Business

This week I launched Venture Media Canada with the first episode of The Entrepreneurial Life!

This only took about a year longer than expected (there's a reason why "perseverance" is usually listed as a top trait for entrepreneurs). Next on the list is "execution". I'm reconnecting with the people who expressed an interest in being on the show, scheduling interviews, and having fun.

Please give the site a visit and tell your friends, associates, and enemies about it!

About a year ago, I came up with the idea of doing a series of video interviews with Canadian entrepreneurs. Hardly a unique idea, but my take on it was to focus on the experience and process of starting and running your own business instead of just talking about what the business does.

I subsequently put a fair bit of effort into getting everything set up: build a site, bootstrap a platform... all in my "spare" time. Then I stalled. That platform will never be ready because it suffers from the chicken and egg syndrome. There's no site without content, and there's no content without a site. Frustrated, I'm solving that problem by redefining it away. This post is the egg.

So, what's this all about?

As Canadian entrepreneurs, I don't think we give ourselves enough credit, or get enough respect. Other cultures seem to embrace the concept of starting your own business – of taking a risk – more than we do. Canadians also seem to have an aversion to "failure". Despite the oft-quoted "entrepreneurs start an average of seven businesses before they succeed", Canadians seem to look at someone who has tried once and failed as a loser. This is simply not true.

The fact is that there is no adequate school for entrepreneurs, and while it's possible to take courses that will give you some important skills, there never will be a course that guarantees to teach you everything your start-up needs to succeed. The best way to learn is to try. The business might fail, but the only time there's a real failure is when the entrepreneur doesn't learn from experience, or learns but doesn't use the experience to try again.

Part of that education is to get an understanding of what it really means to be entrepreneurial. One good way to do that is to talk to people who are doing it, and who have done it. This means not only celebrating our successes, but talking to entrepreneurs about where they struggled, and what they would have done differently. Anyone who has read something like Why we shut NewsTilt down knows that there's a huge amount to be learned from someone who has tried, failed, but come away wiser.

So this is an open call to Canadian entrepreneurs who are running a business in Canada. Successful, struggling, or licking your wounds. I want to talk with you about your experiences, from what led you into starting your own business through what you've learned, what you expect to learn, and more. If you faced unique challenges, particularly because of race, culture, or sex, I really want to hear from you.

The process is simple. All you need is Skype and a web camera. First we'll chat without recording, so I can get an idea of your experiences and where the conversation should go. Then we do a recorded conversation, targeting a 15 minute session length (if there's really a lot to cover, then we break it up and do multiple recordings). Then I do some post production and upload it to a video sharing/streaming site under a Creative Commons license.

If you're interested in doing this, get in touch and we'll set something up.

One of the great things about maintaining your own domain is the ability to put up a good fight when it comes to spam. It's a real battle. This domain has been registered since the late 90's, when an open Internet meant that just about anybody could harvest contact information from domain registration databases.

The result is that my main personal mail address has been inundated with spam for nearly 15 years. It's not just inbound. This domain has been used as a forged mail source more than once. In one incarnation, the home page here maintained a debunking of various bullshit claims that appeared to have come from me, so at the very least those with the wherewithal to visit the site would not get scammed. Like it or not, I'm on the vanguard of the spam fight.

For the past decade or so I've created a unique forwarding address for every thing I sign up for. Over the years it's gone from a simple "name of service at ambit online dot com" to incorporate a random string, to eliminate the "anyone could have guessed that" defence.

This has led to some interesting results. From exposing criminal theft of data at two companies, to partner misbehaviour at Salesforce (see my Don't Trust Salesforce.com post).

This morning I was met with two pieces of spam from my tracking address for ZoomInfo.com, both personally addressed using my name. One was from audio@execwebtraining.com, one from audio@webcareertraining.net. Clearly both are from the same source, and the body of the message includes the same contact information: Executive Education, P.O. Box 31, Devault, PA 19432, 1-888-669-6067. My opinion: anyone who does business with a spammer using a generic name and running out of a post office box is a complete fool.

