The kind of programs the government should be getting behind

I saw this program at the Stanford entrepreneurs week:
There’s also an interesting pitch contest. If you’re eighteen to twenty-five years old, all you have to do is submit a two-minute video. In this video, you should explain your answer to this question: What product or service would you offer to help reduce America’s dependency on oil and other fossil fuels?
Makes me wonder, why doesn't the US government get behind this kind of thing in a big way?

Search for gold's gym sucks

This is an email I received today.
Dear Mr. Sack
 
First of all, let me explain how I got your e-mail id.
I did a google search, with the words "Gold's Gym Sucks."
Your blog/posts popped up. I read the posts, and decided to write to you.
 
So who am I? Well, my name is Alok.
I'm a copywriter in Bangalore, India.
Gold's Gym has been making my life a living hell.
And I was wondering if you could possibly help.
 
If the answer's no, all that remains is for me to thank you for your time.
If you think you may be interested, please read on.
 
The situation, in brief, is as follows:
 
A few months ago, I moved house.
It's a small apartment building, on a narrow, one-way street.
Across the road was a 5 storey vacant building.
The Gold's Gym franchisee in Bangalore, India, occupied it.
 
And my life, went down the crapper.
From construction work at god forsaken hours, to traffic problems.
And they haven't even opened yet.
 
They're due to open soon.
They'll have loud music, in the wee hours of the morning.
(They don't have 100% sound proofing.)
They'll have 5 floors of customers. Who'll all have cars.
(They don't have parking for more than 8 cars.)
 
Life, in short, is going to get worse.
 
The Bangalore franchise doesn't register on their site as yet.
So I can't make a complaint via their web page.
 
The franchisee herself couldn't give a crap.
And has brushed me off on the phone.
 
Bangalore may be the info tech capital of India, but this is still third world country.
The people in charge have more on their minds than one man's worries about noise polution and traffic violations.
Besides which, the franchisee has deep pockets. And you know what that means in the third world.
 
To cut to the chase, I want to write to someone at Gold's HQ.
You're the only e-mail link I've been able to find, after hours of trawling.
 
Could you possibly give me the customer complaint e-mail id for Gold's Gym?
Or the id you wrote to at Gold's HQ? Or any id that may possibly help?
 
Hope you can help.
 
Thanks for your time.

Disconnecting from media

I just got back from a week in Mexico.  I think it's the first time I fully disconnected from media since 1994.

  • No cell phone
  • No computer
  • No internet
  • No radio
  • No television
  • No newspaper

Awesome. I found myself reflecting on more than one occasion how tethered we are to modern communication and media. I was super happy to disconnect ....I just made reservations to do it again next year at the same time.   Until then, I'm blogging again.

Response to my recent yelp post

There has been a fair amount of interest and talk about my most recent Yelp post entitled, "What Yelp did better than Judy's Book". There have been 4 basic responses (in my opinion):

  1. People understanding the straightforwardness of my comments. These people take my comments at face value and appreciate the ups, downs, and sideways of trying to grow a real business.
  2. People taking the post and significantly misconstruing the comment to say "Sack says Yelp won". That is NOT what I said. Read the post again.
  3. Customers of Judy's Book who don't like the transition. I understand this perspective too. I have a sense of loss about the Judy's Book transition too....but that is offset by my excitement for building a sustainable business in the future.
  4. Analysts who question the whole category of community driven directories (yellow pages) as a viable business direction. i.e. is it worthwhile to build UGC citysearch 2.0?  In my opinion, that's a damn good question.

So that's the feedback thus far as best as I can tell....I'll do my best to keep you informed in the coming days.

