kottke.org posts about business
The personal lives of CEOs have come under scrutiny lately because what a CEO does in his off-hours seems to have a bearing on how well his company’s stock performs. “It found that on average, the stocks of companies run by leaders who buy or build megamansions sharply underperform the market. The researchers don’t claim to know why. They theorize that some of these executives might be focused more on enjoying their wealth and less on working hard.” (via mr)
Also, I loved that the WSJ published the nickname of “Frederick E. ‘Shad’ Rowe Jr.” Shad Rowe!
A few years ago, I posted an entry about a Manhattan coffee and donut vendor who let his customers make their own change.
When an environment of trust is created, good things start happening. Ralph can serve twice as many customers. People get their coffee in half the time. Due to this time savings, people become regulars. Regulars provide Ralph’s business with stability, a good reputation, and with customers who have an interest in making correct change (to keep the line moving and keep Ralph in business). Lots of customers who make correct change increase Ralph’s profit margin. Etc. Etc. And what did Ralph have to pay for all this? A bit of change here and there.
I get my occasional donut in another part of town now, but I noticed something similar with my new guy. Last Friday, the woman in front of me didn’t order anything but threw down a $20, received a coffee with two sugars a moment after she’d stepped to the window, and no change. As they chatted, I learned that the woman pays for her coffee in advance. The coffee guy asked her if she was sure she owed today. “Yep,” she replied, “It’s payday today; I get paid, you get paid.” Handy little arrangement.
Several of the web’s most popular sites (Digg, YouTube, MySpace, CNN) are using the mullet strategy (business up front, party in the rear) for content to attract both boisterous users and well-heeled advertisers. “They let users party, argue, and vent on the secondary pages” — that’s the party in the rear — “but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp” — the business up front.
An update regarding Harry Potter and the Phantom Delivery: Amazon issued me a refund for the book. I’m close to the end of the book…I hope it ends as well.
Back in April, I pre-ordered Harry Potter 7 from Amazon. They guaranteed delivery on its release date, Saturday July 21 before 7pm or they would refund the cost of the book…the details of that offer are here. All day Saturday until shortly after 7pm, the UPS tracking information indicated that the package containing my copy of the book was “IN TRANSIT TO FINAL DESTINATION”, which is UPS-speak for “the UPS guy/gal who will deliver your book does not yet have it in his/her possession”…the magic phrase for that action is “OUT FOR DELIVERY”.
At some point after 7pm, the UPS status page updated to say that a notice was left at 3:36 pm, implying that a delivery attempt was made and no one was home to receive it. (Amazon’s tracking page says that UPS told them “Delivery attempted - recipient not home”.) No such notice was left. My door buzzer did not ring at 3:36 pm (I was home all day on Saturday) and the doorman of the building next door who takes the deliveries for our building when people aren’t home reported no notice or delivery attempt. Here’s the complete tracking info from UPS:
Location // Date // Local Time // Description
NEW YORK, NY, US // 07/21/2007 // 3:36 P.M. // NOTICE LEFT
NEW YORK, NY, US // 07/20/2007 // 12:00 P.M. // IN TRANSIT TO FINAL DESTINATION
NEW YORK, NY, US // 07/19/2007 // 4:51 P.M. // DESTINATION SCAN
NEW YORK, NY, US // 07/19/2007 // 4:50 P.M. // ORIGIN SCAN
US // 07/19/2007 // 1:34 P.M. // BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
Maybe I’m lying about being home or maybe the person trying to deliver the package made an honest mistake, but it’s curious that a delivery attempt could have been made when the package was not even “OUT FOR DELIVERY”. Here’s what I think happened. I think UPS’s network was overwhelmed by Amazon’s Potter-volume in some parts of the country and they had no way to deliver all those packages. (The forums for the book at Amazon and Google Blog Search are full of similar complaints from others…warning, spoilers! UPS even offloaded some of the volume to the USPS for “last-mile” delivery.) So, UPS just marked all of those packages they had no intention of delivering as “oops, we missed you, you must have been out”.
Let’s go back to Amazon’s guarantee, which states that the refund “does not apply if delivery is attempted, but no one is available to accept the package”. Amazon would be pretty angry with UPS if they cost them a bunch of money due to refunds and, more importantly, the loss of a bunch of customer goodwill…maybe Amazon would switch a larger portion of their formidable package output to another carrier, for instance. So UPS intentionally misclassifying those deliveries covers their ass with Amazon and covers Amazon’s ass with regard to the refund.
My copy of the book from Amazon will be here sometime today (UPS doesn’t deliver on Sunday), by which time I’ll already have mostly finished the copy I bought at Barnes & Noble about 7:30 pm Saturday evening. The extra $20 isn’t a big deal to me and neither is having to wait all day to start in on the book. But this book was a *huge* deal for Amazon (2+ million pre-orders out of a first printing of 12 million) and for their customers who desired their instant Potter gratification. Amazon should be hopping mad at UPS over this; UPS shifted the blame from themselves to Amazon’s customers…who are in turn going to blame Amazon, doubly so because Amazon probably won’t might not issue refunds for those “missed” deliveries because they don’t need to. A customer service-oriented company like Amazon shouldn’t take this kind of crap from their shipping vendor…incidents like these will erode customer goodwill and eventually their customer base, the retention of which is one of Amazon’s stated primary goals.
