Peter Harrington's Blog

Mar 23, 2009

Facebook recently launched a new user interface for their web portal. The initial reception was not very good, with most users disliking it. Things went so far that a developer created an app to get users opinions with 95% responding that they did not like the design. With such negativity its hard to believe that this could represent a dramatic shift in the social network scene.

Twitter has been a tear recently, with nearly 1000% growth over the last 12 months. Breaking into the mainstream has been really tough for twitter, but it is finally seeing success. 

One of the main problems with growing so fast, is that twitter has attracted a lot of attention from marketers, trying to sell a product or promote their drug (not always a bad thing). With an advertising model, attracting this crowd can be great for a company, as in the case of google. But without that income stream these marketers just seem to take up space. This gives twitter a bit of an ‘artificial’ feeling. For example on my personal twitter account, I have just about 300 followers but I probably only know about 50 of them at most.

This brings us to the facebook advantage. On my facebook account I know everybody I have listed as a friend, thats 100%. When I ‘tweet’ on facebook I have a nearly a 100% response rate from my friends and I probably average 2-3 responses per update. Unless you have thousands upon thousands of followers, this very unlikely to happen on twitter. This  change in design has altered my behavior to stop using twitter and instead switched to use facebook. By offering me the opportunity to connect with my friends via tweets and not just everybody on the internet, facebook is converting me back to their platform.

Although people may not like the new update is much, since it makes facebook harder to use for its original purpose. It is making it a lot easier to connect and share thoughts with people online, likely their new goal. So unless twitter knows how to utilize their legions of marketers they should be scared.

Jan 9, 2009

Although I could graduate in the spring semester this year, I have decided to to pursue a summer internship with a tech (preferably silicon valley) or finance company. I have applied to some Apple, Google, VMware, IBM and Sun Microsystems positions. These companies have proven track records and have products that I believe in. Microsoft could be a good company but it would really need to be a position that lets me make a difference, I don’t want to be some lackey for a company with such an identity problem same goes for Yahoo.

I applied to positions directly at each of those companies and I also posted my resume to internshipin.com, the site seems to be a good database/aggregator and I have to support a startup that is so useful. 

My current boss also has a lot of connections that I will be utilizing to help find a summer position. He has admitted that he will not have enough work for me during the summer and will help me find a job. Its really just comparing the best opportunities and deciding what I want to do. I may also ask my dad about some positions, since he is a financial advisor and will likely know some people in fund management (an area that interests me).

Jan 4, 2009

Here are my predictions for 2009, focusing on the tech world of course. Since I don’t recall being wrong before (though my selective memory might have something to do with that), I think we can all expect a predictable 09, stemming from this list.

1. Twitter will continue to grow, but still fail to reach the mainstream. I just can’t picture twitter blossoming into a full fledged competitor of myspace of facebook, despite how much I wish it could. Instead I think it will find an existence working with those sites, but never challenging for real control.
    
2. Apple will be really forcing Phil Schiller on the media. The lack of S.Jobs at MacWorld is the first sign of them trying to put a new face for the head of the company. If Steve decides to retire, the board doesn’t want the stock tanking 15% in one day.
   
   EDIT: it seems that S.Jobs is not talking due to health and family reasons, but I still believe Apple will be using this strategy throughout the year.
    
3. This one is more of a prayer then prediction, but Yahoo finds their identity. Lets face it, Yahoo doesn’t know what they’re good at, its not search thats for sure. In fact Yahoo is not particularly good at anyone thing, but they do have great applications and services (along side a majority of terrible ones). They need to trim the fat, focus on providing good services that generate page views.
    
4. Facebook will pass myspace (though they may have already in that case facebook will continue to stomp on myspace), because myspace sucks and facebook is just above the line of suckage. There is a reason that facebook grew so fast in the beginning, people realized how much myspace sucks. Unless myspace can really turn their music playing into a successful attraction, they will start falling from their peak. 
    
5. Microsoft decides to focus on what they already know (yes, another prayer). But come on, they have been leading the office suite technology suite for so long, is it really possible that they would fail when adapting it to the web?
    
6. Startups rediscover the business model. This one will be very interesting, startups are going to realize that investors are wanting income statements and cash flow statements that don’t end in a giant ZERO. I’m actually not very excited to see what new services come in 09, but how the startups convince customers to depart their thinner wallets.
    