What Yelp did better than Judy's Book

I have not yet had the good fortune of meeting Jeremy Stoppelman but when I do I think I'll say -- nice game....and I'll mean it.  Jeremy and his team have done a nice job and did the following things better than Judy's Book (my company):

  • Yelp focused on a younger demographic : we were focused on the soccer mom and Yelp focused on the younger twenty something generation. When it comes to user generated content (and social networks), it turns out that the younger the consumer the better! There's a reason Myspace is filled with teenagers: younger people feel more comfortable contributing and sharing online then their older counterparts. It's a generational comfort with technology thing....plus they have more time.
  • Yelp focused on the restaurant category first: they had yelp doggie bags in San Francisco that they gave out as a promotional item. I'm not sure how successful that promotion was (i.e. I don't beleive they do it anymore)but it reveals that they understood that the restaurant category was where consumer willingness to write reviews, consumers search activity, and consumers daily life converged to meet local search.
  • Simply put, they out-marketed us. They managed from early on to make their customers feel loved. They were the first site (amongst Judy's Book, Yelp and Insider Pages) to focus on getting consumer photos up on their site. This was a very powerful marketing tool. They were aggressive at experimenting with parties and alcohol and building an offline community with their community. They made joining yelp a bit of a fraternity/sorority....in a good way. Their marketing efforts for a small company were better than ours.

I still have lots of questions for Jeremy about how he turns his site into a money making business. That said, Jeremy and his team have a good game and have the best shot at executing on the original idea of a community directory. 
As Judy's Book evolves and relaunches this quarter, you'll see that we're headed in a different direction than we were previously. We've ceded the directory business to other companies, including Yelp.  We didn't do this because Yelp won (though, they were getting more consumer traction)  -- but rather because we grew highly skeptical of the community directory business direction as the basis for a successful profitable business.

Judy's Book's new direction includes a real revenue model -- and a different set of challenges.  I feel confident that we learned lots of lessons about user generated content, local search, and business in general that will help us succeed going forward. Anyone that thinks this start up thing is easy (particularly in local search), feel free to contact Jeremy or I ....we'll both tell you otherwise!

Why blog?

A friend asked me why I had started blogging again. I told him two things:
i) I have been getting a fair amount of positive feedback from the universe.  My blog was picked up by TechCrunch, the Seattle Times, and the MSNBC recently. A classic case of "personal validation through feedback"....a term that was originally coined by the founder of Fotolog (which is a great company!), Adam Seifer and subsequently adopted regularly (and fondly) by my partner Chris DeVore.
ii) As I've gotten more into blogging, I get more out of it.  It follows the old adage -- the more you put in, the more you get out.  Lately, I've spent too much time adding a few widgets to my blog and I've started to follow traffic -- I'm not sure why I am doing this, I'm just doing it to understand the space more and make my page "prettier". I must say that adding widgets is still too hard...

Marketing thoughts from Mark Benioff

Ben Casnocha has a great post referring to marketing lessons from Mark Benioff. It's worth reading the entire Forbes article but I'm enclosing two points from Ben's post that I thought were particularly insightful....these are originally Mark Benioff thoughts.

  • Always pitch the bigger picture. Salesforce.com was about "the end of software," not customer relationship management software or software as a service.
  • Before you start talking to the media, get ahold of your metaphor. This isn't a sound bite. It is a metaphor that is easy to understand. Salesforce.com's AppExchange is the eBay of enterprise software; AppStore is the iTunes. Early on, Salesforce.com was Amazon.com meets Siebel Systems.

Greg Sterling is in the house

In my talk about analysts, I can't omit Greg Sterling. I read Greg's post today about his claiming of the phrase "the church of local search". Well if he's going to claim that phrase,  I'm going to nominate Greg as the rabbi of local search. It's more appropriate than either the pope or the minister of local search. What do you say Greg?

Greg is a great analyst who I had the pleasure of meeting 2+ years ago at the start of Judy's Book . We had a few things in common: a passion for local search, bagels and lox, and democrats.  In fact, I'll never forget seeing Greg at the Kelsey show the day after Bush won the second term. A ver depressing day indeed. We exchanged condolences.

Since that time greg has moved on from the Kelsey Group and show, and is now out on his own. A tough move for any analyst. Greg does great work, is a great guy, and knows a thing or two about local search. Keep up the good work, rabbi.

