Your Shadow IT Department Is Here To Stay
Guest author Robert J. Moore is the CEO of RJMetrics, a provider of business intelligence to online companies.
Much of the growth in software-as-a-service companies is being driven by a “land and expand” strategy: Tools first get used by individuals, then by small teams, and so on up the organizational hierarchy.
Eventually the company finds itself signing a large-scale deal, all without a competitive process or RFP. Companies like Slack and Dropbox craft their pricing models specifically to encourage this behavior—Slack knew exactly what it was doing when it decided to allow accounts to grow to unlimited users for free, and it was certainly an effective strategy to penetrate my company, RJMetrics. One day, some engineers were using it, then all the engineers, then the rest of the company, then we reached a point of no return and paying for it was pretty much our only option.
Enter The Shadow
This phenomenon is called Shadow IT: technology decisions getting made without input from, and sometimes without even awareness of, traditional IT organizations. Many IT leaders I talk to seem to think that the inmates are running the asylum, and are pushing back hard to regain control. Typically, this is being done in the name of security and compliance.
Users see it the other way around: they feel like they are finally throwing off the yoke of IT departments that have failed to innovate on their behalf.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if this trend is good or bad—either way, it’s happening. Technology no longer exists just in the workplace, and enterprise software is now not solely controlled by the IT hierarchy. Pandora is never going back in that box, so whether or not this state of the world is desirable just isn’t particularly relevant.
We didn’t mind paying—I think Slack is worth every penny. What’s interesting, though, is the position it put us in with regards to our data. All of a sudden, there’s this company that knows more about the way my team communicates than I do. That data seems like it could be quite useful—maybe I could even use it to understand and improve my business. But right now, Slack has that data and we don’t.
The Data Dilemma
Take this problem and multiply it by the number of SaaS tools your company is currently using: CRM, helpdesk, productivity, file storage, and on and on. They all know about your employees, your customers, your products—everything about your business— but you don’t have access to that data. Why is that?
Traditionally, software has been on-premise, and all of the data stores sitting behind the applications were directly accessible by the IT organizations maintaining them. Accessing the data was as easy as opening up a SQL terminal (which is to say, very easy).
But with applications deployed in the cloud, the data stores behind them became inaccessible. The only way to access data living within cloud applications is via the APIs exposed by application developers. And unlike SQL, a universal language for accessing data, the API for every application is different. This means that if your organization uses ten SaaS products, you need to integrate with ten different APIs to get that data, a nontrivial task.
What organizations really need is to get all of that data into a single, high-performance, SQL-based analytical database. Fortunately, there are plenty of great choices as to what that database should look like. HP Vertica, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, and others are innovating aggressively in this space. In fact, Redshift is Amazon Web Services’ fastest-growing product in history.
Business owners of the past would shudder at the thought of their data warehouse living in the cloud, but today this has become less of a concern. The advantages of cloud deployment—managed services with low upfront investment—extend to data warehouses as well. And because of the larger trend towards cloud services, much of the modern company's data is already there in the first place.
But that still leaves an open question: How do you transfer the data from all of the data sources where your data lives into this analytical database? This is, today, an unsolved problem, but it’s one that’s being actively churned on.
Today’s solutions fall into a few buckets:
- Legacy ETL tools (feature-rich but heavyweight, hard to use, and expensive)
- Home-grown solutions (unreliable, difficult to scale, and costly to maintain)
- Open source libraries (promising but immature; still require technical investment)
- SaaS products (still early in development)
This is a problem that businesses today are just waking up to. The transition to cloud services is happening in real time, and businesses are just beginning to realize how in the dark they are when it comes to analyzing this data.
Five years ago there were very few companies actively pursuing answers to these questions. Companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Spotify built their own data-processing engines that have matured into significant competitive advantages for these companies. Today, many more online businesses are following in their footsteps but need an answer that doesn’t require dozens of full-time engineers to build and maintain.
The transition to SaaS is a massive paradigm shift and companies are just learning to adapt. I have very little doubt that these companies will rely on SaaS products to build the infrastructure that ties together other SaaS products.
And thus does the snake eat its own tail.
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Google Makes Beta Testing Android Apps Easier And More Open
Google knows a friction-free app testing and submission process can help developers keep decent apps flowing, so it just rolled out a series of improvements to the beta testing process for Google Play apps.
Overall, the changes are designed to help developers manage pre-release beta tests easily, so they can "iterate faster" to develop or improve features.
See also: Google's Offering Smarter Tools For Smarter Apps And Homes
Consider it part of Google's recent developer outreach, which also gives app makers more finetuned ways to promote their apps once the testing is over.
Test Away
In the past, beta tests were closed and ran through a Google+ community or Google Group. Now users don't have to be part of the company's social channels to become testers.
The new open beta program option lets developers send links, so any user can join a beta test with a single click. That allows the group of users to go from small to large easily, though developers can set a maximize cap, if they want to control the test size.
The old way of running closed beta tests will still be available, Google says. If they want, developers will even be able to start with the old process and move over to the more open version with the same list of testers.
See also: Google’s ARC Welder Gives You A Glimpse Of An Android-Anywhere Future
There's also another option for closed tests: You can run a closed beta test using a private list of email addresses, instead of a Google community or group. Set a master list, and your participants will get a one-click link sent to their inboxes.
Google has provided some examples of how developers might want to test their apps. Vector Unit's Matt Small, for example, suggests using a closed beta to iron out any glaring issues and then switching to an open beta.
The company posted a full walkthrough of the process in the Developer Console's help pages. Beta testers can't leave reviews and ratings in the Google Play Store, so your app's reputation won't take a hit due to any bugs (not until the official public release, anyway).
Finished Your Beta? Here's A New Way To Promote It
Changes to the beta program are not the only new Google offering this week. A new Search Ads format for Google Play is now available to everyone. The service, which began testing in February, allows developers and advertisers to promote apps based on what users search in the store.
According to the company's official statement, "Search Ads on Google Play can provide consumers new ways to discover apps that they otherwise might have missed and help developers drive more awareness of their apps." Promoted apps appear with a small yellow Ad sticker in search results.
The new feature works a lot like ads on Google itself: Apps can be promoted in relation to certain keywords, so a booking app can appear at the top of a search for "hotel reservations," for instance.
In the coming weeks Google will roll out a new Universal App Campaigns platform that lets developers and marketers manage app promotion across Web search, YouTube, app store search and Google's other properties. "Simply let us know what your ad will say, who you want to reach, your budget and target cost-per-install, and we’ll do the rest," the company wrote.
The benefits for Google are obvious: Better testing and search infrastructure means happier developers. Even Apple seems to have gotten that memo, having surprised app builders with recently expanded TestFlight limits. But, by contrast, the iOS beta testing process is still much more controlled and restrictive—which is, in fact, everything you might expect from Apple.
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Here’s Why I Really Bought ReadWrite
Hi! It’s time for me to speak up and introduce myself. I’m the CEO of Wearable World, the company that bought ReadWrite back in February. To the many who have loved this site for more than 12 years, I’d like to say “Thank you.” Thank you for sticking around and believing in ReadWrite.
Like you, I’ve been a reader. I’ve also been a sponsor of ReadWrite. I’m now its owner, and after this post goes live … I’ll be a writer, too.
Having participated in all aspects of this business, I’m humbled to have the opportunity to contribute to a publication that matters to the 5 million of you in ReadWrite’s larger community. (That’s my best estimate of the extended audience reached by ReadWrite’s website, social presences, and distribution partners. There are a lot of you!)
As Owen Thomas, ReadWrite’s editor-in-chief, has told you, we’ve been reorganizing ReadWrite’s editorial output around new sections that tell you how to build new products and bring them to market. We did this after seeking your feedback and listening to you, and we’re going to continue to listen.
The thing is, this is what ReadWrite has always done. When ReadWrite chronicled the social and mobile revolutions, it prepared you to take advantage of those opportunities. When Richard MacManus wrote about the Internet of Things, he forecasted a huge market. And some of ReadWrite’s most popular stories have been guides, tutorials, and explainers about new technology. The only thing Owen is doing differently is presenting it with a more explicit focus on learning and action—what’s new, and what you can do about it.
I’m committed to this new editorial direction. Owen and his team are bringing new voices and new insights to the table that would have benefited me when I was building my own startups.
