play it Sam, for the sake of html5!

This morning as I opened google.com to search for the address of a garage that could check the tires of my car I hit upon yet another cool google logo (see pic).

I was wondering what it was and as I accidentally passed the mouse over it music started playing. I thought it was really funny: the chords vibrate, sound comes out. Cute. Spent 35 seconds playing and went on with my business.

It was not until 20 mins later when I was checking my feeds that I learned from business insider that the stylish guitar I had been "playing" earlier on was done in html5 as a showcase of this new technology.

I had read a bit about html5 and the hype it is causing and how it is going to change the web and forever ditch flash in the process.

Well, I must say my first experience with html5 has not been a blast: although it works fine on my PC, I cannot get the guitar to make a sound on my Ipad...

Unless I am doing something wrong, suddenly html5 does not look much better than flash...

what is FB really about?

Room Luís Pina where
the event took place

Lisbon is an extraordinary place! At the global scale it is nothing but a small village of ~1M souls at the centre of a country that was once great and is currently in a deep economic and self confidence crisis. Nevertheless, it is a place where you can find yourself in a small room of a charming historic building with about 20 people exchanging ideas with David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect and eminent tech blogger.



Last Friday's event reminded me of a good friend of mine that has been living in London for 10 years: he has essentially given up attending concerts in London because quite simply it is virtually impossible to get tickets. Instead he books flights to Lisbon for the dates in which the tour visits this town. Often the tickets are so much cheaper that he doesn't even spend more (especially considering most of the time concert is followed by dinner and drinks).

Anyway, I found the chat, that included local tech celebrities Jonas and Rui Lorenço in the panel, extremely interesting.

More importantly, I came out of it with two bullet points representing 2 interesting and thought provoking insights that I had not thought of. I want to share 1of them in this blog.

What is (really) Facebook?

Well, David has a very interesting view: Facebook is (or ultimately wants to become) part of the internet infrastructure having on its side 1) the personal data, 2) the social web of connections between  individuals and 3) the algorithm that determines who is interested in what.

Google may have hit the jackpot whilst pursuing its goal of "indexing, organizing and generally making available all the information in the world" but with the prospect of someone adding the "web of social connections" to concepts like search and shopping suddenly having an algorithm that yields the most relevant pages out of an anonymous query string does not sound so hot anymore.

There's a great article on Techcrunch published just 3 days ago that explores further this idea that FB may eventually drag Google out of business.

For the time being, however, I think both these two ideas are still futuristic science fiction. I say this based on my own personal experience with FB: whilst they may be getting somewhere in terms of "personal data" and "social web of connections" their algorithm for defining what goes on my news feed page sucks! They hardly ever get it right.

Having said that, we know how fast things change and it is quite possible that with the billions of $$$ Mark will have at his disposal once he goes public he stands a good chance of getting on board someone to get that algorithm right (as well as solving some other issues such as the completely subjective use that each person makes of FB that casts doubt that the FB friends are an accurate representation of the "social web of connections" between individuals).

In these days "futuristic science fiction"may well be upon us in a couple of years....

Managing the tech start up wrap up

The "managing the tech start up" adventure started off about 6 weeks ago. In a series 12 sessions a group of about 30 MBA students and tech enthusiasts were going to be exposed to several tech entrepreneurs and investors. Equally important, we would be exposed to ourselves. To our collective knowledge, to our eagerness to make something happen, to our enthusiasm for geeky stuff. Oh, and also to our big egoes too.... and those of our guest speakers!

My own personal big ego lead me to boast that the Next Tech Big Thing would unravel in these 6 weeks. Well, it hasn't quite worked out that way but it hasn't been a complete waste of time: I have now a reasonably good idea of what "TvMe" (aka the Next Tech Big Thing) would be like and, also as important, what it will not be.

     Tv Me on a mindmap        

Let me take you through that in the next few lines (since the mindmap on the right is not really readable is it?)

What is "TvMe"?
In a nutshell, TvMe is a live video broadcasting service over the web for personal use. At the distance of 2 clicks you will be able to start a video broadcast over the web for your friends only or open for anyone to see.

I anticipate the usual objection: "but that already exists!". Of course it does, is that important? If you think so pls refer to this post and come back to me with your thoughts if you have not changed your mind.

