Tag: Startup

Breaking a team down in order to build it back up

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About 6 months after I was promoted to Director of Marketing at FarmLogs, my team was going through some serious growing pains. We were coming off the completion of two huge marketing efforts — the launch our new website and our second annual User Conference. And, I was spending every free moment available analyzing the previous year and working with our Sales Team to create our goals 2017. Everyone was burnt out and stressed out, and on top of that, we terminated a position on my team. This was the first real personnel shake-up for Marketing and the effect was palpable, bringing team morale to an all-time low. We needed a reset, and I knew that in order to be successful we needed to be a well-oiled machine. So, I cleared our plates and re-prioritized our workload so we could focus on one thing — team-building.

Role Clarity and Expectations

My team was craving transparency and clear expectations, so I wanted to start our team-building week with an all-day role clarity and expectations meeting. We needed to address individual tasks, establish a hierarchy, and define the rules of how we work together. It honestly would have been easier for me to write job expectations, create an organization chart, and outline expectations, but I wanted their buy-in.

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Dear Startups, It’s Freakin’ VUCA Out There!

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No, it’s not an Eastern European carmaker. That was Yugo. And yeah, it’s not an Italian restaurant in SOMA either. That’s Buca. I’m not a big fan of either of those, but I am a huge fan of VUCA.

VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Any startup or anyone going to work at a startup needs to index high on their comfort level with each of these. Trust me: it’s VUCA out there.

Volatility

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I Run the Earth’s Smallest Startup

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I’m now the CEO of a book. Yes, a book.


My second novel comes out today. Set in an imaginary Bay Area startup, it’s steeped in tech and science. The plot deals with the toxicity of social media, the perils of government hacking, the ethics of near-future augmented reality, and more. I poured about 7,500 hours of my life into it, as I mentioned in a post three weeks back. A long-time entrepreneur, I’ve now spent more time writing fiction than running companies, and am a novelist from tip to toe.

But I don’t feel like one this morning. I feel much more like a jittery CEO launching his understaffed startup into a dense market. Because that’s what novelists are these days. My startup is called After On, and my venture backer is Random House. They funded my launch and will support me for as long as it makes sense. Like all good VCs, they’re a great font of advice and contacts, and they earnestly wish me success. Also like good VC’s, they have a portfolio to manage. They’ve diversified their risk across it, whereas I’m frantically all-in on my lone creation.

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Co-located Outsourcing: The Newest Trend In Tech Outsourcing

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Steve Lohr wrote a great piece for the New York Times today, called “Hot Spot for Tech Outsourcing: The United States”

“As brands pour energy and money into their websites and mobile apps, more of them are deciding that there is value in having developers in the same time zone,” Lohr writes.

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Could Video Games Cure Alzheimer’s?

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“After On” Podcast: Episode 2 (first published to Medium member July 21)

One of the world’s top peer-reviewed journals thinks it’s possible

I recently recorded a 90-minute interview with a man who might one day cure dementia by using that classical clinical tool: the video game. Seriously! Originally available just to Medium members, it’s now available to everyone as part of the After On podcast. To access it, either:

  1. Type “After On” into your podcast app’s search field, or . . .
  2. Click the “play” button near the top of this page on Boing Boing or . . .
  3. Click here, then click the blue “View on iTunes” button in the upper left corner of the page (requires iTunes, of course),

Anyway, meet my interviewee, Adam Gazzaley:

>Dr. Adam Gazzaley of UCSF

Adam runs a giant research lab at UCSF, and is emerging as one of the top neuroscientists of his generation. This Nature cover about his agenda-setting work started cementing his reputation a few years back:

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Right Here, Right Now: 27 Simple Actions to Support Women in Tech

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If cars can drive themselves and a settlement on Mars is within reach in the next decade, it seems reasonable we could have an awesome environment for women looking to work or start something in tech. But there is daily, if not hourly, proof that we’re nowhere close as an industry.

We believe in the transformative power of technology to change the world at breakneck speed when we put our minds to it. Why is it when it comes to the very same humans who will make it happen, we set our bar so low? My daughter’s preschool demands more of four-year olds in their code of conduct than we’re asking from tech bros behaving badly.


We shouldn’t have to pledge to be decent to each other. If you can’t be decent, hand over your La Croix and get the fuck out.

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The Future of Augmented Reality Ain’t Pokemon Go

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“After On:” Audio Episode 1 of 8

Meta’s Meron Gribetz on the present & future of AR

Five years back, Google Glass’s famous launch video trained us to think of augmented reality as a flat translucence. It would be a bunch of wee announcements slapped on our field of view like Post-Its on ski goggles. The world beheld this daring vision and hit the snooze bar. AR’s next major milestone, Pokémon Go, is also all about simple superimposition (for now, anyway). So I was surprised to find the faithful at last month’s AR in Action conference almost wholly focused on holograms and photorealism. It’s a big step forward — and it’s actually starting to work.

I attended the New York City event to meet up with Meta CEO Meron Gribetz. Meta is racing Microsoft for the early lead in commercial AR. Florida-based Magic Leap is also allegedly in the hunt, having raised over a billion dollars. But having yet to ship a product, they came in for some sharp criticism back in December, followed by bemused head-scratching, which continues to this day.

Subsequent to the conference, I sat down with Meron in Meta’s Silicon Valley HQ to record a long interview — which now is part of an eight-episode audio series I’m producing to accompany my new novel, After On. I set the novel nine seconds into the future, as this let me feature all kinds of present-tense science and technology. I figured this would also let me stuff my book full of 20-page digressions on how cooooool AR, synthetic biology, quantum computing, and other fields are (or rather, will be. You know — nine seconds from now).

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Taking on the BigCos: Rethinking Categories With A Clean Slate

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NewCo Shift Forum

There are plenty of reasons to avoid taking on the big players in slow growth categories like beverages or CPG. But purpose isn’t one of them.

At the NewCo Shift Forum earlier this year, Bill Kanarick, CMO, SapientRazorfish, hosted a conversation with Kara Goldin, Founder & CEO, hint, Inc., and Tina Sharkey Co-Founder & CEO, Brandless. Goldin and Sharkey had just delivered overviews of their companies, which you can find here (Hint) and here (Brandless). In the ensuing conversation, Kanarick focused his questioning on how best to be a startup in a massive category like beverages or consumer packaged goods. Their answer? Start with a clean slate. More in the video and transcript below.

Bill Kanarick: We just had a conversation about disruption and transformation. We at Sapient and Publicis deal an awful lot with both startups as well as incumbents. I’d be interested to get each of your perspectives on, as a startup, your advantages relative to the incumbents attacking the same space.

What are those advantages? What do you think really gives you an edge over those that might be trying to reinvent themselves, like, say, Proctor & Gamble, Tina, to use your example?

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