Sophia Perl of Wisdom

Telepresence robot is like Rosie for the business

Recently, I had an opportunity to visit Willow Garage, a startup robotics research firm in Menlo Park, California.  I saw a bunch of PR2s and most interestingly the Texai telepresence robot.  You can think of the robot as a mobile teleconference (networked to net with speakers) with a face (monitor).  Basically, a remote employee can assume the identify of a Texai to wander the halls of the office or attend a meeting.  It takes telecommuting to a whole new level.  Read more about Texai here.

Willow Garage’s vision (from website):

We see personal robots as the next paradigm-shifting personal productivity tool.  By investing in open source and open platform adoption models, we aim to lay the groundwork for the use of personal robotics applications in everyday life.

A separate topic, I came across a neat travel idea, Geeks on a Plane.  Check it out!

Make your website sticky like a game

I have this theory.  All websites that have a high percentage of repeat visitors have characteristics of a game.  There was an article in Social Times about the 7 features that should be in every social game.  I am not a Farmville or MafiaWars player, but there are things about Facebook (a website that has social game elements) that keeps me entertained, most importantly real friends, messaging, and customization.  I like to see what’s going on with real friends.  I like to get comments on photos, links, and status update.  I like that I can hide select feeds and personalize my profile page to show certain applications and information.  Maybe I cheated a bit by choosing a social networking site.  But, you should think about what elements of a social game can be used for your website to make it sticky and entertaining for your website visitors.

From the article, 7 features of a social game:

1. Real friends
2. Gifting
3. Leader boards
4. Challenges
5. Messaging
6. Teams
7. Customization

P-Camp ‘10 at Yahoo

This weekend some friends and I went to P-Camp ‘10 (product management camp) at Yahoo in Sunnyvale, California (Thanks Yahoo for hosting!).  I am a product manager after all and I do like to perfect my craft.  This is my second time attending and I think its third year in running.  Last year, I had an okay time, maybe it was the sessions that I picked.  I wanted to try P-Camp again this year.  I’m glad that I did.

One rule that P-Camp has is that if a session is not useful to you, feel free to walk out and join another session.  I didn’t follow this rule last year, so this year I am sticking to it.  During the 2:15pm time slot, I left two sessions and finally ended up at a session that I really liked and asked two good questions such that people approached me about the questions.  In any case, I really enjoyed my experience at P-Camp this year.  I met a lot of interesting folks and learned new approaches and new tools.  I recommend that folks go next year because 1) it’s free (let’s hope sponsors keep it free), 2) you’ll learn valuable skills that can be applied to a startup or a large company, and 3) network, network, network.  Go next time!

Here are the sessions that I attended and my key takeaways:

Product management in a startup environment (Adam Birch)

• Leverage POC as a selling technique to get sales, more funding
• tools: jing, inkscape, powerpoint, uservoice

Customer segmentation

• talk to existing customers, ex-customers, potential customers
• find out why customers went to competitors
• look at the roles / job titles of your customer base / decision makers

Creditability and authority in product management (Alan Armstrong from Eigenworks)

• what is your value if people are trying to go around you?
• be good at bringing ideas together so that anyone can understand
• a study that shows it takes 20 minutes to get something started
• consolidate discretionary time
• person who interviews the most buyers wins
• if not able to talk to customers, go to forums/support information to learn what customers are saying, maybe answer some of their questions
• what’s in it for the sales person to let you talk to the customer?
• reach out to an ex-employee of your client
• go after sales deal that went dead
• create a FAQ

Top 10 principles of great sales messaging (Michael Cannon from Silver Bullet Group)

• communicate value in customer context
• make the right comparison: 1) business creation, 2) order creation
• use strong words
• clear compatibility comparisons
• incorporate lots of proof points

Engineering makes the decisions, what do you do? (Phil from 280 group)

• influence the product development space
• work on messages asap to influence product development and roadmap
• go to all meetings
• leverage usability studies to kill/propel ideas

No one stole your idea, deal with it

How many times have you heard your friends say, “we should start this business, we should start that business…”?  (or maybe it’s just my friends hehehehe)  Empty goals with no action.  So I was reading a Mashable article on a new startup that delivers your favorite toiletries to your hotel room when you travel, so that you don’t have to lug it with you in pint-size containers on your carry-on.  The first thing that popped into my mind was that “hey my friend wanted to start this business too”.

If you are a smart person, you would know by now that ideas are just ideas, in my opinion most are not unique.  If you are too afraid to go to a networking event to discuss your new business idea openly, then it wasn’t that good of an idea if it’s easy to replicate.  Alright, so what makes one business idea better than the other?  Well, it’s a combination of team (ability to execute), idea (compelling value proposition), and market (size and ability to capture a piece of it).

Okay, back to the story.  Yes, probably my friend could have started a similar “Suite Arrival“-like business, but the passion needs to be there too.  For instance, if it were me, I am not too excited to run a toiletry delivery service.  It’s a cool idea, but I am not interested in starting it up and growing it.  Nope, not me.

Want to give away your lifetime earnings (%) for money upfront now?

I was reading a VentureBeat article on entrepreneurs giving rights to a percentage of their future earnings for an upfront cash investment for their business.  The website is called Thrust Fund.  You can think of it like giving money to a promising filmmaker who may have the next Star Wars movie.  I’d like to get in on that for sure except that usually 9 of 10 business fail.  Also, is there any guarantee that the entrepreneur will find a job after so many failures?  I definitely like the twist on finding a new way to fund startups.  Would you sign up as an entrepreneur and/or investor?

From the Thrust Fund website:

Here’s how it works:

1. Thrust Funders learn about Entrepreneurs.
2. When the Funder sees an Entrepreneur of interest, she or he submits an inquiry to that Entrepreneur and coordinates a time and manner to discuss passions, plans, and pursuits.
3. When a Thrust Funder decides to support an Entrepreneur, she or he may negotiate exactly what that support will look like.

Fun time at Stanford E-Week E-Mixer

I am embarrassed to admit that of the whole time that I’ve been in the bay area, I have not made it to a single e-week event.  I saw this event called Reverse VC Pitch and thought hey I’ll go to that, it’s free what is there to lose.  It just so happens it was during Stanford Entrepreneurship Week and the organizer Larry wanted to piggy back with the E-Week E-Mixer which was also free (yes!).  I showed up two hours before the Reverse VC Pitch event to attend the E-Mixer.  It was in the lower cafe area of the Graduate School of Business.  Every attendee received a list of attendees with contact info and a short blurb about why they were attending.  No you can’t have my list. 

I met a lot of B-school students - Cal, Stanford, Chicago (yes, Chicago, 3 students took 3 days off to attend Stanford E-week).  The fun part was that folks asked each other to pitch their ideas (if applicable) and then were grilled on their idea.  Ideas that I heard were: an e-commerce platform idea, learning module idea, a packaging solution, a dating website for couples with no much details, mobile and access to licensed text. I did meet this one guy who made me laugh.  When asked if he had a business card, he said with a straight face, “I’m going green, I don’t have a business card.”  Yeah right!  In general, everyone was very nice.  No one judged each other and I would go again next year.   It was a free event worth attending.

Related to startups, I came across this event where 12 people hop on a bus to come up with a business idea or two while driving 48 hours to SXSW in Austin.   Then when in Austin, pitch their ideas to VCs.  It’s called The Startup Bus.  I think that it’s a great idea except that I would get car sick from reading my computer screen.  My other thought is that well the Silicon Valley area is the mecca of technology why leave it to pitch ideas.  I HEART SV!