ReadWrite In The Real World
When Owen and I agreed Wearable World would be a great new owner for ReadWrite, we saw eye to eye on the need to do more than just deliver great reporting and analysis on ReadWrite’s website. We also wanted to build valuable real-world experiences that lived up to the ReadWrite brand and its promise of democratizing technology and leveling the playing field.
You, the ReadWrite community, inspire and help me, and I want to inspire and help you. I’m really excited to have the opportunity to connect with you directly and share something our team has been working on tirelessly: e2e, a new kind of conference for people building products.
I want to share with you how this conference came about, and invite you to attend. This is the first of many opportunities I hope we’ll have to connect, and I’d like to start by saying I am thrilled to be able to engage with ReadWrite readers—the next generation of creators of game-changing technology.
Unfreezing Innovation
Innovation in its first form is never perfect. Entrepreneurs who want to create impact do not do so by moving slowly. But I’ve seen so many get hung up due to constraints—lack of resources and lack of knowledge. We live in a sea of hard choices. That’s startup life. But some entrepreneurs freeze up at key moments in fear of making the wrong decision. If building a startup is difficult, creating an intelligent and interactive product feels nearly impossible.
At ReadWrite and Wearable World, we are always looking for ways to connect and educate our community. Our vision is to be the innovation chain for entrepreneurs looking to bring their products to market, for corporations looking to partner with innovative startups, and for governments turning to technology to solve civic problems.
A few months ago we came one step closer to this vision when we solidified our partnership with Jabil, a hardware manufacturing giant based here in the United States. By working with Jabil, we’ve secured guidance for entrepreneurs looking to bring their products to market more efficiently and are thrilled to watch what our community will create. (You can count on me to shoot straight with you, so I should let you know that this is a commercial relationship and Jabil is backing the e2e conference financially and working with Wearable World in other ways. We’ll always disclose these relationships to you.)
Everything To Everyone
So we’ve created the e2e conference to usher in our new partnership and kickstart innovation in our community. This jamboree takes place October 13–14 at Jabil’s Blue Sky Center in San Jose. What’s e2e? Well, depends who you ask, because e2e stands for many things, including “end to end,” “entrepreneur to entrepreneur,” “engineer to engineer,” and “experience to experience.”
This event delivers on our innovation-chain vision by going through every step you’ll take from idea to market. It’s the most important event for people building a business in IoT and connected hardware, and will provide attendees the opportunity to work closely with the brightest minds in the industry.
You are the builders and the dreamers, and I cannot wait to see what we will create together.
And if you can’t make it in October, all I ask is that you keep reading ReadWrite—because next to sitting down with us in person at e2e, there’s no better place for you to learn how to build the future than right here.
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The Secret Of DevOps: It's Always Been About People, Not Technology
Adam Jacob is a cofounder and CTO of Chef, an IT-automation company that helps enterprises use DevOps to build and deliver quality software quickly.
I have had the privilege of being either physically present or near many of the seminal moments in the evolution of DevOps. My friend and cofounder at Chef, Jesse Robbins, was the conference chair for the operations track at O'Reilly's Velocity conference.
It was there in 2009 that John Allspaw and Paul Hammond gave their seminal talk, "10 Deploys Per Day, Dev And Ops Cooperation At Flickr." In it they outlined all the ways they worked together to deliver code quickly and safely.
John and Paul’s talk is all the more relevant today. The largest companies in the world are working as hard as they can to figure out how to become better at building and delivering software. It's not an optional piece of their strategy: It's the future of how their customers want to work with them. Software is table stakes for survival.
Work Style Is What Matters, Not Tools
So where should these companies look to understand how to become better at software delivery? Many are in the midst of this transition, but none have completed it entirely.
In some industries, we can point to market-leading disruptors, such as Amazon in retail. But the real answer lies in looking at what John, Paul, and Jesse were doing in 2009—not in the specific technical choices they made, but the style in which they worked, the essence of what they believed made them high functioning and successful.
Then the challenge begins: how to apply this new style to businesses trying to become better at building and delivering software.
See also: DevOps: The Future Of DIY IT?
This is the DevOps movement. The issues that led to DevOps in Web-native companies are now being felt by more traditional big companies. So today there is a noisy market in teaching people how to do DevOps, or in tools that enable DevOps. We'll start seeing certifications, definitions, books, and trainings. Vendor after vendor will tell you they have the magical solution to this difficult business problem.
At its heart, though—when you dig down underneath the rhetoric and positions, the software architecture decisions and design patterns, down below the software-development lifecycle and your agile practice—DevOps is about bringing together all the people you need to build and run your business effectively, and empowering them to move as quickly as possible towards their goals.
Tools matter. Make no mistake, trying to change the way you work without changing the mechanisms by which you do that work is a futile exercise in excruciating failure. But tools exist in service of the prime directive: building highly functioning, highly effective cross-functional teams, that attack your thorniest business problems as a unit, rather than as lone individuals or silos with competing incentives.
See also: Three Reasons Your Startup Will Suffer Without DevOps
Fundamentally DevOps is about taking the behaviors and beliefs that draw us together as people, combining them with a deep understanding of our customers’ needs, and using that knowledge to ship better products to our customers. This is how I define DevOps:
DevOps is a cultural and professional movement, focused on how we build and operate high velocity organizations, born from the experiences of its practitioners.
Notice that I don't mention technology, which may be surprising coming from the CTO of a DevOps-focused company.
DevOps is cultural in that it encompasses the ideas, customs, and behavior of a group of people. It is professional because people can often make a living practicing these ideas in a variety of professions—I've seen everyone from CEOs and lawyers to software developers and sales reps practicing DevOps. It covers both the building and operating of our organizations.
It is uniquely suited to, and born from, the attempt to move at ever higher velocity (speed with a direction—it's not just that we move fast, it's that we move fast and we know where to go).
Finally, it comes from experience. It wasn't a business-school theory that got applied to the world, or a mathematical formula that got applied to a problem—it comes from the collected experience of thousands of people learning the hard way how to function in these environments.
What DevOps Is Made Of
From here we can break DevOps down into three different components:
- the core principles by which it operates, which are shared by every person and organization that does DevOps
- the forms of work we believe reinforce those principles (such as blameless post-mortems, continuous integration, or iterative versus incremental software development)
- the application of those principles and forms into our daily work
Each of these components gets progressively more distinct to the individual. We're very similar in our core principles, we share many of (but not all) the same forms, but we're often quite different in how we apply the same to our actual work. This perspective provides a good place to start: understand the core principles first, then start doing some of the things that people who are DevOps experts do, then see how it feels in your own environment.
There is more background on DevOps and other core principles, but in context of this story on the culture of DevOps, the following principle is most relevant:
People Over Products Over Companies
Anyone who has worked in enterprise IT in the last 20 years has likely experienced the inverse of this principle—an environment where we believed more in companies than products, and products more than people. We used to talk about being an "IBM shop," or a "Microsoft shop," or a "CA shop." When you had a problem, the first answer was always to look at the company whose solutions you had de facto decided to adopt, see if they have a product that fits, and if so, use it. Regardless of whether it was the best product, or if it resonated with the people who were going to have to implement and use it day to day.
DevOps flips this on its head. The first question we ask is what the people who are doing the work, or who are going to consume it, need. If we can find a product that fits that need, great, let’s use it. If we can't, we're not afraid to build it ourselves—to take our fate in our own hands and simply solve our problem.
If we consistently find products that solve our problem from the same company, that's great. We value those relationships, too. But the moment it stops providing value, we're taking our money (and our people) elsewhere.
This principle also holds in how you design your internal teams and systems. Sad people build sad products, which in turn create sad companies. Help your people be awesome, and they will make awesome products for you. Make awesome products, and you have a shot at making an awesome company.
DevOps is about people more than technology. The DevOps movement is the solution to the challenges facing every large company in the world right now. Learning its history or principles is valuable—but in order to truly understand what to do next, you need to understand deeply the day-to-day behaviors of the people who practice it.
And in turn, you must learn to apply those in your own context, whether you’re a software developer or a sales leader. Then we use technology to reinforce those behaviors, and as an accelerant to the changes we need to make.
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Want To Keep Customers? Integrate Tech With A Personal Touch
It's hard to do personalized customer service at scale. When you're using the technology to streamline the process and save your team time, the sense of personalization is easily lost.
You need a strategy to get the best of both worlds—which is why I asked ten founders from YEC how they suggested other entrepreneurs keep the customer service experience personal while still leveraging the best technology.
