tag:459pm.com,2014:/feedJason Traff2014-07-31T09:36:16-07:00Jason Traffhttp://459pm.comSvbtle.comtag:459pm.com,2014:Post/the-reemergence-of-old-business-models2014-07-31T09:36:16-07:002014-07-31T09:36:16-07:00Everything Old is New Again: Recycling Business Models<p><em>“Sooner or later, everything old is new again” - Stephen King</em></p>
<p>Have you ever heard the saying that every new movie rips off Shakespeare in one form or another? Or, more likely, that into one of several <a href="http://io9.com/the-universal-shapes-of-stories-according-to-kurt-vonn-1526559996">generic story archetypes</a>?</p>
<p>This is how I try to think about technology sometimes. </p>
<p>Growing up, most interactions fell into the ‘commerce’ or, as time went on, the ‘eCommerce’ bucket, where you would pay money and receive a product or service. If you’ve gone shopping, this is what I mean. Even early examples of Paul Graham’s ‘<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viaweb">digital mall</a>,’ which was acquired by Yahoo fit examples of this.</p>
<p>Then, in my tween years (early 1990s), I heard about Columbia House, which was the evolution of commerce/eCommerce through a subscription service. They, along BMG Music Service, were famous for pioneering a mail order CD deals like “12 for the price of one.” The catch was that you were then supposed to buy more CDs from them at their regular price.</p>
<p>If you were crafty, or like me, just poor and adolescent - you could register your house like an apartment building with artificial suites and apartment numbers, and the mail would still get delivered to you and you could rack up hundreds of CDs for a fraction of the cost. The downside was that every month, you’d spend a lot of money on stamps mailing back their newsletters with your “Not Interested” reply. </p>
<p>This form of subscription service isn’t as applicable anymore because few online businesses ship physical products, but if you look at how a typical SaaS product is sold, it’s basically the same. The only difference is that the cost of a digital product is so much lower that it’s easier to just offer a 30-day free trial and collect someone’s credit card information for the second month. </p>
<p>So the business model proven by BMG back in the mid 1990s, has been used as the stepping stone for large online businesses, such as Netflix and Spotify. </p>
<p><strong>To take this example to an extreme…</strong></p>
<p>In ancient Rome, there used to exist a business model of patronage, where a patron was the sponsor and benefactor of a client. This was often used for legal obligations, but the most illustrative example is probably in commissioning artwork, where the wealthy supported musicians, painters, and sculptors.</p>
<p>Today, I think this business model lives on through companies like [Twitch](twitch.tv) or [Patreon](patreon.com). </p>
<p>For Twitch, the streaming site known for video game streaming, viewers are given the option to subscribe to a channel for $5 a month or on some channels to donate money directly to the content creator. As for Patreon, it’s more of a recurring-Kickstarter for users to support the artists that they enjoy. </p>
<p>In both examples, giving money to support a content creator confers special benefits to the user, whether that’s special communication privileges or just the right to post fun emotes in chat. And the nature of the internet enables not only the media created to be enjoyed by more people but also allows the crowdfunding of these artists, so the burden of patronage no longer falls on any one particular person but on a larger group. In turn, with a larger pool of patrons to draw from, many of these content creators are able to turn their passion into a full-time profession. </p>
<p>What are some other examples out there? I can think of several, such as Max Levchin’s [Affirm](affirm.com), which offers flexible payments (financing) for online purchases, but I’m secretly sure that if I traced the lineage of any one particular company, it would break down into one classic archetype or another.</p>
tag:459pm.com,2014:Post/the-cult-of-killing-it2014-07-10T13:54:59-07:002014-07-10T13:54:59-07:00The Cult of 'Killing It'<blockquote class="short">
<p>“I will create desolation - and call it peace!” - Megatron, Transformers IDW Collection, Megatron Origin, Issue #3</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Last week, a friend of a friend in San Francisco had their startup burgled. The burglary happened while no one was in the office though it was captured on their in-office surveillance video. In the ensuing discussion, someone chimed in, “You know if you shared office space with us at [XX] that never would have happened. Because I’m in the office every single night. <strong>Even on Christmas</strong>.”</p>
<p>And I thought that was the saddest thing I’ve heard in a long time.</p>
<p>There’s an ethos in the tech community that wisdom is gained through suffering, and that if you can suffer more than everyone else, you’ll be the wisest. </p>
