earlyadopterpro-blog

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Tesla Motors held a job fair last Saturday at their factory at Fremont, CA. Dozen of departments had their booths to talk to attendees. Mostly mechanical, electrical and computer engineers are wanted. Unfortunately, they did not provide a factory tour :)

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In my experience, a lot of startup execs understand the relationship side of working with venture capitalists, but they don’t have a deep knowledge of how VC funds work as businesses. This means they can’t really understand why VCs invest the way that they do, or what their concerns are with...

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Is Form/Task fit is a new Product/Market fit for wearable-computers startups?

Are all new form-factors among wearable devices really solve your problems in the most convenient way?

Up until the mid-2000s people wanted to bring their desktop experience to mobile devices, thus the appearance of smartphones. With the development of technological convergence, it became possible for one device to combine most of the things users' needed: camera, mobile phone, Internet browser, GPS, you name it.

Once smartphones technology advanced and its use became widespread, it became apparent that it wasn't the most convenient and comfortable form factor for certain tasks. People started experimenting with different shapes for devices. The main focus of these trends were: 1. The combination of the required data, 2. The right place (location), and 3. The most convenient way (form factor) to capture it.

For example, taking photos is easier from a glass form, while gathering data about your sleeping habits or workouts would be more comfortable from a person's wrist, hence smartwatch-type devices.

By now, it seems like wrist-wearable shapes and glass shapes are going to compete for being the major form-factor, especially when Google Glass is released into the mass market.

However, I think that eventually each form factor will find its own best use, focusing on certain tasks and solving particular problems very well. Here are some start-ups that are good in Form-factor/Task fit problem:

http://zackees.com/ - Turn signal gloves for cyclists and skaters. It's a simple solution which aims to solve one problem – indicating the intent of cyclist that's about to turn. The project is going to be crowdsourced this fall and presented at TechCrunch Disrupt SF (9 Sep'13) conference, where I had a chance to chat with Zackees team. As they said, “gloves” are just a starting point. Furthermore, they want to go into clothes, such as LED T-Shirts, which can display signals on cycler's back. And their ideas go on from there into different application cases.  Another mind-blowing project is SingUp, the team which I met at Startup Weekend Berkeley, is the prototype gloves, created to help the deaf and hearing-impaired break down social barriers. The gloves have physical sensors that translate sign language into audio and output it to the speaker on the glove, to help those with hearing disabilities communicate with other people. At the same time, gloves have a microphone that allow for spoken words to be translated into text, which is shown on a small display on the glove. Again, one product which solves one problem very well.

Gloves are not the only cloth form devices out there:

“Smart clothing that can monitor wearer’s vital signs, miniature devices that conforms to the shape of the body or sensors that expand and contract with the beating of human heart”

it's quote from WSJ about http://www.mc10inc.com/ products, which are worth of checking out.

Yet another example of Form-factor/Task fit is “Zizz” an intelligent sleep mask which also focuses on one thing at a time: tracking sleep patterns. In contrast to Jawbone UP or FitBit, which tracks users' sleep pattern by body movements, Zizz tracks users' eye movements. Intuitively, this approach sounds like a more proper way to capture the different phases of sleep by monitoring Rapid Eye Movements. You can find out more about Zizz on Techcrunch.

So, as long as wearables continue to evolve, their forms will continue to change and adapt to solving particular problems. Do you think wearables should stay more general and capture as many data as it can, say your steps or sleeping patterns, or should it move into one form-one task approach?

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Read also: 

Is your startup Sustainable?

Life is a Gas - 5 life advices from Adam Cheyer founder of Siri

Follow me on:

Twitter: @EarlyAdopterPro

Instagram: EarlyAdopterPro

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What made you pick up the weddingsnap cards and take a photo of them? I'm curious. I thought I would lose the bet to my friends/coworkers.

Hi Kumar! 

Getting back to your question regarding your cards laying on the stairs at Red Rock Coffee at Mountain View, things that actually caught my sight were:

1. Photos on some card faces: just plain curiosity.

2. Social networks logos on cards: well it was not just a photo dropped randomly by someone, it was marketing piece of paper. 

3. There were many of them, about 4 or 5. So I thought, that it was intended to catch attention.

So what was the bet with your friends? did they think nobody will pay attention to so many cards under their feet? :) 

Was that an marketing experiment of your startup?  Can you share your thought on results you got?

How many cards you places at how many places? And which places actually generated feedback?

Did anybody else mentioned those cards?

And what’s the story behind WeddingSnap becoming  Eversnap http://www.eversnapapp.com/ ?

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Read also: 

Is Form/Task fit is a new Product/Market fit for wearable-computers startups?

Is your startup Sustainable?

5 life advices from I was given by Adam Cheyer founder of Siri

Follow me on:

Twitter: @EarlyAdopterPro

Instagram: EarlyAdopterPro

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Is your startup Sustainable?

Sustainable development, sustainable business, sustainable world. All of these terms are currently massively in use across the web and media. You don't have to be an expert to realize that all these sustainable concepts are applicable for hi-tech startups.

