jonsteinberg

Embracing imperfection and getting comfortable with it is something
that's taken me along time.

Once you realize that "great products are products that ship" (Steve
Jobs?) and that in software businesses the product is never "done,"
you recognize that waiting for perfect is not an option. In fact, even
if you were to wait for perfect, it would change by the time you got
there.

With that said, you need to shift your mind from "everything will be
great when things are perfect" to "by definition there is no perfect."

You can always look ahead to something: graduation, when your kids are
out of diapers, when the code base is migrated, but there is always
something next.

But it should occur to you that there is only the now and the next,
you only live in the now, and there is always a next next.

I've taken a 6am Monday morning train into the city 3 out of the past
4 weekends. This allows for great Sunday nights will Jill, Edie, and
our new baby Cooper; and I'm an early to bed early to rise kind of guy
so waking at 5am-ish is no issue.

However, this requires taking a taxi. All three times the taxis have
been 10 to 15 minutes late. Today I used an earlier than needed pickup
time to ensure I arrived in time for the train. The taxi was 15
minutes late.

When I commented on this to the dispatcher and driver, they were
unapologetic claiming the guy before me was late. They went so far as
to say "there's nothing they could do."

From an operations standpoint the solution is simple: more taxis or
fewer bookings. What they should have said is that the current setup
is more profitable, and that customer dissatisfaction is unlikely to
harm the business. Taxis are not a long lifetime customer value
business.

From the three services I've used, the industry in East Hampton
appears in coordination to abide by these principles. No one respects
pickup times, so everyone can profit maximize at lower service levels.

Such tacit coordinations in fragmented industries would be very
interesting were they not so infuriating.

The only risk is that a vicious cycle occurs. More and more people
like me give false early pickup times and on the rare occasion the
taxi arrives at the appointed time, I'm not ready resulting in
backups. Perhaps that was the cause of my delay today.

The opportunity here is for a higher service, higher price provider:
East Hampton On-Time Taxi. It could probably charge a 50% premium
justifying fewer bookings.

Either way, in frustration there are always learnings and logic.
Things are seldom the way they are because there is "nothing to be
done."

Especially when it comes to being late and poor service, active choice
is almost always at play.

A good poker player is evaluated over the course of weeks, months, years, and a career or playing. You lose some hands and some games, but this doesn't necessarily mean you made the wrong calls. With that said, each hand is a universe in and of itself. When you're playing hand, your chip stack and the stacks of those around you may influence your play, but you're mostly playing a hand. It's the opposite of chess, where you're supposed to be thinking many many moves ahead. In the poker hand, you consider your position, consider how your play may influence the perception of you in the game, but you're predominantly playing the hand. I think it is poker and not chess that reflects the current realities of business today.

You need to play each product, sales, or business development decision as a hand that exists in the here and now. You can be influenced by the historic play of your partners, employees, and counter parties. You're also smart to consider how your play in this hand will influence the perception of you by partners, employees, and counter parties in the future. So to drill the caveats: business and life is a multishot game, so you do need to play each hand with consideration of long term ethics and reputation. But with all those caveats, focusing on future hands and not the current hand is a misallocation of your mental energy.

The current hand is what matters, and last I checked, you only live in the present, not the past and future. The alternative would be to focus on moves ahead. Overly focus on how your current sales strategy or the business development deal that is on the table will play out moves ahead. Playing chess is a mistake because the board will be changed by the time the future arrives. Far from the hyperbole of the bubble in the 90's (i.e. "if you have a business plan you're too late"), this reality is one where partners and competitors enter, leave, and shift strategy so quickly, that the future you anticipate is never the one you are dealing with.

For example, had FourSquare looked moves ahead a year ago, it might have considered a merger with Gowalla or some high level multi-step strategy to compete. Ultimately such long term competitive theorizing would have been worthless, as the competitive dynamics for FourSquare are now shaped by a new platform entrant - Facebook. FourSquare wisely chose to just play hard poker, hand after hand, and I imagine will continue to do so.