<p>Funnily enough, it wasn’t long ago that I had the same mentality. I thought that if I worked harder than everyone else that it would pay off in some ethereal way. That somehow my product would be better than my competitors. That we’d sign more customers. Or that investors would recognize the hustle. The crush. The grind. The indomitable will to succeed no matter the price. </p>
<p>For me personally, the red flags were when I started identifying with the villains in Transformers comics. In the Blurr origin comicbook, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1143&bih=609&q=starscream&oq=starscream&gs_l=img.3..0l10.1985.3543.0.3678.12.9.1.1.1.0.151.702.5j2.7.0....0...1ac.1.48.img..3.9.709.oBbLggH2fQc#hl=en&q=starscream%20g1&revid=1473334784&tbm=isch">Starscream</a> (a bad guy, in case you couldn’t tell by the name) says, “Power. It’s power you care about… You have a single-minded devotion to achieve. You have little time for those around you… others would have you believe these to be abhorrent qualities. Not us.” </p>
<p>And I think that’s what irks me about this mentality of sacrifice. </p>
<p>There is nothing noble about being willing to sacrifice everything for success. Your time, your energy, your youth; your spouse, your friends, your employees, your employees’ spouses, ad nauseum. </p>
<p>Consider this: the nature of being a startup means that most of your competitors are much larger than you. Sometimes, 10-, 100-, or 1000x larger. And, sure, you will be smarter and more nimble. But even if you work twice (or three-times? or four-times?) as hard as your competition, it’s unlikely that will be the silver bullet to your success. </p>
<p>Instead, I think it’s much more likely that you’ll become disconnected from your support network, burnt out from exhaustion and frustration, unable to inspire your best employees, and ultimately fail. <a href="http://459pm.com/test-a-series-of-tests">Kinda like I did</a>. :)</p>
<p>Even now, when I look for company’s to invest in, I want to know that they’re creating a sustainable culture across founders and employees. Everyone understands working hard – from product pushes, deadlines, customer demands, etc., but if you’re working nights, weekends, and holidays without any end in sight. That’s not going to work out for anybody.</p>
<p>Remember, the road is long and you’re going to be on that grind for a long time; like Ice Cube said, “<a href="http://rapgenius.com/1886376/Ice-cube-you-can-do-it/Life-aint-a-track-meet-no-its-a-marathon">Life ain’t a track meet, it’s a marathon.</a>”</p>
<p>The discussion on HackerNews is <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8017245">here</a>.</p>
tag:459pm.com,2014:Post/post-2-lets-play-basic-functionality2014-07-10T13:33:23-07:002014-07-10T13:33:23-07:00Post 2. Let's Play basic functionality.<p>I felt bad about having not updated this for a while, but not that bad because we’ve been sleep training our son. </p>
<p>Did you know that it involves just leaving your kid to cry for ever-increasing amounts of time?</p>
<p>And then your wife starts crying.</p>
<p>And then the dog starts howling.</p>
<p>And then you realize there’s an ever-present tightness in your jaw. </p>
<p>And then finally, your baby wakes up and you do it all again in 3 hours. </p>
<p>So…</p>
<p>The basic CRUD aspects of Let’s Play have been finished; it’s been a lot of fun to poke around in Rails and customize the frontend. Next step will be to introduce some of the visual elements to make it more appealing, and then finally to make it easier to share socially online. Still, the heavy lifting has been done and I’m happy with how it’s turned out. </p>
<p>Now, if there’s a chance for some peace-and-quiet in the house, I’ll look forward to finishing it.</p>
tag:459pm.com,2014:Post/post-1-setting-up-lets-play2014-05-31T13:21:46-07:002014-05-31T13:21:46-07:00Post 1 - Lets Play. Setting up 'Lets Play'<p>So this was a long post detailing the setting up of my new project; I’m guessing that in its majesty it was 1,500 words or so. But… one errant two-fingered swipe backwards, which counts as a ‘back’ button on a Mac, and what I’m guessing are several corrupted cloud saves later… I ended up right back at the start. With a grand total of 26 words.</p>
<p>In fact, even trying to publish this stub of an article has had some 404 issues with Subtle eating my god damn drafts. </p>
<p>Argh, I don’t think I can be bothered to write it all again. At least not right now.</p>
<p><strong>Right, here’s the quick summary</strong><br>
I wanted to have a toy project to learn HTML, CSS/Bootstrap, JS, and Python/Django. I’m bad at all of these things. I decided to make a site to help gamers find new people to play games with online. It’s a problem that I’ve noticed for a while, where I only have a handful of people on my friends list that I like playing with. But, I’m so busy now that I don’t have time to just crunch games for hours on end to make new friends. What if there was a way to find other people to play with?</p>
<p>But you can basically find out what I did <a href="http://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2012/02/09/starting-a-django-project-the-right-way/">here</a>.</p>
<p>Now that the Django website is set up, I need to actually start filling it out. The first step is to start thinking about what my database needs to look like.</p>