1. Incorporate Data Cohesiveness And Integration
With the growth of social media as a customer-relationship-management channel, as well as the trend of using social media and other channels for support, it's important for companies to create profiles and databases available regardless of a customer's point of entry. Whether a customer sends a Facebook message, tweets at your company, starts a live chat, calls on the phone, or sends an email, there has to be a way for the customer-service representative to see that customer's historical transactions. For the customer-service rep to make the experience positive, they need to know what the customer said across all channels. This information will reduce frustration and help to manage expectations and resolve problems. —Marcela DeVivo, National Debt Relief
2. Automate Only Parts Of The Process
Take a long look at your sales process. You should be able to determine which parts are the same for every client, such as intake forms. If the data is something you need to review with every client, automate it. When it's time to do the real work, add in a human element to review the answers to the automated questions. This will save you about half of your time. Also, if possible, offer a product in a box that the client can DIY and then provide premium access to your personal services so that you can better offer something for everyone. If you feel like a hands-off approach doesn't work, certify your best team members to also be client facing. Make sure there's a process to make these affiliates/employees knowledgeable so you don't weaken your business reputation. —Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
3. Add Your Signature
Hire a virtual assistant or get your personal assistant to type or write a personal letter to all of your highest-performing clients or customers. In this day and age, everyone is so caught up in technology and getting things done quicker with less work. Spend the time composing and personalizing your letter and make sure to sign off on it. It's a different gesture to what everyone else is using these days, and I'm confident that it will not go unnoticed. —Engelo Rumora, Ohio Cashflow
4. Use Technology To Your Advantage
The latest in customer-service technology allows your brand to create a truly personal customer-service experience. Tools like Intercom, Olark, and LivePerson allow you to interact directly with your customers through your website in a way that aligns with how customers would actually prefer to work with your brand. You get a ton of information about your users while talking to them, and they get to feel like they're truly talking to someone. Combine that with powerful data collection tools like Promoter.io or Qualaroo, and you've got all the information you need to create an amazing customer experience. These days, not leveraging the best technology available means you'll eventually end up with a subpar customer-service experience. —Mattan Griffel, One Month
5. Leverage Prewritten Responses With A Personal Touch
Most customer-service tools offer a feature that allow you to quickly and easily pull a prewritten response into an email. In our tool of choice, HelpScout, it's called "saved replies." The key to using prewritten responses is to make them sound natural, and to take a moment to further personalize the email before you hit send. For example, we have a response email that says "I just wanted to reach out and thank you for signing up for Edgar. :)" This reads more like a personal note than a form response, and our team can further personalize the email with details specific to the customer. —Laura Roeder, MeetEdgar.com
6. Use 24/7 Chat Features
Streamlining systems and processes to ensure that each employee's time is being used wisely is important to the success of your company and its current projects. A 24/7 chat window accessible through your website is easy to manage and a great way to maintain great customer service, as it is something that does not require hours of focus since it's constantly open and ready to be answered. The availability of a 24/7 chat is the preferred method of contact for customers, as they can quickly get in touch with you and have their questions or problems solved without having to wait for an email response. It allows employees to continue on with their day and workload while consistently being available for customers through an easy to manage chat window. —Miles Jennings, Recruiter.com
7. Be Active on Social Media
The key to staying personal and delivering a "wow" customer experience is to become omnipresent on social media. When customers send you a direct message, your team needs to respond promptly. When a customer mentions you on Twitter, you should favorite the mention and retweet it. If a customer tags you in a post or mentions your brand (good or bad), you need to respond in real time and leverage whatever resources you have to thank the customer or make the situation right. Facebook and Twitter should become your highly personal customer support platforms—it's where your customers will end up if they can't get ahold of you because your systems are automated. It also allows your impeccable customer support to play out for the public to see. —Obinna Ekezie, Wakanow.com
8. Automate Touch-Point Reminders
At GoBrandgo, we have a very high-touch relationship with our clients. Part of what we do is initiate “random” touch points (for example: lunch, industry articles, referrals) every month. With many clients this is difficult to keep straight manually, so we leverage tools like Google Sheets with email reminders to let us know who and what to schedule for the next two months. We also use FollowUp.cc to have articles or introductions show back up in our inboxes at the appropriate time. Leveraging technology turns high-impact efforts that regularly would be deprioritized for more urgent issues into a simple, streamlined process that takes little effort and gets executed like clockwork. This makes our clients feel important. —Derek Weber, GoBrandgo
9. Empower Your Customers
Recent studies have shown that millennials spend more than five hours per day on their smartphones and on social media. An easy-to-use, attractive, and responsive mobile user experience combined with the power of data science can tailor the customer-service experience for each user, empowering them to achieve their goals at their own pace. This ultimately provides a better solution for most users than a phone call with a live operator. Not surprisingly, some of the best new tech startups offer a mobile-only experience. —Eddie Lou, Shiftgig
10. Use Trigger-Based Automatic Emails
Our business thrives on being personal. However, what may look personal can actually be automated. We use a trigger-based email marketing platform that sends automatic customer-service-related emails and followups that look as if they were written by customer-service reps themselves. For example, every time a call comes in, the caller is labeled with a specific tag that triggers a specific "personal" email. It can then send another a couple of days later based on your companies needs. —Raymond Kishk, Interstate Air Conditioning & Heating
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How Startup Job Titles Got Into Such A Sad State
Guest author Tony Stubblebine is the CEO and founder of Coach.me, an online productivity community and app.
I love the job title "growth hacker." It’s an indictment of the entire field of marketing.
How many marketers had to forget to do their job before we had to create a new title to remind them about the growth part?
“Now remember, we want these ads to be funny AND ALSO, this is the part we skipped last month, get people to try our product.”
A growth hacker is a marketer who also has responsibility for the results of their work.
The theme that’s driving new job titles is this: responsibility.People are starting to use the phrase "full-stack engineer."
Usually they think of the stack as being multiple technical layers, i.e. the engineer knows how to write code and install it on the server!
What I hope is that "full-stack engineer" comes to imply some nontechnical layers. What if you built code and then verified that people used it?
We actually do have a word for that type of engineer: hacker. A hacker writes just enough code to get the impact they are looking for.
Work With Impact
Hacker is the only job title that consistently implies having responsibility for impact.
I haven’t yet heard of a new job title for designers, although I think they need one. If you design products that are meant to be used, are you then a design hacker?
That’s crazy. But what do you call designing for Dribbble and designing for products sold by the Fortune 500? Those are two very different modes of design.
You always put something polished and pretty on Dribbble, but for the real products you’re in rapid iteration mode because each exposure to reality is teaching you that you don’t know shit. That’s design hacking.
Probably my least favorite characteristic to hear within a job description is "craftsmanship." Almost definitely the person is saying that the quality of the work is defined by the aesthetic values of peers, rather than by the happiness of the end user.
Hacking and craftsmanship are presented as being at odds. It’s Google culture vs. Facebook culture.
But sometimes, craftsmanship and hacking comes together into something that is both well made and well liked. Unfortunately, we don’t have a word that means that unambiguously.
I would want to say professional. A professional programmer needs to take responsibility for code that is well crafted and matters. But if I said that I was looking to hire for professionalism, I’d hear from a bunch of programmers who were really rigorous about writing unit tests.
Another word for this combination of skills is "unicorn," as if this is an impossibly rare and difficult standard. (Before it was used to describe highly valued startups, "unicorn" was frequently used in recruiting circles to describe hard-to-find candidates.)
One of my coworkers—an engineer, designer, founder, seamstress, public speaker, i.e. supposed unicorn—calls engineers with product design sense “the secret weapon of startups.”
Horning In On A New Career Path
But I hate the word "unicorn" because it implies that being able to take a project from idea through execution through launch is some sort of magical feat.
Yo, we’ve been talking for years about how making startups got a lot easier and cheaper. What are the career development implications of that?
If you can turn yourself into a software developer from one summer of cut-and-paste from Stack Overflow, then you can turn yourself into a unicorn in two summers.
In other words, unicorn could be a normal career path.
Now, I have a friend who is working on self-driving cars. I think that there is some hard computer science involved. This friend could be a software engineer specialist. That seems fine to me.
But everyone else? Especially in startupland, why don’t you just demand that every single person in your company become triple-threat unicorns? Design-> Construct-> Market.
You’ll get weird pushback from people who built their identities around being a specialist.