In my day to day business, I focus on the deals and sales today that I believe will increase enterprise value. I ask myself, is this transaction good today and does it preserve my and the company's long term position at the table. My typical decision process is: "Is this good, and if yes, does it do anything to hurt or long term position?" Which in poker terms would be, "can I win this hand, and if yes, are there any ways this hand could play out that would cause me to lose the game?" If it's a "yes" followed by a "no," I push chips in.

We focus on playing hands, and avoid analysis paralysis of thinking like, "Deal A is good but what is Company B enters our market and we would have preferred to do Deal Y." With that said, we frequently fold on hands that we think we could have won, but didn't like the pot odds.

Don't even get me started on why business is not like golf...

My favorite Buzzfeed name to date is our in-stream ad units. We call
them "story units." The name is simple an descriptive. I find it hard
to even talk about these yellow units without using the name. I simply
don't know what else to call them.

We're rolling out a self-service ad product that Jonah and Chris call
"boost." I'm not aware that there was ever a formal naming discussion
around this; it just is.

We've struggled with what to call our reporting dashboard used by
publishers and advertisers. We currently use the term "viral
dashboard;" I don't love this like I love the other two examples I've
mentioned. However the alternatives, such as "viral cockpit," were
confusing or complex. A name needs to be simple and obvious. It needs
to immediately let a person know what something is.

I suppose this was why Facebook called their "check in" product "check
in." Something unique would probably have confused people.

I also believe that if customers start calling something by a name in
a large enough volume and consistency, you need to just accept it.
I.e. "tweet"

Up until the age of about 23, I went by "Jonathan." People were
consistently calling me "Jon," and I was consistently correcting them.
I realized this was distancing me from people who wanted to be
familiar.

It was awkward for the first year. However, 10 years later, it just
feels natural. It's still weird when people from college call me
Jonathan.

Being able to "tag" friends when you check in will be a huge growth
driver for Facebook Places. I'm an unabashed fan of Foursquare and
think the service will continue to thrive.

With that said, if I'm out for dinner with my parents and check them
in with me, they'll see it in their feed, probably comment on it, and
the next time they run Facebook on their mobiles, potentially check
themselves in. I'm doubtful this will become habitual for most
people, but with this gateway checkin, and 500 million users, sporadic
may be enough.

It's a very good use of network effects. Not only is Facebook pushing
Places to everyone, like Google did with Buzz via Gmail, but it's also
leveraging the network on each given interaction. I'm friends with
almost everyone I eat dinner with on Facebook. I'm a rabid user of
social media, and now in every given checkin, the network effects of
the Facebook platform kick in for me.

I'm sure the privacy issues are huge, but so are risks in anything
that has a huge quick conversion potential. And these Facebook guys
are willing to play dangerous with this stuff.

I poo pooed this launch, and I still think it's pretty lame how much
they've borrowed from Foursquare, even down to the use of the phrase
"check in." (And as a side note, I give the Foursquare exec who was on
stage at the launch event a lot of credit for using his 5 minutes to
coyly explain how much Foursquare had "pioneered" all this.)

But the tagging of your friends at checkin gives this much more quick
growth potential than Yelp or other copycat checkin attempts.

(written on iPhone. Excuse everything)

The theme is that if Ford asked his customers what they wanted they would have said faster horses. If Jobs had asked consumers if they wanted and iPad, they'd have said, "what?"

This is how the argument against market research goes. It has some truth to it but it's also an oversimplification. The Howard Roark instinct to create in a vacuum the beautiful original thing with no feedback is charming but not ideal. This is especially the case when you need partners and customers. You need someone's feedback at some point.

The key for me has always been choosing my spots and allowing for marination. As I look back on my career, it occurs to me that I have always been biz deving a deal or selling a product that is new. I've also had the luxury in all cases of being faced with large markets of many many potential partners/buyers.

The key for me has also been not to argue. When faced with strong initial pushback, I listen, converse, and don't try to convince. I focus on those eager to experiment and those who have questions and specific needs, as opposed to those that prefer to say "no." I do, however, remain in touch and keep the doors open.