<p>I think that for an initial step, I’m going to ask people a series of questions to find out more about them. Later, I’ll build the logic for matching people based off of the information they’ve put in.</p>
<p>So, what would good questions be?</p>
<p>Let’s start with the basics: i) What platform are you looking to find friends on? ii) What is your name on that platform? and iii) What types of games do you play?</p>
<p>Later, I’d love to make it more nuanced maybe even asking people their education level, etc.; I could probably make use of Facebook Connect at some point too, but let’s hold off on all of that for right now and see if I can just do the basics without setting myself on fire. </p>
<p>Inside myapp/models.py</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>class Question(models.Model):<br>
platform_choice = models.CharField(max_length=200)<br>
platform_name = models.CharField(max_length=200)<br>
game_preference = models.CharField(max_length=200)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These are then related to another database, where I’ll be manipulating the data</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>class Results(models.Model):<br>
question = models.ForeignKey(Question)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Once that’s saved, and I’ve made sure that ‘myapp’ is in INSTALLED_APPS, I can try running my first migration with South.</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>$ python manage.py schemamigration myapp —-auto<br>
$ python manage.py migrate myapp</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Great, now lets get off of this default looking Django page. First, create the template directory within the first mysite directory.</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>TEMPLATE_DIRS = (‘/Users/jasontraff/Dropbox/Code/letsplay/mysite/templates’)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then, by editing views.py:</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>from django.shortcuts import render, render_to_response<br>
from django.template import RequestContext</p>
<p>def index(request):<br>
return render_to_response(‘index.html’)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And urls.py to include:</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>url(r’<sup>$‘,</sup> 'myapp.views.index’)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And finally, creating an index.html in /templates to say Hello World!</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>You know this part, html tags all over the place</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>COMMIT</strong></p>
<p>Now, let’s make our databases editable, easy to read, searchable, and filterable by editing admin.py so that it now looks like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>from django.contrib import admin<br>
from myapp.models import Question, Result</p>
<p>class QuestionAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):<br>
list_display = (‘platform_choice’, ‘platform_name’, ‘game_preference’)<br>
list_filter = [‘platform_choice’, ‘platform_name’, ‘game_preference’]<br>
search_fields = [‘platform_choice’, ‘platform_name’, ‘game_preference’]</p>
<p>admin.site.register(Question, QuestionAdmin)<br>
admin.site.register(Result)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Next up is to make the Question ‘detail’ page, which will display the question text and let people vote. (eek!)</p>
tag:459pm.com,2014:Post/is-patience-overrated2014-05-29T18:55:52-07:002014-05-29T18:55:52-07:00Is patience overrated?<p>A common saying is that ‘patience is a virtue,’ but I wonder if anyone believes that anymore.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take much to realize that as a society, our attention spans have diminished, and there’s a constant push to fill our lives with noise and activity – from work, to vacations, to entertainment, ad nauseum. Personally, I often find myself flipping between emails, various lists, Netflix, calendars, Twitch, and random notes, in a blind flurry to make myself look and feel more productive. </p>
<p>I suppose the truest version of the saying would be, ‘patience <em>can be</em> a virtue.’ But the vacillating nature of this wouldn’t make for a very compelling t-shirt.</p>
<p>In particular, when I look at technology entrepreneurship, there’s a constant push to ‘always be killing it.’ Reading through [TechCrunch](techcrunch.com) or [Y-Combinator’s PostHaven Blog](blog.ycombinator.com), you get the sense that if you’re not ‘killing it’ that you’re missing out. Along with the need to be in a cliched ‘hot’ area like social, local, or mobile. Or ideally, all three at once, to form a Voltron-like trifecta called SoLoMo, which even HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ had some funny social commentary on. </p>
<p>And because of all this, it’s very tempting to feel like you’re missing the boat if you’re not in the thick of it all, ‘killing it’, which causes a lot of anxiety to build up around your nascent or non-existent startup. But, I think here is where patience more important than ever. </p>
