First, my thank you speech: “I am most honoured to win this prize. It has been my lifelong dream to appear in everyone’s presentation!” Seriously, thank you everyone for using me in your presentations. I’ve never felt so loved in NUS ever.
Next, I’m really worried about the predicament of being friends with people in the class, with groups intending to sell you and sacrifice you. What happened to the scared bond of friendship under the influence of Facebook?! Still, I am inclined to provide commentary about these applications given that I have wasted hours on one and was disappointed that the other wasn’t available in Singapore.
Friends For Sale Key Viewpoints by the Team: (my immediate comments in brackets)
1. Simple UI & Easy to use (seems that FFS stopped crashing after I quit)
2. Good for interaction & Ice-breaking (when trying to chat up a pretty girl… but is she really a girl?)
3. Involves strategic thinking & is a competitive environment
4. Facilitates communication – creative interactions (but isn’t that done with Superpoke?), unique relationships (your friend is your pet.. hmm..), 2.3m active users (used to be 5m++ at one point I think)
5. An excellent platform for advertisers – Could improve by having sponsorship to get sponsored chores/gifts (e.g. BK Burger)
6. Could Improve by – Add animations to chores & gift giving
It was a fun presentation and I agree with Points 1, 5 and 6, but having spent hours “researching the economics of FFS”, I must say that there is a fundamental flaw in the game that is not being addressed. Inflation in the game is THROUGH THE ROOF! For the sake of those who have never used FFS before, let me explain. Let X denote a pretty girl, and A & B be 2 guys wanting to buy her as a pet. Each time A & B buy X from each other, her “value” increases in a compounded manner (10% of previous value). From $500, X’s price could possibly go up to $50m in a day, and just by trading X, A & B’s cash holdings could each increase by millions! (“The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest” – Einstein)
From a game player’s stand point, all one does is to find the “rising stock” (popular pet) and chase it all the way till the pet’s price goes out of your buying range, and do this regardless whether you really want the person as your pet. This is flawed on so many levels! For new users, you can never catch up with an experienced user unless you spend all your time on FFS riding all these “rising stocks” (and you need to be beside your computer all the time in order to ride that stock). Only then can you possibly have enough $ to buy the pretty girl (or handsome guy) that you have been looking to take in as a pet. This “barrier to entry” turns people off quickly and one might not get the opportunity to interact with the people he/she wants to.
For the conduct of its Commercial Activities, the hyper-inflation makes it hard for sustainable revenue for FFS as well. With its advertising being run by MyOfferPal, one of the most popular ad service on Facebook, users using multiple apps began choosing to earn points for the other apps (performing the same activity) when they realize that the points earned in FFS are not as useful in achieving the desired goals.
FFS did re-adjust the “economy” recently by changing the value of the new user to $100k, but the problem is only going to come up again unless the rules of the game are changed. Maybe a recession might help
Whopper Sacrifice
It wasn’t in my intentions to comment on the application presentation actually, but given that the Whopper the group Sacrificed me for was given to me, it was only right to leave some comments.
Firstly, Crispin Porter + Bogusky is brilliant. Just go to their site and take a look at the stuff they have done for various companies. Not such a big fan of their work with Microsoft though – most seem too reactionary to Apple’s ads. Next, the team that presented it was on the cutting edge of FB Apps. The App was only up for a week or so before being banned on 14th January. Great job people!
The key point that might be of interest, is whether this phenomenon can be repeated. i.e. Can an advertiser gain that kind of publicity enjoyed by BK by repeating the “sacrifice your friend” campaign? My thoughts on it? No, it will get eyeballs, but it will not be as successful as this first attempt. Buzz Aldrin was never as famous as Neil Armstrong, attempts at a sex-focused drama is unlikely to be as well-received as Sex and the City. You get the point. Despite the possibility of using bots to delete friends, I seriously doubt the effectiveness if this were to be repeated exactly for another company. Any ideas for auxiliary features/marketing gimmicks to augment the delete friends feature?
