jon steinberg

I took the dirt road...

This is a story, I’ve told before but never as an adult, and having been blogging for over a year it seemed well worth the time.  Especially given that in retrospect, it’s odd to consider how close you can come to a path you set out on and how much harder and winding that path can be.  The picture on the left was taken when I was around 8 years old.  Moments before it was taken, I told my mother that someday I wanted to be a Disney Imagineer.

How I got it in my head that I wanted to be an Imagineer was probably a mix of the fact that I was unathletic, got a computer at a young age, and liked to invent things.  I knew that being an Imagineer involved the latter two; in fact, I must have read somewhere that being an Imagineer was the pinnacle of computers and creativity.

So I had this dream, and every pass that I missed or time I was picked last, I held onto that dream.  And so in the summer of 1993 when I saw the ad below in Scientific American urging me to “dial into” a BBS with my modem, to become an Imagineer, I jumped at the chance.  I dialed in and began to answer a

wide array of personality questions that scrolled across my Toshiba Gas-Plasma Orange luggable screen.  In the section where it asked for a resume, I wrote ideas that I had for theme park attractions.  I’d like to say that I was surprised when about a week later I got a call from a Vice President at Disney Imagineering inviting me out to Glenview California with my parents, but I wasn’t.  They were looking for adults, but the multiple choice personality test flagged me as having the traits they were looking for, and they thought my ideas were cute.  After tours and interviews, I began an amazing internship that lasted two years at Imagineering and then several more years when that team moved to Sony to develop the Metreon complex in SF.

To the last of my knowledge, I was the youngest Imagineer in the company’s history at the time.

At 15, I spent a summer living in California on my own with other Imagineering interns; they were in college.  I struggled with very little direction or understanding to make REAL contributions to the teams working on the Aladdin virtual reality attraction.  I held myself to an incredibly high standard without a real understanding of the uniqueness of my situation or the opportunity.  I learned a ton about computer graphics, design, invention, companies like Silicon Graphics, the Internet, and creativity.  I thought I knew some things when I got out there but being surrounded by the collective brilliance of the Imagineering R&D team, I realized how far I had to come.  I made a couple life long friends, and learned what it really meant to both invent and execute.

Coming off of Disney I made a couple mistakes in my view.  I either should have gone West to Stanford or postponed college if gone at all.  There was a loose offer to continue working with this team, and I think I could have made that happen.  Going to college in the East was a mistake.  I didn’t allign with my interests and while I was stimulated, it was diversion that led no where.

And so it’s funny, 16 years later working in the NY tech and media community and spending time on that same Silicon Graphics campus that I visited so long ago to be in much the same position that I was at 15.  Being surrounded by brilliant people in the world of technology, creativity, and invention.

Every time I attend a NY Tech Meetup or see a startup pitch, I reminisce about the “Demos” the Imagineering team used to do with new technologies or products.  Every time I drive up to the SGI campus, I get a shiver thinking about my trip there with the Disney team in 1993.  SGI demoed a geo technology to us - it was some rotating globe you could “zoom in on.”  Something about polygons…

And then I think, about how unpredictable life is and how much longer the road always is.  I founded a startup and had pitched at Benchmark and Sequoia by the age of 22, even winning funding from Benchmark - but after all it was 2000.  After the dot com bubble burst, I went to business school, something I swore I would never do.  I consulted for a year for Booz Allen - the worst year of my life.  I did not wake up every morning glad to be doing what I was doing.

I did business development for a startup that had some unique internet data that it modeled into financial research reports.  I acquired some more data for them and that somehow led to me becoming a Series 7 equity salesperson catering to hedge funds.  And then finally I found my way back to technology and innovation.

I always knew what I wanted to do.  I knew at 8.  And then life intervenes, and I suppose whereas some people find a superhighway, I set out on the same cross country journey but somehow ended up taking the dirt roads.  With that said, there have been some great restaurants, some bad restaurants, and plenty of local attractions along the way.  I continue to know what I love, and I continue to drive.

After all, eveything is a fad, even Life, the Universe, and Everything

In 2000, everyone reading this blog was likely too busy working on a B2B idea and proclaiming the stupidity of B2C ecommerce (that’s so 1999) to watch TV, but that was the year that Survivor premiered on CBS to enormous ratings.  The sitcom standby, Friends, was running strong in its seventh season and still enjoying consistent ranking in the top 10 of primetime ratings.