“Yo, I’m a 24-year old expert on this technology that was just released 4 months ago.” — Junior Developer
But actually, working all three areas—design, construction and marketing—makes the core competency stronger.
“Yes, maybe a map would be a good way for people to browse our products. I’ll put a simple version on the site this afternoon.” — Senior Developer
I’m thinking about a different coworker, a first-time marketer. This person is responsible for about half of our revenue — so very strong job performance. They also edit source code directly in GitHub (mostly copy), pull performance reports directly from the database (via Rails console connected to a Replica database), and design-hack marketing iterations based on A/B data.
That’s what a newly-minted unicorn looks like. All of that was learned on the job. In other words, you can train triple-threat employees. More importantly the rarity implied by the word "unicorn" results from our expectations of what’s possible, not any natural limit of human potential.
For the record, I am a rusty mid-level programer with an oddball specialty in regular expressions, a low-empathy, medium-utility, poorly aligned, strangely colored product designer, one-trick social-media growth hacker, a strong sales-closer with weak dollar sense, a PR hack, a small-team engineering manager, and an occasional CFO. In other words, I’m a startup CEO.
This article was originally published on Medium. It is published here by permission of the author.
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Can You Be The Next Uber? It's Easier Than You Think
Guest author Danny Boice is the CEO of Trustify, a service that allows anyone to hire a private investigator on demand.
Uber is so successful that the name is now synonymous and interchangeable with on-demand marketplaces that overturn the status quo and leverage technology at scale. Uber did not invent the concept of aggregating disparate supply and demand to create a business, but they did it in a loud, disruptive manner with cheap technology. Others are paying attention and trying to mimic their success.
Today, you don’t have to look far to see an “Uber for X” business. Why? In large part because there are so many cheap, simple, readily available building blocks for creating a marketplace business. While it has never been easier to cash in on the “Uberization” of services across our economy, the tools and strategies you use will make or break your business.
As the founder and CEO of Trustify, a company that seeks to shake up the industry of private investigators in much the same way that Uber did the taxi industry, I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. For any aspiring entrepreneur who wants to build their "Uber for X" business, here is a guide, complete with free or cheap technology that will prevent headaches and save time.
Step 1: Identify A Marketplace
On-demand marketplaces are delicate balancing acts. You must have significant consumer demand for what you're selling and freelance suppliers ready to meet the demand in an instant. Too many startup founders play the "wouldn't it be cool if" game. They then build a product they would personally like, only to find out the hard way that customers didn't want it, or the labor force wouldn’t play ball.
The Tool: QuickMVP.com
At Trustify, I used QuickMVP.com and the Lean Startup methodology at large to confirm that there was consumer demand for a "private investigators on demand" app before I did anything else. This proved invaluable, and sure enough, we had revenue our first day in business and have grown quickly month over month since we launched.
Just as Uber had to acquire drivers who would not get frustrated and defect, we had to ensure that private investigators were interested in a new, predictable revenue stream and a better way of servicing customers. This came fairly easy for us and PI demand continues to be immense.
Make sure you have the suppliers or else you'll find yourself in an interesting pickle where tons of customers want what you're selling but you have no suppliers to do the work. This is one of the many unique considerations of a business model where you don't truly control supply.
Step 2: Acquire And Manage Customers
Acquiring customers will always be a top priority. There's no point building your on-demand "Uber for X" app if nobody uses it. You also need to retain customers and turn their network into new customers.
The Tool: HubSpot
At Trustify, we use HubSpot, an inbound-marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. HubSpot is a great service for finding and managing customers, and they offer a startup discount.
Step 3: Manage Suppliers And Active Jobs
One of the most challenging aspects of building an "Uber for X" business is connecting disorganized consumer demand with disorganized suppliers. A good CRM with case-management capabilities can help you address this challenge.
Remember, "Uber for X" businesses are not difficult to launch technically. The challenges result from logistics and managing a cloud of suppliers that you don't actually employ.
The Tool: OroCRM
At Trustify, we use the open-source OroCRM platform to acquire and manage our private investigators and to manage and monitor all of our active jobs. We had considered licensing commercial salesforce services, but decided against them because it was too expensive and did not provide a silver-bullet solution that we couldn't find in an open-source alternative. Likewise, we considered building our own solution from the ground up. This would give us infinite extensibility, but it would require months to build and the additional labor.
Oro is built on Symfony, a framework of PHP components, so it is powerful, robust, and extensible. Oro is easy to use, and it has a strong API and developer framework for data interchange, integrations, and customer modules. Oro helped us to get to market quickly without a big investment up front.
Step 4: Communicate With Your Customers
Once you've connected your consumer with your supplier, it often behooves you to let the two speak directly. The challenge is in protecting yourself from suppliers cutting you out of the equation and working directly with the customer in future jobs. In order to prevent that, it is best to connect customers and suppliers via an intermediary that masks their mobile numbers but still allows them to communicate via SMS or text.
The Tool: Twilio
We use Twilio because it provides an SMS gateway, via an API, that allows the customer and the supplier to communicate without knowing each other’s phone numbers. Twilio SMS allows you to programmatically send, receive. and track text messages worldwide. There are dozen of options, but we chose Twilio because it is a large company that provides developers with tools to build SMS and VOIP applications via a Web API, using the standard web languages you likely already know.
Step 5: Ensure Transparency With Built-In Maps
When customers order an Uber, they can track their driver in real time. This works because Uber drivers have corresponding apps that track their exact location and send the info to Uber, who then sends it back to the customer in a nice display. When Uber first introduced this, it was a novelty. Now it's taken for granted—even Comcast has tested a system where its cable technicians on service calls appear on a map within its app.
Transparency is a priority at Trustify. Before we came on to the scene, PIs had a reputation of liberal billing, which didn’t sit well with customers.
That’s why we’re developing a mapping functionality that will show customers exactly where their private investigator is when he or she is “on the clock.” Our goal is to remove the unknown from the equation, so that both customer and investigator are happy.
The Tool: QuickBlox
We considered many commercial products, including Global Mapper SDK, Google Maps Geolocation API and the Here platform. Ultimately, we landed on QuickBlox because it does exactly what we need, costs nothing, and is easy to use.
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What Startups Can Learn From Jet.com's Awesome Video
This post appears courtesy of the Ferenstein Wire, a syndicated news service. Publishing partners may edit posts. For inquiries, please email author and publisher Gregory Ferenstein.
I didn't expect to spend 5 minutes watching a commercial for an e-commerce startup, let alone enjoy it enough to share it with friends. But Jet.com, a hot new competitor to Amazon, produced a delightfully entertaining commercial that proves the financial underpinning of ad-based businesses don't have to be annoying.
The company hired HBO "Silicon Valley" comedian Kumail Nanjiani to perform a 5 minute semi-interactive standup routine explaining the e-commerce service's best features.
See also: How Small Changes To Google Search Can Punch Your Web Traffic In The Face
"Five pounds of mayonnaise is a fundamentally ridiculous thing to buy," says Nanjiani, explaining how pricing algorithms allow for the warehouse-style pricing on groceries. "When you're done with it, you can live inside the jar—7 years from now."
I watched the entire ad. Voluntarily. Even more important, at the end, when Nanjiani pointed to embedded hyperlinks, I clicked to learn more about the company. The clip was basically a pitch deck disguised as a video, and it worked. Due to sheer entertainment value, I sat through the whole spiel and wanted to learn more.
Creativity Rules
Engaging videos are important not just for startups, but for the free Web as a whole. The media industry, social networks like Facebook, and countless others depend on ads for their livelihoods. The business they bring in pays for the tools users enjoy for free.
But click-through-rates for many types of advertisements are declining, forcing online businesses to become increasingly aggressive about their tactics. The online world is riddled with annoying popup ads, auto-play videos, and complicated tracking software that slow webpage load times to a crawl.
The rationalization: If people don't voluntarily consume ads, then companies must get attention by any means necessary.
That approach, to put it simply, is wrong-headed. There's a difference between videos that bully their way into your view, and ones that draw people in and inspire them to click or share. The latter is not only less annoying, but, as Jet.com's effort shows, can be highly effective. The video was so popular, it landed on the front page of Digg.com.
This is, apparently, the year of video marketing. Larger companies have some advantages, like more resources and bigger budgets. But young companies looking to grab attention don't have the layers of bureaucracy and approvals that all too-often bog down video production. They just need to use the same type of creative thinking that went into building their apps or developing their products, and let it loose for the cameras.
