"Over there, by the fire, is that a stick or a snake?"
It turns out that humans have been naming things for a long time. If we know that this is a cheetah, or a grapefruit, we can make intelligent decisions on how to deal with it.
Lately, though, we've been naming more than things. Now we classify ideas and opportunities as well.
Getting smart about naming is at the heart of marketing. Calling every single person a 'customer', for example, is hardly a nuanced way of engaging with the public. Salespeople are especially nuanced at this, but often make mistakes as well. Car salesman are notorious for misnaming women who walk in (spouse instead of primary decision maker).
As an investor, are you misnaming the businesses you look at, mistaking a cliff business for a bootstrappable idea? Dozens of book editors misnamed Harry Potter at first glance, labeling it a 'loser from the slush pile' instead of the most profitable book they were ever offered.
Job interviews are nothing but sessions where we try to put a name on a stranger looking for employment. Is she a superstar in the making or someone we ought to avoid?
Most of all, are you misnaming opportunities and calling them risks instead?
When you are isolated or if the world is stable, your need to name new things goes down, and the world might feel safer as a result. Most of us don't live in that world, so our ability to name things becomes critical.
Just because we're not good at it doesn't mean it's not important.
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Kevin Hale: Build software people want to have a relationship with
Kevin Hale, a late addition to the Big Omaha lineup, focused on relationships in his Friday afternoon talk.
Big Omaha 2012 definitely benefited from Kevin Hale's gracious agreement to join the lineup at the last minute. He spoke at KANEKO for almost an hour Friday afternoon on "designing for relationships," or "how to design a company, a team, an organization so that it fosters really strong relationships with users and customers that help you grow."
Hale is the founder of Wufoo, an internet application for building online forms. "All you need to know about it is it's a database application at its core, but it looks like it's designed by Fisher Price."
Oh, and that it was acquired last year by SurveyMonkey, giving its investors (who contributed a total of $118,000) a 29,561-percent return.
"What worked for us had to do with how we decided to start the company," Hale said. Human beings are social creatures, and "we wanted to build software that people wanted to have a relationship with."
Focus on first impressions
"We approached all of our new users as if we were trying to date them, and all of our existing customers as if we were trying to create a successful long-term relationship," Hale said. For new users, "it's startling how much" first impressions make a difference. If someone picks their nose on a first date, they probably won't make it to a second. But if you've been married for 20 years, nose-picking doesn't send you to a divorce lawyer. Hale shared examples from Cork'd, Flickr and Hurl, and he recommended Little Big Details for more. For Wufoo examples, Hale mentioned the announcement of the company's 2011 acquisition, which featured a throwback to vintage video game Rampage, with the Wufoo dinosaur and the SurveyMonkey hugging. He also mentioned a programming contest that featured a real, custom-forged battle axe as first prize. "Here, in modern times, if you can actually use programming skills to get a medieval weapon, that's some serious bragging rights," he said.Everyone fights; focus on resolving those conflicts
"Software engineers are often divorced from the consequences of their actions," Hale said. "All you have to do is make everyone do customer support. That's it." Hale paraphrased Kayak co-founder Paul English, who is known for installing a customer support line directly in the engineering room: "After the third or fourth call of answering a problem from a customer, they'll stop what they're doing, and they'll fix it. And then we won't have that problem anymore." At Wufoo, Hale and company added a "Emotional State" drop-down menu to their customer support form. They were surprised when 75.8 percent of customers filled it in (compared to 78.1 percent who completed the "Browser Type" field). "We didn't realize that just by adding a drop-down, we let people know there are things about you that we want to know that don't necessarily come across over the internet," he said, "and we care."Relationships atrophy
You have to keep the romance alive, or else the relationship falls apart, Hale said. To make sure the new features they design for their customers get noticed and get used, the Wufoo team designed features that highlight what's new since the particular customer logged in last. They also instituted a practice of sending customers personal thank-you notes; each employee hand-writes about five per week. "If all this emotional, touchy-feely stuff is not convincing you, I'll leave you with this point," Hale said. According to research he attributed to the Harvard Business Review, there are only three ways to achieve market dominance in any field: offering the best price, the best product or the best overall solution. "Regardless of the size of your company," he said, focusing on giving your customers the best overall solution "is always accessible to you." For real-time coverage of Big Omaha on Thursday and Friday, including a live stream of all 14 speakers, visit siliconprairienews.com/live. Credits: Photo by Malone & Company / Big Omaha
Silicon Prairie News' coverage of Big Omaha 2012 is presented by CoSentry. For more than a decade, CoSentry has provided startups, web-based enterprises and larger organizations a safe, secure, affordable network of computing and data storage facilities.
Learn more about CoSentry at cosentry.com.
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Cheers and caricatures at the Gist Get-Together
Michael Gelphman and Chris Bernard enjoy a drink at the Gist Get-Together on Thursday.
