Dan's Thoughts

I Want to Follow You, But…

dandriffill — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:16:59 +0000

If I don’t follow you on Twitter, don’t take it personally. Unlike many on that service, I actually read all of the tweets in my feed, which is why I have to limit the amount of people that I follow. Here’s the problem, there are some really smart folks that I want to follow but they tweet like jackasses.

So, here’s my humble (and unsolicited) advice:

Don’t

Don’t post all of your Foursquare check-ins. That’s what Foursquare is for. I can follow you over there. (Note: This is where you brag about going to the gym, not Facebook or Twitter!) Do Tweet it if it’s a cool badge or a concert/festival, though. Discretion!

Don’t post all of your Instagram uploads. Again, I can follow you over there (But won’t if you just post pictures of your cat all day) BTW, my Insta username is ‘dandriffill’. Shocker, right?

The “Shit I Read” Daily is out! I don’t care about your automated aggregation. If you find something really interesting or valuable, tweet it alone, not packaged with other crap, every single day. Nothing is more narcissistic.

Simple rule: Don’t tweet more than 5x/day. If you’re live-tweeting an event, warn followers beforehand. If you have brilliant and original thoughts more than 5x in a day, write it down and save it for a slow brain activity day.

Stupid, stupid, stupid retweets. You don’t need to retweet every pastor’s morning message or your favorite athletes comments about a missed foul. Retweets are sort of an expression of yourself, if you agree with a tweet, retweet it! If a tweet really makes you lol, retweet it! Just don’t do it 10x/day in a boring fashion.

‘Le Crap’. Undeveloped points off of the top of your head. “This is such a great book!” “I hate the raiinnnn!” “This class is so stupid!” You get my point.

These are the main reasons that I don’t follow people, and I want them to be known. If I don’t follow you, don’t take offense, I just don’t have the time to read through pointless drivel, and we all know there’s enough of that online.

$1B Isn’t Cool, Know What’s Cool?

dandriffill — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:28:57 +0000

Building something that someone is willing to pay $1B for. This is going to be a short post; I just want to note a few things:

I was surprised like a lot of people when Facebook made its largest acquisition to date, snapping up the mobile photo-sharing company for a billy. I retweeted Chris Dixon’s comment that eliminating your biggest threat for 1% of your market share (based on Facebook’s IPO valuation) was savvy. My initial thought was, “Wouldn’t Twitter be a bigger threat to Facebook than Instagram?” Short answer, no. Instagram’s advantage was that it was mobile, and it’s no secret that all tech is moving toward portable/cloud for functionality and access. Also, at its real core, Facebook is basically a photo-sharing site. Instagram’s massive growth threatened that competency. Twitter is for sharing opinions and links to a global audience, Facebook (including Instagram) is about sharing your more intimate personal experiences with a much more closed social circle. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Google acquires Path to shore up their newly improved G+ service.

My second, and more important point, is that building a company that could potentially be valued at $1M, let alone $1B, is HARD. I heard too many people last week say that they could have easily created Instagram or that it was ridiculous to pay $1B for a photo filter service. The small Instagram team deserves their exit because getting to that exit alone proves that they worked their collective asses off, and I am all for rewarding hard work. Getting positive press is hard. Finding good employees is harder. Getting funding is really hard. Building a popular app is super hard. User acquisition is about fucking impossible. Releasing a successful API will seriously mess up your calendar. Negotiating a $1B deal in ~48 hours is a lot more complicated than a shake of hands. A great team laid the preconditions of success, executing on a near-perfect strategy, over the course of many nights and weekends- that’s the real story, not an overnight photo filter app that got lucky. Now that’s cool.

Please, take these two points away: If someone is willing to pay price X, it is worth price X. Don’t criticize success, it is almost always justified and you’re just hurting yourself.

Lessons From Kodak’s Bankruptcy

dandriffill — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:44:33 +0000

The Eastman Kodak Company filed for bankruptcy this week. When I saw it on Twitter shortly after midnight, I gasped. Everyone has known that the film company would be declaring, sooner rather than later, yet it still saddened me. It comes as no surprise, like a sick relative, but it still stings when it finally happens. I am proudly from Rochester, NY, born and raised, and Kodak’s shadow has largely loomed over this city all of my life. My Dad was a long time worker at Kodak, my Uncle, my girlfriend’s Aunts and Uncles, countless friends’ parents, high school teachers, and college professors- all former employees of the yellow box. I have been to “Take Your Kid to Work” days, eaten in the cafeteria, been to many events at the Theater on the Ridge, and have an antique George Eastman metal coin on my bookshelf (formerly given to employees with 25 years of service). The company has always meant something to me, long before I learned how to analyze financial statements- Kodak was a symbol of what an entrepreneur could achieve with ambition and hard work. While the Kodak we once knew is now gone, it does not do well to ignore past mistakes and hope to avoid repeating them going forward. Let’s take a look at a few lessons that can be learned from Kodak’s demise.

1) Mind the Product Life-Cycle

Companies simply can’t afford to be afraid of cannibalizing their existing products with innovative solutions. Kodak had digital photography before anyone, but their cash cow film product led them to sit on the technology. Products age, now faster than ever, and if you do not update your offerings, it is very difficult to catch up. Apple, for example, had no real qualms about hurting iPod sales when they launched the iPhone. If Kodak had ushered in the digital age of photography, maybe they would still be industry leaders.

2) Be Skeptical of the Company Line

Loyalty to your company is important, in and out of the workplace, but it is prudent to formulate your own judgments in the interest of self-preservation. You can be a good employee, investor, or speculator without blindly taking the company’s PR releases as indisputable fact. In the era of transparency, Kodak was almost laughably quiet about their true performance or future expectations. There was a constant corporate shout of a “return to profitability at date X after our strategy shift.” It was complete and utter bullshit, most people knew, but you can bet that someone out there picked up what management was putting down and loaded up on some $EK stock. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.