Now all that’s said and done, the final thing I need to do, is to complete the rest of the song and post it onto YouTube. That’s-What-Friends-are-For-2.0
Stories of how companies are born are without fail, one of the genres of stories that I find most exciting and most appealing to the entrepreneur in me. That’s a major reason why I attended the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Series when I was in SV, still listen to its podcast regularly, and am involved in In3, where we try to bring such entrepreneurial leaders to share their stories at NUS to all Singaporeans. I was therefore, very happy when greeted this morning with a tweet from @dom about How Twitter was born.
Let’s do lessons learnt before we go on:
1. When you have an excellent team, try and try until you succeed - Odeo didn’t, but Twitter sure did
2. For the people – People didn’t understand the value of Twitter till much later, given its lack of a special feature. However, what they missed is the only important feature – People.
3. Keep a record of thoughts – Tweet #38 said “Oh this is going to be addictive” and sure it was. These records make for excellent stories, both in success and in failure.
4. Go for glory – Being B2C, without the huge events that Twitter supported, it couldn’t have gotten the network effect that it currently has
More straight-to-the-point than the article itself, though, is the comments that one of the co-founders, TonyStubblebine wrote:
“… Odeo was made up of a lot of past and mostly present company founders… I think we needed that many rockstars to turn the middling opportunity we had in podcasting into the major opportunity that Twitter has”
Throughout all these start-up stories, it is clear that persistence is one of the few persistent topics. By persistently pursuing dreams and aspirations, one naturally will attract people who are as passionate as they are. While along the way, each one of us may fail in our own projects, but when we keep at it, and find others on the same path to band together, great things are bound to happen.
Never give up pursuing entrepreneurial aspirations – it is going to be addictive!
With so many of my friends involved in a presentation or a pitch recently, I thought I might post some notes that I have from a short lecture by David S. Rose on 10 things to know before you pitch a VC for money. Why is this relevant? One of the worst presentation situation to be in is when you have to ask someone else for money, hence being able to do so effectively would give one wings when in other situations. (I will not discuss the fact that VCs actually need credible entrepreneurs as well to achieve their investment requirements.) And of course, there is a fair number of people actually looking for funding.
Having attended so many such lectures throughout my days in ASES and NOC, and read more detailed commentary on the topic (do check out The Art of the Start if you’re interested), the content wasn’t anything out of the blue, but it was a good lecture nonetheless.
Key Ideas
1. Define your goals – VCs invest in people, keep in mind that you’re really trying to say “I’m the one you’re looking for”
2. Manage Emotions – Grab attention, Wow with solid content, end off by hitting the homerun with something they cannot resist
3. Use Imagery instead of bullet points (I am a huge advocate of this)
4. Go to the point – Give them what they are looking for (adhere to the conventional templates which VCs are used to looking out for)
5. Give attention to detail – It tells what type of person you are when you don’t check for typos
Jumping right back into the great Mac vs PC debate, an interesting take away from the lecture might be that despite Jobs having raised “corporate presentations and product introductions to an absurdly high level”, one can more than make up for the inability to do this by being extremely good in everything else like Bill is.
Enjoy the 15min video and share any comments that you might have!
Do we dare to dream big?
Core belief: World CHange Starts With Educated Children
To reach Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal: 10 million children by 2010
70% of Nepal is illiterate, suffering from poverty of opportunity.
John rented Zag the yak to carry the library of books from one village to village.
GDP is linked with education.
Purchasing Power Parity (economy) is linked with education.
Infant mortality is linked with female literacy.
110 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school.
880 million people around the world cannot read or write. 2/3 of these groups are girls and women.
SOLUTIONS:
To work with government to supply teachers
To enlist parents to build the school rooms
To build reading rooms – learn their own language and english
To publish local language books
Long-Term Girls Scholarship – funded by Don Valentine
“Educating girls yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world” The World Bank
Room to Read fund raise.