Why will people use "TvMe"?
In a word: sharing. It is possible nowadays to share all sort of content with friends and/or the whole world but the video sharing applications are limited and live video sharing is virtually inexistent. Furthermore, there are a few additional premium services that I imagine could come really handy (ex.: can you tell me of simple clean software that can help you edit your videos?)

How much does "TvMe" cost?
The service will not be free! But neither will it have a price! It will have a free trial period and a "pay as much as you like" afterwards. I discussed the concept a little bit more here and the basic idea is to keep the service free from annoying advertising

When will "TvMe" come to life?
Not a major concern for the moment as I explained here but there is one important event that comes to my mind worth considering: 4G deployment. A service like "TvMe" will be heavily dependent on fast wireless networks and great devices that can record and connect to a network easily and the next generation of wireless networks may prove crucial for the success of the service. More on the ISPs and "great devices" next.

How will "TvMe" be deployed to the market?
I plan to capitalize on a few go-to-market ideas that came to mind during the "managing the tech start up" course which you can read in here, namely the PR through key bloggers. But equally as important will be strategic partnerships with ISPs and device manufacturers. Having spent most of my 10+ year professional career in telecoms I have a decent understanding of their business and I have some innovative ideas of how "TvMe" could partner with them for mutual benefit.


Last but not least, the "Managing the tech start up" course gave me an excuse to interact on a daily basis with a bunch of smart, committed and inspiring individuals that have the drive, the balls and, ... yes, the craziness to go ahead with their own ideas and shape them into something tangible.

Here are a few examples: foodie square (did I spell it properly?...), dealboss (love the pig!), fitempo (the power of prezi...) and watchfit (when, when, when will we have it, my friend, founder&CEO?)

line space

Free is dead! Long live freedom of payment!

I have been goofing around quite a bit in this blog about the Next Tech Big Thing and how I will be launching it by the time my tech start up course is finished.

Well, the course finishes today and my Next Tech Big Thing is not ready for launch. However, there are a few things that I have a pretty clear idea about at the moment.

One of them is that it is not going to be free. I don't like to give out stuff for free, it gives the impression that is worthless or that it takes no effort to make; it makes business models reliant on advertising that, most of the time, undermine the quality of the service and/or frustrate users.

Nothing is really for free in this world so why should my service be free?

In the internet age we have grown used to getting stuff for free, namely apps and content. There are some signs that this is changing such as spotify restricting free acess.

Well I think that "free is bad" but I also think that setting a price is, well... inefficient. Prices have first and foremost one sure effect: alienate users that cannot afford the product and/or do not value it as much as the price we set. So if by setting a price we will lose customers and revenue, why bother?

The Next Tech Big Thing will not be free! And it will not have a price!

It will have a try out period so that users can confirm that they find it useful and/or fun after which they will have to pay a fee determined by themselves.

So depending on your income level, how much you value the service or even which way the wind is blowing, you will decide to pay whatever you think it is fair.

You will not have the Next Tech Big Thing for free. But you will be free to pay whatever you like!

IT@IE adds new feature!

In a desperate attempt to capture more attention from the online community, IT@IE has created a new feature that allows the readers of this blog to interact in an innovative and unique way with the author.

Arguably, I could also say that this new feature is part of the healthy experimentation that goes on when launching a new tech start up.

Now you can ask me a question (any question) by simply clicking on this link or on the one you can see on your right below the headline NEW FEATURE!!!!

So what are you waiting for? Ask me a question!

DO IT! DO IT!

on PR, international growth and uninspired outdated copycat ideas

Our MBA elective "Managing the Tech Start Up" proceed last week with 3 more sessions designed to help us get us som insights about launching and managing our own tech venture.

We had Iñaki Arrola, from coches.com, Gabriel Echevaria, from Chiquissimo and Jesus Encinar, virtual real estate local celebrity and founder of idealista.com and Alberto Torron, virtually unknown e-bay supplier that eventually opened up a series of specialized websites like todotaladros reaching 1,000 customers (yes, an ode to "(very) small is (or can also be) beautiful").

The sessions varied in degree of interest mostly depending on the eloquence of our guest speaker, but content wise they were, as always, quite enriching.

