Uncertainty: #StartupIceland: Google+

Showing posts with label Google+. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Native Monetization

[Original post written @http://startupiceland.wordpress.com]

I dont get banner ads, let me be very honest with you I am Ad blind. If you really think you care going to get me to click on a banner, you are very wrong. I am not the only one thinking this way. We have become oblivious to all these flashy things shown on the websites. I wish we would have a cleaner web. I go to a website to do something, i.e read gossip, read news, watch a video or read about something my friend thought was cool, important whatever, I get sorely disappointed when I go to these site which have these ridiculous advertisements that really turn me off. Fred Wilson, had a very interesting post about 6 months back here is that video. The video is 22 minutes long, so check it out when you have some time. The summary of the video is that the online advertising medium is fragmenting, You have Google Ads which is based on searched content, Social Ads that is based on emotional/social sharing content, Internet Video Ads, Mobile Ads, Location based Ads, Streaming Audio based Ads etc. Managing the advertisement budget is not that simple anymore. I specifically want to emphasize there is a difference between Marketing and Advertising. I don't want to go into that discussion in this post. This post is about Advertisements. I believe websites need to focus on Native Monetization, I think that is the way to ensure you don't turn off your user base. What do I mean by Native Monetization? Look at the ads by Google, they don't sell banners they specifically encourage their advertisers to do the work on deciding how, when, what and where the ads needs to show up. More specifically, what search words are linked to the ads, what geography etc this actually enhances the experience of the ads consumer. The same is true of many of the platforms, like promoted ads on Twitter, location specific ads on FourSquare, promoted ads on Tumblr etc I am not so sure that it has been implemented that correctly in Facebook and that is probably the reason they are not able to monetize ads effectively. I hear through the grapevine that Facebook is having challenges in converting advertisements. I may be wrong in this assertion. One more titbit of information that I got out of Jonah Peretti of BuzzFeed (video below) is that the Content Management System that renders your websites contents needs to be used for the ads that you display in your website. Actually just following that advice you will be forced to do Native Monetization. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oMBs9Uk9Ds&w=560&h=315]

comScore Media Evangelist on Monetizing Web Video: Increase Ad Load and Embrace Brand Advertising (beet.tv)
Making The Switch To Online Video Advertising (socialmediaexplorer.com)
After 200M+ Views in 2011, The Decorah Eagles' Live Stream Is Back For "Season 2″ (techcrunch.com)

SXSW update - 8th Lean Startup Meetup

[Original post written @http://startupiceland.wordpress.com]

Kristjan Freyr Kristjansson was at SXSW2012 and he gave a brief talk about the show and more importantly shared his thoughts on attending many of the Lean Startup Panel. The summary of the SXSW update was:

It is very noisy, crowded and advertisements everywhere - it would be impossible to get your startup noticed or even to meet someone and follow up on the conversation. It is a fantastic place to get connected for the first time through the parties hosted by various brands, Kristjan particularly liked the one hosted by Startup Weekend, TechStars and Google.
Have a plan with regard to what you want to achieve when you attend SXSW, and it is something every startup/entrepreneur should experience once
There is an opportunity to have a big Icelandic contingency in the next SXSW, as the planners of the SXSW really liked the Thojdfunder National Assembly that was organized in Iceland and they would like to tap into the crowd of brilliant entrepreneurs and people focused on solving challenging problems attending SXSW next year and apply the same approach that was applied in Iceland. Gudjon Mar and Gunnar Holmstein were the instigators. I fully support the initiative lets see if we can gather enough people in Iceland to support this initiative and show some strength from Iceland next year in SXSW.
There were some very exciting interactive advertisement focused software that had face recognition software and based on your online profile was able to display ads that were targeted. The technology is here and it is just a matter of time before it becomes mainstream. The advertisements on the subway in Minority Report when Tom Cruise was running is going to happen sooner than you think.
There were many formats for the Lean Startup sessions, some of them were led by Eric Ries, but there were others where different startups shared their examples of applying the Lean Startup Principles. Kristjan, thought it was so incredible to be see so many startups starting to apply the lessons and are learning fast and pivoting into valuable solutions. It is amazing to me why this has not caught on sooner here in Iceland, we have a long way to go here.