Update: I’ve asked Amazon for a refund and am waiting on their reply. From the emails I’ve gotten from readers so far, it sounds like Amazon is being liberal in the refund policy, as one would expect.
Update: No word from Amazon yet, but the USPS (not UPS) delivered my book Monday morning. It had a UPS sticker on it with instructions to the Post Office to deliver it to me. No update on the UPS tracking page that its been delivered. I’m tempted to leave it unopened in its custom Amazon box as a collector’s item. Maybe I can get JK Rowling and Jeff Bezos to sign it.
Update: Amazon issued me a refund for the book.
CEOs must be designers, not just hire them. “Design is no longer just about form anymore but is a method of thinking that can let you to see around corners. And the high tech breakthroughs that do count today are not about speed and performance but about collaboration, conversation and co-creation.”
McSweeney’s is opening a small design shop called Timothy McSweeney’s Design House to “tackle smaller jobs where the personal touch is welcome”. If I wanted a job, this is one of the places I’d apply. (via quipsologies)
In the battle of Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) vs. Steve Jobs (former CEO of Pixar and current Disney Board member), Steve Jobs (Apple) was the clear winner. Apple sold an estimated 500,000 iPhones this weekend — grossing somewhere between $250 million and $300 million — while Pixar’s Ratatouille grossed $47.2 million.
Update: Some more interesting iPhone statistics, including Apple’s stock price increase since the iPhone was announced ($32 billion increase in market cap) and that iPhone was mentioned in 1.25% of all blogs posts over the weekend. (thx, thor)
Update: Apple’s stock price went down this morning in heavy trading. I guess Wall Street wasn’t so over the moon for the iPhone?
How Whole Foods is using longer checkout lines to ensure faster checkouts in its Manhattan stores. “Whole Foods executives spent months drawing up designs for a new line system in New York that would be unlike anything in their suburban stores, where shoppers form one line in front of each register. That traditional system, they determined, would take up too much space and could not handle the crowds they expected here.”
Julian Dibbell on Chinese who farm gold (and perform other for-pay duties) in online games like World of Warcraft. “Nick Yee, an M.M.O. scholar based at Stanford, has noted the unsettling parallels (the recurrence of words like ‘vermin,’ ‘rats’ and ‘extermination’) between contemporary anti-gold-farmer rhetoric and 19th-century U.S. literature on immigrant Chinese laundry workers.” Dibbell’s Play Money was a great read and deserves wider readership than it originally received.
For the past few years, the workforce at Best Buy has been transitioning from a “how much you work” model to a “how much work you get done” model, with promising initial results. “Hence workers pulling into the company’s amenity-packed headquarters at 2 p.m. aren’t considered late. Nor are those pulling out at 2 p.m. seen as leaving early. There are no schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles. Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It’s O.K. to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid.”
NY Times on the rise of OpenTable, which wasn’t exactly an overnight success. To me, the thing that pushed OT over the edge toward acceptance wasn’t so much the public-facing business (let your customers make reservations online) but the software that the restaurants were provided to keep better track of their customers and their habits. It used to be a big deal that Four Seasons Hotels tracked the preferences of all their customers but now any restaurant with the OT system can easily do the same. “Doug Washington, a co-owner of Town Hall, said the notes were not just helpful, they are occasionally indispensable. Next to the name of one regular, who has a habit of bringing in women he is not married to, is an instruction to make sure the man’s wife has not booked a separate table for the same day.”
Long profile of Steve Jobs on the eve of his fourth act written by John Heilemann, who is one of my favorite technology/culture writers. I’m dying to find out what past Jobs-championed Apple product the iPhone will most resemble: the Lisa or the iPod?
Digg policies from Lifehacker and Gizmodo, which state that the only Digg-worthy posts of theirs are those with “original content, new reporting, treatment, or photos” because “it’s not fair when we get the Digg for someone else’s work.” This seems inconsistent on the part of Gawker Media. One of their main innovations (if you’d like to call it that) regarding the blog format was the idea of linking to things in such a way that readers don’t need to actually leave the site to get the full (or nearly full) story. Why let all those readers (and the associated ad revenue) go to some other site to read the story…they might never return. Due in part to Gawker’s influence as first mover in the pro blog space, this practice is unfortunately standard procedure for most similar blogs.
Bad news from McSweeney’s: their distributor filed for bankruptcy late last year and now they’re out $130,000:
As you may know, it’s been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney’s included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 — actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn’t hit right away, but it’s hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there’s really no way to absorb a loss that big.
