back in the saddle

My netbook life on line, first in a series………until I run out of stuff to review

What’s up out there?

Interesting times out in the real world.  Everything is a “crisis”.  At VT&T, we’re in the process of raising our first institutional round, and most professional investors are recovering from 6 weeks of being shell-shocked.  They are doing the smart thing for their current portfolio companies, and saving some “dry powder” for follow on financing. The other problem is “exits”, how do they get their money out of these companies? Unfortunately for everyone in the industry, they are missing some great deals.

It’s a very good time to invest- there are good values out there, investors can get in at a decent valuation, and help grow a young company.

So if anyone  out there is like us  – focus on your customers and keep the faith: great companies (young and old) will thrive, just keep looking for a partner with courage & cash

Happy holidays!

Steve

Non-stop Relationships

When you or someone you know needs a particular product or service, who do you think of first? For example, most people are not always buying or selling a home or property, but when it’s time to buy or sell that big ticket item, the first person who comes to mind is likely the agent who has stayed in touch. Even though a specific project or transaction may have ended, there is always value in keeping up the communications and fostering an ongoing relationship for the future.

 

We find that rather than having hundreds of projects with five to ten people in a project, what is more common is a series of multi-tier relationships. For instance, a nationwide  real estate group has about a dozen people that help agents learn how to navigate technology, and coach and help the agents on high-end commercial and personal residential deals. They don’t have 72,000 agents as customers; what they have is 72,000 individual relationships with their agents. Another example would be a bank, that may have hundreds of customers in a branch, but every one of those account holders perceive an individual relationship. Those relationships need to be direct, persistent, and positive to retain customers.

 

Just like with TV or the Internet, there are so many choices—instead of the three original broadcast channels to tune into, the consumer can pick and choose, and wants to know why any option is the best. He or she doesn’t care about the other 20 million people and their selections. It’s a key component of the Youniverse: if you’re competing for my attention, how do you speak to me, over time and distance, not as a member of a market segment, but to me as a unique customer who wants to establish a long-term relationship?

 

“Paying” Attention

So now that you know systems are built to leverage your time, and now that you know the information is there so that you can get it when you choose, and now that there’s a context, how do you decide where to pay attention?

 

What is attention? The new currency is not information; it’s free and everywhere. It’s not hardware, or software, or applications, or bandwidth, because those things are getting cheaper every day. It is your attention, because every time you choose to look at something, read something, contribute to something, you are taking out of your attention bank account. How do you decide to “pay” attention?  Everything is competing for your cycle, so how do you decide which things you want to look at? You want not just information, but meaning with value, and it has to be valuable enough for you to pay out of your attention bank account to deal with it.

 

We’ve talked about information content as well as context, and content plus context adds up to relevance.  The higher the relevance, the higher the value, and the more attention you’ll pay out of your attention bank account. To decide, you have to also factor in the element of time to relevance, and that affects the value. You may get some information at one in the afternoon that has no current relevance, but if at 1:15 something dramatically changes in your business or home, all of a sudden that may now be the most important thing.

 

It’s very important, also, to be able to find and recall all that valuable information, because if you can’t recall it immediately and lay your hands on it, that time spent searching is wasted time and attention, and if your most valuable asset is attention, then you’re burning cycles to no benefit.  So what are the parameters that constitute relevance to you?

Content in Context

The fact that you are established as the center of the youniverse, with new, cheaper systems making it possible for you to be always on and able to conveniently access materials in central locations, also means that now programs need to further cater to you by showing you the specific information that you want, in context.

The quantity of knowledge available becomes meaningless without a way to find the details you’re looking for. So what becomes really important is an effective way to link people, files, information, and discussions to particular bodies of work and contexts, attaching attributes to ideas to associate them with certain people, so there can be a relevant identifying link.