Failing fast

Peter Rip at Crosslink Capital has a great post about the entrepreneurs perspective  on failing fast.  He lays out the analysis an entrepreneur has to take when raising capital for a consumer Internet company.  He actually provides the framework behind what we're doing at Judy's Book. I must say that my process has been more intuitive than Peter's....but what's interesting is that while we're positioning to re-launch Judy's Book in the near future, we're also work on a couple of smaller sites that could get into market quickly.  While this does have the effect of diversification, that's not what is motivating me (us) to launch multiple sites. Rather, it's my belief that simple sites are more likely to capture the consumers attention and they also happen to be easier to build.  One last comment on Peter's post is that failing fast is not an objective unto itself -- succeeded faster is the objective and sometimes you need to fail first in order to succeed. 

ROI of blogging

Charlene Li of Forrester Research is one of the best analysts I've had the pleasure of meeting. She's a chop-chop no-nonsense pull no punches kind of analyst.  She still charges a lot of money but because of her approach, she manages to add value.
I'm yet to work with her fully in a professional capacity but look forward to the time we can afford her :-) (i.e. I've been the beneficiary of a couple of free update meetings that I've found to be very compelling and thought provoking)
I've been reading her blog and really like the post she just wrote about the ROI of blogging. Worth reading if you're spending an increasing amount of time on your blog -- like I am!

37 signals

Here's another post that covers two themes I've been writing about lately:
i) organization size and the power of small over big
ii) quality products

37 signals does an excellent job. They've released a bunch of different items. They're making good money. They've evolved into a kind of rock star in my world.  That said from some one who still listens to Journey and Boston as if they were present day musical stars.
We at Judy's Book have #1 above nailed down. We're small and staying small. The thing we're working on -- at times struggling with -- is making the right product design decisions in line with our constraints.  The person making most of these decisions for Judy's Book is my colleague and friend -- the esteemed Rahul. He's writing about his use of the 37 signals spoon on a new blog that is worth checking out.

Saying No

After reading Fred Wilson's post about saying No yesterday, we had a management meeting where we were discussing what features make it into the re-launch of Judy's Book and which ones we should say no too. It's a difficult conversation and wasn't filled with enough no's.
Without going into the details of the features we're discussing, the trade offs of time to market vs. completeness, quality, and differentiation. We ultiamtely sided with the latter -- but it was a hard decision because we're feeling pressure to show marked improvement in the numbers of our business soon.
This evolution thing isn't easy or fast ....but I have to say that I'm feeling excited and positive about our prospects. Time will tell....and no doubt, I need to practice saying NO more.

Jackson Hole in January 2007


Jackson Hole at -22, originally uploaded by a sack of seattle.

Another photo to share ....MLK weekend was my annual college ski weekend.  We went to Jackson Hole for the first time.  A few comments about Jackson Hole and this trip:

  • Jackson Hole is a really cute town that's a pain in the ass to get to.
  • At -22 degrees, it's too friggin cold to ski.
  • This mountain is for experts. There's no easy way to get down the mountain.
  • This was our 6th trip -- always a fun time. It's interesting to see how the conversations change as time marches on....lots more talk about spouses and families than before. Middle age is here!

Looking forward to next year -- we're either going to return to Alta/Snowbird or go to Aspen. Remains to be seen. Look forward to it!

Upgrade at the hotel in Paris Las Vegas


Paris Hotel, originally uploaded by a sack of seattle.

I've recently uploaded some photos from the past month...and I thought I'd share some with you.

I took a trip with my dad to Las Vegas. I arrived a night before him and thus, got to stay at the Paris hotel (Priceline selected the hotel for me). When I arrived at the hotel, I had to wait in a long line to register. When I finally got to check in, I was friendly and pleasant to the woman behind the counter. She looked at my reservation and decided (for no reason other than my kindness) to upgrade me to the penthouse suites on the top floor of the hotel. It made my stay unique and really fun. I just regret not having 40 or 50 friends to invite over for a party....the room warranted a big party. As you can tell from the photo, it's classic las vegas design!  I have to say -- I enjoyed the Paris hotel....and won't soon forget this upgrade.