Founder's Fog

Really well designed video on the elements of design. Well worth...

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:01:48 -0700

Really well designed video on the elements of design. Well worth a watch.

IBM Web Experience - Day #1

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:35:25 -0700

Two Weeks of Fame

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:44:00 -0700

Researchers at UC Berkeley, Google and eBay have studied the news from 1895 to 2010 and discovered that the average median time somebody is famous is just two weeks… and that it hasn’t changed at all since 1940.

Somebody once said that today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping. This study proves it.

Hacking at Super Happy Block Party #shbp

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:33:00 -0700

Hacking at Super Happy Block Party #shbp:

Yesterday was a lot of fun as we formed an ad hoc team and designed and built Analyzz.me in about 8 hours. Check it out!

SoftTech VC by the Numbers...

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 19:26:13 -0700

Some great stats on SoftTech VC by stephpalmeri:

To coincide with the close of our third fund at SoftTech VC, our portfolio company Visual.ly turned our raw data into this awesome infographic. See for yourself…

by visually via

"Use the holidays as an opportunity to energize your brand by winning new conversions. But while..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:53:02 -0800

“Use the holidays as an opportunity to energize your brand by winning new conversions. But while you’re reaping the rewards, don’t forget to look ahead to the new year.”

- Jessica Lee, Ephox

What job title should I use in Silicon Valley?

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:11:06 -0800

I recently spoke to a group of entrepreneurs from the UK who were doing a tour of Silicon Valley. In the evening I attended a similar get together of entrepreneurs from Portugal. This is the first of a few common questions I jotted down. It seems trivial, but isn’t: “What job title should I use?”

In the UK and Australia it is common to call the leader of a company the managing director. The key technologist in a startup might call themselves the technical director. The problem with these titles in Silicon Valley is that a director is actually a mid-level role in a US corporation. A director title does not signify the leaders, founders or key entrepreneurs behind a company.

The most common titles for startups in Silicon Valley are going to be CEO and CTO. Note that CTO stands for chief technology officer, not chief technical officer. It really does not matter if your company is just two people, these titles are accepted and acceptable.

As Mark Suster suggests, avoid the title chief operating officer (COO) or president in your startup as it is unnecessary when you are small. It is confusing for staff and hampers decision making. If you are thinking of giving the COO title to a co-founder, it is probably an ego thing and Mark recommends getting more functional with their title. Make them VP Sales or VP Product and tack on a “& co-founder” to satisfy their ego.

Other C-level titles are also best avoided as they scream expensive overhead early in the lifecycle of a company. This is all very rough… but a CFO isn’t needed until you are >50 staff. A CMO isn’t needed until you are >100 staff. And a CIO probably isn’t needed until you are >200 staff. This isn’t to say that you don’t need a head of marketing, but their title would be marketing manager, marketing director or vice-president of marketing depending on their experience and your requirements. Job titles matter hugely when you are setting pay and your 22 year old “VP Marketing” is quickly going to be googling “VP Marketing salary” and wonder why they aren’t being paid what they deserve. Inflated job titles can also make it difficult to bring in more seasoned managers as you grow.

A side note is that occasionally I have seen finance types get involved early in startups. IMHO, unless a person can either build, market or sell a product they don’t belong in a founding team. If a startup is in the finance industry, yes a finance background makes sense…otherwise the supposed ability to raise capital is not a good enough reason to be a co-founder.

Finally a word on modesty. With the group from the UK, the question came that “we are only 5 people, isn’t a bit over the top to call myself the CEO?” This modesty is very typical for people not raised in brash American capitalism. You’re in America now, so in my opinion you should definitely call yourself the CEO. Being the CEO clearly states who is in charge and investors, staff, customers and partners like that. And, forget your modesty, as by some standards 5 people is actually quite big. A lot of YCombinator startups only have 2 or 3 founders. If you truly insist on being modest, you can stick with just “Founder.”