As I see it through the lens of knowledge I have about sustainable practices, there should be three main focus points for a startup to be sustainable.

First, a sustainable idea.

You can convert any idea into a good business only if it is timely delivered to the market.

If it takes you too long to convert your idea into a working product, you can lose the battle without having fired any single shot. I believe there are plenty of examples for this kind of cases. We are also watching how some companies try to catch up with the ideas and solutions in the markets where they are late guests. Say Google+ in social, MeeGo and Maemo in the mobile OS market or HP tablets.

On the other hand, if your idea is ahead of the time it is invented, it will be underestimated. As it was for DodgeBall, the early concept of Foursquare; the idea which the founder had was too brilliant at that time. For instance, there were no GPS on cell phones, needless to say that smart phones per se would come 4-5 years later. Great example of good timing is launching Siri application on iOS. Adam Cheyer, co founder of Siri, had initial idea back in nineteen nineties. But up to 2006 it was not possible to create Siri with full potential due to the lack of available technologies. Adam describes the timing process as:

Timing the Future: 

1. You can be too early. 2. Identify trends. 3. Design something the world will want in two years.

at the talk on his 5 life advices outlined briefly here: "Life is a Gas - 5 life advices from Adam Cheyer founder of Siri".

To build a successful startup and grow it into a 100-year company, as Evernote mission states, you will need a Sustainable Idea. This means that your idea should pass a time-stress test. Solutions that you are going to build should address the real problems that people face, regardless of the time they live in. Today, 10 years ago, or a decade from now.

As an example, let's examine the Fabulous Four Companies. Did they all have sustainable ideas at startup phase?

Microsoft is the oldest folk in the band. The core was its Operational System. In 1975s, the market of personal computers was in its infant age, but it was evident that any computer will need an OS to run. Moreover, for Bill Gates, it was evident that every company, every family, and every person will have a computer. That means the demand for OS will always be huge.

Another part is the MS Office package, which is also a good concept for a sustainable idea. As long as people work with computer they will need a decent text redactor or spreadsheet software. It was true in 1980 when the first Office Word was launched, it is true today, and it will still be true in the future.

Amazon - people had "trade" centuries ago, and will have it centuries after us. So the problem which Amazon is solving will always be an actual one. As long as Amazon will be flexible to the demands in trading, their business is out of risk.

Google - people will always need to search for information. This need helped Google to maintain their company, and generate enough revenue to build and test dozens of unsustainable projects. Of course, the way people search and the type of information they search for will be changing through time but nonetheless, the need for search will be there.

For example, Facebook's Social Attack - Google's search solution is threatened by Social Graph Search. The demand - "searching for information" - is still there, but people can have a better solution.

This brings us to the second part, sustainable business. By "business", I mean revenue generating products which had proven their right to exist and is out of startup age.

"Now, you see, it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

this quote from the sequel to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" perfectly describe my point. In order to keep the business sustainable, one should always be changing. Ameliorate your products, always look for how you can solve the problem in a better and faster way. The fall of Apple in early 90th, and their comeback after 1997 is a good example. The recent story of Nokia selling their mobile phones division to Microsoft is another valuable case of how business can be ruined in a couple of years, only because "you couldn't run fast enough".

In all cases, companies could not innovate and change within the required pace. It took them too long time to make a right decision. Movement is life, if you are not moving you are either sleeping or dead.

Find new solutions, find new business models, don't be afraid of cannibalism.

Oftentimes, those who seem to be everlasting can lose their positions in a couple of years because of unsustainable concepts in their business processes.

As your product evolves, the problem it solves also evolves. People needed photo pictures and, when they got it, they decided to make those pictures move. Then, they needed to colorify the moving pictures and accompany it with sounds. And that was not enough. People decided that they need 3D pictures, surrounded sounds, and popcorn.

Similarly, we needed mobile phones; once we got it, we find that we also needed mobile computers. Now, we need wearable computers.

In order to succeed in the previous two points, sustainable idea and sustainable business, one need to Focus on the most valuable part of any organization - Sustainable Team.

Keep people happy and do not push them to the limits for unreasonable aims. As a founder, you must take care of the environment in which people work, provide them all the tools they need, and all the perks that will keep them wanting to progress with your startup. Most of all, help them to realize their dreams. I have no idea, why companies still do not have "we will realize your dreams" as part of social package for the team. I believe, that most of dreams could be easily realized, it could be something easy as "skydiving trip", "travel to certain country", "learn to ... dance/play guitar" up to "build something useful". The latter can actually convert to part of business for the company. 

To conclude, do you believe that your startup is sustainable?

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Read also: 

Is Form/Task fit is a new Product/Market fit for wearable-computers startups?

Life is a Gas - 5 life advices from Adam Cheyer founder of Siri

Follow me on:

Twitter: @EarlyAdopterPro

Instagram: EarlyAdopterPro

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3 years and 150M users later, Instagram starting monetization game. Some time in the past Twitter was thinking that putting paid tweets into user's feed will be harmful. But eventually it became the most efficient way of advertising for Twitter. Let's see how things will go for Instagram.