This spam not only contained my name, but it was addressed to an address that contained "zoominfo" plus six random alphanumeric characters. Obviously this is came directly from Zoominfo's databases. The odds of a guess on the random string alone are over one in two billion.

When this sort of thing happens, I normally contact the source and try to find out what the issue is. It's either theft of data or unethical behaviour from a partner. Both are serious, and possibly criminal, bad behaviour. So I went to the zoominfo.com site, started down the "support" path. Zoominfo is structured to deflect support away from anything that requires them to expend staff time. That's an early indicator of a poor customer service philosophy. Honestly I just don't have the patience to eventually get to some form buried five levels deep, only to get an auto-response suggesting I consult the crap I just waded through. It's just easier to go public.

So here's the simple bottom line: Either Zoominfo has been hacked and has a big problem, or they have lousy partner selection criteria, which is possibly a bigger problem. Either way, they need to come clean in a public way, and fast. Their credibility with me has just taken a huge hit. Not that that makes for much of a change, really.

Meanwhile, I'm off to update a tracking address. If the spam follows the address, I'll know it's a partner problem. Unless Zoominfo is completely asleep at the switch, there are likely to be updates to this coming soon.

Over the past year or so there's been an unusual amount of public navel gazing on the investor side of Silicon Valley (and by proxy most of the North American venture capital space). Venture capital companies have an image of being slow, demanding, and cumbersome; solely focused on big wins with huge valuations. So called “super” angels have emerged to fill a void in the VC deal space, and new hybrid models like that of YCombinator have emerged.

As Max Levchin observes, angels have an interest in lower valued exits. He concludes that the positioning of super angels as VC alternatives has resulted in a “lack of visible significant innovation”. While Levchin's observations are correct, I'm not certain that it's the angel's fault.

Instead, I think we're reaching the “long tail” of the Internet, and we need to look for innovation elsewhere. The big hits in the Internet space have all had to do with providing analogues of existing human behaviours, and the number of untapped behaviours is diminishing. A preponderance of incremental innovations – with corresponding low exits – is only to be expected.

We have been so focused on Internet related innovation for the past decade and a half (and software for the decade previous) that for a lot of investors seem to have forgotten that there are alternatives.

It's not that there's a shortage of demand for innovation. There are many areas that need great minds and risk capital. Unfortunately those aren't the opportunities that can be exploited by a bright kid with six months programming experience. They're big, capital intensive, long term projects that need teams of highly skilled people to address them. Some of these problems are critically important. They need to be solved if we're going to preserve our current lifestyle, if not ensure our survival.

If the investment community wants to innovate, it's going to have to stop looking for the ultimate solution to determining how to rank “influence” on Twitter, and instead look for better transportation solutions, better solar power generation, methods to scrub carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, local power generation and distribution, and solutions for other truly important problems.

While North America becomes increasingly concerned about it's own relatively trivial problems like how to make an even cooler handheld device, our ability to innovate – our very concept of innovation – is collapsing in on itself like a dying star. Meanwhile, Asia is fast becoming the true leader in innovation and unless we pull out of this “make it big on the Internet” vortex, it won't be long before we're buying critical technology from abroad.

Let's not blame the angel investors. Levchin says “we should aim higher.” He's right. The question is whether or not we know which way is up.

Probably everyone has seen a dozen of these by now. Usually someone has discovered some amazing way to make money, or to achieve something that makes money. He or she will tell you all about it, at great length on their seemingly one page web site.

Oh and what a page it is. Make $103,736 a month plucking chickens at home. Just keep reading and we'll tell you how. Watch our fantastic headers show up in uppercase red text. Count the exclamation points! Look at how we make everything longer with our big borders and narrow copy area.

There's even proof: here's images of copies of the Big Fat Earnings.

And now testimonials. Joe the Plumber used this system and now has two houses and three vacation properties. Maybe you can even hear from Joe in a video. Regular folk who look like losers made money with this fantastic technique.

Here's a link to get started NOW. But just in case you're not convinced, let's repeat the whole thing, saying the same stuff in a slightly different way.

