entrepreneurship & tech

Another successful NYC hack fest. Boom. Photo courtesy Doug...

Sun, 20 May 2012 23:40:00 -0400

Another successful NYC hack fest. Boom. Photo courtesy Doug Kanter

Cool idea! diy: Introducing DIY We started building DIY a few...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:22:16 -0400

Cool idea!

Introducing DIY

We started building DIY a few months ago and now we’re sharing the first thing we’ve made. This is a company that we hope to spend decades crafting, but it’s important for us to build it out in the open, bit by bit, to encourage our community of kids and parents to share feedback with us continuously. From Zach’s experience making Vimeo, we understand that this sort of culture fosters collaboration and admiration between a company and its community, and ultimately leads to something that is loved.

Our ambition is for DIY to be first app and community in every kid’s life. It’s what we wish we had when we were young, and what we’ll give to our kids. Today we’re releasing a portfolio tool to let kids collect everything they make as they grow up.

We’ve all seen how kids can be like little MacGyvers. They’re able to take anything apart, recycle what you’ve thrown away – or if they’re Caine, build their own cardboard arcade. This is play, but it’s also creativity and it’s a valuable skill. Our idea is to encourage it by giving kids a place online to show it off, so family, friends and grandparents can see it and easily respond. Recognition makes a kid feel great, and motivates them to keep going. We want them to keep making, and by doing so learn new skills, use technology constructively, begin a lifelong adventure of curiosity, and hopefully spend time offline, too.

We’re looking to you parents as partners to make it all work. It used to be that you hang your kids’ work on the fridge to let them know you’re proud. Now the Web is becoming a part of their life at home and school — and there’s a new opportunity to connect you to their creations and cheer them on.

“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
- Sir Ken Robinson

When you get your kid to join DIY early, you’re helping to recognize creativity as an essential part of every kid’s education, and possibly a requirement for their satisfaction as an adult. Sadly, most adults don’t believe they’re creative although we’re all capable of it at any age! We believe that to accept yourself as a creative adult you must start as a kid who is fearless of learning new skills and doing it yourself. Encouraging your kids to be inventive and self-reliant now will better prepare them to participate in a world that keeps changing.

Here’s how it works today:

DIY kids sign up and get their own Portfolio, a public web page to show off what they make.

They upload pictures of their projects using diy.org or our iOS app.

Kids’ projects are online for everyone to see, you can add Stickers to show support.

You also have your own dashboard to follow their activity and to make sure they’re not sharing anything that should be private.

Kids are ready for this. They’re instinctively scientists and explorers. They’re quick to build using anything at their disposal. They transform their amazement of the world into games. They’re often drawn to learning that’s indistinguishable from play (think about bug collecting!). And, most important, they embrace technology.

We’re grateful for your help to make this company, and grow the next — hopefully larger — generation of creative kids.

- Zach Klein, Isaiah Saxon, Andrew Sliwinski, Daren Rabinovitch
(and Dave, Brian, Mike, Courtney, David, Lucas, Shawn, and Sean!)

PS. See our Parents page for more information. Or you can follow @DIY to see important updates.

There have been a lot of bits published about Instagram....

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:56:00 -0400

There have been a lot of bits published about Instagram. Here’s the thing you really, really need to know in a nutshell about their success. Instagram was a combination. Specifically, it was a mashup of two already successful services: Hipstamatic and Foursquare. It took Hipstamatic’s great idea, made it free, even easier to use and added the nitro glycerine of a social feed (plus simple external social publishing). Kevin and Mike were also incredibly disciplined about not adding features, Eric Ries/MVP style. Sounds simple. It’s not.

I want to index social media and I'd like your like!

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:28:00 -0400

I want to index social media and I'd like your like!:

Hey so I’ve applied to this awesome opportunity with my friend Mor Naaman and we’d really appreciate your like or reblog if you think it’s cool!

newschallenge:

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]

Index all social media, allowing everyone to search, see, and better understand the world’s stories (e.g., Tahrir Square).

2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30 words]

Yes: manual aggregation for events (eg.,…

"There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of..."

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:32:02 -0400

“There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

- President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs: “He changed the way each of us sees the world.” (via moth)

Launching a new product is as much an art as it is a...

