Sophia Perl of Wisdom

Freebase.com is an open, shared database

Imagine all the data in the world open for you to use.  That’s what Freebase.com is all about.  It’s a universal database that people can populate and use whatever is stored already.   My only concern is how the data is organized around a particular topic.  It sounds like a mess waiting to happen.

From website:

In general, any data that might be of interest to other people and that you have the right to use is appropriate for Freebase. Examples of the kind of data that’s great to upload or add include:

• Information about people
• Information about locations
• Information about books, films, albums or video games (Freebase doesn’t have storage for the media files themselves; you can, however, add links to other sites that make them available)
• Information about products
• Information about organizations, including businesses, non-profits, political groups
• Scientific data
• Sports data
• Financial data
• Government data

Event listing for upcoming week

• 6/27/2008: Pownce 1st Anniversary Party
• 6/28/2008: iPhone Startup Camp
• 6/28/2008: Technology and Tips in Managing Personal Finance
• 7/1/2008: Venture Financing 101

Does your company have a strategy map?

Do you ever think about what makes Southwest Airlines different from United Airlines or Continental Airlines?  Well, if you were to jot down the unique characteristics of Southwest (e.g., low-cost tickets, no assigned seats, no first class, short flights, etc), then draw lines connecting to related characteristics (e.g., no frills traveling), you would see a graphic cloud of connected items aka strategy map if done right of course.  Sometimes it does not make sense for a company to copy  another company’s strategy because it may not fit with that company’s market positioning.  Would it be weird for Southwest to have first class seating like Continental?  Probably.

Also, the likelihood of a company copying every single unique characteristic of another company successfully is low.  Imagine that there’s a 90% chance that a company can copy another company’s unique characteristic and then times that by the number of characteristics.  The odds go down with each characteristic.  The next time that you think about your company’s strategy, consider what collection of unique characteristics makes your company different.

Some other references:

• - http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3888.html
• - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_map

Stay on top of venture capital news

In case that you wanted to stay on top of venture capital news, check out these websites:

• - The Deal
• - National Venture Capital Association
• - Venture Capital Update
• - Dow Jones Financial Informaion Services
• - Yahoo! Finance- Venture Capital

Harrah’s casino is doing something right for customers

Harrah’s Entertainment is a good example of a company that needed to do something fundamentally different in order to survive in the cut throat environment of casinos. Like many companies have done before it, Harrah’s decided to model its customer service after successful companies in other industries such as Nordtroms and Starbucks; this helped revolutionized the way it did business in each and every one of its locations. While other casinos paid most of their attention to the high roller customers, Harrah’s shifted its focus from mainly high roller customers to every customer with distinct level differentiations.

The key changes included
• treating customers not as transactional entities, but as relationship entities
• developing a core competency in deep data mining and decision-science marketing

Harrah’s understood the importance of creating and maintaining loyal customers in order to secure repeat visits and possibly more stable streams of revenue. In the casino business, this can be achieved by treating your best customers with the utmost customer service. For Harrah’s, the best customers were the loyal customers, not always the biggest spenders. In addition, Harrah’s developed technology that could extract invaluable consumer behavior from all sorts of already collected data. The company was able to be one step ahead of the customer by anticipating their demands. The idea was to fulfill extrinsic customer satisfaction rather than intrinsic customer satisfaction.

The business environment has so many competitors that one would often wonder why a particular customer would stay loyal to any company/brand. The answer lies with what the customers’ needs (besides the actual product or service itself) are. Companies need to take a step back and focus on its core competencies and strategy. It is not enough for a company to make short-term revenue targets if long-term goals are put into jeopardy. Harrah’s has proven this point many times. In addition, the right tools and people for the most part need to be in place to do some of the answering. A crystal ball does not exist that can help predict the future, but historical data and personal feedback can help be a good start. In conclusion, all that successful companies have in common is that they never lost sight of providing distinguishable customer service.

Shoeture is bling for your shoes

I met someone from Los Angeles who is coming out with shoe “bling” accessories for your athletic shoes. Shoeture is a word made up of shoe and couture. These Shoeture “hooks” go on the front of your shoes, looped through the laces. They come in silver and gold metals and in a variety of colored plastic. Rumor has it that some big names in the music industry are asking for Shoeture.

From website:

It’s the feeling you get when you put on a new pair of sneakers.
A special blend of confidence, freshness and excitement.
That’s the love Shoeture is bringing back.