BUSINESS MODEL:
1) Hire strong and entrepreneurial local teams – not to send volunteers or expat
2) Engage the Community – We call them “Challenge Grant” – catalyze creation of schools, give them ownership.
“You can only help ppl who wants to help themselves”
3) Be nimble and act quickly, no excuses – Team opened 39 schools in post-tsunami area in one year even though no present operations there.
4) Invest heavily in human capital – training teachers and librarians
5) Invest heavily in monitoring and evaluation – 84% Laos librarian is confident to train new librarian.
They published books in Hindi, Sinhala, Nepalese – 10,000copies per books. Authors include 10, 15-year-olds.
6) Have an Intense Focus on Results
“What gets measured, gets done”
7) Makes efficient use of donor’s money – instituted no Land Rover policy – can’t open 25 libraries, can’t open 4 new schools in Nepal.
Run a social business:
Low overhead ensures the money goes where it’s needed most
87% Program services
Rated 4 Star by Charity Navigator.
Create a World-wide movement of “Super Empowered Individuals”
“Go Big or Go Home!” on philantropy. Scale up
“If Starbucks can do it”
Low prices alllow everyone to “Be the change”
What is the most image can you imagine? – potential or kinetic – take action.
TiE Host: Ro Choy – Vice President of Business Development, RockYou Moderator: Gus Tai – General Partner, Trinity Ventures Panelists:
Anil Dharni – Director of Products, Hi5 Networks Inc.
Seth Goldstein – CEO and Co-Founder, SocialMedia Networks
Sab Kanaujia – VP Digital Product Strategy & Development, NBC Universal
Keith Rabois – Head of Strategy and Business development, Slide, Inc.
Anthony Soohoo – SVP & GM, Entertainment Communities & Social Media, CBS Interactive
Lessons/Facts
Online shows and watching TV is similar in activity – Case: NCAA Tournament on CBS
Take fan base to enhance interaction -> higher ad & impressions
Apps that enhance communication works, not info apps
Realty based shows get more people to talk
maximize exposure by building communities based on the show
Widget (hard to monetize)
Platform strategy to monetize
Monetize mobilized social activities (games)
A decreased value proposition will cause product failure – if you don’t need to spend much and the product can still spread, you’re addressing an important need
Most social platforms don’t know how to monetize. The main platform needs to be able to monetize to have the application useful for monetization
Data Portability the trend of the future
Vertical Market Platform: Context will drive CPM, even if a smaller market size (Flixster). BUT look at the size of the vertical. If its too niche also no good
Using network effect to prevent privacy. Release the premium content to everyone that doesn’t have pirated content.
Killer Apps, Niche Social Networks, What Next?
TiE Host: Ro Choy – Vice President of Business Development, RockYou Moderator: Gus Tai – General Partner, Trinity Ventures Panelists:
Anil Dharni – Director of Products, Hi5 Networks Inc.
Seth Goldstein – CEO and Co-Founder, SocialMedia Networks
Sab Kanaujia – VP Digital Product Strategy & Development, NBC Universal
Keith Rabois – Head of Strategy and Business development, Slide, Inc.
Anthony Soohoo – SVP & GM, Entertainment Communities & Social Media, CBS Interactive
Lessons/Facts
Online shows and watching TV is similar in activity – Case: NCAA Tournament on CBS
Take fan base to enhance interaction -> higher ad & impressions
Apps that enhance communication works, not info apps
Realty based shows get more people to talk
maximize exposure by building communities based on the show
Widget (hard to monetize)
Platform strategy to monetize
Monetize mobilized social activities (games)
A decreased value proposition will cause product failure – if you don’t need to spend much and the product can still spread, you’re addressing an important need
Most social platforms don’t know how to monetize. The main platform needs to be able to monetize to have the application useful for monetization
Data Portability the trend of the future
Vertical Market Platform: Context will drive CPM, even if a smaller market size (Flixster). BUT look at the size of the vertical. If its too niche also no good
Using network effect to prevent privacy. Release the premium content to everyone that doesn’t have pirated content.