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:52:26 -0400

Launching a new product is as much an art as it is a science—a risky endeavor with no guarantees. Successful products aren’t lists of ingredients—they’re thoughtful recipes. Success depends on the perfect mix of ingredients, time and craft. The market’s tastebuds are fickle and there’s only a few degrees difference between a success like the iPad and a failure like the TouchPad. This video is fascinating because it shows the focus Apple applies to its recipes and shows that its products aren’t lucky flukes, marketing hype or the result of Steve’s reality distortion field. They’re the result of laser-like focus on a product category and feature set.

I recently had the honor of product consulting with Gauri and the fantastic team at SpotOn. In one exercise, we reviewed the iPod product launch because it so beautifully demonstrates the questions product-focused CEOs ask themselves about their offerings. If I had to summarize the strategy from Jobs’ pitch it would go like this: 1) Find something meaningful to you; 2) Find something meaningful to others; 3) Survey the existing landscape; 4) Identify the valuable segment to focus on; 5) Create multiple improvements to that segment’s existing offerings.

Obviously these lessons apply to the more recent successes of the iPhone and iPad, but the parallels between the iPod and Apple’s previous innovations in personal computing and the GUI are striking to me too. Apple’s less an R&D house and more a synthesizer and popularizer of existing research. The company excels at translating innovative technology experiences to mass markets. Panasonic used to claim that they were “just slightly ahead of their time” but I think it’s a better slogan for Apple. Too far ahead of your time and you have expensive technology that won’t find a market (Apple learned this lesson with Lisa, Xerox with the Star). Too close to your time and you’re chasing the puck on falling prices for commodity hardware. The Lisa made a home appliance out of a decade of research from Xerox. But the Mac reduced Lisa’s price by 75% and changed the world. Likewise, with this video we see how Apple’s laser-like focus created a new product category and forever changed how music is listened to and distributed.

Differences between ITP and the Media Lab

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:59:00 -0400

Differences between ITP and the Media Lab:

I’m often asked what the difference is between ITP and Media Lab. Sometimes from prospective students, but mostly from high-powered executives or important writers who have heard of the program or The Show. I had one friend once who left Media Lab disappointed, so I’m super qualified to speak about it.

MIT kids are smart. Really smart. They probably have been studying violin since they were, like, two. Then they wrote software algorithms when they were 10 to approximate a symphony that could play along with them in real time while they played Bach concertos. If these kids were a rock band, they’d be Emerson, Lake and Palmer with a laser show and a 360 major label deal.

ITP kids are… resourceful. We didn’t invent hacking or email or lasers and shit. We invented QTVR, PComp, Gurl, Arduino and Foursquare. Instead of beautiful John Meada visualizations, we’ve got a lot of wooden tiles that move in concert to show you a picture of yourself and we think that’s art. It’s not really, but we never studied art so we don’t really know any better. If we were a rock band, we’d be the Ramones with their shitty recording contract and Laurie Anderson playing midi controlled tambourine.

And that’s the difference between Media Lab and ITP. I created this Google spreadsheet MIT:MSG :: ITP:CBGB for further study. I hope this helps clear things up and finally puts the question of “What’s the Difference Between ITP and Media Lab?” to rest.

Join the Design Trust @ this weekend's Hackathon

Tue, 17 May 2011 13:03:00 -0400

Join the Design Trust @ this weekend's Hackathon:

Target by Jasper Johns by cliff1066™ on Flickr.

Sign up to Hack Design @ this weekend’s Hackathon!

Svpply, Kickstarter, Vimeo, Tumblr, Forrst, Foursquare. It’s a great time to be a designer in New York. We’re an art and design focused town and our take on the startup bubble is often being led by design centered founders and services. SVA’s IxD program and Techstars’ Design Hackstar program are also pointing to and creating new opportunities for creatives in the Big Apple.

And this weekend there’s another chance to lubricate the evolving startup-design relationship at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. This is the third time I’m helping organize this carnival, but it’s the first time we’re specifically trying to partner awesome designers and hackers together. Pheobe Espiritu and Michael Yap will be leading the Design Trust - a group of experienced designers who will lend Design/UX support to the hacker teams. I can’t wait to see what comes out of this! If you’re a designer and want to play, Sign-ups are still open.