Here's to hoping that ads can be become less of an annoyance and welcome part of the Web.
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Why Apple Won't Allow Reviews for iOS 9 Yet
Bugs, incompatibilities and other weird things are so common in pre-release software, they're practically guaranteed—which is why Apple has now blocked users from leaving App Store reviews for its iOS 9 beta release.
Apple apparently wants to nip premature complaints in the bud, which seems very logical and reasonable. But it should have seen this issue coming ahead of time. Developers may be used to dealing with unfinished software, but everyday iPhone users may not be prepared for the unexpected problems that often go along for that ride.
What makes matters worse, according to developers: Some of those issues didn't even stem from programming errors in their own apps, but from iOS 9 itself. In a sense, it was like taking the fall for someone else. Apple has been focusing on improving iOS development, but if it's serious about supporting its app-making community, it shouldn't overlook such common-sense matters.
Apple Should Have Seen This Coming
When it comes to mobile apps, reputation can be everything. That's why App Store reviews and its popularity charts can wield so much power.
So naturally, some developers had a right to worry when they saw beta testers leaving one-star app reviews—particularly since some of those problems came from issues in iOS 9's code.
Apple executives must be monitoring social media more closely these days, first responding to Taylor Swift's plea for Apple Music royalties and now reacting to developer woes like this being tweeted out. Although it didn't officially announce any changes to its policy, word has spread that the company has indeed blocked beta testers from leaving reviews.
Apparently users of the iOS 9 beta now get this message if they attempt to leave an App Store review:
On the surface, the company appears to have acted quickly, striking reviews mere weeks after the iOS 9 beta opened up to the public. But dig deeper, and you'll realize that the issue goes back several months.
iOS 9 is the first major update to get the public beta treatment, but it's not the very first to take this route. Early reports that Apple would open up the iOS 8.3 beta culminated in the company pulling the trigger back in March, making it official.
Opening up early access probably looked like a great way to go. Not only can the tactic help drum up excitement among users, but this wider availability—which also wound up extending to Mac OS X—allows for a huge army of free beta testers. Too bad it also exposed Apple and its app developers to millions of users who don't necessarily understand what using beta software entails.
Better Late Than Never?
Clearly, Apple wants to make its iPhone and the apps that run on it as bulletproof as possible. Most recently, it expanded the limit on test devices—from 100 in total to 100 devices per Apple device type (iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, etc).
As for this latest change, it's not immediately clear if it the new policy will affect any previous reviews left by beta testers. But at least from now on, developers may get some much-needed breathing room to get their apps fully iOS 9 compatible, without fear of bashing.
Hopefully, it will also serve as a timely reminder to users that beta versions are not the same as polished, full releases.
The final version of iOS 9 should officially see the light of day when this year's iPhones are launched around September time. It brings with it a more proactive Siri, multitasking views for the iPad, and a News app that showcases a curated list of articles from selected publishers, among other new features.
Image courtesy of Apple
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A Nokia VR Headset Could Bring Pros And Cons For Developers
According to a Recode report, Nokia may be entering the virtual reality fray with a headset of its own. Its sources peg a product unveiling for the Finnish company next week at an exclusive event in Los Angeles.
See also: Virtual-Reality Films Could Put The Whole Industry In The Spotlight
From a VR perspective, a Nokia VR device would be another product for consumers to mull over and developers to possibly build for: The movement kicked off by the Oculus Rift has since attracted the likes of HTC/Steam, Samsung (whose device runs Oculus technology), Sony, Google and several smaller names, not to mention related projects by giants such as Microsoft. Altogether, that makes for a race to connect our faces to all sorts of digital realities.
For Nokia, it's a way back into hardware after the company was gutted by Microsoft, which bought the mobile arm in 2013. Not just any hardware, either. VR has become a trendy, frenzied area for tech makers. If Recode's story pans out, Nokia's play for virtual reality could be even more important—or at least more exciting—than any attempt it could make to dip back into the saturated smartphone market.
Opportunity Could Be Knocking On The Virtual Door
Nokia Technologies, the small hardware division left post-Microsoft, hasn't completely forgotten about mobile devices. The firm produced the Nokia N1 Tablet and still plans to resume its pursuit of smartphones at some point next year, though at least initially through a licensing deal.
See also: Sphericam 2 Wants To Put VR Filmmaking Within Anyone's Reach
But virtual reality represents a brave new world of hardware and software—one that's at its early stages, much less crowded and with huge potential for the future. It would be the perfect market for a reborn Nokia to innovate in.
Consider this: VR turned out to be just the thing to reinvigorate interest in HTC, the struggling handset maker that wowed attendees at Mobile World Congress and the Game Developers Conference with its HTC Vive VR goggles.
For now, little is known about next week's event or whatever device Nokia may show off there—including what support for it might look like. In other words, it's not clear if this rumored headset will work off an existing platform, or foist yet another on app developers.
Some Real Hassles In Developing Virtual Worlds
For the people who will build the immersive, virtual experiences users will enjoy, that matters a great deal. Coding apps multiple times to support various platforms and devices plagued mobile developers for years. Right now, it's not entirely clear if the same situation will ding the VR programming experience.
In a sprawling Reddit thread, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey confirmed that the Rift will be an open platform, so developers will be able to create apps without approval from Oculus itself.
Luckey also said he was hopeful that the same code could eventually work for multiple VR headsets in the future. However, it's going to take time, effort and collaboration that Oculus and others can't spare, while they ramp up their own products.
Now they may have one more to ponder, which could be both exciting and, depending on the details, possibly fraught.
If there's a glimmer of hope, it may be this: The broader virtual reality's appeal becomes, the more developer tools we'll see. After all, neither filmmakers nor advertisers will want the complexity of remaking multiple versions of their virtual worlds. In that sense, if a Nokia-branded set of goggles really are on the tarmac, then everyone involved in VR should hope they take off and inspire greater adoption.
Image courtesy of Nokia
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This Free Tool Can Tell If Hacking Team’s Exploits Crawled Into Your System
This week, IT security software firm Rook Security released a free tool that can sniff out malware leaked from Milan's Hacking Team, a clandestine group that sells surveillance and malignant software to governments, law enforcement and other private clients worldwide.
Ironically, the Italian firm that helps governments spy on citizens itself fell victim to a cyberattack earlier this month that spilled 400GB’s worth of data into the wild.
The attackers, who may have been ex-employees, released torrent files that span internal documents, source code, and emails with detailed customer information. Rook created its Milano tool to specifically sniff out the Hacking Team's exploits, and reign in threat that's now out in the open.
Why Stockpiling Malware Is A Bad Idea
“This breach has been very unique in nature and challenging for security technology vendors to obtain code samples to create signatures and patches, thereby leaving scores of systems potentially vulnerable to nefarious actors seeking to weaponize Hacking Team’s once proprietary tools,” said J.J. Thompson, CEO of Rook, in a press statement.
Rook has been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, specifically its Cyber Task Force in Indianapolis, to zero in on the HackingTeam’s exploits.
The firm's new tool, called “Milano,” digs into target systems, performing either a quick scan in a few seconds or a more comprehensive inspection taking up to an hour. The software hunts for “hashes" (files) connected to the Italian company's attack.
More than Hacking Team’s own confidential information is at stake. Over the course of its work, the company unearthed security holes in technologies ranging from Adobe to Facebook, and many others. Both companies patched the holes to the affected Flash plugin and Oquery tool, respectively.
Hacking Team had discovered or had been working on a variety of exploits for everything from software to online services to drone-based Wi-Fi surveillance tools. It often took advantage of "zero-day” vulnerabilities, which are holes that the vendors don’t even know they have. When zero-day attacks go out, they often do damage before companies even know what hit them.
What You Can Do About It
The reach of the group’s stash of work could be extensive, affecting developers and other partners, as well as users on a global basis.
Rook said it moved swiftly to respond to the threat. “After our Intelligence Team quickly deduced how the leaked code could be weaponized and used for harm, we immediately put a team in place to identify, analyze, and detect malicious files located in this data,” said Thompson.
The Milano download is available for download on this page. More from Rook about the tool, including a technical overview, can be found here.
Lead photo courtesy of Shutterstock
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How Eddystone Will Take Beacons Further Than Ever Before
Szymon Niemczura is the CEO and cofounder of Kontakt.io, a provider of microlocation tools. Kontakt.io is a Wearable World Labs company. ReadWrite's parent company, Wearable World, takes a stake in Wearable World Labs companies.