Starting Keynote: Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla Motors, Solar City & Space-X w Mike Malone (Refer to the earlier post on Space-X and X-Foundation)
Forecasts: By 2030,
- Solar Powered
- Pure electric vehicles the dominant one
- Man on Mars
Lessons:
For large item purchases (e.g. Tesla Roadster), have a “lockout” period to maintain branding and make sure people don’t start selling your item on eBay
Innovators’ Dilemma again – Tesla took the market space that Toyota and Detroit manufacturers won’t be moved to jump into the area
2nd Keynote: Sustaining Entrepreneurship in Biotech and Its Global Impact – John C. Martin, PhD, President and CEO, Gilead Sciences
- Biotech lies at the intersection of life sciences and technology: Health focused companies that capitalize on the increase in scientific understanding of biology and genetics
HL: “Don’t be boring. Make Biotech as sexy as Tesla motors”
Healthcare Challenges and Opportunities:
- Globalization makes disease travel faster
- IP in developing world to attract investors
AIDS Developing World Challenges:
- More than 30 million infected
- 4.1 million new infections per year
- Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa: 47
- Without AIDS, life expectancy would be 62
You like me, You REALLY like me.. Now what?: Challenges After Hypergrowth
Keynote Panel – 4-5pm Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal
Jia Shen, CTO & co-Founder, RockYou
Kent Lindstrom, President, Friendster
Derek Liu, CTO & co-Founder, Gaia
Lessons Learnt
Mathematic growth of huge market will allow for huge growth
Self-expression a need for human interaction
Dorm rooms still not producing quality apps. Slide and RockYou still key players.
Youtube app?
Huge applications might not be the key. Niche but high interaction would be more monetizable
Building applications onto platforms instead of building social network platform
Friendster facing “Innovators’ Dilemma” that’s why mySpace and Facebook got to take over despite Friendster’s initial success
Agility to keep success of website over long period of time
CTR rates????
Monetization Models
Long tail model (Google) vs. Site target model (Yahoo) of advertising
Data Profile that each advert publisher “must buy” – e.g. if you want to meet college student you must buy Facebook ad, if you’re launching movie must buy MySpace ad. This is actually still similar to buying ad during the relevant TV show
Fake cars, fake houses to impress real people =)
Microsoft Passport Model – Friends Connect, Facebook Connect; Expanding of Social Graph beyond the own website
Mobile – will grow from there
Micropayment systems in Asia
Ads as brand advertizers instead of cost per click model for people who want to drive traffice to their website
Learning Points
Outsource – break up into small pieces so that nobody get the whole picture of what you are looking at
Definition:
Algomist – like Alchemist reversed, so build up the entire architecture
Pico-coding – break up into small pieces and code
“McDonaldize” the processes and in addition, try to let no one step affect the other step
Chunk it up until the context is gone. People don’t know what it actually iss
Be global from day 1
Positives of Pico-coding
Globalization – Global resources on your hand when you need it
Time to market
Lower cost of development
Make most use of the thinkers instead of spending time coding
Problems & Solutions of Pico-coding
What to do when you need upgrade? Throw away and buy a new one!!
Security of Code: How to ensure that its integrity?
1. Look at ratings – will go south with one entry
2. Code inspection – get someone you trust to do it
Can’t use this model when you are doing a pure innovation
Learning reduced
Core algorithm still has to do in-house
Enterprise software might have a problem because it can’t be fixed immediately
Information security requirements
IP – the coder is supposed to use unique code for everyone
Project Management vs. Global Outsourcing
Project Management starts with resource constrain, global outsourcing is planned with no constrain
Anand
Current: Advising 3 companies in Valley, 1 in India
A love for Ben Franklin: The original ‘renaissance man’. Inventor, Philosopher, Businessman, Diplomat, Politician, Librarian, Scientist, Engineer
Special Meetings: Mohnish Pabrai, MD of Pabrai Funds leading to a new way of thinking driven by values and sound principles, not buzzwords
Ideas are big, but DON’T BE OVERWHELMED. You have a lifetime to learn and apply these principles!!
