Musings on the world of business

More unsolicited positive press for Philip Carmichael and pcpartpicker.com Fantastic example of focusing on the product and letting press and perception take care of itself!

> Next, we’ve decided to use PCPartPicker to put together our builds. We ? > love it, and think you should use it too—it gives you more flexibility in > your part buying, helps you eliminate possibly incompatible components, > and makes sure you get he best prices for the items you plan to buy, even > if it means you have to buy them from different retailers. Whole Article: http://lifehacker.com/5840963/the-best-pcs-you-can-build-for-600-and-1200

Just read a brilliant blog post from Umair Haque on HBR[1]. It gets to the core of why I believe building a massively profitable business can still leave you feeling unfulfilled in spite of the wealth accumulated.

“a reason is not a purpose” - This is a crucial distinction being lost on the hordes of young minds enraptured with the cult of the modern day entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is the new black and it is a world view that is slipped into your mind camouflaged as a path to freedom and financial independence. This is dangerous; a world view should be consciously chosen not accidentally acquired. Entrepreneurship is not a reason, it is a purpose. The reason has to come from within before the purpose can be manifested in its entirety.

Or as umair says it…

Absolute clarity. A reason is not a purpose. Priya’s real mistake is that she’s confused a purpose — writing books — with a reason: why the books must (not should, but absolutely, totally, must, or else your whole life will feel empty, wasted, pointless, over) be written. Imagine you were a master stonemason. Your purpose might be to build a great cathedral. But your reason might be to approach the divine, to leave a legacy, or simply to do great work. A purpose, then, is a set of accomplishments — but a reason is the animating force behind them; it is the “why” that gives sense to the “what”; and without it, all our “whats” may end up being empty, barren, senseless in the terms of a life that feels well lived. Priya, like many people I know, is a stonemason with a blueprint — but no incendiary, unstoppable, inescapable reason to begin building.

The distinction is important and it comes through in the product or company that you build. It always comes through whether you like it or not. Having a reason not only fulfills your pursuit but it speaks clearly to the people you serve through your purpose (your customers in business speak). I think this is why great entrepreneurs are so.

Links:
[1] http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2013/04/how_to_create_your_reason.html
[2] Related TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

I needed to export a small (330 so “manually” was not an option) number of emails to text for analysis. I could group them together using a gmail query. The top google search results often pointed to using imap or pop, combined with the native export functionality of an email app (like thunderbird). This was not suitable for me.

Luckily, i found a quick work around. It took me about an hour and assumes rudimentary coding skills. Below is an outline of what I did. Get in touch with me* if you want specifics.

• Group the emails within gmail via a label (you will see why below)
• [Sign up for google drive if you haven’t already]
• Set up google drive for script creation.
• Modify this 15 line javascript function to suit your needs.
• Execute the function.

What the function does: It searches through your gmail account for threads matching a specified label. It then pulls out the first email in every thread and saves it as a google doc in your drive account. The name of the doc is set to the subject line of the thread. This worked for me since all of my threads were single email threads. You may want to modify this.

Function:

function myTestFunc() {
  // Log the subject lines of the threads labelled with <<label>>
  var label = GmailApp.getUserLabelByName();
  var threads = label.getThreads();

  for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
    docname = 'mesg ' + i +' ' + threads[i].getFirstMessageSubject();     
    doc = DocumentApp.create(docname)
    // assumes that only the first email in the thread matters
    doc.setText(threads[0].getMessages()[0].getBody());
    doc.saveAndClose();
  }
};

me = amar dot rama at gmail

The wake-up call to app developers should be that that only 37 per cent of consumers are comfortable sharing information. 33 per cent are not at all comfortable. That means either 33 per cent of all consumers are avoiding apps because they don’t trust them, or they are happily downloading and using apps unaware that they are sharing their personal information.