As you have innumerable options of data to view, the people competing for your attention have to know where to put their information for you to see, how to make it easy for you to find, and how to describe it in a way that has the most value to hold your attention. For example, you may not be interested in a bunch of general articles about interest rates, but you would probably be more interested in an article about interest rates that includes the features of your loan and 12 banks who would like to talk to you based on your credit score. It’s the same information, just a different context.

How can these companies best present information that gets your attention and still shows respect for your time with a context that is attractive or meaningful to you?

Always On

Not only does our user-centric Youniverse provide a wealth of ways to access communications technology as computers, computing time, and transmission options become more diverse and inexpensive, but these communications are always on. Growing from the general availability of wireless broadband and the option to always be connected, the ability to connect is now a general expectation and considered a basic requirement for normal daily functioning.

 Consider that the newest generation of technology users doesn’t even know what it means to be disconnected. They don’t remember a time without the omnipresent devices that can access so many resources from anywhere.

 New architecture sites like YouTube (the leader of online video) and FaceBook (a popular utility for social networking) are structured for this new always on generation. These kinds of systems are continually accessible, so users can generate content and put it up in their chosen web environments, then let people know it’s there to be viewed at anytime. So instead of sending multiple emails with attachments, they put out the information once, and it’s there instantly, ready for action. Always connected has spawned the incredible growth of virtual online game environments. These are interactive content spaces where users, literally, create their own worlds.

 The opportunities to exchange information and ideas keep evolving, so you can connect in more ways with more people, all the time. How can these always on communications possibilities work for you? Are you using them, or stuck in the old paradigm of offline-online?

What is User Centric? (Rls 1.0)

In the last post, we touched on the idea of the “Youniverse,” and how the world of technology has changed from machine centric, where users contended for rare technological resources, to user centric, in which each user is surrounded by multiple available electronic or digital products, applications, and systems. 

Consider the technology you can now access on a daily basis. You probably have at least one computer at home and one at work, with a plethora of programs for communications, research, word processing, entertainment, and more. Your home entertainment system might now include a TV with DVR for increased interactivity, or game platforms that not only play a variety of games, but access the Internet to post your scores, download other games and demos, or just surf the Web. You also use (at least) one cell phone, smartphone, PDA, iPhone, electronic daily planner, or combination thereof.

Now you not only have the advantage of an abundance of technologies, but they are smaller, more portable, more and more omnipresent. Laptop computers and cell phones become ever lighter and more powerful. Many cars are now equipped with GPS systems. Portable music players barely take up more space than a pack of gum, with near-invisible earphones and wires.  

As the hub of all this activity, you get to make the choices, and you get to decide—how do you want your “Youniverse” to evolve?  How will people, systems, applications and requests get your attention? In the Youniverse, attention must be earned, not demanded. Are those things that are trying to get your attention earning the right to occupy your precious time?

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The Move from Machine to YOU

Business architectures naturally focus on getting the most leverage from the most expensive resources, which traditionally have been computing, storage, and bandwidth. For a specific example of system optimization, let’s consider email, which maximized a shared resource function. A person would compose mail offline, log in, use the minimum bandwidth, synchronize the client to the server, then log off, repeating the process numerous times per day. Although today most users are connected to systems full time, the process is essentially the same, continuing to optimize resources that are cheap, and even free. Such architectures are very slow to change.The computing environment has always been machine centric: a computer or network in the center, with many users contending for its time. The current move is clearly toward the user—YOU—being the center of your computing universe, with lots of machines, networks, and applications competing for your attention in a complete reversal of the past situation. Layer on ubiquitous, cheap, and constant connectivity, cheap computing and storage resources, and you have the perfect storm of change for the fundamental premises of computing. This calls for significant changes in thinking, architecture, and deployment.

New requirements for the user-centric “Youniverse” must be developed independent of traditional computing, storage, and communications designs and technologies. These new methods will take advantage of the lowering costs of formerly expensive resources, and serve to enhance the effectiveness of the new center of the computing universe—YOU.
Thanks for your thoughts
Steve Metzger

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