Okay, let's repeat that again. And again. Maybe even again.

Well if you got all the way down here you MUST be convinced, so save 50% or more in this time limited offer by clicking on this special link! Only a fool would pass this by!

And now you're at the end.

Ten, twenty, thirty pages of essentially empty claims all jammed into one and dressed up in a loud suit. The only option for navigation is to the order page.

You've just been subjected to a Toilet Paper Pitch. If you printed it out, you'd get a long roll ready for what it's worth.

Ever notice how these things read like those old five page double-sided direct snail mail pieces you used to have to wade through fifteen years ago? That's because they're direct descendants. They try to get you in a box, lead you through their pitch. I think the same cabal of old men is convincing people that this is the way to go in the web world and cranking them out at some ludicrous price.

At some point this pitch style must have worked for someone, because not a week goes by that I don't see another variation on this theme. Style over substance, or maybe bullsh*t baffles brains, I'm not sure which.

But enough already. It's tired. It's lame. It's not Web 2.0, it's Web 0.5. It's old. It's done. It's boring. Build a useful site instead... unless of course your product is crap. In which case TP is definitely the way to go.

Do something else. Anything. Please.

With the rise of social media sites and services (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and so on), a whole new field of "Social Marketing Expert" has been created. Aside from the obvious fact that it's hard to be a credible expert in a relatively new domain, the silliness of some of these "experts" is laughable.

By far the best of this bunch are those who have been discredited elsewhere and are hoping that their bankrupt strategies can somehow find new life in a new medium. It may be true that "the medium is the message", but sometimes the message sucks universally and thus transcends all media.

The prime example here is "word of mouth" marketers. These aren't the people who say, quite correctly, that word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing communication anyone can get, but those who figure that somehow word of mouth is a tool, something that can be created out of thin air.

Surely manufactured word of mouth has been sufficiently discredited that we don't have to bear through more ill-advised campaigns in the social media space. Is there anyone still doing the "paid shill" scam, where people are paid to go into public spaces and talk up specific products? Have sufficient bloggers been roasted over online flames for accepting money in exchange for talking up products? Apparently not.

So get ready for a (hopefully brief) onslaught of bull masquerading as recommendations. It will be easy to spot, let's take a look at a quick example:

Slimeball:	Good morning.
You:	Good morning Slimeball, what's the weather like over there?
Slimeball:	Pretty good, it's a great day for DumbProduct!
You:	So, it's warm and sunny or something?
Slimeball:	Actually it's raining quite heavily, perfect for DumbProduct.
You:	I see, and how are the kids?
Slimeball:	They're happy, thanks to DumbProduct.
You:	Just hold on a second while I block you and write a negative blog post about DumbProduct's unethical marketing techniques.

Bottom line: if you're a marketer don't do this. Just don't. Build genuine word of mouth by delivering a great product and providing great service. Encourage your customers to talk about you, but please, never cross the line and start trying to pay for it. No good can come from this.

Writing on ojr.org, Getty Storch asserts that "Papers must charge for websites to survive". There is a lively debate in the comments that follow, most of them are in disagreement with Storch's analysis.

This includes mine, which I reproduce here.

Anyone who thinks newspapers can survive on local content needs to spend a few weeks on Twitter. Here is a medium where news arrives in near real time, is reliable (since misinformation is rapidly corrected by others), and relevant. This applies just as well in a global environment. I have seen real reports from people on the scene of demonstrations in Thailand and Athens, and learnt about the supply of gas from Russia to Slovakia from people in cold buildings. Twitter and similar channels tell me about traffic jams on my route downtown, about power outages and emergencies in ways that no newspaper or even television station can ever dream of achieving.

Twitter has merely brought something that has been happening for a very long time into the mainstream. As a case in point, I learnt about the death of Princess Diana via an international online chat almost three hours before the local media picked it up. This is a decade ago. Times have changed.