Munger/Buffett Track Record
Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway: Coca-Cola, Gillette, ABC, Wells Fargo, See’s Candies, Saloman Smith Barney, GEICO, NetJets, Costco, AmEx, Washington Post. WITHOUT scandals, greeds or creative accountings
Early students of Ben Graham,
‘Moat’ Philosophy – Moat for sustainable competitive advantage
‘Cigarette Butt’ Investing and approach to evaluating ideas/business – Just do it and make a bit of $???
Munger
Modern day Ben Frankin
Fair business at a great price vs. great business at a fair price
Buy own, work for and invest in a great business with a fair price than the other way round!!!!
Notion of worldly wisdom to build latticework of mental models and lollapalooza results
Key Themes
- Meet the eminent dead
- Meet the one-legged guy in an ass-kicking contest
- Worldly Wisdom: “man with the hammer” tendency
- Invert, always invert
- Lattice
- Multi-disciplinary approach
- Web of derserved trust
- 6 themes of influence
- Self-serving bias
- Ability to kill your best ideas
- Inventing vs. method of invention
- Bad bridge vs. bad business
- How do you build a 2 trillion $ brand from scratch?
Meet the eminent dead
Instead of explaining concepts in the abstract, it’s a lot more fun to make friends with the eminent dead!!
- Ben Franklin
- Carl Jacobi
- Charles Darwin
- Adam Smith
- Linus Pauling
Worldly Wisdom
The man with the hammer… would want to make everything look like a nail so that he could use the hammer. So go back and add other tools to the hammer so that not all problems look like a nail. If I can’t solve the problem with these skill sets, add more skill sets!
The one-legged guy in an ass-kicking contest. You can never win. Build other tools so that the problem is varied and not with that one tool that you have.
Evolutionary Biologist would come out with hypothesis then change. Darwin proposed it.
Don’t make the decision then justify. Go and observe and come out of comfort zone.
How to acquire Worldly Wisdom??
- Making friends with eminent dead across fields
- 6 themes of influence (tbi)
- Self-serving bias: Appealing to bias, not to rationality
- Causality vs consequence
How do acquire and retain WW?
Always invert. Ask the opposite question. “If I know where I’m gonna die, I will never go there.” If you know one thing you’re not going to do, that eliminates a lot of possibilities.
Pavlovian Models (See ‘Building a $1 trillion brand’)
Borrow from one subject to improve another like Linus Pauling
Look at reading list from SFI http://www.santafe.edu/
Multi-Disciplinary Approach
Arrive at a checklist of tools that you have. Ways to think of a problem. What not to do. Etc.
Tools to evaluate marketing and business problems
Avoid man with hammer tendency
Costco: Optimize on a single variable (to the extreme) à What is really interest is that they are doing everything Walmart is doing, but they can negotiate with all suppliers, hence get HUGE discounts, and provide for a fee (membership). Paying for value
Gillette: commitment and consistency
Nebraska Furniture Mart: Customer service, low prices
Knowing when to apply the “extraordinary routine” like when you need to fly a plane
Case Study: The 6 themes of INFLUENCE
From “Psychology of human misjudgement”, Charlie Munger speech at Harvard Law School, 1995
Look for reinforcing effects in marketing situations (for Lollapalooza results)
RECIPROCITY
- LinkedIn recommendations: Help people to help yourself
- Chain Letters: cascading effect of reciprocity to reach a million people
COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY
- Only one sperm can get in then it shuts off. One idea is in, your head shuts off.