Another question might come as to whether it is acceptable to have co-CEOs. Intuitively I think it is a bad idea as there is no pig (see Chicken and Pig story.) However, the most successful startup I have witnessed grow first hand in the last 10 years is Atlassian. Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquar have been co-CEOs and done an outstanding job. Still, in your early days if you can’t figure out who the CEO is I would stick with just Founder and add the CEO bit later after it becomes clearer who the leader is.

Marketing Lessons from a Bad Panel

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Ouch. I am at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston and the panel on content management systems (CMS) got lynched by the audience via the #ims11 twitter stream. Comments included “the panel is boring”, “If the Tweet stream was like the Gong Show, we’d be on to the next session by now.” and “the cms panel killing themselves on stage.” They missed the mark with a fuzzy, technology-centric discussion.

In their defense the CMS panel followed a couple of great keynote presentations but I can’t help but wonder what they could have done differently. I am on a panel this afternoon at 3:15pm so the thinking is more than theoretical!

#1 Pay Attention

You don’t need fancy semantic analysis tools to realize the audience was letting out a collective yawn. Unfortunately, none of the panelists were checking the twitter stream so they couldn’t adjust their message. I don’t care if it looks a bit silly, but I’ll be taking my laptop up on stage this afternoon.

The same should apply to your business. It is NOT that hard to keep an eye on some critical keywords on Twitter, Google Plus, etc. A critical comment here or there is no big deal, but a torrent of them probably means you are doing something wrong.

#2 Know Your Audience

The attendees at IMS11 appear to be primarily marketers, not technologists. Most of them are using low end CMS such as WordPress and Drupal. They aren’t familiar with why a company would implement an expensive CMS let alone why one system is better than the next guy’s. Marketers love words like ‘brand’, ‘impact’, ‘differentiation’, ‘reach’, ‘audience’… they don’t love words like ‘personalization’, ‘services’, or ‘scalability’.

Ironically, the CMS panelists talked a lot about using tools to know your audience. What they missed was a very simple look around the room. The most important question they were failing to answer was, “What Is In It For Me?” for 90%+ of the audience.

#3 Remember Why You Are in Business

Congratulations, you have a job at a CMS company because you understand web technology. And, congratulations, you are on stage because you are slightly less scary and generally more passionate than the other technologists in your company. But DON’T make the mistake of directing your passion to your own product.

Passion should be directed towards what your customers are passionate about. In this case, the audience cares about creative, inspirational marketing! Awesome content! More leads! Remind them why THEY get up in the morning, not why you do.

Wish me luck this afternoon.

7 Content Marketing Tips from the San Francisco Marathon

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

I am currently in the final few days before running my first ever marathon, the San Francisco Marathon on July 31st. Here are some content marketing tips I have learned by being ‘engaged’ in this great event.

#1 Be Clear

The San Francisco Marathon site’s design is nice and clean. Big visual banners call the site visitor to action and a lot of thought has gone into the site architecture.A surprising amount of information has to be communicated for a marathon. For runners, they might be asking how hilly the course is, how they should taper training in the week before the run or what they should be eating the night before? Spectators might be asking where to stay or what are some of the lead up events? Volunteers could want to know how to get involved and friends might want to donate to a charity.Whilst violating a few rules (the “Race” menu has 26 choices), the overall visual design and layout is very effective.

#2 Stay in Touch

Everyone is busy. Despite best intentions and the lingering fear of running 26.2 miles, people don’t pay attention as much as they should. For me, the San Francisco Marathon’s Facebook page has been invaluable for keeping me in the loop. A couple of updates a week has accelerated to 1-2 a day as we near race day.

Their Facebook fan page gets prominent billing on their home page, inviting you to “Like” them. There are 25,000 runners in the marathon, and they have over 13,000 “likes” on Facebook. Not bad!

But not everyone is on Facebook or necessarily paying attention to it. So they have also effectively used selective email newsletters, with emails sent 1-2 times per week. Their Twitter feed is also no doubt helpful if you don’t follow quite as many people as I do.