Varsity Bookmarking: My Job Pt.1 — I have no idea what I'm doing

Mon, 16 May 2011 15:54:34 -0400

Varsity Bookmarking: My Job Pt.1 — I have no idea what I'm doing:

Honest as hell

pieratt:

I am the CEO of Svpply, Inc., a social shopping S-Corp operating out of New York City. My company has been the recipient of over half-a-million in investor dollars, for the stated purpose of building an unknown, 3,000-member web service into a cultural phenomenon, and I truly have very little…

“They teach safe sex in primary school but they...

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:17:04 -0400

“They teach safe sex in primary school but they don’t teach safe business in MFA programs. Why is that? The goal of this class is to stop creative professionals from having uninformed, unprotected business.” I’m teaching an Entrepreneurship for Designers Skillshare class this Sunday - please come!

Start with clear goals

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:01:00 -0400

As some of you know, I’ve been keeping notes about the last year trying to get Marco and Steps off the ground. It’s been an incredible, nerve wracking, gut wrenching, awesome making experience. I’ve learned and grown a ton. I started off writing Kerouac-stream-of-consciousness style and have been refining the original document since. I have some 28 pages of outlined notes. I’ll be sharing some of my insights and lessons here. Here’s the first installment.

Asking why is a powerful tool when trying to start something. If you keep asking why deeply enough you’ll find diamond-like truths. Keep asking “why” until you get to “I don’t know”. “I don’t know” is very honest. Steven Hawking made a career poking for energy at the boundaries of black holes, amazingly discovering more about the unknowable by looking at its edges. It takes guts to admit you don’t know, but it can lead to more learning and more truths.

When you’ve exhausted “why” and “I don’t know”, follow up with “what” and “how”. Business is hard, companies are hard, startups are harder. Clear goals are a map to come back to when you’re lost and confused. Self doubt is part and parcel of a startup. Your goals will keep you sane when you’re starting to lose it.

There’s another benefit, once you’re clear with yourself about why you’re doing something, you can be honest with your potential investors, employees and customers. That authenticity will pay dividends.

Goals can change or become more clear. Don’t be afraid to update them. And don’t be afraid to walk away when your current project isn’t fitting them. If you find that’s easy, you probably haven’t been honest with yourself about your goals.

majesse: New video just unleashed by my friends @skillshare...

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:29:48 -0400

majesse:

New video just unleashed by my friends @skillshare ^_^!

I knew I was getting old when our 30 year old intern had never...

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:48:13 -0400

I knew I was getting old when our 30 year old intern had never heard of Peter Falk or Columbo. We got him with the Princess Bride tho ;)

officialbeastieboys:

Some good 70’s cinema shit right here

TWiT Apr 6 edition

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:33:04 -0400

This Week in Tech is a series of posts that grew out of a lecture for design students in the entrepreneurship class at SVA’s IxD program to get them up to date on weekly developments and the implications for their careers.

Google +1s
Google’s golden goose is search. You know what surprised me with the JCP Penny debacle? Who knew it was that easy to rig PageRank? Many will claim that this +1 thing is an answer to Facebook’s social threat. Or maybe it’s part of Larry Page’s new vision as CEO. Or maybe their search isn’t as good as we all thought (which is what I’m implying). Point is, Goog doesn’t want to get all complacent and watch their business disappear. Fair enough, admirable even. Personally, I’m not really feeling their latest parries - the streaming results and twitter includes feel busy. I think they need some great product people with real design sense, don’t you?

letter.ly loses domain
Sam, creator of letterly and drop.io and now working with his bud Mark at FB, found it difficult to renew his domain name in the middle of a civil war. Perhaps the country’s NIC was on drugs or partnered with Al Qaeda.

Twitter’s Turns Five, SAI looks @ numbers
Jack Dorsey’s return is intended to help make Twitter mainstream. I like the daily charts SAI does and I thought this was a really fascinating breakdown of Twitter’s numbers. Twitter has 90MM user accounts with zero followers. Data shows that there are 56 million accounts on Twitter following 8 or more accounts. There are only 38 million following 16, and just 12 million following 64. There are only 1.5 million accounts on Twitter following 512 or more accounts.

