June 23, 2010

BP: Now more evil than Goldman Sachs

June 23, 2010

Entrepreneurs: Are you passionate about your product? Prove it

I enjoy reading about various start-ups on Techcrunch or Mashable, and am always jealous of my friends that leave the cushy workforce to start a cool new company. Many of my HBS classmates have chosen the road less taken and are running their own show at start-ups like Rent the Runway, ThredUp, LearnBoost, and Triangulate. I know the CEOs of all of these companies personally, and I am convinced that they are passionate about their products and literally jump out of bed every morning itching to change the world. It inspires me, frankly.

One of my former colleagues, Greg Pope, started up a company called eRelyx, that will eventually be a place where users can buy and sell used watches online. One of my entrepreneurship professors at school taught us that venture capitalists often invest in the person more than the idea - if this is the case with eRelyx, I have no doubts that Greg is going to get gobs of money. I have never met a guy more obsessed with luxury watches than Greg, and the guy's a walking encyclopedia.

I have taken to testing him. I sent him this picture of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, and asked him to identify what watch he was wearing.

Greg responded within about five minutes with a link to the black ceramic J12 by Chanel. Amazing.

The best thing about Greg's start-up, though, is following the blog he has been keeping. The guy rarely misses a day without a post, and his posts are usually funny, well-written, and most importantly, they make me want to buy expensive watches. Seriously, I was never a watch guy (picture of my current watch below), but now that I'm reading Greg's blog, I'm starting to get into them. I blame my future bankruptcy on him.

But, by reading his blog, I have no doubt that Greg is absolutely 1,000% committed to eRelyx, and to luxury watches. I have no doubt that luxury watches are probably the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up in the morning, and the last thing he thinks about when he goes to sleep at night. He's a walking, talking luxury watch machine. And that's why I would invest in him.

So entrepreneurs, if you want a tip to impress potential customers? Write a blog. Put something up there every day that makes me realize that you love your product. Even if I'm not a customer, maybe I'll like your blog so much that I'll become one. That's what Greg has done, and that's what more people should do.

June 22, 2010

Why Posterous Will Win the Blogging Platform Wars

I have had this Posterous account for a while, but I've never really gotten into it. (I blame Dwight Schrute for getting me into it) Mostly I just send e-mails in from my phone with funny pictures of stuff I'm doing, or I post a link to a thought-provoking article I find on a blog or a newspaper.

I recently read, however, about their new "Switch to Posterous" marketing campaign, picking off dissatisfied users from other social networks like Ning (by the way, what the hell is Ning? I'm an early adopter and kind of a geek and even I've never heard of Ning). I think it's brilliant, and in two years, everyone and their grandma (literally) is going to have a Posterous.

Here's the thing: if you buy that lots more people are going to start blogging in the next five years or so, which I do (so does this guy), the experience of blogging is going to have to become way more user friendly. I know that other blog platforms win the big arms races when blogs like Lifehacker tally up the votes, but there's no way my mom (or most of my friends for that matter) are ever going to sign up for Wordpress. That's the genius of Posterous - you don't need anything to start blogging, just an e-mail account. And everyone has one of those.

Now that everyone's carrying around tiny little computers in their pockets all day long, they're going to start to need a place to post their pictures, their observations, and their videos. As soon as they hear about Posterous, I predict they'll dive right in faster than you can say Autopost.

Now, a revenue model for Posterous? That's another question. Still thinking that one through. But these guys seem sharp - I'm guessing they have a plan.

June 21, 2010

Geography of Lost

via geographyoflost.tumblr.com

Amazing

June 21, 2010

How Jujamcyn Theater Owner Jordan Roth Has Become an Industry Evangelist -- New York Magazine

Don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to get a young audience to see The Music Man. If you want a young audience, don’t f*cking do The Music Man

via nymag.com

Love seeing some young blood finally shaking up the Broadway theater scene - an industry that I fled in horror several years ago.

June 21, 2010

Thoughts on the Future of Education

So I usually don't write about real serious stuff on here -- I usually don't write much about anything on here -- but a neat little contest from fellow HBS alum Rafael Corrales has inspired me to put my thoughts down. It's a pertinent topic for me, and not least because I'm a consultant who sometimes thinks a little bit about the education industry. As a new father, I often think about all the exciting ways that my 18-month old son Jack's education will be different from my own, and how lucky he is to have been born in America in 2008.

Here's how I think the education world will shake out in the next 10-25 years:

Most students will take classes online. I was amazed to learn, recently, that it's entirely possible to get a fully-accredited PhD without ever stepping foot in a physical classroom, thanks to the rise of powerful online universities like Capella and Phoenix. These schools are not the oft-criticized "diploma mills" that the popular press likes to take potshots at. These are real, regionally-accredited, nationally recognized degree programs that fully qualify for all federal Title IV funding, and offer degrees that are recognized by every employer in the world. The online world will continue to grow exponentially, at the expense of traditional brick-and-mortar schools. In 20 years, I wouldn't be surprised to see a substantial portion (25-50%) of all university degrees to be awarded by online universities. Incidentally, when a university is fully online, its students are going to need a good online gradebook, and companies like LearnBoost will be well-positioned to meet that need (even more well-positioned if aforementioned gradebook is also a free gradebook).

For-profits will continue to take share. The stigma against for-profit universities will continue to erode, as more and more higher-quality offerings come to the market, such as those mentioned above. Although the education world continues to harbor an irrational resentment and suspicion towards those players that make an honest profit in the education space, the fact is that the offerings from the for-profit players are often more interesting, innovative, and forward-looking than the ways that the old fuddy-duddy traditional universities do business.

Humanities and liberal arts degrees will decline. I say this sadly, as a former History and Literature concentrator, but my son is probably going to have to major in a so-called "STEM" (science, technology, math, and engineering) field if he wants to maximize his employment options. I love the fact that I went through college reading the greats of Western literature, and writing a very thoughtful honors thesis on the work of Arthur Miller, but it has done diddly in terms of preparing me for the 21st century workforce.

It will be possible to earn a degree on an iPad. This goes along with the transition to online colleges, but I imagine my son will take several classes from his iPad (or whatever they will be calling it in 20 years). My son Jack is only 18 months old and he can use my iPad proficiently - swipe between pages, open apps, and select menu items. Imagine if there's a math class that uses the iPad to engage his natural curiousity, packages the content in a game or a multimedia experience, and he can carry it in his backpack 24/7? Now that's exciting - and far less of a backbreaker than the old textbook I used to lug uphill three miles to and from school (barefoot in the snow, of course).

As you can hopefully tell, I'm very excited about what all this means for the future of education, and what it also means for the future of America. What are your thoughts?

PS: If you want to write a post like this, there might be a free iPhone 4 in it for you. Head on over to Rafael's blog to read all about the great contest he's running, and if you have a blog yourself, take a stab at an article like this. If I win the iPhone, I'll be sure to post an update. And lest you think there's any kind of conflict of interest, although Rafael and I have interacted a fair amount on Twitter, I don't think we've ever actually met. He seems like a great guy, though, and I look forward to buying him a beer when we finally get to meet someday.