Coffee, Sun & Technology

Ahhhh… The joys of starting a new venture with little or no capital. I’m in Seattle for a couple of days working with a beta client for Liveclicker. Got here using United miles, booked a car for $25/day, and got a great hotel room for under $60 on www.hotels.com. I’m hoping I can keep it all under $200. Below my orange Ferrari - reminds me of European cars!

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

Here are a few things I’ve learned working on the product management side for software startups for the last few years… Might be useful if you’re running short release cycles (1-2 weeks) with a handful of engineers working with you.

1) Spec early, spec often. Put down on paper your thoughts as soon as you have a clear idea for how a feature or bug fix should be handled. This will help your engineering counterpart know where the product is going, and minimize the surprises. Also do not hesitate to create updated feature descriptions even if the feature is still being developed, instead of waiting for the final release. The cost of correcting a feature once it’s out is generally high.

2) Minimize disruptions. Product managers are often pressured to interrupt engineering for important bug fixes. 99% of the time it’s a for an impatient key customer or a trial client. When this happens, it’s best to schedule the fix for the next release and focus your cycles on making sure you understand what the problem is, and have a plan ready to deliver to engineering when they are done with their upcoming release. This will maximize the team’s productivity and reduce the number of half-baked features or fixes.

3) Don’t brainstorm with engineering. Brainstorm with clients. Your most productive discussions will always involve a client. Clients pay invoices, engineers don’t. I remember countless meetings where we would discuss for hours about a product issue between the four walls of our conference room, when a simple phone call to a client with a pointed questions could have ended hours of speculation.

4) Put your engineers in a position to be creative. Keep the team up to date on customers and try to articulate clearly to your team what their problems are. Engineers are brilliantly creative at solving problems when given a little bit of context.

5) Learn about your competition by talking to your customers. No amount of online market research will beat the quality of the competitive analysis you’ll get from your existing clients. Your competitors are constantly pitching your customers, with phone calls, emails and elevator pitches. Ask your clients - “who should I worry about, and why”. They’ll tell you.

These days I’m running into more and more eMarketing folks with engineering backgrounds. I think this happens for a couple of reasons. First, e-business is about efficiency. Online you can track the effectiveness of your campaigns, promotions, changes in site design. Something you can’t do easily in the offline world. So it’s not too surprising to find people who can crunch numbers taking key roles in companies - even in the Marketing departments. Second, we live in a Google world. Google has become such a powerful force in e-marketing that it was able to push its spread its analytical/math based culture on to their partners and customers. It’s all about results as they say.

Coming from an analytical background, I certainly am happy to see this happening. As long as analytical folks realize they still need to work hand-in-hand with their more creative counterparts, this is a promising evolution.

Here’s a bonus… eBags.com first sketch, dated 1998, from Jon Nordmark and Peter Cobb.

It’s interesting how view points can change over time. As an hi-tech entrepreneur switching between B2B and B2C opportunities (Fireclick 1998-2005 then Wambo 2006-2007), I got to learn that markets function differently. Consumer businesses seem a little easier to get off the ground, but are highly competitive. Enterprise businesses on the other hand require stronger products, which take longer to develop - but once the initial hurdle is passed things get more predictable.For the last 2 years, Wambo has kept me laser-focused on Web 2.0 applications, social networking and media sharing. I spent a fair amount of time studying the market, innovating, and marketing to the consumer using a mix of viral and search engine marketing. This sharply contrasts with my prior experience at Fireclick, where I never really paid attention to the new wave of innovation led by YouTube and others - sites like Digg, Facebook and even MySpace were complete unknowns to me. I was simply too busy working with eCommerce sites. Gap.com, HSN, Novica, Tower Records - that was my world - far, far away from Web 2.0.

Recently, I’ve taken another look at eCommerce. Called a few of my former customers, looked again at a few of the leading retail sites and ran a few ideas by some eCommerce luminaries. In other words, I’m paying attention again to what’s going on in the world of eCommerce, but with a different approach - an approach we may call Web 2.0.

My first observation is an obvious one. Commerce sites keep getting more templatized and cleaner overall - unlike social networking sites, where personalization and chaos are generally the norm. By contrast, commerce sites appear inhuman and cold. And silent. Makes you feel like shopping at an empty 7Eleven at 5AM on a Sunday morning after a great party with friends.

I would think this issue has a significant impact on user engagement with the commerce site, and eventually, customer loyalty. Let me say this differently. Commerce sites have much to gain by humanizing the shopping experience, I think.

I’m planning on going to eTail 2008 in Palm Springs (February 11-14). I’m hoping to meet interesting people, learn about the latest and greatest in retail technology (Web analytics, online marketing, SEM, etc), and collect feedback on a new idea I’m working on. If you’re around and want to chat/brainstorm/just say hi, send me an email: xavier at liveclicker.com and let’s find a place and time to meet.

I had a nice lunch at Yahoo today. From the outside, it was sort of business as usual but I suspect it’s only a facade. People there are worried about their future. Let’s hope this great company can find its path soon.

Everyone was talking about it at Starbucks this AM. We even got interviewed by a Mercury News reporter.

It was pretty strong and about 10-20 seconds. It felt like riding the subway in Paris at times, but of course way more scary because we didn’t know right then if this was the “big one” that’s supposed to be overdue.

Sort of interesting the fact that when this kind of things happen, you instinctively try to call someone on the phone. Nothing like a nice 5.6 shake up 6 or 7 miles from your house to put a few things into perspective.

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

Raw thoughts on this one from my iPhone at Starbucks…

1) Superb corporate move by OMTR, which one again impresses everyone. I saw their market cap topping $2B this AM, incredible.

2) Nice outcome for the WebSideStory guys! $400M is a big payout and I’m sure Coremetrics and others are feeling good about their exit options right now.

3) New opportunities in the Web analytics and digital marketing space to emerge: as all the web analytics vendors are all busy fighting omniture, and omniture is busy buying off companies, I bet smaller/ agile startups will try to enter this market which must now be on every VCs radar.

4) Now most important: is this good for the customer? Yes. More M&A activity = more investment = more innovation. We have a few interesting years ahead of us.

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

My friend Guillaume Cohen giving me a tour of his new startup Veodia: very very cool tech! Check it out at www.veodia.com

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Argentina 34-France 10. Ouch. We’re talking about rugby here, world cup. 2 weeks earlier France had beaten the All Blacks (best team in the world) and of course, we felt like WE were the best Rugby team… Then we lost against England and now Argentina. So French - capable of the best, and the worst. Alas, next chance to win the title: 2011.

posted from iPhoneSlide.com