The Founders’ Library

by on January 4, 2012 in Resources

One of the best resources on startups: The Founders’ Library, curated by Daniel Tenner of Swombot. If you’re a startup founder, I’d advice you to camp out with a notebook for one week, read through every article on the site, and take prodigious notes.

Some of my favorites from this voluminous tome:

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Sortable.com: How Seven Geeks From Waterloo, Canada Built a ‘Decision Engine’ With 3 Million Monthly Users

by on January 4, 2012 in Startup Profiles, Startups

sortable

Operating from the Accelerator Center at the University of Waterloo, a bunch of seven geeks first built four wildly popular shopping websites: SnapSort, GeekAPhone, LensHero and CarSort, covering the four verticals of cameras, phones, lenses and cars, respectively. ‘Data intensive’, ‘powerful’, and ‘beautiful’ were some of the words I’d used in an earlier write-up to describe the site(s). In December 2011, the four websites attracted more than 3 million users, and over the course of the entire year, delivered 41 million recommendations.

Now the company has shifted gears and consolidated the entire business into one site: Sortable.com.

Employing the same model perfected in SnapSort and GeekAPhone, Sortable has expanded its offerings to a total of five verticals: TVs, cameras, phones, tablets and laptops, all spec-intensive categories that benefit greatly from Sortable’s data-centric approach to shopping recommendations.

 

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Google Grounds Chrome for Violating Webmaster Guidelines

by on January 4, 2012 in News

Yesterday, I wrote about the really scummy thing Google Chrome did to boost its rankings: paying people to write posts about it, which is in direct violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Google today responded by demoting the Chrome download site for 60 days.

I wasn’t quite sure if Google would take such a step. It could’ve easily brushed the issue aside with some PR mumble jumble. A 60 day ban is nearly not enough; I’ve seen lesser culprits fare far worse, but it is some action at least and is more than welcome.

Of course, as I’d predicted, Google didn’t quite own up to its sins. The blame was tossed around before it was settled firmly on Unruly Media (an ironic name in the context). According to Google’s email to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land:

Google never agreed to anything more than online ads. We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We’re now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.

Unruly Media, on the other hand, denied the link spam allegations altogether, saying that they were only buying advertising, not links, according to this interview with AllThingsD.

No one has addressed the issue of garbage content, however. All the posts linking to Chrome were filled with what can only be defined as utter crap. Google hasn’t owned up to it, neither has Unruly Media. I guess when you get caught with your pants down, explaining your choice of underwear becomes less of a priority.

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‘Pain is Everywhere’

by on January 4, 2012 in Wisdom

Here’s Seth Godin, once again hitting the nail on the head:

The truth is that pain is everywhere, in every project and in every relationship and in every job. Wandering from one to another merely wastes your energy.

Embrace pain. Accept that you’ll never be too big, too rich, too famous or too powerful to escape it.

"If I just get a little bigger, a little more famous, a little richer–then the pain will go away."

This notion creates a cycle of dissatisfaction, an unwillingness to stick it out. There’s always a pain-free gig right around the corner, so screw this, let’s go try that.

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Anil Dash: Foursquare is Today’s Best-Executed Startup

by on January 4, 2012 in Opinion

Not Zynga, not Groupon, and not even Facebook. For Anil Dash, the best-executed startup today is Foursquare:

Foursquare is the one startup that’s doing the most remarkable job of any company out there in product strategy and product creation.

You can’t expect Anil to make a claim without backing it up; he goes on to dissect Foursquare and illustrate clearly why the company deserves to be on this distinguished mantle. This includes the startup’s core platform, its thoughtful business model, robust API, unique aesthetic sense, and technical competence.

He further adds:

Particularly important to me is that everyone from Dennis and Naveen on down within the company speaks about the vision that they have for what Foursquare can become, as opposed to short-term thinking or resting on the (not inconsiderable) hype that’s been lavished on the company.