#3 Fill Your Events

Events are still the most meaningful way to build a relationship with your audience. A typical Facebook update from the marathon read:

“Don’t forget to join us for the Eat for a Cause: tacos for San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center event tonight at tacolicious! 6:30pm-11pm!”

Getting people out of their routines and to something new is always hard, but worth it. Get your events noticed and get as many of your audience as you can to them.

#4 Promote Your News Coverage

The public relations team for SF Marathon are out there getting the good word out. When they succeed, it is worth highlighting the stories far and wide. An example is a phenomenal story in the San Francisco Chronicle of a war widow who intends to run the marathon twice (52.4 miles!) in honor of her fallen husband. This was posted onto their Facebook page where I picked it up, and no doubt many more did as well.

#5 Guest Writers Build Credibility

Guest bloggers with personal stories build credibility. Their expertise matters less than their personal stories and connection to the topic at hand. Whether it is Libby Jones writing about violating the taper in her lead up or Bridget Batson’s recipe for carrot zucchini muffins, this authentic and personal writing is better than any canned copy.

#6 Mix Up Your Content Types

People learn in different ways – some are visual, some are auditory and some prefer to read. If your goal is to educate and inform your audience, then you need to deliver content in multiple formats.

Certain topics also lend themselves to different content types. I found the videos of the course mapexceptionally helpful. And don’t underestimate the printed word: the Runners’ Guide PDF provided a lot of useful information in a ready-to-print format.

#7 Run Competitions to Generate Content

A recent Facebook update from the SF Marathon said “Let’s kick off race week with a contest! First 5 people to post pictures of their PACKED bags for traveling to San Francisco this weekend win a sweatband! Make sure to tag us in your post. Better pack fast!”

What better way to generate some activity than invite your audience to submit relevant photos for a competition?

Newspapers reduced to Twitter-sized articles

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:00:00 -0800

Is this a trend of the future? The Australian publishes an article online with a whole 85 characters. I think republishing their ENTIRE article might constitute a breach of fair use … but seriously where is journalism going?

GOOGLE chief executive Eric Schmidt says the US economic situation is “pretty dire”.

With the economy so “dire” will all newspaper articles be less than 140 characters soon?

Quick and Easy Surveys

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:00:00 -0800

Let me start by saying that at Ephox we have never really used ‘employee surveys’. Whether it be to figure out buying decaffeinated or full strength coffee, gauge employee satisfaction or do 360 degree reviews we have relied on good old-fashioned communication: phone, email or a face-to-face chat.

The closest we have come is a self appraisal form that we use for annual reviews. The form asks questions such as: “What do I feel are opportunities for growth and improvement in this position?” and “Are there any changes I would like to see made in my job that would improve my effectiveness?” As a manager I know that I value the feedback and constructive conversations it prompts.

To try and take this adhoc review process to the next level we signed up for SuccessFactors. They offer a performance management solution which incorporated goal setting, performance reviews, compensation management and a lot more.

But… the complexity of SuccessFactors got the better of us. 18 months on and it still goes unused. In fairness, our company is still recovering from Post-NetSuite Implementation Stress Disorder. At this stage I am unwilling to unleash another difficult-to-use system. I came to the view that the system for managing quarterly objectives, bonus setting and performance reviews can, and probably should, be done in Word or Excel files in a company of 25 staff.

Lately I have run into some more lightweight approaches that might work just that bit better than good old MS Office.

The first was the realization that our survey software tool SurveyMonkey has a range of pre-canned surveys that might be a useful starting point. They offer 360 degree reviews, performance appraisals and more. At first glance the surveys looked quite good, can be customized and would be very easy to setup. For a laugh, feel free to fill out a survey I prepared in about 3 minutes.

The second tool I stumbled on was an interesting service called Rypple. Rypple is the Twitter of 360 degree reviews. It lets you ask 100 character questions of contacts who reply anonymously. It seems like a great idea for adhoc queries of coworkers. Like “decaf or full strength?”… although I suspect I know the answer to that one already.

The final tool I have seen but not used would be the ability to easily create forms that submit Google Spreadsheets.