I take this strategy for several reasons. Some people prefer not to do new things. So their push back has little to do with my product. Others prefer not to experiment, so the best thing I can do is work with early adopters to prove out success that they can then seek to emulate.  Finally, some of those who push back strong just need time and silence to marinate on the idea, to ping me every week or so with a question or two. I can't change their process, or if I tried it would take a lot of time and probably be unsuccessful.

The luxury here is that I've never been in a market with one or two possible partners. In fact, I hate markets like that for exactly the reasons stated above.  When your market has thousands of buyers and partners, you can just keep moving and not dwell on one counterparty. This has that added benefit of when you leave someone alone, he or she has his time to think through the offering, ask questions at his own pace, and see your success in the market.

You never want to "convince" someone of something, just like you don't want to convince someone to marry you.  A relationship that begins with convincing will always be a struggle.

The most concrete example I can give today, is with regard to viral and social advertising.  We still meet some people who think viral and social advertising should be free. They believe that if they make a good video and tweet it out, the world will see it.  This view is quickly becoming rarer and rarer, but when I see it, I explain big seed marketing, listen, and move on.

I often get asked why people share more on Buzzfeed. The data proves
out this claim, but let me offer some qualitative drivers.

A recent study found that our users share 67.5% of the time, as
opposed to the next closest site, whose users only shared only 49% of
the time:

A BuzzFeed user is on average much more to share a page then not.

Let me lay out the reasons why this is:

First and most importantly, BuzzFeed surfaces the most imminently
shareable content. Out tracking code monitors 1.4 billion page views
of leading content sites each month. Only the most viral (or shared)
content gets triggered onto Buzzfeed.com. This means that the stuff
people are sharing is the stuff that ends up on BuzzFeed.

So our users are presented with stuff that has already demonstrated
itself as sharing-friendly.

Second, this ends up being a virtuous cycle. We attract users who are
early identifiers and like to share. We present influentials who like
to share with content that is begging to be shared.

Third, people want to share content quickly and emotionally. This is
why BuzzFeed pioneered our LOL, OMG, WTF, cute, etc. buttons. One
click to tag an emotion and fire it to your friends.

Fourth, each viral content page shows the seed and viral traffic. Data
informs and drives sharing. Our users want to know where the viral
spread stands. Some like to be early, some like to know that the
content is really viral. Either way, the data informs the judgement
and willingness to share.

These are just four reasons, there are many more, but these are some
of the best.

We're looking to hire a sales person to focus on selling into the "Entertainment" vertical.  We've already done campaigns with: National Geographic, Comedy Central, MTV, and movies...BuzzFeed is growing like crazy and we need more sales help!

This person can live and work in NYC (out of BuzzFeed Global HQ) or in Los Angeles (where Hollywood is big!)

Here's the spec...the alias at the bottom goes to me.

Director of Sales: Entertainment Vertical (TV and Movies)

Buzzfeed is seeking an experienced media sales executive to work with entertainment brands (movies and television). The ideal candidate will have experience selling display advertising and sponsorships for television tune-in campaigns, theatrical film openings, and DVD marketing campaigns. This person will sell sponsorships and our proprietary ad units, as well as, work closely with our product and account service teams to see to it that the campaigns are implemented to maximum long-term client satisfaction. The Director of Sales for the Entertainment Vertical will report to the President. He or she will have a track record of success and an entrepreneurial leaning that will allow her to quickly get up to speed on our products and begin generating revenue.

Responsibilities

• Prospect for clients, pitch new business, and generate sales
• Create persuasive and clear sales materials
• Generate and traffic insertion orders
• Manage client campaign reporting
• Convey client feedback to the Buzzfeed product team
• Hit or exceed monthly sales targets

Requirements

• 5 years of internet sales experience
• Understanding of and experience in selling display campaigns to the entertainment community
• Experience negotiating, structuring, and closing complex six figure insertion orders
• Ability to understand complex technology and convey it in an easy-to-understand manner
• Deep network of advertiser relationships
• Passion for social and viral advertising
• LA or NYC

To apply, send resume and cover letter (in body of the email) to: salesjobs@buzzfeed.com