The Big Omaha crew came together last night for the Gist Get-Together at Urban Wine Company to share drinks and converse about the day's events. The entertainment for evening was the local band All Young Girls Are Machine Guns and artist Rachel Mindrup gave attendees the opportunity to get a caricature similar to the one's our design partner Oxide Design did for each speaker.
Check out a few of the caricatures below as well as a few scenes from the evening. Or find the full set of caricatures on Facebook.
Brittany Mascio and Jeff Slobotski of Silicon Prairie News.
Adi Kunalic and Mailani Veney
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Michael Karnjanaprakorn: ‘You should be a lifelong learner.’
Michael Karnanaprakorn founded Skillshare because he believes traditional education doesn't facilitate learning.
Before Michael Karnjanaprakorn even took the KANEKO stage for the last day of Big Omaha 2012, conference-goers were treated to a video explaining his company Skillshare. Highlighted by clips of kids learning about electricity and adults learning about music, the video claimed: "The future belongs to the curious."
The 2012 TED fellow said that everyone believes in education, but everyone has their own ideas about how to make it better. Skillshare, a site that aims to let anyone learn anything anywhere, is Karnjanaprakorn's solution.
Learning is not going down a path specified by another
"Education is no longer about learning," Karnjanaprakorn said. He went on to define modern education as leading people down predetermined paths, putting square pegs into round holes. Said Karnjanaprakorn: "I woke up one day in college and kinda felt like I got duped."Something intimidating can become fascinating
If you need to learn something in order to do something else (say, learn game theory, which you totally didn't understand in college, in order to become a world-class poker player), Karnjanaprakorn suggested that a drudge topic becomes enjoyable.Everyone can be a student
Karnjanaprakorn wanted to rebuild education, so he attempted to reinvent what a classroom looks like and reimagine who a student is. "The pinnacle of education today is getting into college," he said. "Unfortunately, that means most people stop learning after they graduate. You should be a lifelong learner! Learn everything you want to learn."Don't modernize a broken system
Skillshare keeps its classes offline. For now. "We'll move online eventually," Karnjanaprakorn confirmed. But he wanted to emphasize first that community is one of the most important aspects of effective learning. "Most online learning now is just taking the broken model (lectures on video) and simply putting it online."Make sure you're studying applicable skills
Memorizing. Exams. Lecturing. Karnjanaprakorn doesn't want any of that to be a part of a Skillshare class. He advocated learning by doing, by making mistakes and by making things. "All our hiring is based on what you've done," Karnjanaprakorn said. "In many ways, that's the new résumé." For real-time coverage of Big Omaha on Thursday and Friday, including a live stream of all 14 speakers, visit siliconprairienews.com/live. Credits: Photo by Malone & Company / Big Omaha
Silicon Prairie News' coverage of Big Omaha 2012 is presented by CoSentry. For more than a decade, CoSentry has provided startups, web-based enterprises and larger organizations a safe, secure, affordable network of computing and data storage facilities.
Learn more about CoSentry at cosentry.com.
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Eddie Huang: “I’m about getting papers, but I need a ‘why’”
The story Eddie Huang told today at Big Omaha involved one hustle after another dating back to early childhood.
Edie Huang, writer, chef, entrepreneur and TV personality, took stage on day two of Big Omaha 2012 to speak to the crowd at KANEKO. His presentation, laden with photos of celebrities and quirky commentary, brought laughs and motivation to attendees.
From the age of 6, Huang has been a businessman. When his mother gave him pots and spatulas to use as toys, he found a way to get the latest Transformer toys in exchange for doing his classmates' homework. When the plan played out, his entrepreneurial spirit was sparked. It continued to thrive, as Huang sold everything from jpegs to shoes and apparel. What he's learned in these many ventures is what has made him successful today.
It is about the money.
"People are embarrassed to get money and chase dreams," Huang said, "but it is about making money." He said that without money, businesses are just hobbies.Nothing is crazy if it works.
After moving to New York, Huang began selling rare Nikes from all over the world. He would purchase the shoes from cities that didn't have a market for them and sell them out of his studio apartment on the same days that stores would release the shoes. For three years, he sustained the business and quickly had lines forming to see the new products he had in.Find something you really believe in.
A change came to Huang after viewing the "Newsweek" cover featuring Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in January of 2007. His pull to Obama forced Huang to find a way to make money while supporting the cause. "I'm about getting papers, but I need a 'why,' " Huang said. At the time, street shirts were popular, yet no one had tried to encompass political messaging. Under the name of Bergdorf Hoodman, Huang began making jerseys with "Obama '08" on them. Soon after a few stores had picked up the shirts, Huang received a call from Nima Neems, "godfather of street wear." Neems bought all of the shirts that had been produced and sold them on his website, Digital Gravel. Soon, the shirts were seen around the city and on many celebrities. "If your cause is big enough," he said, "nothing will curb your enthusiasm"Put your personality behind your product.