In its new Eddystone standard, Google has offered a complete package that solves proximity for developers in a number of ways. What should you do about it?
Eddystone is an open format from Google that takes the primary capability of beacons—their ability to broadcast a unique number via short-range Bluetooth signals—and extends it to an impressive degree. What does that mean? Let’s start by looking at what makes Eddystone different from iBeacon, the well-known beacon format from Apple.
- iBeacon is Android and iOS compatible, but native only for iOS
- Eddystone is Android and iOS compatible, and may be a native part of the upcoming Android M release
- iBeacon is simple and easy to implement
- Eddystone is flexible and opens new possibilities, but is more complicated to code
- iBeacon is not open source—the specification is in Apple's hands
- Eddystone is published openly on GitHub
- iBeacon broadcasts a unique ID number
- Eddystone broadcasts three different packets: a unique ID number, a URL address, and sensor telemetry
Take in the broader set of data you can broadcast with Eddystone-compatible beacons. You have the capacity to broadcast URLs directly to users’ smart devices, or take temperature or other sensor data from beacons and broadcast it to smart devices for a variety of uses.
Google has done more than that. This week, it also launched two new services: the Nearby API and the Proximity Beacon API.
The Proximity Beacon API is a Google-sized solution for a problem many other businesses have tried to solve: How does a developer manage all of the data involved in working with beacons and smart devices? They’re hardly the first ones to present a solution for this (every beacon manufacturer worth their salt has developed its own approach), but Google is making their own attempt at being the one API to rule them all.
The Nearby API is also a good answer to a hard problem: putting proximity features into smart devices at the operating-system level instead of at the app level. Through Nearby Messages and Nearby Connections, Google is looking to own the data flow from beginning to end.
The Internet Of Things Is Where The Money Is
Google knows that the Internet of Things is going to be where the money for the Internet is, in a few years’ time. In order to be there in the future, it is running hard at its target now.
For a young company like ours, in a space that’s attracting attention from companies as big as Google and Apple, you know you’re doing something right. It’s also kind of scary. Do we all really want to give Google even more data points about our lives?
Eddystone represents a big jump forward in what you can expect from the Internet of Things. For the Internet of Things to reach the kind of saturation point that it needs to transform our lives in the manner which the Internet itself did, it needs to be ubiquitous. By building a complete framework that expresses how you broadcast data from Bluetooth Low Energy beacons (Eddystone format), where this data resides (the Proximity Beacon API), and even how to present that data to smart devices (the Nearby API), there's one coherent framework for the Internet of Things to operate on.
This improves how developers will create experiences across platforms and makes it easier to create an endless stream of proximity data for our devices to interact with.
So how does this bring ubiquity? If, as many expect, Google natively supports Eddystone in Android M, developers will get the ability to push notifications to someone's smartphone through the Nearby API. Their apps can also take into account what the user's smart device has been doing (like searching for a given term or getting directions to a specific place) and present relevant data to users with virtually no effort on their part.
By putting a native integration into the most popular mobile operating system in the world, Google will create a huge demand for beacons and smart-device interactions, and will hugely increase the beacon installations around the world.
Here's an example. Imagine you're taking a trip. When you look up directions from an airport to a hotel after you rented a car, the Nearby API can be used to see if you've left the parking garage and automatically take care of most of the steps required for checking in. Upon arriving at the hotel, you're prompted to install the hotel's registration application to speed things up. It also sets the room you're going to be in to your preferred temperature, informs the hotel staff when you've parked in their parking lot, and can even have your phone serve as your room key. When you check out at the end of your stay, your phone passes by a beacon as you leave the hotel parking lot, checking the exact registered location with the Proximity API, and checkout is handled automatically. All of these features are proximity interactions that can be driven by a native integration with Android and beacons through Eddystone, the Proximity Beacon API, and the Nearby API.
What To Do About The Eddystone Opportunity
In any market, the main differentiator between the winners and the losers is that the winners correctly identify the major market trends and get ahead of them. The losers don’t even notice things have changed until they’re irrelevant. Blockbuster didn’t worry about Netflix—until too late. Taxi medallion owners didn’t worry about Uber—until too late. If your business is in a space where proximity is valuable—and that’s almost every business segment out there—now is the time to start thinking about what your plan to embrace proximity in your organization is.
If you don’t determine how your business can make use of proximity to better serve your clients, odds are someone else will, and by offering better service in a world where Internet of Things functionality is ubiquitous, they’ll get and keep clients faster than you will. Just like no one takes a business without a website seriously these days, it will soon be the case that no one takes a business that doesn’t have good proximity integrations seriously either.
As the leader of a company that manufactures beacons and beacon software—and who was one of the select few companies working with Google on this project as they got it ready for launch—I'm excited about what Google's Eddystone is bringing to the space. We hope it will help drive more sales of beacons, but that's almost incidental to the kind of experiences that it makes possible. It helps us by giving developers everywhere a language that they can use to construct something other than just another couponing app, and by raising expectations for what developers deliver, will increase the value of the Internet of Things to everyone who's looking at joining the space.
Lead photo by Jonathan Leung; other images courtesy of Kontakt.io
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How Small Changes To Google Search Can Punch Your Web Traffic In The Face
This post appears courtesy of the Ferenstein Wire, a syndicated news service. Publishing partners may edit posts. For inquiries, please email author and publisher Gregory Ferenstein.
When it comes to optimizing traffic to your website, plenty of reports would have you believe that social media is the only field worth plowing. But a new Adobe study shows that Google searches remain a dominant force—so much so, that even small tweaks to its algorithm can cause immediate and significant changes in Web traffic.
See also: Google Shows How Fast America Rushed To Learn About Gay Marriage
The company has a history of intentionally punishing or rewarding websites, based on whether they align with its vision or not. Most recently, it decided to lower rankings for websites that weren't mobile-optimized, such as those displaying large text that didn't wrap to fit smartphone screens.
The change wound up not being so little after all.
When Google, which owns 70.8% of the global search engine market, decided to focus on phone-friendly websites, the shift wound up undercutting traffic and raising the overall cost of website operation. The report calls it the Google “mobilegeddon.”
KO'ed By Mobilegeddon
According to the report, which tracked 5,000 websites [PDF], Google's shift shrank traffic to some sites up to 10% in just 2 months after it implemented the policy. That may not sound like much, but for high-volume sites, that can amount to a severe drop-off.
See also: Why The EU Hates Google: Its End Game Is Still A Single Search Result
Perhaps more importantly, the change made running mobile-unfriendly websites more expensive: Some website owners bought advertisements to make up for the resulting dip in organic traffic from Google searches.
Publishers didn’t just buy more ads; they wound up paying more per interaction, with the "cost-per-click" of ads rising 16%.
Everyone knows Google owns Web searches. (They don’t call it a search giant for nothing.) But scenarios like this illustrate how deep its influence can go.
Woe Be To Anyone Who Doesn’t Think Like Google
In past years, Google has tweaked its algorithm to punish content farms, such as Demand Media’s How.com. The site features popular headlines, but the tech company believes it lacks substantive information.
Demand Media's business, which depended on Google for much of its traffic, suffered immediately after the changes.
In the future, Google reportedly plans to prioritize websites that have scientifically validated facts, rather than speculation—especially when it comes to health-related information. This could have a big impact on fringe communities that lay outside popular opinion, like anti-vaccination activists. Granted, that can be either good or bad news, depending on your point of view.
But the move may also keep educational sites about Eastern medicine, holistic healing and alternative therapies in the shadows, away from the Google spotlight.
The numbers in the “mobilegeddon” report matter less than the fact it managed to quantify how Google can broadly influence the way we find information or media. Let it be a lesson: Those who want to curry favor with the search giant will align with their priorities with it.
In other words, woe be to any site that ignores Google’s priorities. You could be de-ranked into obscurity.
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Photo by Ari Bakker
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How Google's Latest Boosts Bluetooth Beacons
Bluetooth beacons, those low-power signals that announce location and other data to nearby devices, have broadcasted more hype than reality. That may change, thanks to a Google-backed initiative called Eddystone.
Eddystone, at its heart, is primarily a set of formats—agreed-upon standards for data transmission meant to simplify the cacophony of bits that beacons broadcast.
This won't solve all the problems beacons face—many of which, as Matt Asay recently pointed out, are business-related rather than technical. But Eddystone promises to remove some of the barriers that have made beacons a headache.