- Physics: people resist change when they like the old idea and they won’t look like an idiot
- Phil Zimbardo: Stanford prison experiment
o People who play prison guard played the role as humans will commit and be consistent
o The power of thought, commitment and being consistent with it
SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE
- Tupperware Parties. If everyone has it, I have to have it too. And when your friend is at your place, you’re more likely to make the purchase
LIKING, AUTHORITY AND SCARCITY
- Work for somebody because you like him
- Nobody cares who created it. I like the iPod I’ll buy it
- #1 brand always has the highest market share
- Brand loyalty
- Scarcity by Steve Jobs. Show it once, and everyone wants it. Then make people give Apple discounts to sell it.
Real Estate and Car Dealers: Scarcity and Authority to sell you something
Coke & New Coke: Commitment and Consistency. Something you are familiar with.
Darwin vs. the rest: That’s why people don’t like his theory
“Limited Edition” items: Scarcity
Case Study: Incentive caused bias
Apple employees can’t be convinced that Apple sucks
TRUE MEANING OF AGENCY COSTS – never try to work against what people are paid to believe
Fedex shift/hour compensation example: Each employee was paid by shift. So instead of that, they would be paid by the hour and track performance each hour. Incentive caused bias
Commission driven with CRM updating system to drive Salespeople to work
A return to values…
Are you comfortable with this appearing in the front pay of the NY Times tomorrow morning? Use this as a guide to make decisions.
WWJD?
If you build a bad bridge it will collapse. There is no consequence of building bad business. Everyone has to put in their part.
Web of deserved trust: best way to succeed is to deserve what you get
The ability to kill your best ideas – do it before others can do it so that anything that you allow to get out of your lab is going to cater to the highest standard
Makes financial sense to gain others trust
Can you build a $2 trillion brand from first principles?
“Practical thought about practical thought” – Charlie Munger
Lessons:
1. Trademark your name, protect it strongly to build scarcity
2. Have a product with UNIVERSAL appeal
3. Leverage on classical conditioning and operant conditioning (conditioned reflexes)
4. Liking, Scarcity, Social proof
5. Always invert and turn it around – what should we NOT do?
6. Exclusive product that people can’t get ANYWHERE
7. Don’t get bad effect of successes (like Microsoft, etc.) Use principles to build company up
Yahoo Strategies
Integrated Search and Display strategies
Yahoo as a Open Platform?
Acquisition of Right Media and Blue Lithium
Display (Page View advertising)
SearchMonkey… mmm…
Yahoo! Buzz: Ecosystem of Users, Publishers, and Advertisers à Digg style voting
Yahoo Monetizing that?? Finally making profits??
Of everything that could be asked, first question is about customer care… and interface of the yahoo email… haha =)
Discussions and Stories about Yahoo the past 2 weeks
Weren’t planning to sell
Board felt that Yahoo! Is in the midst of transformation since December due to development costs, so Microsoft came at the exact right time
Sue was at Berkshire Hathaway on Board meeting, shook Bill Gates’s hand
Pace of Acquisition of Yahoo!
Yahoo! Will continue to acquire things that can integrate into their systems
Not integrating Overture faster causing Google to move faster in Search
Open Social
Yahoo! Will support open social, with a broader approach, with $$ for developers to develop on Yahoo! Instead of on Google
Macroeconomic Environment on Yahoo!’s movements
Ad is 500billion size
Ad is cyclical with economy, especially in traditional
Online ads can figure cost of customer acquisition, so less reduced compared to traditional ads
Alienating User Groups with Voting
Homepage is not automatic, so Buzz doesn’t change the main site immediately. The main editors will make sure quality is there.
Dynamic content serving
Google outsourcing question
Panama and Google only about 20% difference in earnings
Is it worth it to use Google to close it, and use Google, or continue to build
Video Ad Monetization
Video Ads on static content page
Yahoo’s acquisition of Zimbra à EmailInsights from content will provide relevance and allow others to want the experience
Seriously, thank you everyone for using me in your presentations. I’ve never felt so loved in NUS ever.
Stories of how companies are born are without fail, one of the genres of stories that I find most exciting and most appealing to the entrepreneur in me. That’s a major reason why I attended the 
Create a World-wide movement of “Super Empowered Individuals”