I look forward to seeing which, if any, of these approaches offer an improvement.

Digg was Elanced

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:00:00 -0800

Interesting tidbit…

We have used Elance from time to time on projects although not much in the past few years. Like all remote work and outsourcing we have mixed success.

Apparently Kevin Rose used Elance to find and pay a freelancer to help build the first version Digg. I guess his project worked out just fine!

A tip from the projects that we were successful on is to make sure you allocate the time to spec the project out in fine detail. In a programming project we went so far as to define a very specific test plan that the outsourcer - based in Singapore - had to pass.

The stateless micro-multinational

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:00:00 -0700

Last week’s Economist had an article praising the stateless multinational. The article’s perspective on the new breed of global company was worth noting.

The conventional wisdom is that a global business is a bad thing as it pursues a race to the bottom for lower taxes and costs. Clearly a rational business does this but the Economist points out the alternative is no better:

The real threat comes from overly chummy links between a state and its multinationals. Although politicians may have been more comfortable in a world where what was good for General Motors was good for America, that tended to lead to protectionism and antiquated working practices. Firms in which loyalty to the state goes beyond the economic value it offers usually expect something in return—soft contracts and subsidies, perhaps, or standards conveniently set in their interest. In fact the sorry story of GM itself highlights the dangers of being a national champion. Rather than fear the stateless corporation, people would be wise to do all they can to make them feel at home in their country.

At Ephox I perceive us as a small example of a “stateless multinational.” We have our engineering team in Australia, our HQ in the US (including VP Sales & Marketing, COO) and now a growing operation in Europe (including CEO and CTO).

The challenges for a global company are clearly present. Communicating ever changing priorities takes work. Our US and European team have a sales-driven perspective and our Brisbane team tends to have a more engineering-driven perspective. Getting them on the same page is, well, not easy at times. Time zones and frequent long haul travel drives us crazy.

Despite all of this the opportunities for a global company are also evident. These opportunities are also one which our Australian heritage seem reasonably well equipped for.

Australians, on the whole, tend to be tolerant and welcoming of different cultures (“I am, you are, we are, Australian”). We work hard at not wasting time and energy on conflict as conflict is ‘bullshit’. Empire building and being ‘too big for ones boots’ is frowned upon. Australian prime minister Bob Hawke probably summed up this spirit when, on a trip to Japan, he said that we weren’t going to “play funny buggers” (apparently that didn’t translate well.)

Embracing a global culture whilst retaining key elements of our heritage is an ongoing project at Ephox. I guess the ultimate is to take the best elements from all of our locations and people. As the Economist article says, a “globally integrated company needs a single culture, and that the best way to foster this is to make the highest ethics anywhere in the firm the norm for everyone, wherever they are working. Anything less tends to corrode the culture.”

Recessions are the Brick Walls We Need to Climb Over

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:00:00 -0700

This weekend we were busily packing up our house for an impending move to London. I am moving over for 12 months to help grow Ephox in Europe.

At first glance this may seem like a stupid thing to do given that Britain is facing its worst slump in 60 years. Why on earth is this a good time invest time and money in developing the market there?

The main reason was that brick walls present a challenge that is highly motivating*. I have also had an unshakable belief that great companies are built in difficult times. Warren Buffett has it right when he says to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.

My girlfriend and I moved to Silicon Valley in August 2002. In the week of October 8, 2002, the NASDAQ composite touched its lowest point of 1,114 and completed its ride down - way down - from its all-time high of 5,132. Over $5 trillion in market value of technology companies had been wiped out.

Was coming to the US at that time a good idea? In hindsight yes it was. The tech market wasn’t any easier in Australia at the time and getting a foothold in the Valley was much easier on a shoestring in 2002. We were able to hire staff, rent premises, rent accommodation and much more without resorting to the ridiculous premiums of the dotcom era. My wife was also very lucky to get a job with Qualcomm and had stock options priced at the lowest their stock had been in 10 years. Talk about timing!!

