Tag Archives: technology

January 30, 2019 · 4:23 pm

Lucky Or Good

I have a rant for you today and I’m going to say upfront that it is not political in nature although as you read it you might think that it’s my intention to make it so.

One of the things I’ve noticed in business is that we tend to put people who are rich or successful (and usually both) on a pedestal. We assume that they know a heck of a lot more than we do because they are rich or successful. We listen to them give speeches and prognosticate on business and the world. The reality is that more often than not they’re more the beneficiaries of “right place, right time” than they are smart.

You think I’m exaggerating? Let’s take a few examples in tech. The founders of Google at one time said they’d never take ads because it might throw in to question the purity of their search results. It took a non-founder, a person you probably have never heard of, to convince them that great computer science is one thing but running a business that has investors is quite another. Advertising is what makes Google profitable. Are the founders smart or lucky?

Think of all of Google’s products or Facebook’s for that matter. Besides the “core” product, what have they invented that demonstrate that they’re not just a one-trick pony? YouTube? Instagram? What’s App? Sorry, all acquisitions. Most of the features or products they have were created elsewhere and either bought or copied. Think about how many failed products or features those companies have produced. I’d suggest that they, like many in tech, we much luckier than they were good and yet we venerate many of them as if they were Einstein.

Then there are those in business who were born on third base. These are the ones who came from money and often are working in a family business. The positions they’re in can command respect but unlike those people who advance into those positions via hard work and demonstrating talent, these folks are often unsuited for jobs several levels below where they are. I’ve encountered several of them in my career and did my best to avoid them in business dealings.

Would I rather be lucky than good? I often say exactly that, mostly after a wayward golf shot hits something and ricochets back into a good spot. Studies have shown that we can create luck by being extroverted, observant, and positive It also helps to have perfect timing as many of those who got rich in the early internet days did. The really smart ones got out, recognizing that when a rogue wave throws you out of the ocean rather than drowning you, use the dry land to run away.

This isn’t prompted by anything other than a two-hour car drive which afforded me some time to think. I’ve been both lucky and, I think, pretty good. Life isn’t a zero sum game and I don’t begrudge these charlatans their success. I do, however, wish some of them would stop confusing their success or the jobs they hold with who they are as people and what skills they possess. Hopefully, none of us are doing that, right?

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January 14, 2019 · 10:34 am

How Your Dog Food Tastes

I saw something in an article this morning that had me nodding my head in agreement and I thought it was something that all of us should think about. It was a piece about how the growth of marketing technology companies has stalled and it gave as a reason this:

There is a long list of sales and marketing tech vendors that have had their growth stalled for a number of reasons: failure to find a use case with broad market appeal, product based on a feature, or quite simply couldn’t execute.While these companies might have received more funding two or three years ago, in today’s climate VCs are not replenishing their offers. Today, there are big rounds for those with momentum and a big story, or no funding for those that don’t.

In other words, many of these companies have been able to attract a client base but the results those clients were expecting haven’t been there. That’s a critical thought when you’re making promises, isn’t it? I can’t begin to count the number of tech companies I’ve spoken with over the years that made huge promises but failed to deliver.

I wrote about this several years ago. Way back in 2011, I wrote:

I can’t tell you how many presentations I’ve sat through for companies that were going to grow my revenues 10x but wouldn’t take 90% of the first year’s incremental revenues as a fee.  Big red flag.  Then there were the companies who promised great service but wouldn’t sign service level agreements that legally obligated them to provide that great service.

So at the risk of repeating myself, I’m going to repeat myself (this time from 2016):

Nothing like eating your own dog food, right? But that’s a critical part of serving our customers well and each of us needs to do that on a regular basis. When was the last time you tried to go through checkout on your own online store? How was the experience? How about trying to return what you purchased or put in a call to your customer service department? My guess is that none of your top managers have done any of those things in a while.

You can only grow so big if the results aren’t there. If you haven’t explored those results with your customers along with the time, effort, and expense it took them to achieve those results, you’re not doing your job. More importantly, you’re setting your growth curve on a downward course because nothing in business happens in a vacuum these days. People talk.

One thing I’ve learned in consulting on franchises is the importance of what we call validating the franchise. It’s when a prospective owner speaks with current owners to find out if the representations made by the franchisor are accurate and complete. It’s kind of like checking references when you hire except the FTC requires the franchisors to disclose the names and phone numbers of all their current franchisees so you can’t control with whom a candidate speaks. That means the results have to be there, pretty much across the board.

When was the last time you spoke to your customers about their results from using your product or service? If you have to think about it, it has probably been too long. Food for thought?

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May 21, 2018 · 12:16 pm

We Are At An Advertising Turning Point

Unless you never use the internet, you’re aware that something is happening in the next few days because every service and site you use is updating their terms of use. You may be wondering why you’re getting lots of emails to that effect or why sites are putting large banners to that effect on their homepage. It’s due to the start date of the GDPR. In case any of you don’t run digital businesses (which I suspect is most of you), the GDPR is a regulation that pertains to privacy and data protection for all citizens of the E.U. Because the internet is a global thing, many digital publishers and stores are extending the protections of the GDPR to their non-European consumers as well. I, for one, am very glad even though there is a good chance that it will force the ad tech business to change dramatically. It’s a big effing deal and we are at a turning point.

Let me preface this by saying that I got fed up with the ridiculous amount of tracking going on quite a while ago. Like many people, I think that tracking someone without their permission or a court order is wrong. I think it slows down the user experience and unbalances the trade of content for attention toward the publisher since tracking me beyond your content is infringing on some other entity’s territory. Besides that, it’s creepy. I don’t want to see a few weeks’ worth of ads for an item I looked up for a friend in which I have zero interest. I don’t care about ad personalization, frankly, although I know for many people it’s a much better user experience. I think only showing me ads for products and services that you think I might care about excludes product discovery and I have proof in that I’ve made many purchases based on content-based marketing but very few based on served ads.

I installed a browser extension called Cookie Auto Delete which wipes out cookies as you surf. That’s on top of Ghostery which blocks ads and other trackers. Because of that, I don’t see ads other than those targeted to things such as geography that don’t require cookies (actually, I don’t see a lot of ads period). Am I hurting my friends in digital publishing? I don’t think so since most of the cookies placed these days are not by publishers but by ad tech services that I think undermine the value of great content. They value eyeballs, not what lures the eyeballs.  Ads served directly by publishers and embedded in their content value the content. They’re not based on your ability to track me.

Am I overly sensitive? Not when I’m joined by billions of people who have installed ad blockers. If ad tech was doing a great job, that wouldn’t be happening. Would GDPR be necessary if ad tech companies respected consumers’ privacy? Of course not and I think it’s going to cripple any business that doesn’t respect its customers enough to work in the customer’s best interest. Tracking them like Big Brother doesn’t do that, does it?

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