My own two cents: Foursquare has definitely out-competed GoWalla and Brightkite, but to label it the most innovative startup (and not ‘mobile’ or ‘tech’ startup) is, perhaps, to be either a little myopic, or a little unjust to the dozens of companies innovating in sectors as diverse as energy and biotech. Even with web startups, I can point to a few companies that are doing as much, if more right than Foursquare (DropBox and AirBnB come to mind)

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‘Imagination and Practicality’

by on January 4, 2012 in Wisdom

Ben Yoskovitz on the necessity of imagination, and its counterbalance, practicality:

It seems to me that startup founders need a healthy dose and mixture of both imagination and practicality. One without the other makes you an incomplete founder and leader.

This is a reiteration of something every startup founder knows: you either need to have two contradictory skillsets in order to succeed, or you need to find a partner who posses skills diametrically opposite to yours. Two engineers with little experience with design or marketing is a bad combination, as is two business majors or one founder donning the hats of the designer, business guy, and programmer. Imagination needs to be counterbalanced by reality; hardcore engineering skills need the counterweight of practical marketing and/or an eye for good design.

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‘Incubators are a Ghetto’

by on January 4, 2012 in Wisdom

Andrew Clay on startup incubators:

There has been an explosion of incubators in the last few years. Most of them suck. Some suck so bad that the net value created by the program is probably negative.

And some advice to founders

If you are a founder looking at a program that hasn’t had at least 50% of the previous companies funded, you might reconsider the options. If you can go to YC, Techstars or 500 startups, you should. I would. You’ll learn things and get a tiny bit of money, but the connections you make to the network of founders and mentors is what will make all the difference

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We’ll Go More A-Roving…

by on January 4, 2012 in Technology

It’s not everyday that a product meant to last 90 days stretches its warranties to eight years, but that’s exactly what happened with Spirit and  Opportunity, the two Mars Rovers that landed on the Red Planet’s surface eight years ago Jan 3, 2004 (Spirit) and Jan. 25, 2004 (Opportunity).

Between them, the two rovers have covered 26.15 miles on the planet’s surface and unearthed secrets about the Red Planet that have dramatically altered our perceptions of its geology. We now know for certain that Mars had water – and possibly, life – at some point in its history.

Stephen Hackett says:

I propose this set of rovers may be the best-designed thing mankind has ever built.

A thought to which I’d readily agree. This has to be attributed to the supreme quality of NASA’s engineers who managed to create robots that could survive the harshness of Mars.

More on the Rovers from Mike Wall of Space.com

Also allow me to indulge myself with one of Byron’s finest poems:

So we’ll go no more a-roving

So late into the night

Though the heart be still as loving

And the moon be still as bright

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Don’t Forget About Microsoft in the Apple vs. Google Fight

by on January 3, 2012 in Opinion

boxing-microsoft-google-apple

Palm has been knocked cold, and from all indications, RIM has thrown in the towel too.

Now, there are just four players left in the ring: Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nokia, battling it out for the future of computing.

The Daily Beast’s Daniel Lyons reduces this fight to just two competitors – Apple and Google – with scarce a mention of the giant from Redmond and the lumbering Finnish beast.

Perhaps Lyons is right. Apple and Google have proven to be far nimbler in the past decade, outmaneuvering and outinnovating the competitors. And while you could be skeptical two years ago, there is no doubt whatsoever that the future of computing is in mobiles and tablets. Apple and Google already have a large foothold in this space. It is not a stretch to imagine Google dominating these markets in the near future (not due to superior quality, but due to affordability of its products), with Apple coming in a healthy second (with massive profit margins, to add).

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This is Utterly Disgusting: Google Subverting Its Own Webmaster Guidelines to Promote Chrome

by on January 3, 2012 in News

In a remarkable expose that is sure to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of SEOs and marketers around the globe, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land and SEOBook have unearthed a shady link buying scheme for Google Chrome, masterminded by Google itself in a direct violation of its own webmaster guidelines.

Take a look at this screenshot from HumphriesNation:

google-chrome-link-buying-scheme

That’s a direct link to the Google Chrome download page. The post has no meat whatsoever (something the Google Panda update was supposed to discourage) and is stuffed with frivolous SEO keywords. The content itself makes no frickin’ sense. How the heck does Google Chrome help small businesses? Does it do something special that Firefox or IE or Safari can’t do?

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