After successfully starting multiple businesses, Huang quickly found what worked for him and why. Following his father's footsteps, he became a restaurant owner in New York. But unlike his father's steakhouses, Huang's restaurant, BaoHaus, was focused on the food he was used to eating at home. That makes the dining experience his guests have "real, genuine, and authentic," just how Huang envisioned it to be. For real-time coverage of Big Omaha on Thursday and Friday, including a live stream of all 14 speakers, visit siliconprairienews.com/live. Credits: Photo by Malone & Company / Big Omaha
Silicon Prairie News' coverage of Big Omaha 2012 is presented by CoSentry. For more than a decade, CoSentry has provided startups, web-based enterprises and larger organizations a safe, secure, affordable network of computing and data storage facilities.
Learn more about CoSentry at cosentry.com.
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Sarah Prevette: ‘Fall in love with the problem’
Sarah Prevette's advice to the Big Omaha crowd focused on passion for a solving a particular problem rather than a creating a specific product.
Sarah Prevette's biggest advice to entrepreneurs is to focus on the problem — not the solution. Prevette is the founder of Sprouter, a website that serves startup founders and connects them to resources. She spoke to the Big Omaha 2012 crowd today at KANEKO about finding passion in the problem. "If you have a problem that you've dedicated yourself to solving, you can always change the product," she said. "You keep iterating and changing it." Here's the rest of her advice for startups.
You have limited resources
Focus — don’t try to do everything. "When things’s aren’t going well, don’t try to run 100 experiments by trying to find different products and services," she said. Find out what's working and pull all of your resources into making that work.Users are not customers
There's a difference between people who pay for your product and people who don't. To entrepreneurs who are building a big user base and figure out how to monetize later, Prevette's message is simple: "Stop immediately. Please come talk to me afterwards — I will pull your head out of your ass." Prevette emphasized a focus on monetizing and getting customers. "Ship early, ship often, ship fast, and make sure people are paying for the value that you're providing," she said.Be sales-focused
"Your job is to get customers," Prevette says. "Your job is to sell your vision and get people to use it." If you're part of a small team, you have to be the salesperson. Even if you don't like sales, "get over it," she says.Cash flow is everything
Know what money is going into your business, how much is in the bank and how much is going out. "You've gotta know your runway," Prevette said. She advises startups to make a dashboard and monitor six things: committed monthly recurring revenue, cash flow, customer pipeline, churn, customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value.Documents matter
"The idea of spending thousands of dollars on accountants and lawyers seems a little asinine," Prevette says. But when you're closing or selling a company, those documents are important — they can make the difference between being successful and crying into your pillow at night, Prevette says. Get a lawyer, get an accountant. Get all important agreements in writing.Strive for success, prepare for failure
It's a roller coaster — there are high highs and there are low lows, Prevette said. "You have to be prepared for the fact that there's going to be a lot of failure, and sometimes you're going to have to walk away," she said. "But you need to act like you're going to build the next big business." But the ultimate answer: don't give up. For real-time coverage of Big Omaha on Thursday and Friday, including a live stream of all 14 speakers, visit siliconprairienews.com/live. Credits: Photo by Malone & Company / Big Omaha
Silicon Prairie News' coverage of Big Omaha 2012 is presented by CoSentry. For more than a decade, CoSentry has provided startups, web-based enterprises and larger organizations a safe, secure, affordable network of computing and data storage facilities.
Learn more about CoSentry at cosentry.com.
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Ninth Division tells the story behind its latest Big Omaha app
About the Author: Andy Peters is the founder of Ninth Division, the Omaha-based app development company that has created Big Omaha apps since 2009. For more on Peters and the apps, see the note following this post.
Ninth Division built the Big Omaha app for tablet-wielding Big Omaha attendees like Corey Spitzer (above).
About the author: Andy Peters is the founder of Ninth Division, an Omaha-based mobile development company. The team at Ninth Division also includes Brian Langenfeld and Adam Polt.
Ninth Division has made apps for Big Omaha since the conference's inception in 2009. You can find this year's Big Omaha app in the App Store and Google Play.
Silicon Prairie News' coverage of Big Omaha 2012 is presented by CoSentry. For more than a decade, CoSentry has provided startups, web-based enterprises and larger organizations a safe, secure, affordable network of computing and data storage facilities.
Learn more about CoSentry at cosentry.com.
Ninth Division built the Big Omaha app for tablet-wielding Big Omaha attendees like Corey Spitzer (above).
Why build an App for #BigOmaha?
- A lot of people use it as their program.
- SPN Trusts us. (Like Oxide Design Co.)
- We like putting what we learn year over year to a test.