To try and make up the gap, they’re having a big sale and are also auctioning off some “rare items” like original art from Chris Ware, proofs from issues, signed copies of things, a painting by Dave Eggers of George W. Bush as a double amputee, and so on. In addition to Ware and Eggers, there’s stuff from David Byrne, Nick Hornsby, and Spike Jonze. I’ve long admired McSweeney’s for their editorial and business approach…it would be a shame to see them go out of business because of another company’s financial difficulties. So give them a hand by purchasing something, if you’d like.
Marc Andreessen on how to hire good people. Don’t just hire smart people or people with degrees…look for drive, curiosity, and ethics. “Pick a topic you know intimately and ask the candidate increasingly esoteric questions until they don’t know the answer. They’ll either say they don’t know, or they’ll try to bullshit you. Guess what. If they bullshit you during the hiring process, they’ll bullshit you once they’re onboard.”
Scott Rosenberg quotes Steve Ballmer as saying that only 4 out of the first 30 Microsoft employees were good…the rest “weren’t as good — they just weren’t pushing as much”. Here are some of the schlubs in question. Ballmer pushed pretty well, I guess…he showed up late to the party and, somewhat controversially, got $15 billion out it.
Why are so many web entrepreneurs so young? Because the beginner’s mind is an advantage that the young have and the old can’t easily reclaim. “The principal asset a young tech entrepreneur has is that they don’t know a lot of things. In almost every other circumstance, this would be a disadvantage, but not here, and not now. The reason this is so (and the reason smart old people can’t fake their way into this asset) has everything to do with our innate ability to cement past experience into knowledge.” Wisdom is a bitch.
Big-seed marketing. Instead of relying purely on viral marketing or mass media marketing alone, big-seed marketing combines the two approaches so that a large initial audience spreads the marketing message to a secondary audience, yielding more overall interest than either approach would have by itself, even if the message isn’t that contagious. “Because big-seed marketing harnesses the power of large numbers of ordinary people, its success does not depend on influentials or on any other special individuals; thus, managers can dispense with the probably fruitless exercise of predicting how, or through whom, contagious ideas will spread.”
Update: Full paper with data is here. (via atomiq)
Curious story of what’s up with JPG Magazine, a photography mag founded by Heather Champ and Derek Powazek. Derek formed a new company (8020 Publishing) with a friend (Paul Cloutier) and that company bought JPG. Then, says Derek, “Paul informed me that we were inventing a new story about how JPG came to be that was all about 8020. He told me not to speak of that walk in Buena Vista, my wife, or anything that came before 8020.” The founding and the first 6 issues of JPG were removed from the site and Derek left his company. More from Heather and on MetaFilter, including this nice sentiment: “The great thing about a labour of love is the love, not the labour.”
The new postal price restrictions on thickness and whether the envelope is “flat-machinable” or not seem like the USPS passing along internal problems to their customers, the same crappy stuff that banks and the airlines do. Keep the process simple…we don’t care about your technology can and can’t do. Figure it out.
Matt Haughey recently launched a new blog about “doing business online” called fortuitous. In his introductory post, Matt describes his job as “professionally screwing around on the web”, which is an accurate description of my current vocation as well.
The long-term success of films isn’t always determined by how they did at the box office. Traffic made $124 million at the box office in 2000 while Requiem for a Dream made only $3.6 million ($9.50 of which was mine), but Requiem gets rented 33 percent more from Netflix than Traffic. ‘It’s almost impossible to go onto someone’s MySpace page now and not find a reference to [the Coen brothers’] “The Big Lebowski” or [Terry Gilliam’s] “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”’ - two movies that caused barely a ripple in the theaters.”
Big Box Watch is a map that displays future big box store openings in the US. The site currently tracks Best Buy, Home Depot, Ikea, JCPenney, Kohl’s, Lowe’s, Target, and Wal-Mart.
A Japanese temple building company goes out of business after 1428 years. Kongo Gumi was founded in 578 and was the “world’s oldest continuously operating family business”.
World map of where Wal-Mart gets its products. China dominates, Russia and most of Africa doesn’t exist, and Europe is tiny. (via fakeisthenewreal)
Regarding the recent Google news (YouTube, DoubleClick, Dodgeball), Fred Wilson tells us it’s time to pour a little malt liquor on the ground and say goodbye to the old Google, the Google that we all know and love, and welcome the new Google, a big company, for better or worse. “Google’s lawyers are going to become their most important asset and when lawyers are more important than engineers to a company, you lose.”
Dodgeball founders leave Google and that leaves Dodgeball probably dead. Then why did Google buy Dodgeball exactly? Not for the founders…they left. Not for the tech. To build it up into a profitable company? (Nope, they didn’t put any resources into it.) To kill it before some other company (Yahoo, Microsoft) got their mitts on it? For the PR value? Why did they even bother?
Update: Official thumbs-down announcement here. “It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I’m actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again.”
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