A new kind of app company is going to win the marketplace,  one that tells the user exactly what it costs them to use its app. Two possibilities:

• IT IS FREE!! Err…. well actually not. We collect your location, demographics, and some browsing habits,.. okay all browsing habits. We might sell it to these 3 people anytime over the next 6 - 12 mos. Err… actually they might sell it to 80 more people. So yeah, we don’t know how many people will have access to it. Anyways you can use this app for free and somewhere down the line you will be paying the price.
• It is $25.99 to download and costs you $3.50 a month.

I know it is “old fashioned” but at the end of the day nothing beats providing concrete utility to your customer and charging them directly for that. Popular wisdom was that this was a quick route to profitability but inhibited explosive growth and scaling.

Now it is clear that this business model is not just attractive from a revenue point of view but also the best way to take care of the customer. There is _no_ such thing as free food (it should be treated akin to laws of physics).

A free product or service is always being funded by one of two things; either a foundation or corporation that is paying for everything (because of alignment with mission) or there is economic value being extracted from user behavior or user attributes way down the line. 

Most of the “free” apps fall into the second category. Customers are biologically impeded. We are wired to favor convenience and short term wins over long term costs. But we are learning and growing as the research shows.

If you truly care about the customer - provide utility by solving a problem and identify a route to profitability at the price point the market chooses.

Complete transparency on what it costs a customer to use your product/service is a big win for them! :) which over time will translate to invaluable goodwill for you. 

[1] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/16/flashlight-apps-location-and-why-consumers-till-dont-understand-privacy/

If taking money and then trapping customers and their kids for 5+ days in a barge of sewage does not destroy a corporation, I don’t know what will. 

Carnival’sstock price[1] barely took a hit from the Triumph disaster[2] of the coast of Texas. This is not a rare occurrence either. 

The cruise industry says cruise ship fires are rare, but they are not rare. They happen with alarming frequency. In the two years between the Splendor and the Triumph fires, more than 10 cruise ship fires were reported in the media. Several cruise ships were completely disabled, including the Costa Allegra, the Bahamas Celebration and the Ocean Star.

src: cnn report[3] - expect some bias.

This is clearly a broken industry. But more importantly it shows us all up for the hypocrites we are. We all talk a good game about quality, integrity, customer service and blah blah blah but at the end of the day all we want is a good deal and everything else goes out the window. How else can we explain why cruises companies like Carnival continue to stay in business and operate as usual. Sadly enough it looks like carnival will continue to do business as usual. Seriously WTF!?! 

As an entrepreneur this is why it is very, very, hard to build a quality product or service especially when most of us/consumers seem to favor a “good deal” over quality product or service.

But it is worth it! The alternative is depressing. Living in a world dominated by mass mediocrity goods and services is a sad end game for the human race. This is not just restricted to cruise lines. It is the same fight to ensure Mcmeat and cheetos do not become the global food and snack in spite of massive evidence of the health cost. 

… hopefully Carnival grows a conscience but I don’t have high hopes. Any CEO who can make a statement like this without a tinge of shame or irony is incapable of any authentic change.

“I appreciate the patience of our guests and their ability to cope with the situation. And I’d like to reiterate the apology I made earlier. I know the conditions on board were very poor,” he said. “We pride ourselves on providing our guests with a great vacation experience, and clearly we failed in this particular case.”

Yes, Gerry the best way to summarize[4] this epic shit storm Carnival created is to categorize it as failing to deliver a great vacation experience. For the love…. is there a CEO college that trains these people in complete bull shit statements?

Links

[1]http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=CCL+Interactive#symbol=ccl;range=my;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

[2] http://www.sfgate.com/news/houston-texas/slideshow/Carnival-Triumph-cruise-disaster-56826.php

[3] http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/13/opinion/walker-cruise-ships/index.html

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/cruise-ship-moves-toward-shore-again-after-towline-break-passengers-describe-scene-on-board/2013/02/14/a37f6058-7705-11e2-b102-948929030e64_story_1.html

Begich said the Postal Service should have allowed Congress more time to find a legislative solution. The Senate passed a postal reform bill last year that would have prevented the elimination of Saturday delivery for at least two years, but the effort stalled in the House