The general discussion centered around how we can experiment and validate hypothesis, Kristjan shared the link to the Lean Startup Experiment website lean.st. The 5 minute corner was taken by Helgi þor Jonsson, Helgi has been following a blog site Unicornfree.com and how he has taken the first step to becoming an entrepreneur. He has started working on a prototype of a Project Management Platform for volunteers and non-profit activities. His insight working with this blog site is the concept of 30 x 500, which is get $30 from 500 people then you have a business or $500 from 30 people. He has been taking the online course which is almost over and he would be ready to move on to the next stage of launching his product. We discussed a lot about how to raise the bar on Startups being created in Iceland. Of course there were many suggestions, Gudjon Mar was of the opinion that we need to have big wins to establish a precedence that successful and profitable startups can be created out of Iceland. I feel we need to go one step further, successful and profitable startups need to created in a faster pace. We need to accelerate the process to actually make an impact and change minds in Iceland. I believe that if we can focus the entire startup community to pick topics from Paul Graham's Ideas that YCombinator will invest in and basically build companies for those problems we will get somewhere with the culture here. We need to make it attractive for someone to invest in, nothing against someone wanting to start a coffee shop it just does not create a buzz for Angel and Venture Investors to get excited about.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Migrating this blog to WordPress

Image via Wikipedia

I started blogging in 2004, it was just something I wanted to do because I never had a habit of maintaining a diary. Blogging was very easy with Blogger, stuck with it until now and I think the time has come for an upgrade. I am moving this blog to WordPress, I already did the migration over the weekend here is the new link http://startupiceland.wordpress.com, but I will continue to post in both platforms until I am fully satisfied that WordPress meets all my requirements. I found an excellent resource that helped me in the migration, that was Google Groups. The link here pointed me exactly to what I needed to do, of course there is a limit to the size of the file that you can export from Blogger and Convert, in addition the WordPress import tool does not work as well directly from Blogger. Here is what I did:

Exported my blog from Blogger to XML - Settings - Other - Blog Tools - Export blog
Ran the conversion program hosted in Google App Engine
Imported the converted file through the WordPress import tool - Tools - Import - WordPress

Some of the challenges that I think I will have once I complete the migration:

Links - I think the links to my previous posts might break or go to the original blogger link
Google Search Results - Search Engines may not get my new URL until another month
Analytics - I like the Blogger analytics dashboard, will need to see how I like WordPress
I may have to move to a host - don't like that because the interface is different for every host and I need to learn that interface, how it links to WordPress etc I am hoping that I can fund someone to do all the behind the scene dirty work and I can just write! well, as they say there is no free lunch.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Skolapulsinn.is - Mashing Technology, Education and Psychology

Brian Suda, does not need any introduction in the Icelandic Startup Scene. He also writes a pretty well read blog @optional.is. I stumbled upon this post by Brian on Skolapulsinn.is which he and a couple of other hackers put together for solving a big problem in Schools, to gauge the pulse of the students. Typically this is captured by asking the students through Surveys, but Skolapulsinn.is makes that feedback look much shorter and allows for School Administrator and Teachers to react in real time on what is going in the school system. He has written a very detailed post on this in his blog here. I have to be honest I was not aware that this tool was hacked together in 2008 and has surveyed more than 12000 students, thats pretty impressive data set. I need to talk to Brian today and understand where is this data and what can we learn from it. I bet you could ask a whole lot of questions and this data can be used to understand the living breathing student community in Iceland in real time. I like how Brain refers to the school system as a living breathing thing rather than a stoic institution. We could ask important questions like how involved are the parents in the school work of the students, because time and time again it has been proven that kids whose parents are more involved with their kids work, make better students. We can actually give a more real-time report card rather than wait for the year to be over or solicit the opinion of the teacher. It is the kid who knows whether their parents are involved in the home work or not. In addition, we could ask questions about the general feeling of the students to access whether they are feeling positive about school, their self confidence etc. This tools is a fascinating introduction to me and I obviously am going to bug Brian about how this is used in the Icelandic School System. If it is not used, then I want to lobby to the Ministry of Education and get them to use it. We need innovation like this to Tinker and Learn to improve our educational system, after all is'nt Education about Learning?

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Isafjordur the next Startup Hub?