Challenge
Challenge: Design, build and test the most unique iPhone and iPad app in seven days and then port it to Android in less than five days. Also, make it interactive, fun and true to the branding. GO! … challenge accepted. With some improved planning techniques, we could have more time to build this app. We had tons of ideas on what we were going to do with the app. Besides the core features of schedule and speakers, we wanted something else that was just fun. I ran them by Joe of Oxide, and he was in love with the idea of allowing people to draw on a whiteboard or a picture. That's how we landed on the feature.The App (Android and iOS)
To keep a heavily interactive feel to the app, we knew we had to do some very challenging and unconventional UX/UI design rules. You'll see that the app is intended to be very gesture based, to simulate drawing on that whiteboard. We wanted to be (mostly) buttonless to maintain that feel of drawing with your finger. We came up with the menu that is much different from the conventional tabs at the bottom approach. We were able to make the Android and iOS version both have the same features and almost the same experience. Some basic changes needed to be made to the Android app when we ported it, as some things didn't make sense on that platform in comparison to the iOS platform. The only major difference between the two is the menu will stay on when you tap and hold on Android, where it will disappear when you lift your thumb on iOS devices. Of course the most exciting addition is the drawing (what we are calling Scribble). You can draw on a white background or over a picture. We are really excited to see how people use the drawing. I've already seen a good sample of nice drawings or doodles on Twitter. When you are in the scribble section, tap and hold for more options. On iOS, you can share on Twitter or save to your Camera Roll. With Android you have a few more sharing features, thanks to the Android platform for having those build it. Follow #GiantCow or #BigOmaha on Twitter for photos.Have Fun
As you use the app I hope you find all of little easter eggs scattered throughout the app. Either in what you swipe, what you tap, or in something you read … there are some fun surprises in store. This app is easily one of the most unique apps we've done. It's different than many event apps you ever run across. So far the response has been positive on the experience. We can't wait to see more doodles/drawings/sketches too. Credits: Top photo by Malone & Company / Big Omaha. Photo of Peters courtesy of Peters.
About the author: Andy Peters is the founder of Ninth Division, an Omaha-based mobile development company. The team at Ninth Division also includes Brian Langenfeld and Adam Polt.
Ninth Division has made apps for Big Omaha since the conference's inception in 2009. You can find this year's Big Omaha app in the App Store and Google Play.
Silicon Prairie News' coverage of Big Omaha 2012 is presented by CoSentry. For more than a decade, CoSentry has provided startups, web-based enterprises and larger organizations a safe, secure, affordable network of computing and data storage facilities.
Learn more about CoSentry at cosentry.com.
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Free samples
It bothers me to watch the hordes at the farmer's market, swooping in to each booth, grabbing a sample and walking away. The thin slices of handmade rye bread, or the perfect strawberries or the little glasses of juice--all of them disappear into the hands of people who have no intention of buying.
Sure, someone stops and buys now and then, which is why the farmers keep offering the samples. To them, it's merely a cost of doing business, a relatively inexpensive way to keep prospective customers coming. I'm not sure I could do it--the people afraid to look me in the eye, all that slinking around, and most of all, the profits walking out the door, over and over again. Enough thin slices makes a loaf.
This is vexing, even to someone who merely makes ideas. Watching people sneak endless tastes with no intention of making a purchase--sometimes I gasp at the audacity.
The distinction in the digital world is profound. In the digital world, the more free samples you give away, the better you do. The miserly mindset that afflicts the merchant watching inventory walk out the door at the market is counterproductive in the digital world. That's because more free samples cost you nothing.
The scarce resources in the connection revolution are connection, attention and trust, not molecules, atoms or strawberries.
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Leonardo on Avoiding Mediocrity
"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian painter, sculptor, and inventor
Email this quoteSales brain…
How are you kicking off your salesday?
Are you preparing your mind with solid thought, information, and support? Are you allowing the right radio or TV personalities to get you ready (are any of them good…share one)? The right news or material? The right people at the office? Be careful to what you give your attention. It all has an influence on you. (And kicking it is much more fun than mediocrity…or worse.) Feed your mind well. It’s where action starts. (smove out) __________ If you’ve not seen it…Here’s Eric Thomas on Work (calls himself the Hip Hop Preacher – 5-minute video). It’s meant for students but it’s reminded me more than once to work hard and focus. Short on time? Start at 2:20 and go to 4:00. Chills baby.Connect with Sam (guy behind this stuff)…
Facebook | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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Why ask why?
"Why?" is the most important question, not asked nearly enough.
Hint: "Because I said so," is not a valid answer.
- Why does it work this way?
- Why is that our goal?
- Why did you say no?
- Why are we treating people differently?
- Why is this our policy?
- Why don't we enter this market?
- Why did you change your mind?
- Why are we having this meeting?
- Why not?
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