Naturally, my key take aways are essentially the ones I thoroughly look for to confirm the emotional decision that I already took that "my" idea for a venture has all the ingredients of the Next Tech Big Thing. Here they are:

1. unispired outdated and not necessarily exciting copy cats of already existing ideas have as much chance of succeeding as any other. It's all about the execution. For example, when Jesus Encinar decided to launch himself in the real estate online classifieds there were roughly 28 sites already in existence. In Spain only. I don't need to remind you that Facebook came way late to the social network arena, right?

2. when you go online, the interface is key. So maybe there are 20 guys doing the same as you do on the web. So what? Each person has as much patience to spend time figuring out his/her way around a website as they have for "amazing" telecom offer cold calls at dinner time.

It's not the functionality, it's the user experience!

Get the usability right and they will choose you. My favourite example of this are google.com and apple products. 10 years ago going to google.com and yahoo.com yielded completely different user experiences. I mean, the yahoo.com page is still so crowded that I really don't want to go there, it makes me dizzy! And remember the press conference of Steve Jobs when he  launched the 1st i-phone? He said something like "this gadget will revolutionize your life because now you have a phone, email and web browser all in one place". Daaaa!.... as if blackberries didn't exist at the time! Again, it's not the functionality, it's the user experience!

On this matter, one extra piece of reflection I would like to share: have a look now at yahoo.com, google.com and bing.com. Done? Isn't it funny how yahoo is still horrible, google is still simple and clean and bing is still faithful to Microsoft's (highly successful) business model of "copy the best but no less than 5 years later"?

3. Forget advertising, go to PR instead. No start up has advertising budget and placing ads is the "investment" with (one of) the most uncertain returns you can possibly make. So work your way up the brand awareness levels through careful PR. Suggested steps: 1) get your act together, make sure you have something decent going; 2) start a dialogue with influential bloggers in your field. here is a good tip of how to do it right (thx for the tweet, guerson); 3) pray that they like you and talk about you; 4) start reaping the rewards as mainstream media starts to talk about you

Incidently, since we are talking about PR and brand awareness... I am appalled at the pathetic traffic this blog of mine is generating.

I mean, I know that it may not be the most interesting thing but given the ratings below, and assuming that google analytics and statcounter are not purposefully sabotaging the results, not even my family seems to be following this blog and if it wasn't for the pity of my good friend Karan that seems to be the source of  60% of my traffic no one would read..., pardon, open these pages!

I will have to do something about it! Keep watching...

hjk

a conversation about money

The second chapter of my "Next Tech Big Thing" journey proceeded with a highly entertaining and rather enlightening session with Jorge Mata, former management consultant and MBA graduate that degenerated to serial entrepreneur with a very big ego.

Jorge's conversation started off exactly with this word: ego. Entrepreneurs, Jorge claimed, are first and foremost looking to fulfill their egos. Think about it: you are sitting around somewhere fantasizing about some product or service and imagining how this thing will once change the world and/or make you filthy rich. I mean, how big of an ego must you have to dare think you can do that?

And with this start I could relate to Jorge instantly and was eager for more!

I will spare you in this post a long list of quotes and minutes of minutes type bullet point (you can check those up in the this twitter account) but instead I will focus on the two key aspects that I took from Jorge's presentation and that it is so critical for my TV ME, my "Next Tech Big Thing".

#1
"A tech start up is not about technology, it is about the process". Jorge means, forget the techy stuff, what pain are you solving? Then choose the technology. THIS IS GREAT!!, because, as I mentioned in my previous post, I do not own any technology nor own any of the tech skills required to fulfill my vision. But this is all secondary because I have The Pain!

I mean, did you have a look at the twitter account link above? With the pseudo web cast of what happened in the session? If not, go now and ask yourself: did you get anything? Did you find it engaging? Who wants to follow text tweets in the video era??!!!!

#2
"Founder's money is not a good idea because the founder's role is to fulfill the vision; the VC role is to diversify the business. If the founder puts too much money in the venture he will turn it into a pizza delivery service if he has to". THIS IS EVEN GREATER, because, as you might suspect from a soon to be MBA graduate, I am pretty much broke.

So I don't have the TECHNOLOGY and I don't have the MONEY but I do have the PAIN and one thing I can start right now is to leverage some of the existing technology to explore different ways to solve this pain.

So stay tuned to this blog to watch the Next Tech Big Thing unfold right in front of your eyes!...