I saw this video on Bloomberg TV, the interesting thing is many of the new "hot" startups are cropping up in NYC because I believe there is a transition that is starting to happen, the technology is getting easier to put together the cost of creating a company is also getting to be not a huge hole in your wallet. NYC has many of the Fortune 500 companies, so if your startup is in the business of Media, Advertising, Fashion, Financial Services or even Pharmaceutical NYC is not such a bad place to be. Goes back to the Investment thesis that I wrote about, all the traditional businesses are now the users of new technology infrastructure built by Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, Apple etc.
The investment thesis is quite simple, if one looks at:

1970s: Successful companies that created a lot of value were the hardware companies like Atari, Tandy, Radio Shack, Apple etc
1980s: IBM PC, Microsoft, Lotus 123, WordPerfect, HP, Compaq, Apple - Software companies that built applications for the Micro and Mini computers (back then Personal Computers were called that!)
1990s: Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NeXT, Novell - Network related companies that made the plumbing of the Internet work
2000s: Google, Amazon, Ebay, PayPal, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft - Software companies that build application on top of the Internet infrastructure
2008+: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Apple, Google, Amazon - Software as service companies that run on top of the software that connects the Internet.
2010+: Any company that is building applications on top of the software stack of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon and the Mobile Devices

What is even more exciting is that the companies in the future that are building things on top of the Internet Software Infrastructure can be located anywhere and still sell it to the entire world. This creates an awesome level playing field for places like Iceland. You can be in Isafjordur or Egilstadir and still create companies that solve a global problem. The picture is from Isafjordur, not a bad place to start the next Google. Nobody says it cannot be done!

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Disruption in Education

Education is one of the most valuable bequeaths that we can pass along to our next generation. It was hammered into my head when I was growing up that there is only one way out of poverty and that is education. I am doing ok following that advice, what is exciting to me with the advent of the internet is that education is no longer confined behind the walls of an institute. There are disruptions happening that could fundamentally change the dynamics of competitive advantage, productivity, understanding and knowledge dissemination in the entire world. I signed up with Khan Academy yesterday and watched about 40 minutes of Python Programming videos, I have to admit I have done my stint with coding and I am a geek. I thought the instructions were very clear, and I actually felt like I relearnt a lot of the basics very quickly. I think what Sal Khan is doing is fascinating and he is really defining his legacy. This is by no means an advertisement for Khan Academy, but the number of videos that is available in the library is close to 2800 thats a lot of learning in various subjects. I am going to continue my learning in the Python Programming and anything else that I want to learn. The freedom to choose your learning by watching a good teacher is a great motivator, it gives you confidence and the of course the learning. So, what are you going to learn?

Saturday, February 04, 2012

SVEF or The Association of Icelandic Web Masters

I was invited to speak at the annual meeting of SVEF the Association of the Icelandic Web Masters. I was very impressed to see the Mayor of Reykjavik speaking about how he loves the Internet. Anyways, this was like the Oscars of Internet Web Page designers and implementors. I was impressed by the turnout and quite humbled to even be given a stage to talk about something that I believe in. I have written about it here "Iceland can create the next Google". The quality and the sophistication in the implementation of the websites that were nominated was world class. I wish this work gets publicized to the rest of the world and I spoke about that during the event as well. Orkusalan a energy management company won the most accolades. The city of Reykjavik also had a couple of awards for its website betrireykjavik.is. Here is the full list of the awards (disclaimer: I used Google Translate for the categories, here is the link to the original website article) :

The best Icelandic website: Orkusalan.is
Athyglisverðast web site, in the opinion of members sleeping: BetriReykjavik.is
The best look and feel: Orkusalan.is
Original web site: BetriReykjavik.is
The best campaign: Icelandair.is/uppahaldsborgin
Best Mobile: m3.siminn.is/airwaves
Best approach, blogs and video content: Snoop-Around.com
The best entertainment and news: ruv.is
The best service and information web site: Landsbankinn.is
The best sales and promotional web site with more than 50 employees: Landsbankinn.is
The best sales and promotional web site with fewer than 50 employees: Orkusalan.is

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Locals Recommended - A Startup Profile

Met with Helgi Hermansson, former TV program producer, now an Entrepreneur trying to create a platform for video curation for the travel industry. What is that you ask? well, it is quite simple they want to be the filter of the videos that you see on YouTube but the filtering is specifically for the Travel Industry, Hotels, Airlines, Restaurants, City councils, Historic Sites, tourist attractions etc will be made into movies by you and me, the website will provide the guidelines on how to make the video and you can upload it to their cloud. They will market and sell it to the Travel industry and you get a cut of the revenue that your video generates. Not a bad idea for all those artists trying to make it in the TV business around the world. The website is called localsrecommend.org, as .com site was already parked and given that he is an Entrepreneur did not want to spend money on buying the domain. They already have a number of locals in their networks established in various cities and they control the quality of the videos that are uploaded into their platform just like it is done in a TV Studio or a Movie Studio. I like that, quality control on videos and providing a filter on YouTube like platform is a good thing especially from a business perspective. He wants to build this platform into a global business, the travel industry buys subscription to the content and embed the videos in their respective websites. We had a very long and good discussion on his pitch, which needed work, how he could make the business scalable, pricing, driving eye balls to his content etc This is a trend that is bound to emerge in the video content on the web, niche sectors will create their own curation channels just like TV channels now are targeted to a specific cohort Children's channel, Sci-Fi channel, Comedy channel etc the same organization is bound to happen to content that has been created on the Internet.