7. Posterous and Tumblr starting fighting the bigger platforms for the domination of the blogging world. The only thing stopping them right now, is the lack of integration with other online technologies (ie. problems with Technorati), preventing individual blogs from becoming more viral.
    
8. Seesmic dies, this site has zero use and as much as I like the charisma of the CEO I cannot stand this site. Video comments are annoying and already exist in the form of replies on YouTube. Why bother making a whole new site when YouTube already has a giant database of videos at their disposal.  
   
   A side note for seesmic: DON’T HAVE YOU WHOLE SITE IN FLASH, ITS ALMOST AS ANNOYING AS PEOPLE TYPING IN ALL CAPS. GET WHAT I MEAN?!?!?
    
9. Mahalo Answers goes big, because its useful, efficient and makes sense. I’m still not sold on the rest of mahalo, which probably has something to do with me hating their actual site and how it feels so “thrown together”, but this answers portion will be big and really put a hurt on Yahoo Answers. 
    
10. And for my final prediction….. are you as excited as I am? Well here it is, Google will continues to invest in companies at Eric Schmidt’s discretion. Many of their investments (not acquisitions) have absolutely nothing to do with Google’s core business, and seem to be based entirely on personal interests (ie. thermal energy). So expect this to grow in 2009 as Google cuts back on other services and realizes it has more engineers that it actually needs. 

Thank you for reading my list, I hope you enjoy it.

BONUS PREDICTION:

Linux finally goes mainstream…. haha no it doesn’t. (Thanks to 1938media.com for this one)

Dec 18, 2008

2008 is coming to an end, looking back I felt I learned a lot but it was not a year of giant progress (which will change for 2009). Things I did accomplish were, in no particular order:

• Attended TechCrunch50, this was a great experience and I met some awesome people. One of which I’m working on Heddge with.
• Launched FileLock , my first product launch. This really taught me a lot and was a great relief to have it finally launch. I never realized how many sales go through a site like macupdate.com.
• Finalist for the TechStars program where we ended up being a substitute if one of the other teams didn’t follow through. Although this was somewhat of a loss it really showed me what investors want in a startup.
• Entered the Stic.ca business competition, this something I really wanted to do in 07 and so I’m very glad I did it this year.
• Met Frank Addante at TechCrunch50, even if it was on the way to the bathroom :)

2008 seemed to be a year of meeting a lot of great and helpful people. In 2009 I plan to continue meeting amazing people but there is also some other big things in the work. Here are some of my goals:

• Get a summer internship with either a tech company (startup or Apple ;) ) or a finance company, preferably fund management
• Launch Heddge.com and another web based project that is in the works (its a financial tool that acts as SaaS).
• Build both of those properties to a be profitable.
• Get my number of twitter followers to over 1,000
• Graduate from the University of Calgary with my degree in Economics.
• Launch FileLock 1.1
• +Whatever I think of between now and new years.

Now that I’ve shown you my goals, go out and set yours. Lets make 2009 a great year!

Dec 11, 2008

I thought this would be a good post with new years coming up

There was once a  study of students at Yale, students were asked if they set goals. 97% of the participants said no with the other 3% saying yes. A number of years later the people conducting the study went and interviewed all the students again. The 3% that did set goals had a combined net worth greater then the other 97% combined!* A large statistical discrepancy such as this is rather hard to argue against.

Now what if it was that easy? What if you could literally set goals and become wealthier then the majority of the population? Set a goal and success will come, a pretty nice law if you ask me. It is like the saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, what if this was fact and you could just have an apple a day and be healthy your whole life.

Can you really justify not setting a goal, when clearly is has been a common factor between so many successful people? Well you shouldn’t, goal setting does not take up a lot of time and is not very difficult, though a lot of people do not do it properly.

When defining a goal it is very important to follow these guidelines:

• The goal must have a time line or completion date, how else are you going to be able to tell if you completed it on time?
• The goal should be very clear. Don’t just say I want to be rich by 2010, assign numbers to the goal. Instead say “I will have $200,000 in real estate investments by January 2010″ or “I will have launched my own startup and have built cash flow to $1000/month”.
• Think positive when writing goals, the more positive the goal is the more positive your results will be.
• Discuss your goals with your spouse and/or family. This is good for a couple reasons. First it will make you accountable to your goals and second you can make sure that your goals will not interfere with theirs. But try to avoid sharing them with negative people, they will only dampen your spirit.
• Write it down.
• Read the above guideline one more time. This is very important so don’t forget. Also, put your goals somewhere that is visible. Perhaps on the fridge door, this is focus your mind as you will be constantly reminded of what you want to accomplish.