3) The Customer is Always Right

It is easy advice, but foolish to diminish. Businesses often become preoccupied with competition, meeting quarterly expectations, maintaining efficient operations, or securing more cost effective supplier relationships that they forget what is most important. No customer means no sales, which means no operations, which means no cash flow- it happens quickly. Kodak largely ignored consumer preferences and trends. Their digital cameras were late, their software was bloated, their online store was cumbersome, and they put their future in printing pictures at home when very few people care about physical photos. You can’t stop systematic risk events, but idiosyncratic signs need to be defended against, and Kodak failed to keep their eyes open, maybe due to arrogance.

4) Don’t Focus Just for the Hell of It

Focus is a very common bit of advice in business. Steve Jobs told Google’s co-founders to quit screwing around in 50 businesses and stick to what they do best. In the Saunders Summer Startup program, I was told by mentors to “focus” almost every single day. If a company does one thing better than anyone else in the world, they will probably be successful, Kodak just picked the wrong thing. They banked on film and spun off entities like Eastman Chemical and healthcare imaging divisions. Kodak is now in Chapter 11 and those divisions are quite successful. You can’t be afraid to evolve your business model, especially with a century-old firm.

5) Don’t Hang Your Hat on IP

Patents and trademarks are advisable and all, but when it comes down to it, they will not save your company from consumer preference. Kodak has desperately tried suing Apple, Fuji, HTC, Samsung, and probably others because it was the only hand they felt like they could play; “If we can’t beat em’, let’s try to at least get them to pay us a little to stay afloat”. Now more than ever, especially in America, patent reform is necessary and I believe is on the cusp of radical change. So consider it a necessary step in your company’s process, but don’t expect a letter from a corporate lawyer to stop anyone else from offering the public a great product. The fight is now, the courtroom battle can be kicked down the road.

I do not want to bang on Kodak or remember it as a failure, because it was not a failure. Kodak and its founder, George Eastman, gave so much to my hometown and really helped build the city into the great place that it currently is. People can put Rochester down, but I love it here. I have no doubts that this will be a successful hub of entrepreneurship and innovation, as so many small companies (many led by former Kodak people) are already proving.

The titan of industry Kodak is forever gone, but it was one hell of a run.

The Wishbone Principle

dandriffill — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:55:00 +0000

When I was younger, a holiday tradition that I enjoyed was the breaking of a wishbone. My Mom would let the wishbone of the turkey sit to dry out and let my sister and I pull it from different sides, with each of us attaching a wish to the success of our side of the bone prevailing dominant. I believed in the authenticity of this wish many times (and I often lost), but the realization that luck was absent from the equation did not hit me until many years later.

Now when I see a wishbone, I can clearly see which side will hold up to pressure. It is very slightly larger, it has more girth at the “flex-point”, and simply, has become second nature to visually detect.

Why am I sharing this experience? It relates to a lot of our lives; business, relationships, shopping, etc. “Hell, I either make it or I don’t”, or “I either get lucky with this or I miss”. It’s a bullshit philosophy. We see many signs over the course of our lives’ experiences to enhance the positivity of our decisions. We learn what works, we realize what does not, and we gradually evolve to become better at living in this society.

My kindergarten teacher, (If you’re out there, find me! I’d love to buy you dinner) taught us “to do our homework”. Funny thing is, my 1^st grade teacher (You get dinner too!) had a large sign up that exclaimed, “Knowledge is Power.” I have heard the phrase, “All you need to know in life, you learned in kindergarten”- I think that meant sharing and generosity, but these two other lessons prevail. If you do your homework in life, you’ll be rewarded with knowledge, both directly and indirectly. Read, study, analyze, watch, listen, be humble, practice, persevere- you must do all of these things. The knowledge gained will allow you to choose the right side of the wishbone in life. Trust that all of the ups and downs will eventually correlate into positive decision-making when it really matters.

Life, in rare instances, is indeed left to chance and ends in arbitrary results, totally regardless of our input, but not often. We have the power to frame our lives based on proper decision-making. Make a plan. Trust your intuition. Be confident in your choices. If you know what is going to happen (or at least can make an educated-guess) before you make your choices, it makes life an awful lot easier. Make the right decisions, and those decisions will take care of you.

Kosovo Wind Gardens

dandriffill — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:34:33 +0000

For much of 2011, I have been working with a team of people (primarily from RIT) on a project that brings wind energy to the citizens of developing nations. The first country of interest has been Kosovo, due to our team’s experience abroad at the American University of Kosovo. If you’re not aware, Kosovo is the poorest country in Europe and is also the youngest. The energy infrastructure is so weakened, that citizens suffer common (usually daily) blackouts. This obviously makes their work productivity and attracting foreign investment a difficult task. The work of corporate and social responsibility has basically been just buzzword PR fodder, but it means a lot to me, and we’re working hard to solve some really difficult problems.

I was recruited to the team to write a business plan for the Dell Social Innovation Contest, where we finished in the Top 20 of over 1400 applicants. We were also a member of RIT’s startup pilot program, where we were mentored by industry experts and counseled with angels and VC’s about funding options. Things have pivoted over the course of the year (as they do in almost every startup), but it has been a rewarding experience thus far, and we’re just beginning to start some really exciting new things.

I could write 20,000 words on the issues and details, but if you’re interested in learning more about the project, head over to KosovoWind.com, and if you’re feeling extra ambitious, we’re trying to crowd-source some capital as a part of another competition. If you’re interested in learning more, get in touch.