Building a company in a recession can be a good thing for a range of reasons. Many great companies have had their formative years in tough times. I have often said that if we had arrived in the Valley a few years earlier we could easily have raised a ton of VC and long since flamed out. Getting going in the recession really focused our energies on the important things and instilled a profitable growth mentality that most start-ups never get.

Will increasing our investment in Europe - and in the US and Australia - pay off during this recession? Time will tell :)

_____________
*Yes, I have been reading Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture.

Good Buzz, Expensive Healthcare

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:50:00 -0700

I stumbled upon the web site for Oregon health insurance company Regence and I was immediately impressed by its clean almost Web 2.0 design. Remember this is a big, boring corporate collecting over $8 billion in premiums per year. Then I noticed their section ‘The Buzz’ and I was even more impressed.

Regence have done an outstanding job with a very plain English description of the challenges facing the health care industry in the United States and what we can all do about it include:

Treat your doctor like a partner
Double your motivation (to improve your own health)
Make wellness a daily to-do
Know your health risks
Safeguard your good health
Watch your wallet

Their solutions are clearly only part of the answer as healthcare in the US is a hornet’s nest of problems. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see a ‘big corporate’ use such simple, authentic communication.

Today the news is aghast that consumer prices are up 5.6 percent. This is bad news clearly. But the news yesterday was a sense of relief that healthcare costs are up only 10.6 percent.

If a 5.6 percent increase in the CPI is viewed as shocking and 10.6 percent increase in healthcare is viewed as a relief there has to be something wrong with healthcare costs in the US!

Aussie Dollar Plummets

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Australian dollar is down more than 8% since the beginning of July.

This is excellent news for export-oriented companies such as Ephox who have a lot of expenses in Aussie dollars yet most earnings in US dollars. In fact, our worldwide price list is in US dollars so even when we sell in Australia we sell in US dollars. A weaker US dollar has made our software more affordable to a huge range of markets but on the balance I think it has hurt our business.

Before we all start celebrating and break open the champagne I am hoping that we can see the Aussie fall by significantly more … even accounting for the recent drop the Aussie is up about 70%since the beginning of 2002. This seriously means that we would have 70% more staff in Australia than we do today if the currency had stayed where it was. We had our cost crisis long before it was popular for small business to be worrying about the cost of gasoline!

The other interesting thing to note from the graphs above is how closely the Aussie tracks the Euro. Most of the movement in the Aussie dollar has clearly been from US dollar weakness… not from any inherent attributes of the Australian economy despite what Australians might like to think (“We have mines! The Chinese love our coal!”).

The relentless fall in the US dollar actually elicited some good laughs from a largely European audience at an SDForum event I spoke at during which I quipped “Thank you for traveling from Europe to evaluate Silicon Valley as a place to outsource your software development.”

Homegrown US software companies are generally well funded, operate in a huge market and are thus often highly successful and difficult to compete with. The falling US dollar was the elephant in the room for any software companies with significant staff outside the US.

The US dollar’s further rise is hardly guaranteed given how far it has come in just a week but I am certainly hoping it keeps ‘going and going’!

ECM Acquisitions I Didn't Notice

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

These two acquisitions happened so quietly during the festive season last year that I didn’t notice until today.

Firstly Australian ECM vendor Harvest Road hit the chopping block on December 21st 2007. They appeared to completely melt down last year and sold their assets to Italian vendor Giunti Labs. Founded in 1841, Guinti has to be one of the oldest content management companies around so hopefully their product has found a stable home. CMSWire has some more info.

Then Blackboard closed their acquisition of San Francisco-based Xythos on New Year’s Eve 2007 for $25.5 million. This is appears to be a solid valuation of 4.5 time sales - their sales for 2007 were around $5.7 million. The valuation seems more appropriate for a software as a service company and they were mainly a licenses company but then again this is still a reasonable deal for Blackboard shareholders as BBBB is trading at 4.8 times revenues. The much larger, well funded Blackboard is a nice home for their products. Xythos’ solid WebDAV-compliant repository has always seemed impressive, at least technically.