Entrepreneurship Workshop
I’m going to teach a 1.5hr entrepreneurship workshop. Did you enjoy my lecture? What was missing? Would you mind taking a 2 minute anonymous survey to help me cater the course for maximum usefulness? http://svy.mk/biz4design

TWiT: This Week in Tech

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:03:10 -0400

These are a series of posts that grew out of a lecture for design students in an entrepreneurship class at SVA’s IxD program to get them up to date on weekly developments and their implications for their careers.

Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player
Look out Apple, Google, Dropbox, Rdio, Spotify and your music collection. Amazon is giving away 5GB of cloud storage for music and data. Music can be streamed to a web player or Android device. No iOS. 5GB for free, $1/GB-yr up to a terabyte. My problem is my music collection is in the TB territory and I can’t afford $1,000 to host it remotely. Additionally, I’d want it to be able to play on my Apple devices. That said, my current solution - having a music strewn across LaCie drives and multiple computers is completely broken. Maybe Google will pull a Gmail move and just give everyone 1TB free and blow the roof off this shit. Here’s to hoping!

Color
The big news for anyone interested in the mobile, photo, LBS (insert buzzword) space was that a seemingly unproven player came in post SXSW and secured $41 million dollars in financing for a brand new product with nary a user. For many of us, Path was a huge, questionable investment at $11MM. Then again, Instagram’s user adoption curve has proven they’re onto something. What are they onto? Computing is moving to your pocket. Your social life’s peanut butter is getting infected by your tech life’s chocolate, and some investors think they’ll be selling a lot of peanut butter cups. I think that shift is inevitable and happening. I have no idea if Color is worth $41MM. I personally think if I had 1/100th of that I could make something cooler. But there’s good arguments for and against.

Malcom Gladwell on Crack
I think Malcom Gladwell is brilliant. I also think he’s on crack w/r/t social media and the democracy movements in N. Africa. I think what’s actually going on here is that he’s trying to counteract the irrational, self congratulatory exuberance over the transformative power of modern American tech. I think he’s right to counter it. Companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google aren’t around to create democratic revolution - they’re around to make $. These companies (particularly Google and Facebook) have proven they’re willing to bow to government pressure. The point is that we shouldn’t trust them to stand up for human rights, justice or democracy. That’s the job of an engaged citizenry. And I also think the press has underplayed the important role Al Jazeera played in disseminating information to the populations affected. But there’s no question that videophones, twitter and facebook helped create a powerful stream of information and coordination in the recent democratic uprisings. I’d imagine a lot of countries, including our own, are looking for ways to plug those holes in the future.

Paper - all my digital work starts here. I love paper....

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:17:46 -0400

Paper - all my digital work starts here. I love paper. It’s cheap. It’s fast. It’s burnable. It’s hi/lo res. It’s a magnet for ideas - you can go from coffee ring to company in one stain. You can take it to the beach, pin it to a wall, throw it in a bin, pass it to a friend or scrawl on it for later. I use all forms of the stuff for my tech work. I have the before and afters to prove it. I swear if I was in prison or trapped on a desert island - give me some Uniball Micros and a box of Moleskine Journals and I’m good.

"Beautiful. The idea behind the Slow Company movement is that instead of trying to be the first or..."

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:55:29 -0400

“Beautiful.

The idea behind the Slow Company movement is that instead of trying to be the first or to get the most mindshare or market share of any company in your vertical, you try to make something that people genuinely find useful and are willing to pay for it.

And instead of trying to woo celebrities and plastering your name all over SXSW, you make something that people like so much that they tell their friends, and it spreads by word of mouth based on how well made it is and how awesomely it solves problems that people have — real problems, not ones that marketers make up.

”

- Lucius Kwok (via jkleske)

I think it goes without saying that those ascribing to this mindset are bootstrappers. This is what is next for Galvanize, actually. More on that soon.

(via kthread)

TWiT: This Week in Tech

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:58:10 -0400

My latest installment of this week’s tech happenings, from my vantage point in downtown Brooklyn.

Japan’s Nuclear Crisis
First the largest recorded earthquake in history, followed by a tsunami, followed by a nuclear crisis that could be worse than Chernobyl and feels like the BP oil spill on a daily basis. A lot of technology worked - most reactors are fine, buildings not affected by the tsunami are still standing. But many of the seawalls failed and the world is now aware of how unmanageable a nuclear crisis can be (if we didn’t already know). Over 20 reactors in the US have the same 40 year-old, controversial design. Between BP and now Fukushima, we clearly need much, much more investment and commitment to green energy.