Over the past three years we’ve watched with amazement as Instagram has grown to a global community of more than 150 million people capturing and sharing the world’s moments. Instagram is a place where people come to connect and be inspired, and our focus with every product we build is keeping it...

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Good portion caffeine makes from owl an early bird. Every morning I kick start my day for new discoveries. Foursquare helps me to discover good coffee spots since 2009 when I was one of early adopters. Amazingly since then I used Foursquare to find coffeeshops in places all around the world: from Moscow to Dhaka, from Prague to San Francisco. I had a chance to try 5 out of 10 busiest coffeeshops list.

National Coffee Day is this Sunday, September 29th. We know, we know… every day is coffee day to you. But we think the almighty java deserves its own special day. To celebrate, we dove into our 4.5 billion check-ins to find some of the most popular coffee shops in the U.S.

...

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Life is a Gas - 5 life advices from Adam Cheyer founder of Siri

Adam Cheyer - most famous for creating Siri, had an exciting talk at Startup Weekend Berkeley last week [1]. Besides Siri, Adam founded two more up-to-date successful companies: "Genetic Finance" and Change.org. Amazingly, Adam founded all three companies simultaneously in early 2007 with only one, main goal in mind, to Impact Users. Well, actually around the Christmas Holidays of 2006, he made a public "New Year's Resolution" to run 5 projects with high impact in 2007. As we can see 6 years later, three out of five have actually made a huge change in people's life in different ways.

#1 Life is a Gas - You can cram in more than you think. - Set an ambitious goal and do your best. - Lose the fear of failure.

Do more than you think you can and you will see that you are able of doing a lot. This is how he started all his projects at once in 2007.

#2 Verbally Stated Goals - Start with a core emotion. - Form it into a mission statement. - Tell it to everyone you meet.

Publicly announcing your goals makes you internally responsible to keep working on them. A bunch of people to whom you stated your goals, can bump around you in a half-year later and ask "So how're your projects going?", and you will need to have something to show.

That is why at Christmas Holidays 2006, Adam stated his goal - to run 5 projects that will impact users in 2007. This goal defines quantity goals, quality goals, and strict time frame. It is crucial to have measurable components in a goal definition.

#3 Portfolio of Goals

Have several (but not too many) goals which suit you best. Three goals that Adam have chosen in 2007 were:

- Make the world a better place. - Follow his passion for technology. - Make lots of money.

All three of them ultimately became separate companies. Change.org, the petition platform, fulfilled "Make a world a better place" goal. Technology Passion brought about Siri, and Genetic Finance became an income generating vehicle.

Adam shared his approach to leading all of these companies, the main part of which was time management: 60 hours per week he would devote to Siri, about 15 to 20 hours for Generic Finance, and the rest go to the family, friends, and Change.org.

#4 Timing the Future

- You can be too early - Identify trends - Design something the world will want in two years.

But, make sure that the world needed it at that time. Adam came up with the idea of Siri in the nineteen nineties. But up to 2006 it was not possible to create Siri with full potential due to the lack of available technologies. In 2006, with the introduction of the iPhone, things started to change dramatically. Adam realized that finally, it is a good time to roll out Siri. Anytime before that would be too early.

- Identify trends - try to make a prediction about what will happen to the world in a year, in two, in ten... 

Back in 2003, Adam made 10 predictions about what will change in the Internet industry in a decade. Now, in 2013, reflecting 10 years back, his best 3 predictions came true.

#5 Visualize it

- Picture a precise scene where you know you've succeeded

- Life will usually surprise you (in a funny, good way)

When Adam started Siri in 2007, he took a walk to the closest Apple store. Walking around the store, he was looking up at huge app icons of Google, Pandora, and others hanging on the walls. "One day", Adam told to himself, "One day... Siri's icon will also be on there".  That was his precise visualization of a goal. 

In 2010, after Siri's incorporation into iOS and official launch with iPhone 4S, Adam went back to Apple Store and noticed huge display with video titled "Introducing Siri"... needles to say that life surprised him in a good way by advancing his dream of having Siri's icon on a promo stand, to a stand alone display dedicated solely to Siri. 

Finally, since it was Startup Weekend, where we struggled to launch the business literally in a weekend, Adam shared his views on starting a company. In contrast to wide spread philosophy of "Launch early. Fail fast. Iterate.", he seems to have a more solid and long term approach, which actually is well-aligned with Apple's style. He took his time to launch Siri, and divided the timeline to three-year parts:

1st year - building platform. 2nd year - building application. and, 3rd year - growth.

With that, he concluded his speech by wishing us all the best in our ventures. Luckily we won "Best Pitch" award for our Crowdsourcing the Taglines service WordHerd.co; but that is another success story...

[1] Adam Cheyer' presentation available at Prezi: http://bit.ly/1fF9BnH

More info on #SWBerkeley http://berkeley.startupweekend.org/

Read also: 

Is Form/Task fit is a new Product/Market fit for wearable-computers startups?

Is your startup Sustainable?

Follow me on:

Twitter: @EarlyAdopterPro

Instagram: EarlyAdopterPro