A Beacon Of Hope For Developers
To date, the beacon industry has been vertically integrated, with companies like Gimbal, the Qualcomm spinoff, providing hardware, software, services, and standards. Apple has its own iBeacon standard, focused on enabling beacons for iOS devices.
That works well in scenarios where retail chains like Macy's install beacons in their stores and design apps to talk to those beacons. There, only the retailer's in-house developers have to understand the data broadcasted by those beacons, and the rules and safeguards around its use.
See also: Bluetooth SIG Unveils Better, Stronger, Faster Bluetooth
That vertically integrated scenario starts to fall apart when beacon-equipped physical locations want to court a wide range of developers, while protecting the privacy of users. Now retailers and the managers of other public venues can simply publish specifications for the data their beacons broadcast—and developers can build all kinds of apps they never envisioned.
Think of this as the moment beacons become an open platform.
The need for this struck me when I thought back to South By Southwest Interactive, which experimented with beacons tied to the tech conference's official app. Features, like finding nearby conference attendees going to the same panel, were interesting, but were trapped within SXSW's app. It would have been far more interesting if SXSW had unleashed its community's creativity—if it had a way to announce specs for its beacons and welcome in third-party developers. That's the kind of thing Eddystone can fix.
"It’s been clear to me, because I’ve been deeply involved in this for a while, that it’s not a one- or two-person ecosystem," Matthew Kulick, a Google product manager who worked on Eddystone, told me. "You’ve got people who specialize in deploying beacons into people’s apps. It’s a relatively interesting ecosystem. That’s why we’re trying to offer tools and services here at multiple layers of the stack."
Stacking Up Tools
Those layers include application programming interfaces (see our API explainer), which allow app developers to associate a beacon with a physical location (the Proximity Beacon API) and extract data from nearby beacons, like a bus stop or an art exhibit (the Nearby API). They also include management tools for companies deploying fleets of beacons in physical locations.
Google isn't creating dashboards or other management services for beacon deployments, Kulick said—which is good news for the growing number of startups that offer them. Instead, the tech giant is hoping that Eddystone formats will help those companies simplify the task of setting up and maintaining large beacon installations in public spaces like malls, stadiums, and museums. In particular, an Eddystone telemetry format will allow beacons to communicate problems, like low battery levels or other hardware failures.
Eddystone also offers Ephemeral IDs, which lower the risk of privacy leaks by encrypting the ID, so that only authorized clients can use them, and changing them frequently. If widely adopted, that may alleviate some of the privacy concerns around beacons.
Google has partnered with beacon manufacturers including Bluvision, Estimote, and Kontakt.io, who are planning to support Eddystone. (Disclosure: Kontakt.io recently participated in Wearable World Labs, a startup accelerator run by ReadWrite's parent company, Wearable World. Wearable World holds stakes in Wearable World Labs companies.)
The significant omission from that group is Gimbal, a large beacon manufacturer that deployed devices in Apple Stores, among other retailers. Kulick said Google and Gimbal had not spoken about Eddystone. A Gimbal spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It's likely Apple will be reflexively hostile to a Google-backed initiative, so we may see Apple and Gimbal line up against Google and its Eddystone partners. That would be a shame, because beacons, on balance, make smartphones and mobile apps work better. A rising tide of open formats lifts all boats.
Photo by Intel Free Press
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Why Apple, Google, And Samsung Want To Lock You In With Wearables
Guest author Christian Cantrell is a developer, blogger and science fiction author.
Chances are you're either an iOS person or an Android person. Chances are also pretty good that whichever platform you’re currently using, you will remain faithful come upgrade time. Mobile devices, it turns out, are a little like political affiliation, ice cream preference, and James Bond fandom: Most of us find something we like, weave it into our identities, then vehemently defend it.
But every once in a while, much like our favorite Game of Thrones characters, someone unexpectedly changes sides. Maybe it’s screen size that tips the balance, or platform pressure from a group of new peers, or a particularly crafty salesperson with incentives to clear out aging inventory. Whatever the impetus, if you pay careful attention to smartphone metrics, although the majority of consumers remain devoted to their chosen clans, the tides do shift.
There are typically three parts to platform migration: getting accustomed to a new physical form factor, acclimating to a different user experience, and either navigating the perils of data migration yourself, or entrusting your entire digital life to someone else (usually either a smarmy sales rep, or a tech-savvy relative who can’t say no). Defecting from one mobile faction to another may be inconvenient, but it’s not yet impossible, which is why major platform players are inclined to steer their devices and services in a direction that increases not only their allure, but also the cost of abandonment. And an important new weapon of mass disincentive is wearables.
How Wearables Lock You In
Generally speaking, you have two types of wearables: platform-agnostic, and platform-dependent. Platform-agnostic wearables are devices that work with either iOS or Android (and in some cases, even Windows Phone). These include most fitness trackers like the Fitbit, and some smartwatches like the Pebble Time and Garmin Fenix 3.
Their main advantage is that you can pair them with whatever device you happen to have, and they usually function pretty consistently—or, at least, to within a tolerable variance.
Platform-dependent wearables, on the other hand, are those that will only work with one brand of device, and in fact, are better conceptualized as extensions of those devices rather than standalone gadgets. Canonical examples include Apple Watch, Android Wear devices and most of the myriad of wrist-top concoctions hatched by Samsung. The advantage of platform-dependent wearables is that they integrate with your phone’s OS more tightly, leveraging APIs and services that third-party devices might not have access to, and generally delivering a more seamless and better unified user experience. But the disadvantage of such a tight coupling is that you are more heavily invested in that one specific platform, limiting your options the next time you find yourself upgrade-eligible.
If the rumors about Google working on iOS support for Android Wear are true, it’s possible that a third category of wearables is about to emerge: platform-preferred. A platform-preferred device is one that can be considered “native” to one platform, but can function at some level when paired with the competition.
The problem with the prospect of pairing an Android Wear smartwatch with an iPhone is that—due to constraints that limit deep third-party OS integration, or simply fundamental discrepancies in platform features—you are likely to find yourself in a kind of purgatory where your experience is worse than if you were using an Android phone, and also not as good as if you were wearing an Apple Watch. Many iPhone users who try to use Google services exclusively are already familiar with this unfortunate dynamic.
For example, you won’t be able to access Apple Pay from a Moto 360 (or probably any other Android Wear device, current or future), nor will you be able to smart unlock your iPhone with your watch. As a result, the more invested you become in wearables, the more you are probably going to be tempted to bring your devices into more harmonious alignment.
For the truly platform devout, party-line conformity isn’t a problem. In fact, it’s practically a feature since it dramatically simplifies things like compatibility, upgrade decisions, and support. But for those of us who like to keep our options open—who want to ensure that some of the most powerful entities on the face of the planet continue to be motivated to compete for our fealty—the rise of wearables presents a pretty serious compatibility conundrum.
Google primarily makes money from services, so it makes sense to try to establish as much of a presence as possible across multiple platforms and devices. But for a company like Apple—one of the few companies left that still enjoys huge profit margins on hardware—deep device and platform integration isn’t just a convenience for customers. It’s a business imperative.
Why The Apple Watch Isn't Gunning For Market Share
On its face, it might seem like a mistake for Apple to inextricably link the Apple Watch to the iPhone. Why invest so heavily in an entirely new product category like smartwatches, but intentionally engineer them so that they will only appeal to a relatively small fraction of the total addressable market? Actually, to be more specific, only a fraction of a fraction since iPhones only make up roughly 18% of worldwide smartphone market share, and it appears only a subset of iPhone owners want an Apple Watch.
On the other hand, if the Apple Watch were compatible with any modern smartphone, while still offering additional features and functionality when paired with phones of their own noble lineage, the total addressable market would instantly skyrocket.
The only reasonable conclusion is that there is much more to be gained in platform acquisition and retention than there is in simply shipping and selling a few million more devices per quarter. Public companies need their revenue to be as predictable, consistent, and as steady as possible which means they require their customers to be as loyal (or locked-in—either way works) as possible.
They need such business and marketing constructs as customer and product pipelines; they need subscribers to services as opposed to isolated impulse buys; and they need the walls of their ever-expanding gardens to grow increasingly unassailable.
Of course, to not do everything possible (or at least legal) to retain customers would ultimately be irresponsible. Most of these companies would find themselves playing by different rules than their competition, putting them at a distinct disadvantage.