There were likely ad buyers at the time unwilling to buy time around Survivor.  Not because it was questionable, but rather because it was a “fad.”  These marketers probably continued to buy Friends, while commenting to their Survivor spot buying colleagues at other firms, “Survivor is stupid, reality TV is crap….it’ll never last.”  But how flawed is that logic?  Survivor proved to have some legs, but even if it was a one season fad, why not buy time around a highly rated show even if it’s only popular one season.

How about those who steer away from trendy restaurants not because it sounds distasteful but rather because it’s trendy, a flash in the pan.  But why is longevity a reason in and of itself to value something.

I like trendy; I like trends.  If something is good or interesting now; it is good and interesting now.  The only thing that’s forever is family, close friends, and ideally integrity.

Of course, this comes back to Twitter and my annoyance at people who scoff at Twitter or the concept of advertising on Twitter.  10% of twitter users may produce 90% of the content, but that still means that it has 4.5M to 9M registered users and the eyes of the web tuning into it at a rate of 125M visitors a month.

Further it’s not an either or game.  You can advertise everywhere you want offline and online, including Twitter.  If the only reason your corporate twitter account gets attention is because it’s on Twitter that’s fine.

If you don’t find this logic compelling, then you probably also avoided buying tech stocks during the bubble and predicted the housing market decline for the past 5 years.  If you say anything long enough you’ll eventually be right, because in the long run the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent and the long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.  Because at the end of the day what’s not a fad?  GM was a fad.

Remember, “You have to run Windows for file compatibility.” FAD

It seems the only industry that has a reasonable view of its product-related longevity is Broadway, which begins selling tickets to a production with the incoming ackowledgement that it will have a “run.”

And after around 80-100 years all of our lives will be over, so I suppose you could even argue that each of us as humans is a fad.

For the record, I think Twitter will be around at least long enough that my 4-month old daughter will someday want her Twitter-name, so I grabbed it.  But at the end of the day, all that matters is that it’s the most important media creation consumption platform around right now, so only the foolish would snicker.

DropBoxee

VOTE FOR DROPBOXEE in the Boxee Developer Challenge!

boxee + drop.io now live in the App Box! (Boxee Blog Post)

Dropboxee for Boxee Released in Boxee’s App Box

I’m really psyched to announce Dropboxee. I’m a big fan of boxee, and when I heard about the developer contest, I knew I had to build something. I often have home videos on my desktop that I want to quickly and easily get onto my AppleTV Boxee.  There was simply no easy way to do it.

Pairing this need with my love of knitting together APIs (and words) and DropBoxee came to me.

Without even asking, I knew that Sam Lessin’s Drop.io API would be flexible to do just about anything.  Sure enough it is.

I knew with the right developer, I could have this built quickly and elegantly. I had the great fortune of meeting Nick Perez on ODesk willing to build it for me as a work for hire.  His skills, speed, and attention to detail far exceeded my hopes.  As soon as DropBox opens their API, we have plans to add that support to the App, and I look forward to continue to working with Nick on projects.

DropBoxee Real Life Walkthrough from Jon Steinberg on Vimeo.

DropBoxee is the easiest way to get your own video, music and images on Boxee!

* Step 1: Drop your content in a drop.io
* Step 2: Enter the drop name in the Dropboxee App on Boxee
* Step 3: There is no Step 3

DropBoxee is the easiest way to get your own video, music and images on Boxee!

• Step 1: Drop your content in a drop.io
• Step 2: Enter the drop name in the Dropboxee App on Boxee
• Step 3: There is no Step 3

Twitter: @dropboxee

A rising tide lifts all boats, or enough to eat for everyone

Everyone obsesses about competition when product and execution are so much more important.  And it’s also execution in the right area/sector at a time when businesses or people need your product, and the economics of the market space allow for success.  May you live in interesting times and be a creature of your times.

For example, being an app developer on the iPhone is a great place to be.  The app store allows for tons of entrepreneurs to make money using a friction free platform.  To make a VC type return, you have to be one of the best producers on the platform, but there is plenty to eat and all boats rise for those who are shooting, or willing as a fallback, to be Ramen-profitable.