If you follow this process you will start to see a positive change in your life. So good luck and don’t forget the sky is the limit (unless your an astronaut ;))

*I only read this study and have no actual backing for it, despite its lack of proof the story still has a positive message so I’m leaving it up

Great list of marketing articles for startups

Dec 1, 2008

Today we handed in our application for stic.ca, a business plan competition. We of course wrote about Heddge.com and its overall greatness :P. For the first stage of the competition business plans are restricted to 3 pages, so they are more like executive summaries + brief parts about market/competition, technology and competitive advantages.

Writing the initial plan was actually very difficult at all, we wrote the 3 pages in a couple hours. Our next step was to show it to people, especially ones who did not know anything about finance, to get their thoughts. They had no idea what the idea was, uh oh. And they said they didn’t feel it was a great idea (ie. we didn’t explain the problem well enough), so back to the editing board we went. 

Heddge.com is a fairly complex idea for those who do not have experience/knowledge in the tech and/or finance industries. So to write something that explains our idea in a such a simple way that anyone could understand it was difficult. Your idea has to be explained in the first hundred words, which was very hard to do. We eventually managed to not only educate the reader about industry basics but also highlight the problem and how were solving it (to be fair we went over 100 words, but we kept it as short as we could). 

I recall reading that writing a business plan is good because it makes sure all team members are on the same page and understand the vision, blah blah blah etc. I did not not get this experience at all, but what we did get was well worth it. Instead I learned how to explain the idea in the simplest terms so that it could be explained to anyone and could be explained quickly and easily. I had always feared doing an elevator pitch before with Heddge, because I had no idea how to fit everything into 30 seconds. The business plan forced us to think in absolute simplest terms and then project our idea with those terms. I think we ended up doing a good job and I personally cannot wait to get started on the next phase of the competition. 

P.S. I also remembered how helpful it is to have other people help you out and edit things. More eyes make catching errors a lot easier. So thanks to everyone who help out, you rock!

Nov 24, 2008

On the weekend I participated in a business pitch competition. First place got $3,000 for their business or tuition. I was competing with Heddge.com and I had an opportunity to learn quite a few things. First place went to my good friend Mark (I had guaranteed the organizers that one of us would win), and I’m happy for him but disappointed in myself.  Although I’m confident I would have taken 2nd place, an organizer reassured me of this, I was unsatisfied as I absolutely hate losing. The constellation prize was some good networking and having the MC telling me that we could probably get funding.

Things I did right:

1. It is very important to educate the audience on the basic knowledge of the industry your operating in. I knew going in I would have to educate them on Technical Financial Analysis, but I think that they didn’t quite get it in the end. Without any educational aspect I would have been drowning for the 5 minuets I was up there.
2. Show your passion. This was very easy to do as I am very passionate about: web based technology, startups and financial analysis. I was probably one of the most enthusiastic people on stage, which I knew helped a lot. When your excited about your idea it gets other people excited too.
3. No powerpoint or keynote. It was only me up on that stage speaking about Heddge. A slideshow would have distracted people from my enthusiasm and passion, plus there isn’t a whole lot I could have put up that would have made things easier to understand.
4. Be confident, going into the competition I knew I stood a strong chance. Knowing you will win is the first step towards winning. 

Things I would change:

1. Show how you discovered the need for this product. Somehow I managed to skip over how we found a problem and are solving it. Going by the judges comments afterwards, this is one area that I lost ground in.
2. I would showcase the need for the money/prize more. Student competitions don’t want to give the money to somebody who has $100,000 in the bank, they want to give it to the person to whom it make the most difference.
3. Talk slower, it all my excitement I may have talked a bit too fast.
4. Tailor the talk to the audience more. After seeing that non of the judges had any technological or financial experience I should have talked more about the concept then implementation. 

All in all it was a helpful event and I’m glad I could take away some valuable lessons and networking connections. This time I guaranteed that my friend or myself would win, next time I guarantee I will win.