Franken gets Neutrality
As long as we’re on a political tip - big ups to Al Franken, who really understands the importance of Net Neutrality. With references to Francis Ford Copolla, SNL, big media and the role of an artist, media maker and entrepreneur, I loved this talk. He’s kind of boring, and there’s no sexy slideshow, but we can’t let the internet turn into the next TV wasteland. http://www.livestream.com/theuptake/video?clipId=pla_4cc380bc-71ef-4c6a-ab8e-360c3ba40cd2

Flickr’s Death Knell
Is there any better example of Yahoo’s lack of leadership than their inability to understand, support and grow the community that Flickr started? So much online social shit was pioneered by Flickr and Delicious and it’s like the services got stuck in amber. I’ve met a few of the Flickr folks over the years and they’ve all been brilliant. You can even read Kellan’s play by play of why flickr didn’t beat Instagram to the mobile social game here: http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Flickr-miss-the-mobile-photo-opportunity-that-Instagram-and-picplz-are-pursuing I don’t know Matthew Rothenberg, Flickr’s head of product for the last 5 years, but it can’t possibly be good that he’s leaving. I personally think Yahoo should just sell it to Instagram (which desperately needs a web presence) and be done with it.

TWiT: This Week in Tech

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:42:34 -0500

A few weeks ago, @zachklein invited me to talk in his Wednesday class and I gave a little presentation outlining some stuff I’ve learned about business since I left ITP 10 years ago. I also included a “This Week in Tech” section in which I highlighted 3 interesting things happening in Tech. That week was SV Angel/Yuri Milner funding all YCombinator participants, the opening of General Assembly and the democracy protests unfolding in Egypt. We’ve kept it going since. Here’s my picks for this week.

1. Next New Networks

Acquisition by Googtube. NNN, an online video network, attempting to discover and master being the MTV of the youtube era. Hard to argue with their success - having made two of Youtube’s most watched videos - Bed Intruder and Ke$ha parody. Bed Intruder should be embedded in the dictionary definition for Viral Video. Ad and song sales must have made NNN a small fortune. One wonders how to read the current acquisition - is it akin to MTV’s shift years ago from playing videos to creating more original content? Was NNN running out of cash? Or is it as simple as Youtube knowing what side its bread is buttered on? No one knows, but great news for another NYC startup - cheers!

2. Foursquare recs

At only 2 years old, Foursquare has continued to innovate and take no prisoners. A testament to their success: it’s hard to imagine a time when Gowalla was ever seen as a serious threat. 2 years out of SXSW, Foursquare now boasts over 7 million users. This past year, despite the massive growth, saw serious questions and challenges to the basic premise, summed up by the term “check-in fatigue”. The company seems to be creating new reasons to open the app, rethinking the gameplay, but more importantly attempting to leverage their massive data set. The best chance for monetization in the space is getting to users before they’ve made a decision, providing them with valuable suggestions and sponsored deals to help guide them. If Foursquare can create suggestions from everyone’s history, your friends’ history and your history to actually make meaningful predictions they might silence their legion of critics once and for all.

3. SXSW burnout

Last year, SXSW Interactive attendance surpassed film and music for the first time. This year promises to be even more nuts. I liked it last year and found it valuable even with its size. Hard to know if it’ll continue to be or if it’ll just turn into a tech themed, industry sponsored CMJ-style disappointment. I’m not the only one bailing this year (I didn’t land a panel and can’t justify the $). Time will tell whether I’m jaded, broke or prescient.

The TC HackDays that were organized by Daniel Raffel, Chad...

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:45:00 -0500

The TC HackDays that were organized by Daniel Raffel, Chad Dickerson and myself were featured in an article in Oh Comely - a British mag. They did a spread on folks that make stuff in 24 hours - Comics, Magazines etc. Featured are Nat Gertler, Longshot, HYPtv and us. Some things to note - they get all the facts mostly right, but some ideas and details got lost in the editing. Daniel had the original idea for the event and Chad and myself helped him organize it. Most importantly they neglected to mention Josh Rooke-Ley who was my co-conspirator on the ybox at that first Yahoo event.