk several times a week so this was really unusual. So to those of you thinking about starting a business I give this advice;

Don’t ever panic

I finally got him on the phone yesterday only to find out that things are all set and he was just busy trying to get stuff out of the way so he can focus on this once funded. It figures. Anyway, it’s a good idea to keep more than one option open, thus the interviewing you see sprinkled here.

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I have an interview with Product Management at Google tomorrow and I came across this document while doing research. The design and development philosophy expressed in it is very similar to the one we had at Revit. No surprise such a process yields a great product. They have a ‘Top 100′ list, we had a ‘Top 50.’ Oh well, I guess we weren’t as big!

Maybe there are similarities due to Sergey Brin’s russian heritage. He was born in Moscow, and his family came to America in 1979. His father was a math teacher. Leonid (founder of Revit technology) was born in St. Petersburg and WAS a math teacher (just kidding).

The notes were taken by Evelyn Rodriguez and posted on her blog. My great thanks to her for the insight into the way Google creates products.

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Although it might work technically, I think this is a bad PR move for Google, which publicly claims to have a philosphy of making money without being evil…

Google labs eavesdropping software

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Social software in the enterprise,
originally uploaded by Larsz.

Another good one from Larsz. This mindmap is from the Collaborative Technologies Conference held in Boston this past June. It’s a breakdown or structure of how social web-applications are altering enterprise dynamics.

Yes…this is the real geek stuff

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The Wall Street Journal Maketplace section had an article on the front page, top of fold about the US Securities and Exchange Commission shutting down the ‘autosurfing’ site 12DailyPro.com. There is a lot to learn from how this case is resolved. Here’s why…

The difference between the new economy and the old one is that the old economy players relied on ‘economies of scale’ in production, while the new economy relies on ‘economies of networks.’ 12DailyPro was (supposedly) a really efficient way to build a huge network of people interested in website promotion. It was one of the top 400 sites (rated by Alexa traffic) on the Internet. It is safe to say that it was a top brand in website promotion.

The SEC shut down 12DP because it claims that, because 12DailyPro got most of its revenue from membership dues, that it was a Ponzi scheme. That logic makes every fitness club in America, for instance, a Ponzi scheme. I’m guessing that the SEC has more info than it is releasing publicly. But for now, by simply claiming that 12DailyPro is a Ponzi scheme, the SEC has been able to shut down a top brand in the website promotion business, with very little uproar from anybody. Isn’t this guilty until proven innocent?

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Today we turned in our papers and watched the winner’s presentations on the simulation. It was a great learning experience. How to apply the 4 Ps of marketing and see whether you ‘get it.’ We got most of it, but COMPLETELY screwed up promotion. Why raise your ad budget at all over 10 years? It’s a waste of money, right? WRONG!

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So B-school is still fun, but BUSY. The difference between this and working is that at work I didn’t have a deliverable EVERY DAY of the week. In fact, I had a class this week that had 3 deliverables all in one class. So the pace is pretty frantic.

I’m starting to learn some stuff that would have been very useful to me the last few years. At work, I always wondered how anybody could confidently make use of ’squishy’ survey data. I’m now understanding that you can seperate out confounding factors using statistics. I learned stat many years ago, but in the context of engineering, not business. Application makes all the difference in the world.

The other interesting insight is that I’m starting to understand the mindset of a marketer. I’ve done the tasks and the math before, but working through the reasoning of cases with a master like Menezes is a real eye-opener. It really allows you to understand how to structure a compelling argument for moving a business/product in a given direction.

I can confidently say that an MBA is going to be a huge asset - I should have done it years ago.

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In the middle of last week, I got a callback for a Product Management position at Google, so I have another phone interview on Friday. They basically ask you questions about products and design, leading to a question about how to improve a Google product. This seems like an interesting way to get feedback as long as it makes it into the official loop.

Anyway, since I had the opportunity, I went right after the core product and told the interviewer how I thought they could improve AdWords. Maybe next interview I can focus on Adsense. It’s a pet peeve…

Why? Well, for one thing, Adsense is COMPLETELY insecure. Since the publisher codes are available within the source of the page, anybody with a site extractor that supports PHP can fake being you and get ALL your sites banned in one go. Actually it’s easier - if someone wants to get you banned, all they have to do is join a free surfing site and put your URL in the rotation. You will then get invalid clicks and VIOLA, all your sites will be banned by Adsense. As a bonus, you will have no recourse with Google.

There are discussion and articles on various forums about this and it is some of Google’s dirt they try and keep under the rug. There is an easy way to fix this and I’m surprised they haven’t done it yet…method to be revealed in an another interview someday

For instance, this site is EXACTLY the type of site Google wants in it’s publisher network. Yet, somehow everytime I submit, they come up with some vague reason to say it’s not what they’re looking for. It indicates their system is broken. I think they know that. Or maybe it’s because I’m starting to bash AdSense. I think I’ll submit MusingMill again today. Let’s see what happens. (revised - 10/17) Yes, Google turned this site down again. Hmmmm.

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Here’s what we did in class at BU this week;

Marketing 723 - Targeting and positioning. Techsonic case analysis, VW New Beetle case analysis.
Statistics 716 - More on normal distributions. Time series data analysis. Simpson Pharma case.
Accounting 710 - More key ratios, inventory accounting, FIFO and LIFO effects on reporting.
Finance 723 - More NPV calculations, calculating annuities, evaluating long-term cash flows.
Org Behavior 713 - Organizational change. Telemachus case roleplay.
Presentation Skills 700 - Message structure, strategies for openings.

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Last week was definitely more in-the-groove. I’ve gotten the drive time down to 30 minutes each way. That helps. We’re in a rhythm with the MBA-family balance. The kids have gotten used to it. I see them in the mornings, a couple nights for dinner and then weekends.

I’ve been enjoying the hard skills classes more. They are filling in gaps in my accounting, finance and marketing knowlege areas that I was uncomfortable with. These professors are top notch. The softer Org Behavior stuff is leaving me flat. In truth, the Autodesk Leadership Program (ALP) is much better, meaning more effective.

I’m going to bring this up with the faculty and see if OB can be improved for future classes. The second year students made big improvements for us, and it shows. Each class needs to improve the BU experience IMHO.

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