Too Much Due Diligence

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feedburner-logo-350

I’m currently evaluating a 2 (maybe 3) exciting opportunities to start a new business venture in Australia. 

I decided that I would objectively evaluate these opportunities, as if I were a venture capital investor. I.e. don’t just go on gut, but spend a few weeks doing some decent “Due Diligence” on each of the ideas.

Of course, there’s a risk of over analyzing, especially once you have a bit of experience starting up businesses and you’ve faced plenty of customers saying “No!” to you and your amazing products! 

So it was refreshing to read Fred Wilson’s post on A VC about how he missed a great opportunity because of Too Much Due Diligence! 

In particular, he called up some of the major publishers to ask if they would use FeedBurner for their RSS feeds. They all said “No!”, as it would mean a 3rd party would have access to their analytics. Because of this customer feedback, Fred passed on investing in that round. Then this happened: 

About six months later I ran into Dick at an industry conference. We decided to grab lunch together and during lunch he said to me “you know those dozen publishers you called?” I said “yes, what about them?” He said “every single one of them is on Feedburner now.” 

Fred was still able to invest in FeedBurner, but at a 50% premium. In 2007, FeedBurner was acquired by Google for $100 million!  

So what did I learn from this lesson? First, trust your gut. I was using Feedburner and knew it was a very useful service. I felt that others would see that too. They did, but it took some time. Second, I learned that a service can get traction with the little guys and in time, the big guys will come along. 

From http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/05/you-can-do-too-much-due-diligence.html  (Audio version: http://soundcloud.com/avcfm/you-can-do-too-much-due) 

WordPress: Please Don’t Make Me Think

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About a month ago I moved my blog from Posterous to a self-hosted WordPress installation. I didn’t bother setting up the Akismet comment spam filter at the time and started noticing quite a few spam comments coming through. From having previously worked with WordPress, I knew that I needed an API key. 

These days, it’s a bit easier to get, as you can simply sign up for a WordPress.com account which gives you a whole host of benefits when using a standard WordPress.org installation on your own server. 

I clicked on Plugins and selected “Settings” under Akismet. I entered my API key and started frantically looking for a “Save” or a “Save Settings” button. I found none, and thought that maybe it would auto-save once I navigated away from the page – a trend in desktop software, especially since Mac OS X’s System Preferences started doing this. 

I noticed a button saying “Update Options >>” (see below). I clicked on it to see what the “Update Options” might be, expecting a popup where I could choose whether Akismet would update automatically or manually.  The little double arrow indicated that further options would appear. 

Screen Shot 2013-05-10 at 9.46.03 AM

Ha! I was wrong. A message appeared saying; “Options saved.” 
Screen Shot 2013-05-10 at 10.02.38 AM
So why doesn’t the button say “Save options”? 
Steve Krugman writes in “Don’t Make Me Think” about naming buttons. In particular, regarding a Search box/button: 
“It’s a simple formula: a box, a button, and the word ‘Search’. Don’t make it hard for them – stick to the formula.” 

Porridge for Chess – Phiona Mutesi

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My sister, Elodie, is getting married next weekend.

When I was young, I loved chess. As a 7 year old boy though, I didn’t have many people to play it with, though. Elodie, was 4 years old at the time. I taught her how to play chess and she picked it up quickly, but she lost interest in it just as rapidly as she lost interest in most of her boyfriends in later years. (until Justin came along). 

So I made up a story. This being the early ’80s and South Africans still being taught to hate & fear the Russians, I told her that if she couldn’t play a good chess game, men from Russia will visit and chop off her head. She believed me and within a few short weeks  Elodie was South Africa’s best 4 year old chess player… 

I was reminded of this today as I read about Phiona Mutesi. Phiona grew up in the Katwe slum of Kampala, Uganda. Her family was starving. 

She heard about a sports centre that was giving free chess lessons. And free porridge. She went there with her brother, but was chased away because she was too dirty. 

“My brother was very annoyed and took me back to my mom. My mum told me to never go back to chess, but I went back because I wanted that cup of porridge” 

She walked six kilometres ever day to play the game. Two years later, she won the Uganda women’s junior championship. 

Phiona-Mutesi-Uganda-ches-007

 

Google vs Yahoo

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A week or so ago my iOS Safari browser started using Yahoo!

I’m not sure why – I suspect an iOS update – but I thought I’d give Yahoo! A shot after many years of not using it.

It’s hasn’t been great overall, but today I remembered why Google is Great. I quickly needed information about the flight Althea is on. Here’s what Yahoo! showed me when I entered “qf571″:

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And here’s Google’s:

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My new employer, Compare Courses, gets a small mention!

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On the Shoestring blog: 

The newest startup coworking space to launch in Sydney this week will be Tank Stream Labs. Located right in the heart of the CBD, TS Labs will house some of Australia’s coolest startups with a lot of buzz around them at the moment. Airtasker, Joe Button, Room.us and Compare Courses are just some of the new ventures occupants of the labs will be rubbing shoulders with.

Welcome to Sydney

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First night in our new apartment and Sydney said “Howzit!” in style!

Sent from the asteroid known as B-612

Responsive Design for Mobile Sites

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We decided to go with Responsive for Skyrove’s WiFi Hotspot Portal pages for the following reasons: 

1. Many, many different screen sizes to cater for 
2. We had a very small amount of layout changes and resizing to do (images didn’t even need to resized) 
3. It was definitely going to be more hassle to manage a separate site 
4. We were inspired by the Responsive design of Trello.com (check it out by signing up and simply resizing your browser window) 

Importantly, at the same time, we took the approach of designing for “Mobile First”. Design would be done for the best mobile experience and only THEN would the design be adopted for the desktop! (Obviously, as it was responsive, we would already have a working desktop version, albeit not optimized for the larger res) 

Keep in mind, that all our users did pretty much the same thing: Login if registered already, Register if not, purchase credits, or login with a roaming partner account (Skype, Boingo, etc). We only had about 3 or 4 pages to worry about. 

Google has a graphic that summarizes the Pros and Cons nicely: 

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