It's Going To Be A Bumpy Ride
As wearables become increasingly available, capable, and prevalent, I think it’s worth acknowledging the paradox many of them embody. In one sense, they are about freeing us from phones, PCs, and other less convenient technologies by making information and human connection much more readily accessible.
In exchange for freeing ourselves from one burden, we are agreeing to take on another. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t buy devices like smartwatches; it just means we should be fully aware of the fact that, as much as we’re strapping devices to ourselves, we are also strapping ourselves to our devices.
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Clinton’s Big, Confusing Speech (Kind of) Takes Aim At Uber and Airbnb
This post appears courtesy of the Ferenstein Wire, a syndicated news service. Publishing partners may edit posts. For inquiries, please email author and publisher Gregory Ferenstein.
Today, at a speech at the New School in New York City, Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton just laid out her economic vision—sort of. Her remarks included statements that could have implications for companies like Uber and Airbnb, but their ambiguity may leave the entire "sharing economy" industry scratching its head.
Clinton said she “vows to crack down on employers who misclassify workers as independent contractors,” calling the behavior “wage theft.” She also noted that the “so-called 'gig economy' offers exciting opportunities but raises hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.”
See also: A Silicon Valley Startup Explains Why It's Ditching Freelancers
She was referring to businesses powered by legions of independent contractors, a work model popular among some tech companies.
Clinton didn’t offer specifics, so it’s not clear whether she’ll be a friend or foe to such companies. That could make it hard for both startups and investors to plan for the future. Betting on businesses that hinge on the freelance model could be especially tough, if they’re met with resistance at the presidential level.
Policy Matters
A California commission recently ruled that Uber must pay employee-like benefits to a driver who worked what amounted to full-time hours for the company. If used as precedent, the decision could put the contractor model in jeopardy.
Already, some companies, like Shyp, have begun to reexamine their workforce policies. (Though Shyp denies it has anything to do with the ruling.)
The matter’s complexity belies the simplified rhetoric it seems to have taken on. On one hand, treating all full-time workers equally—with the same benefits and protections—sounds only fair. Then again, if such businesses are on the hook for expensive benefits, like health insurance and overtime pay, those challenges could prevent them from hiring as many people, or allowing for the flexible arrangements that some freelancers rely on.
Like with so many areas of technology, startups and those who would fund them need to pay attention to policy, as well as those who would make it. This is not likely to be the last time the freelance workforce becomes a talking point in a campaign trail increasingly focused on the economy and its effects on the middle class.
Well, on the flip side, there’s at least one candidate whose position on the “gig economy” seems clear: According to Politico’s Mike Allen, Republican candidate Jeb Bush is planning to ride an Uber during a San Francisco trip to showcase his support for Silicon Valley startups. It’s a transparent gimmick, but at the very least, there’s no confusion over which side he supports.
Clinton better offer specifics soon, lest she be branded an enemy of innovation.
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Lead photo by Marc Nozell
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9 Unexpected Pitfalls of Raising Capital (And How to Avoid Them)
Guest author Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council.
Raising rounds of venture capital is the goal for many companies: An influx of cash is certainly the fastest way to jump-start your growth and start hitting key milestones more quickly. But venture capital isn't a silver bullet, and it's not the right fit for every company.
To better understand the benefits and drawbacks, I polled nine successful entrepreneurs from YEC to get their thoughts on some of the biggest pitfalls to be wary of, and advice on how to avoid them entirely.
1. You Could Give Away Too Much Too Soon
It is extremely sexy to be a “venture-backed” startup. This leads many entrepreneurs to seek venture capital as soon as humanly possible. This, however, is not always in the best interest of the entrepreneur. The longer you can wait to accept investment, the better. A track record will increase your valuation and thereby decrease the percentage of the company that you need to sell to raise the requisite capital. Remember, venture capital companies are in the business of making a return on their investment; act accordingly. —Matthew Moisan, Moisan Legal
2. It's Hard to Maintain Culture and Quality
When you're tight on money, it's easy to be rigorous in your hiring process; a bad hire can be a costly affair. Conversely, after a new round of funding, the pressure to grow quickly may lead to a decrease in the quality of new hires as you say yes to the borderline people you used to reject. The result could be a dilution of the company's culture as the droves of new hires can't assimilate quickly enough.
Two suggestions:
1. Stay disciplined in your hiring process. Make sure you have your long-term goals in mind. Ask if this person will be a great employee in three years.
2. Codify your company values and devote a significant portion of your onboarding process to conveying culture. —AJ Shankar, Everlaw
3. It Can Lead to Excessive Dilution
With a new round of financing, the true value of your business does not necessarily increase. Once you raise money, the expectations for your company skyrocket. If you are unable to grow bigger, faster, you might find that you'll have to give up more equity to investors under far less favorable terms. At some point, your equity is diluted so much that you are no longer motivated to grow the business, since you'd get a minuscule percentage of the upside during an exit. Capital helps, but be very careful about how much you raise and when you do it. — Danny Wong, Grapevine
4. It Can Lead to Overspending
Raising money provides a great jolt of energy to a company. You finally have the resources to execute your plans: hiring a CTO, getting that PR firm, spending money on Facebook advertising. Other expenses pop up, too—maybe a small team or year-end bonus that you wouldn't have given otherwise. Certainly a bump in salaries. You hire that one extra person who wasn't on your radar. While you're managing the bank account closely, the team only knows that there's a big amount in there. They don't think about the monthly burn and they might start expecting daily lunch, nicer team events, or more swag. Manage your team's expectations and only spend on what matters. —Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches
5. It Can Cause Premature Scaling
One fatal side effect of raising capital is premature scaling, which is when startups overspend too early on expensive marketing campaigns, hiring sales people, and building the company before customer adoption. According to a report from Startup Genome, premature scaling is the No. 1 cause of startup death. Raising capital often misleads first-time entrepreneurs into assuming that their business model has been validated. Although raising VC is a milestone, it is not an indicator of success. It's important for founders to realize that only when they have a scalable business model combined with a repeatable sales process can they be certain that they have a sustainable business. —Vishal Shah, NoPaperForms
6. It Opens the Door for External Influences
Most entrepreneurs realize that raising capital means losing some control and ownership of their company. Not as obvious is how influential these new owners can be. So while you may maintain control through a voting majority, you might get pushed and pulled in directions you might not otherwise have gone. For example, I've seen small companies go public prematurely as their initial investors demanded an exit strategy. Disaster always ensued, but in each case the pressure was great to do so. Keep in mind that while on the surface your goals may seem to be aligned, your funders may at times have their own best interest in mind, which don't always coincide with the company's. —Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net
7. You May Improperly Value Your Time
One of the largest problems that inexperienced entrepreneurs are not aware of when raising capital is that the funds are not always serious when investors schedule meetings and begin diligence—all of which can suck up critical time for an entrepreneur. Raising money is a full-time job and can pull any founder or CEO away from managing their team, executing on customer contracts, and refining the product in the market. A good way to solve this problem is to create a clear sense of urgency with funds so investors do not request meeting upon meeting upon meeting. This forces the investor to best utilize the founder's time and enables founders to cherrypick the best place to focus their energy. —Zoe Barry, ZappRx
8. It Can Lead to Excess Scrutiny
Entrepreneurs sometimes chase investor dollars without clearly identifying why they need the money and how they will use it to generate profits. In so doing, they court disaster. Anybody that gives you a dollar will want to have a say in your company. They will scrutinize how the money they gave you is being spent. If it produces profits, life is good. If it’s misappropriated (fails to produce a noticeable bump in productivity, brand awareness, or profits) the bright lights, critiques, lawyers, and forensic accountants will pay you a visit. To avoid this scenario, entrepreneurs and investors need to have honest discussions and establish measures of accountability and performance. —Souny West, Chic Capital
9. Emotion Will Run High (So Hire a Lawyer)
I know you want the money to execute on your dream, but don't let the emotional supercharge take over. Make no mistake that investors want one thing: more money as fast as possible. And money is valued more highly than your blood, sweat and tears. Investors are extremely sophisticated and there are a lot of strange clauses that make their way into contracts. Avoid regret later and hire a lawyer to help you negotiate a fair deal and explain to you exactly what you are signing. Lawyers are expensive, but you'll be glad you spent the few thousand dollars now rather than realize a few years from now that the fine print cost you a lot more. —Jeff Denby, Pact Apparel
Photo by giuseppe
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