<p>For me, this anxiety is a new sensation because for the longest time, my role in startups was as the ‘business’ guy, and in this role, I didn’t have the ability to shape a product outside of data analysis or customer feedback. So my anxiety was slightly capped because I knew that I was only one part of a founding team required to get anything off of the ground. And this willful ignorance was blissful.</p>
<p>Then I started learning how to program. And, with no regard for efficiency only efficacy, my programming slowly improved. Like Voltaire said, “Nothing succeeds like excess.”</p>
<p>Finally, through a ham-fisted mashup of HTML, CSS, Python, and Django, I learned to duct-tape together startup prototypes. Nothing very technical, obviously, and if I’m honest, my documentation is still the only strong point of my programming; because I’m constantly trying to remind myself what the hell I’m doing. So I’m in no danger of suddenly revolutionizing robotics or any number of countless fields for which I never received a PhD. But, I did get to the point of being able to knock-up a proof of concept with a lot of time and effort.</p>
<p>And with this new, if slightly mediocre, ability, I experienced a new sort of anxiety around startups. The pressure to organically create a workable and scalable company seemed insurmountable when compared to the constant stream of million dollar fundings and the billion dollar acquisitions that dominate the tech headlines. And how would I know that what I was working on would be the Next Big Thing? Should I just make ‘Airbnb for X’ or ‘Netflix for Y’ and hope for the best? This seems like an act of futility, where I’d just burn a lot of time and energy. </p>
<p>So my new solution is to try cutting out a lot of the noise and anxiety by applying some methodology to what I’m working on. And so far, it’s been working really well.</p>
<p>The first part of my methodology is to slim down my prototyping options to my own fields of expertise and interest, and I’ve found a delightfully succinct way to do this is by asking myself a common YC interview question: <a href="http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html">“Would you use this thing yourself, if you hadn’t written it?”</a></p>
<p>The second, and more philosophical, part of this approach is to recognize the role of patience through the idea generation and customer discovery process. In essence, rather than rambling through ‘Netflix for Y’ combinations to instead focus more on having an open and inquisitive mindset to my surroundings. To this end, I started meditating and reading books on philosophy and Zen, which considers patience not only a virtue but a necessary pathway to enlightenment. </p>
<p>Or, I could just start playing the Powerball. Actually, I may start playing the Powerball anyway. Just to be safe.</p>
tag:459pm.com,2014:Post/the-importance-of-twitch-to-gamerdads2014-05-02T15:29:35-07:002014-05-02T15:29:35-07:00The Importance of Twitch.tv to Gamerdads<p>Five months ago, my wife and I had our first child, a son. And while parenthood has been rewarding, it has also meant that I no longer have time to play video games.</p>
<p>Sure, maybe it’s a small consolation, but video games have always played a big part in my life. As a kid, running games through the command line on my Commodore 64 sparked my interest in computers, and through my adolescence, running cables around my parents’ house so that I could play Diablo on LAN taught me about computer networks. Then, playing Quake and Ultimate Online on our 21.6k modem taught me about the internet. And through college, unbridled by parental supervision and driven by my natural competitiveness and limitless free-time, I even joined some of the best teams in the world and made a run at <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bQMZEMRWFsk17X65aOtknbhT3HKQtKPK6hIjg0NViKk/edit?usp=sharing">playing first-person shooter (“FPS”) games professionally</a> on the tournament circuit.</p>
<p>Though, it was different back then; even though some of the matches were broadcast, similar to what <a href="http://twitch.tv">Twitch.tv</a> does now, they would rarely attract more than a hundred people for even the biggest matches. And, back in the early 2000’s, even winning the biggest tournaments would barely cover expenses after being split amongst the team, and sponsorship mostly consisted of free <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amp_Energy">energy drinks</a> and mouse pads.</p>
<p><strong>Then, after graduating college, I like so many other gamers got too busy for gaming.</strong></p>
<p>Between my 70+ hour/week day job, being in a relationship, and trying to start new companies on the side, there wasn’t much time for gaming anymore. I migrated from PC games to console and handheld games, where the upgrade cycles were cheaper and they were less demanding on my time. Still, I enjoyed playing online with friends whenever I could, which was usually on the weekend or between the hours of 10pm-3am, and this was how gaming was done between for most of my 20’s.</p>