The same can be said of cloud storage.  It just makes sense for consumers and businesses, and this tide will raise many players in the space including Pogoplug, drop.io, and Dropbox.  Ryan McIntyre wrote a great post about Foundry’s investment in Pogoplug.  He argues that Pogo is much more affordable that “true” cloud platforms, and I think his argument makes sense.  However, the overall market shift to cloud will benefit all players who have good products in the space.  I’m going to buy a Pogo and continue to use the other two.  Some consumers and businesses may use only one.  But the reality is, you want to be one of these guys and not a consumer hard-drive manufacturer targeting end-buyers.

The macro trends so often outstrip everything else.  Businesses worry so much about their competitors “beating” them when relatively few businesses fail because of competitors.  Most failures can be attributed to failed business models, poor execution, or a solution looking for a problem.  And, relatively few businesses exist in markets where network effects result in winner-take-all.

The importance of industry and market trends is why so many VCs and public market investors use a thematic investing approach.  Unless you can do a hedged trade, who wants to bet against even the losers in a market witnessing tremendous tailwinds.  As an entrepreneur, you don’t have the opportunity to go long a good company in a bad sector, while simultaneously shorting the sector index.

I've seen the future and the rumors of OS death are highly under-exaggerated

Image by Paul Watson via Flickr

You hear about the cloud taking over and operating systems being obsolete, but it’s only when you get your hands dirty that you really understand the scale and speed of this transition.

I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) Netbook Remix on my Acer Aspire One Netbook over the weekend.  It took about 15 minutes to install, after which I was running Firefox and a few other pre-installed apps with ease.  Web browsing, settings, and wireless networking via the preloaded desktop is completely intuitive.  For the average user on OS X or Windows XP, going to Ubuntu will be less a transition than Vista.

Getting Adobe Flash to run properly was a hasle that took hours.  Similarly, installing new apps through the package system requires that you be a bit of a geek.  Your parents could use Ubuntu with ease, but there is no way they’d be able to install new applications.

With that said, the price is right (free) and this OS runs better than XP on the new cheap hardware (netbooks) that are the next growth area in hardware.  Further, most users really only need a browser.  After all it’s no longer 1993, when you were buying packaged software and installing games you bought at Gamestop.  With everything in the browser, and the fact that most people only click a few icons that are on the desktop, who cares what the desktop is running on?

A few more tweaks, and Ubuntu is all you need.

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The easiest money is the money you already have

Image via Wikipedia

In the past three weeks, I have disputed around 4 credit card charges.  I find that I average around one dispute a week.  Here are my most recent disputes:

• Wells Fargo refused to refund a “mortgage deposit,” despite being unable to deliver a mortgage to me less than 25 hours before my apartment closing.
• Equinox Fitness charged my wife for two months of membership on an account that it should no longer have been charging on.  It took me four phone calls to get a refund.
• Vonage attempted to charge me a $44 line cancellation fee despite my having been with them twice the duration of their 2-year contract period.
• Charged twice on another fitness fee.  Same charge twice, a one-time dupe.
• My parental-leave checks mistakenly left-off several days I should have been paid for.  (This was partly my fault, but I spent the time to study the stubs and discovered it.)

I won all the disputes.  Average time was probably about 45 min per dispute.  It amazes me that you can sign up for anything on line in 5 minutes, but cancelling and getting a refund is so much harder for these companies to do.

I try to charge everything on my Amex, and then I inspect it around once a week online to look for errors.  I always find some error.  My first step it to call the merchant.  Around 75% of the time I need to escalate to a supervisor.  There’s a lot of repeting myself, so I typically do email or perform some other task in tandem so that my time is not wasted.

If the supervisor is unable to resolve my issue, I email the management team of the company.  I find their email addresses by going to the press release section of their web site and identifying the structure of the email addresses (i.e. firstname_lastname@companythatscrewedme.com) and then going to the management section to get the names.

Simultaneously, I dispute the charge on American Express.  Their dispute resolution is fantastic; they immediately credit you for the amount and contact the merchant.  I also strongly discourage the use of debit cards; they are much harder to get funds back on.

When I asks friends and colleagues if they perform similar disputes, most respond they don’t get mis-charged.  They should add “at least that they know about.”

I have to give some credit to my mentor in credit charge disputing, my dad.  He gets into the office each day before 8am to check on this kind of stuff.  If you say you don’t have the time to check and dispute, you’re either not waking up early enough, or enjoy giving away money to companies that are trying to defraud you either by error or active choice.

The best way to save money in this recession is to keep the money you already have…