Björn Jeffery

Space Cat Solo (Toca Band) (by Toca Boca)

Space Cat Solo (Toca Band) (by Toca Boca)

You only like things that are complex

A fantastic speaker from last week’s GRID conference.

(via GRID 12)

The acquisition of Sparrow has caused quite a stir, and rightfully so I think. I’m also an enthusiastic user and was disappointed to learn that the product would no longer be developed or maintained. At the same time, it raised an interesting point about entrepreneurs´ motives and requirements to keep their businesses running.

Marco Arment wrote the following:

It’s frustrating when a product or service you like goes out of business, and that’s effectively what happened here. Sparrow tried to succeed in an extremely difficult market, and apparently failed. Their customers supported their efforts up to this point, but there probably weren’t enough customers for them to refuse Google’s offer.

Don’t blame Sparrow. Blame the terrible market for email clients.

Although I agree with the statement above, there is also a third alternative that is not brought up. You can either:

1. Make it on your own, and finance your company through your revenue.
2. Sell your company (and maybe more so, yourself) to someone that wants to utilise your skills for something similar, or integrate your product into something else.
3. Become a part of a company that actively wants to support your current product as it is.

Acquisitions don’t necessarily have to lead to your product changing or forcing you to leave what you are doing. They could (and arguably should to a higher extent) simply be a way to gain access to a great and loved product and give it the financial and structural prerequisites to keep growing. Eventually it will need to be profitable in its own right in order to be viable but that can take a while – and that’s fine. Because the product and team are now there to stay.

This, in turn, requires the entrepreneurs to see an acquisition as a stepping stone in what they are intending to create, not the end of the road + a 2 year lockup period. I think there’s a difference here between people who are passionate about something and become entrepreneurs to create something within it, and the people who are passionate about entrepreneurship per se. Both are fine, but they are not the same.

The Silicon Valley vibe is definitely premiering the latter, which is a shame in my opinion. Vinod Khosla puts it well in this recent NYTimes article:

An acquisition may be a safety net, a way to free yourself or learn to pursue another bigger or more interesting vision, but those are tools rather than goals of the true Silicon Valley entrepreneurs I have seen.

There are investors and buyers that do so to keep. If you’re passionate about your product, look for them.

There are entrepreneurs that are willing to stay and make use of these new resources. I think they will be among the ones creating truly great companies.

I’ve been using a lot of Uber lately, and have been thinking about the service even more. Being a new resident of San Francisco, the unreliability of taxis is something that takes a little getting used to. You call a cab and, if you’re lucky, eventually it shows up. More often than not, it doesn’t. This is not a problem most of the time since you just hail a cab on the street and if it stops – you’re in. But there are occasions that require a little more reliability than that.

I’ve spoken to several cab drivers about the situation and most say that you simply call three cabs (from three different companies) and then one of them will probably show up. It makes the overall situation even worse since all three cabs might decide to come, but only one of them will get the passenger.

The problem stems from a break down of trust in the system. If the cab driver can’t trust that the caller is still there once he/she gets there, then the likelihood of them picking someone on the way there is much higher. The same goes for the caller – if the cab rarely shows up otherwise, why not just grab any cab that happens to pass by? This is, of course, a vicious circle. 

However, where trust breaks down there is also opportunity. Uber has a premium offering by driving town cars, but I think for many the premium is simply that the car turns up. It’s quick, convenient and reliable. Their recent venture UBERx (that drives hybrids at a lower price) seems to support this theory. Not only is it an elegant idea to use remnant car inventory cruising around the city, it is also filling in the blanks of a trust system that has failed. And by doing so – creating a whole new market for itself. Very impressive.

There are many other markets where trust is low, albeit not as low as the SF cab market. Two of my favorite love-to-hate-industries are banking and insurance. Although I was too early in my predictions that these markets would be disrupted (you know how hard predictions can be), I still feel that they are ripe for change.

Do you trust your insurance company to help you out if something goes wrong? Probably to some extent. But what is their listed value of the object that you have lost – is it the same as the value you place on it? Probably not. Many have decided against contacting their insurance company simply because it is too much trouble for too little money. In short – people don’t trust the insurance to help out in the way that it was originally intended when it was purchased. I think there’s something there to be explored.

Banking is the same. This well-written piece (about an investment bank, but still) shows the contempt that they show for some of their customers. Documentaries like Inside Job show an industry that clearly isn’t putting their clients first. The current Libor situation will not help here either.

All in all, there is a break down in trust in these markets too. It is obvious in banking, and somewhat slower (and more accepted) in insurance. The trust is disappearing, and thus the opportunities are starting to occur. I wonder who will be the first to fully exploit them.

All I care ‘bout is money and the city that I’m from

A Yayoi Kusama x Louis Vuitton pumpkin.

(via Photo by fionaspruill • Instagram)

A Yayoi Kusama x Louis Vuitton pumpkin.

(via Photo by fionaspruill • Instagram)

Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” single, which tops the Hot 100, this week moved 296,000 downloads, according to SoundScan, while another version by an artist listed as “Here’s My Number So” sold more than 27,000 downloads of an identically named song in the same week. Both songs are listed at $1.29 on iTunes.

For the most part, these covers try to sound exactly like the hit single they’re reworking, and the more successful ones use search engine optimization-friendly artist names and song titles to lure unsuspecting consumers looking for the original version into making a song purchase.