<p>Then, when I was at <a href="http://ycombinator.com">Y-Combinator</a> for <a href="http://leaky.com">Leaky</a>, I first heard about Twitch, where I had office hours with <a href="https://twitter.com/justinkan">Justin Kan</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/eshear">Emmett Shear</a>, the founders of <a href="http://justin.tv">Justin.tv</a>, where Twitch initially began. And, while I enjoyed watching the eSports tournaments and new game releases, it was still more of a novelty for me to accompany my own time spent playing video games.</p>
<p><strong>But now, with a kid everything has changed.</strong></p>
<p>Today, by most definitions, I don’t really have time to play video games anymore. Not really. Arguably, I have some time either late at night or on a mobile device while in the bathroom, but neither of those are really a good substitute. Especially, as late night gaming has become increasingly painful for me as a new parent, and I wasn’t alone on this – one by one, my online friends were dropping off for work or other obligations. Right now, my group of friends and I are at the point of trying to plan gaming time together somewhere between a few days to a week in advance. </p>
<p><strong>This is where Twitch comes in.</strong></p>
<p>While I think that Twitch is unique in it’s own right for bringing two-way media to people so that rather than just passively consuming whatever the television or radio is playing, you can communicate with the streamers in real-time. For me, it’s not about the lofty ideals of media disruption, but just a nice way to allow me to dip into serious video games without the time commitment.</p>
<p>For example, while getting ready for work, maybe I’ll tune into to see what some of the hardcore MMORPG players are doing, whether that’s leveling, questing, or just entertaining their audience. For me, I’d never have the time to enjoy anything outside of the newbie starting area, but through them I’m able to get an idea of what else the game has to offer. (see: [Cohh](twitch.tv/cohhcarnage) or [Ellohime](twitch.tv/ellohime))</p>
<p>Or, maybe while making dinner, I’ll watch part of a Counter-Strike stream to see what high-level Counter-Strike play looks like without having to personally invest hundreds of hours into becoming a better player. (see: [summit1g](twitch.tv/summit1g))</p>
<p>Or, while feeding the baby in the middle of the night, I’ll watch someone playing a newly released game or just one that I’ve never seen before and think, “Yeah, if I had the time, I’d totally play that.” (see: [MANvsGAME](twitch.tv/manvsgame)).</p>
<p>So, on behalf of busy gamerdads everywhere, who will one day re-unite and make a glorious return to video games, thanks for helping us stay in touch with our favorite pastime. </p>
tag:459pm.com,2014:Post/test-a-series-of-tests2014-05-01T07:12:02-07:002014-05-01T07:12:02-07:00A test in a series of tests.<p>I’ve always been fine with other people doubting me. Surely, that’s one of the many baptisms of being an entrepreneur. But, lately, I’ve been filled with self-doubt. An amorphous and unshakeable darkness that just weighs on my confidence. The end result is a nagging feeling that I can no longer create things of value or interest. </p>
<p>I think it all came full circle when I read Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ piece titled “<a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/04/no-exit/">No Exit</a>” or “<a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/04/no-exit/">One Startup’s Struggle to Survive Silicon Valley’s Gold Rush</a>.” I suspect that the experience he details is true for innumerable startups in the Bay Area, and it certainly would have been true for us at <a href="http://leaky.com">Leaky</a>. The constant grind for validation and success spotted periodically with fleeting moments of pure elation. </p>
<p>It’s been six months since we closed <a href="http://leaky.com">Leaky</a>, and in some ways, I think that I’m still recovering from the three and a half years spent building it. Since the acquisition, I’ve done the hand-wringing to investors, the obligatory period spent consulting, and capped it all off with a ‘what went wrong’ lecture tour that ended in a classroom at MIT.</p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/7lqrpxlq2fvrda.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/7lqrpxlq2fvrda_small.jpg" alt="MIT 15.565 presentation on Leaky by Jason Traff"></a><em>presentation for MIT’s 15.565 Digital Evolution / Web 3.0 class</em></p>
<p><strong>So what happens next?</strong></p>
<p>Well, I suppose that all depends on what I’d like to happen next. And, what I’d like to do is prove myself wrong by creating something that is interesting, even if only to me. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” - Vincent Van Gogh</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And while, I’ve always enjoyed writing – my last blog was for Leaky, where I wrote hundreds of SEO-targeted articles on insurance. Before that, I had a personal blog, which consisted mostly of a looping .gif of a dog jumping over a fire, and it was lost when <a href="http://posterous.com">Posterous</a> shut down.</p>
<p>So, I think I’ll make a start here. Just writing about things I like. </p>