I have had a busy past year. Reviewing the old blog I realized how little time I have made to reflect on where I am going at the moment. Too busy charging ahead. The job at Sun Trading, marathon training and now business school has really limited my ability to reflect. I am finishing my second quarter at Kellogg and I am really looking forward to thinking about what I have been learning and what I really want to do with my life. And grilling. And drinking beer.
I got a phone call yesterday from the admissions director of the Kellogg School of Business. She told me she had good news, that I was accepted to grad school. I was so excited I tuned out for a second on the phone until I realized that she was still talking and I probably ought to be listening to her. Classes start in two months and then I am going to be quite the busy lad.
Well, I got a new job and I am pretty darn excited. I have had a lot of fun at Star Farm but it is the right time to move on. I start my new job on Wednesday the 30th and I will post more info then about the position. Sweet.
I went to a networking event hosted by the Executives Club of Chicago on Thursday and I found the experience to be mostly awkward. I discovered a log time ago that when I meet people, I like to get to know them. I realize that many people just don’t like the experience of walking up to a total stranger and starting a conversation but it has always been pretty easy for me. So I did just that on Thursday night, I walked up to well dressed people in suits and ties and introduced myself. I got some good responses. I met some people who were genuinely interesting and a few people who honestly only wanted to get a business card from me and then move on to the next body in the crowd.
I think this is the same problem that my colleague Joi experienced. When you are meeting people regardless if it is a business or social event, don’t just try to move through the crowd shaking hands. You have to form a connection or there is no point. Humans are all about connections.
It makes sense now. Garmin owns MotionBased and is simply using them to extract more money from the owners of their systems. If you want more function than you can get with Garmin’s included software, you can pay Garmin for their web tools. It is also why there was no drive to make a better site, because there is no competition to force them to create a quality tool.
I am training for the Helsinki Marathon in August with two friends in different parts of the world. We have all run together before but we are no longer in the same place. During previous runs we all became addicted to GPS watches to help with training and so we looked to Motion Based to allow us to share the GPS information from our runs with each other. So it can seem like we are running together or at least heckle each other despite our distance.
The idea behind Motion Based is great but sadly, the execution is horrible. I fault two things, their business model and their execution, which does not leave much to be excited about. Their business model follows lots of “Web 2.0″ sites by having a free service level and a pay service level. Their free site gives you so little functionality that it is not very useful. You can upload your GPS data and view your activities chronologically, but you can not sort by speed or distance. Sites like Flickr also have a free account but it gives you all of the interface functionality of the full service. Motion Based is also quite expensive. Since the free service is so limited, users are either going to pay the $96 yearly or $12 monthly fee or they will leave the service like I did. Full access to Flickr is only $25 per year.
And then there is the interface. Cluttered is a good description. Google ushered in the era of the clean interface but apparently Motion Based was not into that. Their site is hard to navigate and worse than that, hard to use. You can search for your friends GPS information, but the search tool is pretty awful. There is an advanced search too but each time you add a search parameter you have to “run a report”, something I have not had to do since I stopped using Microsoft Access in 1996.
I am tempted to start a competitor site to Motion Based on my own time. I can develop a cleaner interface with more value and a real database. Ultimately, that is the problem with Motion Based. Not enough value.
Saw a really cool tool today called Jott.com. This web app lets you call a number and record a message that it automatically transcribes and emails to whomever you specified. So I could call the number, say I had a message for Izzy, say the message and hang up. Jott would automatically type up my message and send it to Izzy’s email address.
These ideas are really cool for the person on the go, or the plain forgetful. Lets face it, this is the modern version of the personal tape recorder or going further back in time, the string on your finger.
Izzy raised a good point about the security ramifications that this might have. What a great tool for coordinating a group of terrorists with cell phones. Clearly Jott tracks users several different ways since it needs to know your cell number and all of your email contacts to work correctly. I bet the NSA will be sucking up to Jott.com at some point in the near future.
Assuming that I don’t find anything shocking in the privacy policy though, I am really excited about Jott. I am imagining using this with Skype and Twitter and wishing dearly that my wife had a blackberry. I now have nearly infinite ways to send voice and text to different groups using different forms of instant communication. I wonder if I can use Jott to blog? To Twitter? To pick up my dry cleaning?
The Chicago Tech Cocktail was held last night and it was quite a bit of fun. Lots of smart people showed up and there was good conversation and free beer to be had. I met some smart guys working on distributed data centers, disaster recovery, web design, baby sitting and more. Good times. And my friend Tiffany nearly landed a haymaker on a girl exiting the bathroom while playing baseball on a Wii.
I am constantly forming and revising my list of business fundamentals. I consider it part of my continuing education to become a better team member and leader. Many of my ideas are formed from observing what works and what does not work in my current job, but there is asignificant portion of my learning that comes from everday events and reading.
Today I was reflecting with a coworker about business models. We both agreed that the bootstrap method is by far our preferred method to start a business. You eliminate so much risk by building your business on a small scale and proving the validity of your idea before you expand.
If you plan to build a big company out of the gate that may have to survive for several years with no profits, you really better the perfect planner and leader. Any little mistake can be fatal if your are not bringing in enough revenue to sustain the business. If you have to go back to investors again and again for capital before your business is profitable, it sure is a long road. Not my style. I am not risk adverse, I just prefer the easy road.