Xythos was founded in 1999 and raised a Series A of $6.3 million in 2001, a Series B that there is no info on and then a $4 million Series C in 2003. In 2001 Red Herring mentioned that their Series A had a post-money valuation of $20.2 million so a $25.5 million sale over 6 years later isn’t exactly a home run but a whole lot better than nothing.

Top 10 Tips of Digital Entrepreneurs

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Brad Howarth spent some time talking to a variety of entrepreneurs, including me, on what it takes to be successful for an article in SmartCompany. The collection of secrets are:

Make every dollar count
Become a global economist
Don’t lose focus
Listen, adapt and change
Cultivate free advice
Learn to sell
Become a name dropper
Keep your team informed
Be wary of consultants and advisers
Be talked about

My original three ‘tips’ I sent to Brad for the story were:

1. Focus
Initially Ephox targeted the broadest possible market we could. As a start-up in Australia this meant the small business market before trying the education market. Both of these efforts resulted in some great media coverage but few sales. When we started to focus on partnering with larger software companies such as IBM, Oracle and Vignette we were able to access much larger opportunities, build alliances and tailor our product development. Large customers do see value in the ‘next big thing’ but more often than not their concerns are around more mundane issues such as integration costs, reference sites and quality.

2. Sales Execution
Despite being a highly technology-oriented founder I always had a great appreciation of the importance of sales and marketing. However, appreciating the need for sales and marketing and translating that through to significant sales was another thing. We wasted a lot of business development and marketing activities on opportunities that were difficult or impossible to translate into sales. It is critical for a startup to have a professional discipline around the sales process and the day-to-day execution of sales.

3. Think Long Term
Continuous improvement of product, sales, marketing, engineering and operations takes time to add up and take hold. Ephox took three years to get its first $1m in sales, 18 months to get the next million, 12 months for the third million, 10 months for the fourth, 8 months for the fifth, 6 months for the sixth, 4 months for the seventh and is now on course for its first $1m month. I have always had an unshakable belief that if we improve every part of the business every day of every year our efforts will translate into superb results over time. In my experience, the cliché that starting a business is a marathon and not a sprint is completely true. A smart, committed and passionate team who share a view of the long term is essential.

Apple Design Awards

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Apple announced the winners of their design awards last week of which their were two notable winners.

The first is Screenflow. It looks like superb screen recording software that I am downloading as we speak.

The second is Aussie start-up Remember The Milk. I use RTM quite a bit and highly recommend it. Their iPhone app is great. Well done!

IBM Gets Closer to Web 2.0

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

A few years ago our marketing director and I were chatting with an IBM marketing executive about search engine optimization. We were amateurs when it comes to SEO but we held court for more than an hour and they took several pages of notes. The one thing we knew about SEO was that inbound links improve your ranking.

I mentioned how Microsoft, IBM’s sworn enemy, appeared to be quite capable in mobilizing its many bloggers to improve its rankings. Surely IBM, with 386,558 staff, must have a built-in channel that could improve its rankings via links on its employee’s blogs? Nothing dodgey… simply a suggestion that the world’s greatest portal software was WebSphere and wouldn’t it be great if that was what you truly felt that way, Valued IBMer, you could consider a link. It would only be a matter of time before IBM could rise to the top of search engines in their chosen keywords if just 0.1% of their staff used their blogs to link to “service-oriented architecture”, “grid computing” or “anything else”.

Whilst this may actually be a bad idea as IBM may end up banished from search results entirely, IBM’s lack of basic insight seemed to be from another era. A few years on and somebody amongst 386,558 people has clearly started to get the Brave New Web. IBM has launched the IBM Resource Center (or ‘Diggable Resources’) powered by the Web 2.0 darling Digg.

So far Diggable Resources appears to be an isolated good idea within Big Blue. The small number of “diggs” says that huge army of IBMers still need a kick along. For this idea to truly be successful they need the general public to participate but 370,000 people can certainly give it a good kick start.