Information is now free and it will remain so. Any attempt to charge for access to it is absolutely doomed. The only hope that news media, particularly "print" media have for survival is by adding value. This means aggregating sources, adding perspective, and performing astute analysis. Even so, most of the revenue from these activities will be derived from online advertising, and those revenues will be orders of magnitude below what the industry currently sees as normal.

The newspaper as we know it is dead. There is no model that will resuscitate it, period. Rigor mortis has set in, the patient just doesn't fully realize it yet.

For those who don't know, a favicon is the graphic that shows up in the location bar and bookmarks of modern browsers. They're great visual clues that help you remember what's on a page.

It is possible to have this icon animated, at least for some browsers. DON'T DO IT.

Animated graphics are designed to catch your eye. Once your attention is caught, you're supposed to understand a message and respond. That response takes you to a web site. If a favicon is up, then you are already on the site, so animation just catches your eye and distracts you from the site. Anyone who thinks distracting viewers from paying attention to their site should get out of the business and consider a career as a utility pole.

The other possible thought behind an animated icon is that in a sea of tabs and bookmarks, the animation calls attention to your site. That might work, but if every icon is animated, then the result is a sea of irritation, so it's not a strategy that will work for long. As far as tabs are concerned... I just visited these sites, I can recognize your icon without having it wave at me. In fact, the second time it interferes with my attention, your tab will get closed.

Summary: Animated favicons have lots of drawbacks and little upside. Just say no.

One site I miss from years back is swoop.org. It was a compendium of "swoop" based logos, showing the design trend (or lack of originality if you're less generous) pioneered by the Nike logo.

Maybe it's time to do the same with four colour quadrant-based logos. I admit, I used this motif in a logo about four years ago. Maybe that's a sign. When part-time hacks like me start using a motif, it's time to put it to bed.

Yet this past week, Google introduced a new four-colour, quadrant based "favicon". And... and... and it just plain sucks. Not only is it a stunning example of trailing-edge design, it features limited readability. On my system, the outlined lowercase "g", which bleeds into the background, is lost in either the default brownish grey of the default theme, or completely obliterated by the black background of my alternative theme. If you can't control the background, don't use bleed. Isn't that Design 101?

Two revisions back, Google's icon was an elegant representation of the uppercase G on their full logo. I have no idea why they moved away from that, but each successive revision has been worse.

So here's some advice for aspiring designers: get past the four colour quadrant motif. Come up with something new and original, or at least rip off something that's less tired. Please.

A few days ago, YouTube began muting the audio tracks of videos that contained "unauthorized" copyright material. Some videos will now have the notice “This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.” displayed beneath them.

This is a good move for YouTube. It will help absolve them from any liability for "broadcasting" content that the RIAA cabal deems worthy of protection.

It's not such a good move for the RIAA and similar groups. A music track is an essential part of many videos, and we can be pretty sure that not many people who produce them are going to go to the trouble of obtaining copyright clearance. Instead, they're going to seek unencumbered music. This is going to drive up the demand for "open" music, which will in turn cause more musicians to provide the same in exchange for some small promotional credit on the video.

Thus a win-win is born. Video creators will have access to more music they can use, musicians will have a showcase for their work with a potential for global profile that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. How long will it be before this exposure results in a musician who "makes it" in the mainstream? It will only be a matter of time.

How will these musicians feel when a big label comes along to offer them a contract that pays a fraction of the revenue they actually generate while insisting that they turn their backs on their roots by joining the copyright cartel? Some will buy in to the promises and sign up, but some won't. Instead they'll seek new methods and revenue models for distributing their work. Perhaps they will make the bulk of their money from live performance, or maybe they'll find other ways to do it, but they will eventually succeed at it.

Once a successful formula has been found, those who seek to maximize revenue by controlling distribution will have lost the final step in their battle. They will have successfully spawned a revitalized industry that makes them irrelevant. This has always been inevitable, but YouTube's move will certainly accelerate the process. To me it is amazing how, blind to reality, this industry continues to find ways to kill itself off with ever greater efficiency.

Kudos to YouTube; still yet another dunce cap to the established music distribution business.