My day

I'm in chicago today attending the ShopLocal multi-channel shopping conference. I woke up at 4am and was in chicago by noon. Heqrd a presentation buy a forrester researcher and learned that ecommerce still only represents 5 percent of purchases. The other 95 percent happens in store.
I'm now sitting next to greg sterling listening to the shop local VP marketing talk about their product direction. There's one more presentation and then dinner at Smith and wolinsky.
Looking to possibly attending a cubs game. And that's my day in a nutshell.

A rough apple day...I'm switching back to microsoft

It's a sad day. I'm switching back to PCs and Microsoft products.  Yesterday, I took the leap and purchased a iPhone!  First impressions were awesome. The packaging was great. The product was sleek. And then came sign up. I fought through the sign up and got everything working. It took longer than I'd like largely because  I'm not familiar with apple's basic software packages. I'm sure they're a better user experience than Microsoft's but I just got fed up with my own lack of knowledge and expertise. By lunch today, I admitted defeat. I admitted that I have better and more important tasks on my hands than to fighting through the transition curve back to apple products.  My decision was influenced by the fact that I am running an entire PC network at home and that switching to a single Mac at work just wouldn't work for me. Purchasing the iPhone meant I was going to have to convert my home network too and I just wasn't willing to take up all the time that that was going to take. I guess I'm just a PC nerd. I hope Redmond will take me back as a customer.

Managing through compensation

I was visiting a friend this weekend. He was asking my advice on a matter related to his small company. The company has 10 employees and one of the employees -- for the purposes of this post, let's name the employee Dillon-- requested a meeting to discuss compensation. In a nutshell, Dillon wants more money and more ownership in the company. Significantly more. He's currently making 225K but wants to be making over 500K. He also wants a solid equity stake in the company. Dillon is 50+ years old. Dillon has been doing an adequate but not excellent job. My friend is afraid to lose Dillon because it would harm progress the company is making. Dillon senses this fear and is really putting an aggressive tone to the salary conversation. My friend is willing to consider giving Dillon a raise but wants his work commitment to increase.
Based upon what I heard, I think this work relationship is going to end within 6 months. Generally, I don't think you can buy work quality or commitment. In my experience, salary has very little to do with work ethic.

The iPhone

I got to play with the iPhone last night for the first time. I don't know what to say. I'm speechless. It's awesome. Awesome. I was all set to purchase the blackberry curve because I was concerned about version 1.0 of any consumer product. But after playing with the device for 5 minutes I started to fall in love with it. 
I think every great consumer product has at least one wow factor in it. For the blackberry it's always been the ease of email. For my prius, it's the keyless ignition (I love that feature more than the hybrid nature). I got the sense that there were many of those features with the iPhone. I'm going to continue to watch the activation issues with AT&T but as far as a device is concerned....I'm sold on the iPhone even if it's a 1.0 release!

Seattle Start Up Shout Out: Zoodango.com

James Sun, recent runner up on the Apprentice, founded Zoodango.com just before meeting Mr. Trump.  He built Zoodango to help business people and aspiring entrepreneurs meet.  He wants them to meet in person.  9000 Starbucks locations are even integrated in the site to facilitate the interactions.  Zoodango’s essentially local business networking.  Think LinkedIn meets Facebook. 

The tough part for zoodango is the lack of differentiation from LinkedIn, the obvious market leader. LinkedIn facilitates interactions between business people’s existing associates, and helps them meet people within a degree of separation.  Zoodango’s meant to be more about people you don’t know, about fostering relationships that can help you or your business out.  As any web entrepreneur knows, building a community where one doesn’t currently exist is a tough thing to do. 

Where Zoodango may have a play is as the bridge between networks.  A whole lot of students will be graduating out of Facebook and MySpace soon, going from 300 social network friends to about five on LinkedIn.  LinkedIn doesn’t offer much to the un-networked twenty something.  If Zoodango can be first stop upon graduation, and help young business people build the network to eventually make LinkedIn work for them, it MAY have a market....but I'm not that optimistic.  The question is, how many business people are eager to meet at Starbucks with twenty-somethings?

Note:  Zoodango’s ratings multiplied ten fold the day Sun announced the site in Trump’s office....check it out here While the plug may have cost him the apprentice job, it certainly has to be the first social network to launch on national television!

Waiting for the iphone

The iPhone is coming out. Everyone is excited. I'm not. I'm sure that it's a great phone. I have no doubt about that....but it's still version 1.0 and when it comes to these significant technology shifts I've found it always better to wait till version 2.0.

I waited 5 years to buy the Toyota Prius. I waited years to buy the Sony Walkman when it came out. I need a new phone but think I'm going to buy the Blackberry curve and wait 3 or 4 years for the iphone to evolve. That's just me....kind of funny from someone who's obsessed with technology start ups

Naming your company

Increasingly it's hard to come up with a name for your company. Fortunately, there are experts out there who are good about these sorts of things. If you need some help you might want to check out this blog: the name inspector. Also, if you're interested in reading about how noonhat got it's name -- read this post on the process. It's fun and interesting.

Seattle Start Up Shout Outs: NoonHat for lunch

I attended the Seattle Open Coffee this morning which continues to go strong as an informal networking event for entrepreneurs. Attendees are mostly high tech start up folks -- mostly 1 to 10 person pre-funding  companies. It's a good bastion of ideas, networking, and support for the next generation of web and software start ups. I decided that I was going to start to give shout outs to some of these small companies.
Today's shout out is for Noonhat. It's a start up or project run by Brian Dorsey .  The idea is relatively simple: log on, put in your location, and have lunch with people you don't know. It might sound weird -- but I think it's kind of cool. It's not a dating site like Just Lunch though I think it may end up being one. It's about meeting new people and having interesting conversations (period). Not really a business -- more of a cool project....and that's what Brian intends. Check it out and give Brian feedback. I'm going to go have a lunch and I'll let you know what happens. Should be fun....or at least worth blogging about.