Marketing on a Shoe String

As Entrepreneurs we are always faced with constraints related to marketing and selling our products and services, that is natural and true for every company. Very few companies have a unlimited budget to spend on marketing. I have had my pet peeves with the Marketing departments while I was working for a bank. The problem I had was, I never knew whether the money we spent was worth it. This is no longer a problem, today technology exists to precisely build-measure-learn from your marketing efforts. I saw this post in The Next Web with the title "10 Marketing Hacks For Entrepreneurs", I think it is applicable to any businesses and I don't know why they have the title as a Hack? I wish established companies would run their businesses like a startup especially in the marketing and sales organizations because they never give you the metrics related to the spending they do. Here is the list if you have not gone to the article to read it:

Google Adwords
ReTargeting
Facebook Ads
Twitter mentions
Gist
Craigslist
Billboard space through ADstruc
Facebook Insights
WordStream
Social Media - Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Quora etc

I would add your company blog is a great way to market your product or service or what you do. Marketing is a promise you keep with your customers. If you don't tell them what you are doing they usually don't know. All the above tools does not replace simple truth about marketing, as Seth Godin's post on Marketing says:

The simple first rule of branding and marketing anything (even yourself)

Not a secret, often overlooked:
"Keep your promises."
If you say you'll show up every day at 8 am, do so. Every day.
If you say your service is excellent, make it so.
If circumstances or priorities change, well then, invest to change them back. Or tell the truth, and mean it.
If traffic might be bad, plan for it.
Is there actually unusually heavy call volume? Really?
Want a bigger brand? Make bigger promises. And keep them

Related articles

Monday, January 09, 2012

Why Voice and Sound is the next big thing

Saw the news that Nuance technologies (the one that powers Siri in Apple iPhone 4S) has launched a voice enabled TV that allows you to control your TV with your voice. I think this is just the beginning of things to come that are voice enabled. Mark Suster had a post about the 10 Hypotheses for Technology Investing by Roger McNamee and Mike Maples, Jr. where they talk about Hyperweb. Which is a fancy word for the mash up all the technology platforms that I have been talking about i.e Google, Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, etc think of all the fascinating things that you could do if the entire power of the web can be mashed together for a specific reason and if it was voice enabled. You can have your virtual assistant and apply the power of the web to businesses. This revolution could bring about the change in business services what Blackberry did to email.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

StartupIceland.com

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Registered a new domain http://www.startupiceland.com and made it point to my blog and it took a total of 10 minutes, should have taken less time but I registered with eNOM instead of GoDaddy (read original SOAP support is going to kill GoDaddy) and Google does not have instructions for setting the CNAME and A Records for eNOM. Don't you love #Google? they have made it so easy to do this, I am surprise not everyone is switching over to Google Apps or maybe they are and I don't know about it

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Google's Ten Things Philosophy

Here is the more detailed version of the Google's Ten Things Philosophy, but I have been thinking on how the principles and philosophies of companies define who they are and what they do.

Focus on the user and all else will follow
It's best to do one thing really, really well
Fast is better than slow
Democracy on the web works
You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer
You can make money without doing evil
There's always more information out there
The need for information crosses all borders
You can be serious without a suit
Great just isn't good enough

There are start similarities betweent this document and my previous post, both start with putting the customer first, both talk about trust & integrity as being paramount in doing business and both strive for being the best in their respective fields.
Those are just 3 broad themes that I believe makes a company successful. I am going to try to search companies that have principles to investigate if they agree with the above themes... Google did not mention anything about the people who work for Google, whereas Goldman talked extensively about their people being one their priced assets I guess the difference is in the line of business they are in... Goldman is in the people business!

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Google's implication to online banking applications

Intuit has done it, they have Googled their Quick Books application! I wonder how long it would be when a consumer will switch a Bank Account because the Online experience is better than their current banking online application or for that matter how long is it going to be before a consumer starts demanding banks that they provide connectivity from the banking transactions to their financial management tools like Quick Books or Microsoft Money.

I am not too far off on the above claim read this article, here is an excerpt "Banks whose Web sites are easy to navigate, provide quick and accurate responses, and have solid uptime and reliability are keeping and profiting from customers"

Uncertainty: #StartupIceland